The Best Defense is a Good Offense

Despite its depressed economy and tiny defense-only armed forces, Japan has been the second-biggest arms customer of the U.S. during the Clinton administration, which has sold or approved the sale of $22 billion in arms to Japan.

Japan's defense has been closely tied to America since the end of World War II, when Japan's new constitution strictly limited the military's role to self-defense. But this has not left Japan defenseless; under a 1960 treaty, the mighty U.S. is bound to join Japan's defense in case it is attacked.

U.S. arms sales in the Clinton years Direct government sales Government-approved sales (scale in millions of dollars)

Pursuant to this arrangement, the U.S. provides classified data to Japan, including intelligence reports and technical information, and also maintains a large military presence there; in 1992 more than 50,000 members of the U.S. armed forces were stationed in Japan. The U.S. also sells massive amounts of arms to Japan, to ensure the interoperability of the two nations' weapons -- and, of course, to make a buck.

The chief concern about selling arms to Japan relates to violating the spirit or letter of its postwar "peace constitution" mandating that Japan's military and defense industries be destroyed or converted to civilian production (as was the case with Mitsubishi). Japan's self-defense purchases have included F-15 and F-16 fighters, C-130 transport planes, missiles, torpedoes, bombs, and artillery. The rest of East Asia is wary of Japan's military growth, and watches these buys closely. Experts predict that due to the Asian financial crisis, weapons sales to Japan and its neighbors will slow in the coming years.

The U.S. is interested in a greater role for the Japanese military, to the chagrin of neighboring China and North Korea; Luke Warren at the Council for a Livable World suggests that the U.S. wants Japan to be able to defend itself if it is attacked by China. Japan also continues to buy arms because of very real military threats from North Korea.

Like Saudi Arabia, Japan can make many of its arms purchases through direct commercial sales (DCS). Its purchases from the U.S. in 1993 include two Boeing-767/AWACS aircraft for $840 million. In 1994, Japan bought three Orion EW aircraft for its navy, five Gulfstream-4 transport aircraft, and two more Boeing-767/AWACS for $773 million. In 1995, Japan bought 11 Bae-125/RH-800 transport aircraft, buying four more for $80 million in 1997. To round out 1997, Japan was licensed through DCS to buy ammunition, pistols, and rifles, plus spare parts for artillery, tanks, and bombs.

Partly because of shrinking defense budgets, the bilateral Systems and Technology Forum (STF) was established in 1980 to promote U.S./Japan cooperation in developing defense technologies. Since then, Japanese and U.S. arms makers have teamed up to develop ducted rocket engines, propulsion technology using ceramics, and advanced steels. They have also co-produced F-2s (Mitsubishi and Lockheed Martin 130 F-2s, 8-10 per year at $80-100 million per, projected completion in 2008), Boeing heavy-lift helicopters and F-15J fighters, P3-C anti-submarine patrol aircraft, and UH-60J Black Hawk and SH-60J Sea Hawk helicopters.

Japan's 1997 defense budget totaled $41.2 billion, one of the world's largest. It included defense imports worth more than $1.5 billion, mostly from the U.S.

Japan has also absorbed much American nuclear technology. In a September 1994 report, Greenpeace analyzed transfers of U.S. nuclear reprocessing technology to Japan. It cited considerable evidence that the U.S. transferred plutonium breeder reactor and nuclear fuel reprocessing technology to Japan in violation of a 1988 law prohibiting sensitive nuclear technology (SNT) transfers -- as well as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Act.

Following the Greenpeace report, Clinton's Energy Department contended that the transfers were in line with an uncodified 1986 guideline that allows the U.S. to transfer SNT to countries that already have nuclear programs. It then sniveled that it would publish a complete list of guidelines on SNT -- after the fact, of course.

-- Monica Mehta

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