Japan Not Looking for Military Power, Officials Say in Defense of Budget

TOKYO —  Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone’s decision to lift an arbitrary defense spending ceiling of 1% of gross national product has brought charges from China, from Japanese Socialists and Communists and from former Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger that Japan will become a major military power.

But for Defense Agency chief Yuko Kurihara, such critics are mistaking ghosts of the past for realities of the present. Modern Japan could not become a military giant even if it wanted to, he said in an interview.

Criticism from Japan’s leftists had been expected. But Kissinger’s assertion that the decision “makes it inevitable that Japan will emerge as a major military power in the not-too-distant future” shocked Japanese leaders.

“Kissinger may be a great man, but on this point, he doesn’t understand,” Kurihara said.

“In the old days, the military was the emperor’s military. . . ,” Kurihara said. The military “utilized the emperor’s power of supreme command . . . to move politics. Military men . . . held a veto (over formation of cabinets). If (civilians) refused to listen to them, they could threaten to keep out of a Cabinet an army minister or a navy minister.”

Today, no elected prime minister could ignore either Parliament or the people--the most powerful limit on increased defense spending, in Kurihara’s view.

Parliament, he said, would not approve snowballing increases in spending for what Japan now calls its Self-Defense Forces. And even if the ruling Liberal Democratic Party pushed through a huge defense budget increase, “we would lose the next election.”

“We should hold more pride and faith” in parliamentary democracy, which “has been firmly established in Japan,” he said.

Opposition Expected

Although Kurihara was displeased with Kissinger’s prediction, he said he not only welcomes but expects the U.S. government to oppose Japan’s becoming a major military power.

Indeed, under the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, “the United States should accept the responsibility for Japan not becoming a military giant” by “rescuing us from whatever deficiencies we have,” he said.

Kurihara admitted that lifting the 1% limit has caused uneasiness among Japanese, but said that Nakasone’s decision means little more than restoring the intent of the old 1976 policy, which limited defense spending “for the time being” to “about” 1% of GNP.

“Somehow, ‘for the time being’ and ‘about’ got forgotten, and it became just ‘within 1%,’ ” Kurihara said.

“One percent became a symbol of peace” and promoted “the thinking that if Japan exceeds 1% even slightly, it will become a military giant but if it stays within 1%, it won’t become a military giant,” he said.

The immediate result of Nakasone’s decision will be to increase defense spending from 0.997% of the gross national product last year to 1.004% of the GNP this year--an increase of only $89.3 million above what would have been budgeted otherwise.

The new Cabinet decision places a limit on spending for the five fiscal years between 1986 and 1990 of 18.4 trillion yen ($122.7 billion at an exchange rate of 150 to $1), at 1985 prices. The figure of 18.4 trillion yen represents the estimated cost of a five-year defense build-up approved earlier by the Nakasone government, and means, Kurihara said, that Japan will be able to expand its defense budgets in each of the next three years by “about 5.4%.”

Thus, Kurihara said, by fiscal 1990, Japan will virtually achieve its 1976 goals for weaponry and equipment designed to make Japan able, on its own, to withstand a limited, small-scale attack.

A 1976 “defense outline,” approved when the 1% lid was placed on defense spending, set targets of 62 frigates, 93 P-3C anti-submarine aircraft and 320 jet fighters, including 163 F-15 Eagles.

Those figures are about three times the number of destroyers and nearly five times the number of anti-submarine aircraft in the U.S. 7th Fleet, and more aircraft than the United States now has in Japan, South Korea and the Philippines combined.

But that strength would still leave Japan’s armed forces with shortcomings, said retired Gen. Hiroomi Kurisu, the hawkish former chairman of Japan’s joint chiefs of staff.

Nor would it give Japan the strength the United States would like to see.

Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger has said that by 1989 he wants Japan to be able to defend its sea lanes for 1,000 miles from Tokyo and Osaka. But defense chief Kurihara said that this will be achieved “to a considerable degree” only by 1991.

Another Flotilla Needed

But retired general Kurisu predicted that the naval goal will not be achieved until 2000 if the current pace of spending continues. At least one additional escort flotilla would be needed, he said.

Critics have focused on Nakasone’s refusal to fix a limit on defense spending in the years after fiscal 1990. But both the defense chief and the retired general said objective conditions offer the best assurance that defense spending will remain moderate, even without a prescribed limit.

Kurisu said that to make Japan a major military power would require an air attack capability, including bombers, that it does not have now. In addition, Japan would have to acquire the capability to launch seaborne landings, and the ground forces would need “at least 500,000 troops,” or 2.7 times Japan’s present strength, he said.

Nuclear weapons, too, could make Japan a major military power, Kurisu said, but acquiring nuclear weapons would subject Japan to such fierce foreign criticism, especially from the United States and the Soviet Union, that “Japan couldn’t do it. We would find ourselves utterly isolated in the world.”

None of these four elements of “military giant-hood” stand any chance of approval by the people--”certainly not in this century, and even as far into the next century as is conceivable at present,” Kurisu added.

Physical limitations alone preclude Japan’s becoming a major military power, defense chief Kurihara said.

“Japan is a small, narrow country. What would we do if we bought 300 or 400 F-15s, for example? We have no airstrips for them. . . . It’s nearly impossible to describe how hard it is even to obtain an area to conduct a military exercise.”

In addition, the Self-Defense Forces cannot get enough volunteers, he said. The military has only 241,668 personnel, compared to a World War II peak of 8.26 million. Authorized strength is 272,768.

With such limited numbers, sending troops overseas is physically impossible, Kurihara and Kurisu said.

Kurisu believes that Japan should allocate 1.5% to 1.7% of GNP to defense, increasing naval spending by 100%, air spending by 50%, and ground force spending by 30%. But this is politically impossible, he said.

Sensitive to Issue

So sensitive is the public to the spending issue that “even to get to 1.1% of the GNP in defense budgets in the next five years would be an accomplishment,” he said.

The defense budget now before Parliament calls for 3.52 trillion yen ($23.4 billion) in spending for fiscal 1987, which began on April 1. Annual increases of 5.4% would increase the budget to $27.5 billion in fiscal 1990 ending March 31, 1991--still less than Britain, West Germany, or France spent on defense last year.

What happens after fiscal 1990 has been left for the next government to decide, Kurihara said.