TOKYO —
Japan’s Prime Minister
Fumio Kishida instructed ministers on Monday to boost
the country’s defense budget by 56 percent over the next five years to $318
billion.
اضافة اعلان
The government is
overhauling its defense and security strategies in response to regional threats
from nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly assertive China.
Defense Minister
Yasukazu Hamada said Kishida told him that “the size of the medium-term defense
program for the next five years, which is currently being arranged, should be
around 43 trillion yen ($318 billion)”.
“This is a level at
which we can achieve the goal of strengthening our defense capability,” Hamada
told reporters after talks with Kishida and the finance minister.
The amount would be
more than 1.5 times larger than the current five-year spending plan of 27.5
trillion yen.
The decision comes
a week after Kishida announced he wanted to increase defense spending to 2
percent of GDP by 2027.
For decades, Japan
has spent around 1 percent of GDP or less on defense, less than the
NATO standard of 2 percent.
But growing
pressure from China, including military exercises and the presence of boats
around disputed islands, has helped build support for a bigger budget.
The war in Ukraine
and repeated missile launches by North Korea have also sharpened views.
The move is
controversial in Japan for several reasons, however, including the country’s
post-war constitution which limits its military capacity to ostensibly
defensive measures.
Japanese media
reports say one target of additional spending would be “counterstrike” capacity
— weapons that can target enemy missile launch sites and described by Tokyo as
defensive.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
