“If you want peace, prepare for war” is a Latin credo attributed to Roman writer Vegetius. Japan has heeded that advice, announcing Friday it has approved a record defense budget plan exceeding 9 trillion yen ($58 billion) for the coming year.
The spending aims to fortify Japan’s strike-back capability and coastal defense with cruise missiles and unmanned arsenals as tensions rise in the region, AP reports.
The draft budget for fiscal 2026 beginning April is up 9.4 percent from 2025 and marks the fourth year of Japan’s ongoing five-year program to double annual arms spending to two percent of gross domestic product.
The AP report notes the increase comes as Japan increasingly looks to the U.S. as it faces elevated aggression from Communist China.
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi said in November her country’s military could get involved if Beijing were to take action against in independent Taiwan, the self-governing island Beijing demands must come under its rule even though China’s Communist Party has never been in power there.
To that end it has also being building relations with allies across the Pacific region.
The current security strategy, adopted in 2022, names China as the country’s biggest strategic challenge and calls for a more offensive role for Japan’s Self-Defense Force under its security alliance with the U.S. AP reports Japan’s words will be matched by action:
The new budget plan allocates more than 970 billion yen ($6.2 billion) to bolster Japan’s “standoff” missile capability. It includes a 177 billion-yen ($1.13 billion) purchase of domestically developed and upgraded Type-12 surface-to-ship missiles with a range of about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles).
The first batch of the Type-12 missiles will be deployed in Japan’s southwestern Kumamoto prefecture by March, a year earlier than planned, as Japan accelerates its missile buildup in the region.
The budget announcement comes as Japan’s row with China escalate following Takaichi’s remark in November that Japanese military could get involved if China were to take action against Taiwan, the self-governing island that Beijing claims as its own.
The U.S. is also concerned with Beijing’s belligerence, making sure its forces on Japan’s island of Okinawa always remain in a state of high readiness.
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Meanwhile China is developing aircraft carrier strike groups and missile systems, fortified several islets in the South China Sea, launched almost continuous exercises around Taiwan and brutally crushed Hong Kong’s pro-democracy movement.
