U.S. President-elect Donald Trump sees China as the biggest threat and the top-priority for his incoming administration. He has already appointed anti-China hardliners to his national security and foreign policy cabinet positions.
East Asian nations such as Japan and Taiwan, which are located on the first island chain facing China on the very front line, are wary that Trump will demand that they increase defense spending, pay for U.S. protection, and buy more U.S.-made weapons.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, the administration of former Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio decided in December of the same year to double defense spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP), which was highly praised by the Joe Biden administration.
Trump also praised Japan’s efforts to increase defense spending in April 2024 when he met former Japanese Prime Minister Aso Taro in New York, according to a statement issued by Trump’s campaign.
But it’s unclear whether Trump will be satisfied with this.
Elbridge Colby, who served as the deputy assistant secretary of defense for strategy and force development in the former Trump administration, said in an interview with Japan’s Public Broadcasting NHK earlier this year that Tokyo should increase its defense spending to 3 percent of GDP. Colby is frequently discussed as a potential national security figure in Trump’s second administration.
During his presidency, Trump also demanded that Japan and South Korea increase their annual funding for hosting U.S. troops in their countries to $8 billion and $5 billion, respectively, John Bolton wrote in his book “The Room Where It Happened: A White House Memoir” published in 2022.
Bolton, who served as national security adviser in the Trump administration, also warned in an interview with the Nihon Keizai Shimbun in March of this year that if Trump returns to power, Japan may be forced to revise its security treaty in a way that would require it to deploy the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) in the event of an attack on the U.S. mainland.
Article 5 of the two nations’ security treaty stipulates the United States’ defense obligations to Japan in the event of an attack on Japanese territory. Meanwhile, Japan is not required to aid the U.S. in an armed conflict on the U.S. or other territory beyond Japan’s own borders.
Trump repeatedly complained that this is “unfair,” according to Bolton’s book.
The argument that Japan is a free rider on security is not something that only Trump has been voicing, but has been discussed in Washington for a long time. It’s nothing new to try to get Japan to shoulder its share of the burden in security, and Japan has done this, to some extent.
In the 1970s, the United States lost the Vietnam War after suffering many casualties, and its national power was exhausted. Meanwhile, Japan achieved remarkable economic growth and emerged as the world’s second largest economic power. As Japan’s trade surplus with the United States grew, theories that Japan was free-riding on the security treaty began to emerge, mainly in the U.S. Congress. Critics claimed that while the United States was fighting communism, Japan was unfairly taking advantage of the U.S. to enrich itself.
Then, with the end of the Cold War, “rogue nations” such as Iraq appeared. At the request of the United States, Japan went beyond the realm of exclusively defensive security policy and began to dispatch the JSDF overseas from the 1990s onwards. Starting with the dispatch of the Maritime Self-Defense Force’s minesweeping unit to the Persian Gulf in 1991 after the end of the Gulf War, this led to the dispatch of the JSDF to Iraq (2003-2009) and refueling operations in the Indian Ocean (2001-2010).
Since the 1990s, there has been a historic trend in which Japan’s expanding military role has contributed to the stabilization of the Japan-U.S. security arrangements. Such changes on Japan’s side included the historical cabinet decision by the Abe Shinzo administration in July 2014 to change the interpretation of the Japanese Constitution to allow the exercise of the right of collective self-defense. Previously, JSDF troops were only permitted to use minimal force in response to a direct attack on Japan, but now they are able to retaliate if a close country comes under attack, so long as certain conditions are met.
Given this historical context, how should Tokyo respond to the latest allegations of security free-riding directed at Japan?
Japan should highlight the “tyranny of distance,” a term often used among military personnel in Washington. Understanding this term is the key to understanding the strategic and geographical value of U.S. military bases in Japan, including Okinawa and Yokosuka, for the United States.
Here’s what tyranny of distance means.
From the U.S. perspective, Japan is on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. The U.S. west coast to Japan in the western Pacific are separated by 16 time zones. It takes more than 10 hours to make the journey by plane, and about two weeks by ship at an average speed of 15 knots (about 28 kilometers per hour).
For Washington, the time it takes to cross this vast Pacific Ocean can be saved by stationing U.S. forces in Japan. The operating costs of an aircraft carrier are estimated at about $1 million per day, but if Yokosuka is kept as the home port, the aircraft carrier alone can save $14 million one way and $28 million round trip in Pacific crossing costs. There is no need to dispatch an aircraft carrier from Naval Base San Diego on the U.S. west coast every time the U.S. Navy needs to show the flag in the western Pacific.
In other words, by maintaining a strong U.S. military presence in Japan, the U.S. Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps can save a lot of time, and money that would otherwise go to personnel and materiel transportation in the event of an emergency in the sea lanes connecting the Middle East and East Asia. And even in peacetime, U.S. forces in Japan can maintain a military presence that maintains U.S. hegemony in the Indo-Pacific region.
Regarding the value of the U.S. Marine Corps being stationed in Okinawa in particular, Lt. Colonel R. K. Dobson, who served as battalion commander of the 3rd Marine Division in Okinawa, noted that from the Japanese island, U.S. Marines can be deployed quickly anywhere in the Asia-Pacific region using air and maritime transport capabilities. He also stressed that Okinawa’s strategic location reduces response time and puts less stress on the limited strategic air and maritime transport capabilities required to transport reinforcements and supplies from the U.S. mainland.
In other words, the United States is committed to having U.S. military bases in Japan, such as Okinawa, Yokosuka, and Sasebo, for reasons of self-interest: to overcome the tyranny of distance.
The above counterargument would be possible against politicians such as Trump who advocate Japan as a free rider.
If the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty is unilateral, then Japan has already lent the United States strategically important and vast bases nationwide. This is also unilateral. If the security system is truly bilateral, Japan should insist that the United States lend it Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in return for Kadena, and Pearl Harbor in Hawai’i and San Diego in California in return for Yokosuka and Sasebo, for example.
And we must not forget the complications to a nation’s independence and pride caused by the presence of a foreign military in one’s mother country. This is also a heavy burden that Japan is paying.
As the late Ebata Kensuke, a senior reporter at Jane’s Defense Weekly, previously wrote in his book, it is generally not desirable for any country to host foreign military forces and bases. A military is a country’s armed force that exercises national sovereignty. If such troops and bases are located in a foreign nation, it would create a situation in which the host country’s national sovereignty would be restricted or sometimes violated, and would inevitably become a source of trouble.
Throughout history, strong opposition has been seen in many places when foreign troops have established bases on foreign soil. If Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru is truly a nationalist, he should aim to reduce the number of U.S. military bases in Japan.
Trump’s political comeback raises questions about how far Japan and the United States can truly cooperate on an equal footing. However, this is not a one-sided equation. Tokyo has to be clear and firm in its communications with Washington, and make efforts to narrow the perception gap between domestic public opinion and that of the United States regarding the security burden. This is what is truly needed to strengthen the Japan-U.S. alliance.