Don't Mess With Japan (or its Peaceniks)

A nuclear-armed North Korea is practically next door. But "Japanese politicians must navigate delicate domestic politics and a complicated relationship with its closest ally, the United States, as it embarks on selective military improvements," our buddy David Axe notes in a new piece for World Politics Watch and War is Boring. Take fighter jets, for instance.

In February, the U.S. Air Force deployed a dozen of its $300-million F-22 Raptor fighters, built by Lockheed
Martin, to Kadena, a U.S. base on the southern Japanese island of
Okinawa. The F-22 boasts the ability to fly long distances and drop satellite-guided bombs from high altitudes onto well-defended targets; the fighter is a key facet of U.S. upgrades to its Pacific forces, which include 47,000
troops at bases in Japan – most of them in Okinawa. The deployment provoked repeated protests by Japanese peace groups and has attracted a great deal of negative press, according to base spokesman John Monroe.
“There is no good news,” he says of the local media environment.

Pressure from peace groups, local government and developers in
Okinawa has resulted in the planned relocation of thousands of U.S.
Marines based on the island to new facilities in Guam.
But there are no plans to shutter Kadena, which Monroe describes as the largest U.S. air facility in the world and major base for any future campaign against North Korea. “It’s a strategic location,” says
Lieutenant Colonel Wade Tolliver, commander of the visiting F-22
squadron, explaining why Kadena was picked for the deployment. The
Japanese peace groups seem to be aware of the growing importance of
Okinawa to U.S. military plans; professional demonstrators were flown in from Tokyo for the Kadena protests.

Ironically, the Japanese “Air Self-Defense Force” had itself expressed interest in purchasing the F-22 to replace its small force of aged F-15 fighters, but was blocked by a U.S. Congress that is wary of exporting the nation’s most sophisticated weaponry, even to a trusted ally. Instead,
Japan is a likely future customer for Lockheed Martin’s F-35 fighter, development of which is being funded by the U.S. and allied militaries including those of the U.K., Italy, Turkey and Canada, among others.
Fielding the F-35 will enable Japanese forces to use the same spares and munitions as its allies, facilitating joint operations.