Japanese Military Growth

There is a discussion in the National Post about growing military mights in Asia (https://nationalpost.com/opinion/david-j-bercuson-why-japan-is-building-its-military-fast). I don’t think it is widely known that Japan is the military powerhouse of the region. People tend to focus on China building artificial islands. Japan has real admirals that were trained by real admirals. Japan knows they cannot rely on the USA to defend Japanese interests. How could they think otherwise? Trump’s rhetoric is not designed to make people think that the USA wants to be the world’s policeman, at least not without substantial charges to the rest of the world. Plus the USA no longer has a strategic need to play that role, and it hasn’t since the fall of the Soviet Union. 

The Bretton Woods Agreement of 1947, as Peter Zeihan is fond of pointing out, was an American agreement to facilitate safe passage of goods on the oceans for countries that sided with the USA against the Soviet Union. This was particularly useful since the USA was not self-sufficient in various materials and needed these countries to be able to ship to them. But today the USA is the least dependant on imports or exports of any developed country in the world. Something like 10% of its GDP is exports, and a huge chunk of that is with Mexico and Canada. The USA does not need the rest of the world. The world can break down in chaos and it isn’t a big deal to America.

Japan’s growing military, and especially China’s, are no threat to America. The USA has 10 aircraft carriers. Any one of those carriers with accompanying equipment has more fire power than all the non-USA navies combined. And these carriers are now being scrapped…..and replaced with more powerful ones. The USA has China hemmed in by a string of military bases stretching from Australia to Japan. China’s navy is going nowhere without American permission.

Japan has an aged demographic….it’s population pyramid is top heavy, even as is China’s. The differences include that Japan’s is educated and Japan has learned how to produce without a labor force: Japan is highly automated.  In what other country are there robots visiting and caring for elderly patients in nursing homes?