After eleven years of diet, Tokyo will increase its defense budget

Rising diplomatic tensions with China pushing Tokyo to grant an extension for its financial self-defense forces.

After eleven years of diet, Tokyo will increase its defense budget. The Japanese military could thank their Chinese counterparts. Yesterday, the Japanese government, which is worried openly bustle of ships and aircraft in Chinese East China Sea around Senkaku islands controlled by Tokyo but also claimed by Beijing, has approved a supplementary budget for the Department of immediate Defense, which was previously forced to collect regularly cuts his funding. Self-defense forces - according to the official term "army" Japanese since the adoption by the country after the Second World War, a pacifist constitution - will immediately receive an additional 210 billion yen ($ 2.4 billion) collected on 13,100 billion yen stimulus plan finalized yesterday by the executive. According to the Ministry of Defense, some of the new funds should be used to acquire such anti-missile systems to respond to the "hardening of the security environment of the country." Behind the scenes, are the tensions with China are singled out.

Redeploy its troops

After seeing its budget stagnate or decline over the past eleven years, the Ministry of Defence is also expected to see validate its claim up 2.7% in the fiscal year starting in April. Twelve months, the Japanese army could thus benefit from 4,800 billion yen, or $ 54.1 billion. This amount equivalent to the sixth largest military budget in the world but remain well below the amounts released by the United States and China.According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), the United States would have spent in 2011, $ 711 billion for their army when unblocked Beijing, for its part, $ 143 billion. In France, the military budget amounted then to $ 62.5 billion.

The same fear of provocation Chinese South China Sea should also encourage the new Japanese government to overhaul, by the end of 2013, his defense strategy for such redeploy its troops and equipment in southern Archipelago, while a large part still based in the north. Most nationalist leaders, led by Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister should also advocate for a quick "reinterpretation" of the Constitution that would allow Japanese troops to participate in the actions of "collective self-defense", which would include a possible armed intervention with allied forces would find themselves assaulted. This would be a first step towards the abandonment of the pacifist doctrine.