By Sydney J. Freedberg Jr.
WASHINGTON: Japan is the proverbial linchpin of US strategy in East Asia. But linchpins sometimes break. Asthe US struggles to afford a "pivot" to the Pacific, its most important ally in the theater is undergoing a slow and painful shift of its own.
The new prime minister, Shinzo Abe of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), wants to increase Japan's defense spending for the first time since 2002. In his favor: a rising consensus that a nuclear-armed North Korea andan increasingly assertive China -- whose military spending blew past Japan's in 2005 -- require a stronger defense, including a reinvigorated alliance with the United States. In his way: a stagnant economy, a 70-year legacy of anti-military sentiment enshrined in the constitution, and widespread anxiety over Abe's own hawkish leanings.
"Core supporters of the LDP may support Abe's statement of nationalism," said Motohiro Oono, who just weeks ago was Vice-Minister of Defense in the now-ousted government of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ). [But] he has to attract other coalition [partners], including leftists."
The conservative LDP steamrollered the relatively liberal DPJ in December's elections, Oono admitted in a talk at the Heritage Foundation last week. With a two-thirds super-majority in the lower house of parliament, Oono said, "he can change the constitution, he can pass the budget, he can pass bills" -- if necessary overriding the objections of the upper house, where the DPJ still has a majority and Oono himself still has a seat -- for now. But until upper house elections in July, Oono argued, Abe will focus on the ailing economy and tread lightly on security issues such as the disputed Senkaku Islands, called the Diaoyu Islands in Chinese.
Other experts downplayed the idea that Abe is dangerously right of center, however.
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