Active Denial: Redesigning Japan's Response to China's Military Challenge

Abstract

The growth of Chinese military power poses significant challenges to Japan. China's military spending, which was half that of Japan's in 1996, is now three and a half times as large. Japan has taken a range of measures to buttress its military forces and loosen the restrictions on their operations, but much remains to be done. Most important, Tokyo needs to reexamine its strategy to maximize Japan's deterrent leverage. Of the three general approaches to conventional deterrence—punishment, forward defense, and denial—Japan's best option is to shift to a denial strategy. Such a strategy, built around a resilient force that can survive attack and attrite an encroaching adversary, can make the risks to a potential attacker unacceptably high. In Japan's case, such a strategy would leverage the inherent dangers that Beijing would face in contemplating a prolonged war against Japan and its U.S. ally. The strategy, updated to reflect the imperatives of air and maritime warfare in the precision strike era, would require a high level of dispersion and mobility and might therefore be labeled “active denial.” Adopting an active denial strategy would buttress Japan's defense and deterrent capability while reducing first-strike incentives and improving crisis stability.

Ships over Troubled Waters: Examining Naval Development in Asia

“…There was a race to develop a certain defense against a growing China, but there was a point at which this stopped. Similarly, budgetary constraints that may be holding Japan back in relation to additional naval development could lead to a plateau here as well (Heginbotham and Samuels, 2018). If Japan were beginning to reach its limits, this would explain the smaller coefficient for Rival Tonnage in Model 12.…”

The Relationship between Narratives and Security Practices: Pushing the Boundaries of Military Instruments in Japan

“…Huntington (1993) argued that the Japanese had developed a peculiar type of realism, "mercantile realism," whereby they accepted all of the assumptions of realism but applied it only to the economic sphere. Heginbotham and Samuels (1998) built on Huntington's thesis to argue that the Yoshida Doctrine 1 was a realist strategy that balanced Japan's need for military security and economic interests: the Japanese traded autonomy in the field of security for a strong focus on technology, industry, and finance. Based on psychological theory on reassurance, Midford (2002) contended that Japanese security policy was centered on "defensive defense" because of an interest in assuring its neighbors that Japan did not (anymore) have any offensive ambitions.…”

“…With the advent of the second Abe Cabinet's (2012-) expansion of the boundaries of Japanese security policies, the newest contributions try to explain among other things the introduction of collective self-defense, the establishment of a National Security Council, and the first National Security Strategy. Heginbotham and Samuels (2018) go a long way to claim the changes are caused by the rise of China. Lande (2018) too argues that Japan is currently responding to China's expansion of military power.…”

Japan and Foreign Territory Strike: Debate, Deterrence, and Defense Strength

“…range strike capabilities despite his past advocacy. Ishiba and former defense minister Iwaya argued in mid-2020 that contemporary foreign territory strike discussions failed to consider likely mission effectiveness relative to costs, alliance functioning and American preferences, and potentially communicated unintended messages to its ally and the region regarding Japan's faith in the alliance and United States' nuclear umbrella(Mainichi Shimbun, 2020;Jiji, 2020c;Nishii, 2020).Other sceptics note that Japanese defense debates tend to focus on hightech, expensive, and symbolic silver bullet solutions to Japan's security problems while investments into affordable, but symbolically prosaic, lower technology adaptations are overlooked(Newsham 2020a;Jimbo, 2020;Heginbotham and Samuels, 2018a;Schadlow & Murano, 2021). While acknowledging areas of operational excellence such as minesweeping and anti-submarine warfare, RAND's maritime platforms(Hornung, 2020c).…”