Japan’s national security has been deteriorating alarmingly. Now is the time to reverse the continuing decline in the nation’s defense budget.

The Defense Ministry is seeking 4.69 trillion yen ($61.2 billion) in its budget demand for fiscal 2012, up 0.6 percent from the defense budget a year earlier. This is equivalent to the government-set upper limit on budgetary requests from ministry and agencies for next fiscal year.

If the Finance Ministry’s budgetary assessments proceed as usual, there is a strong possibility the defense budget for the coming fiscal year will fall below its level in fiscal 2011, resulting in the 10th straight year-on-year drop in defense spending. This means appropriations for defense will have shrunk by more than 5 percent from the peak figure seen in fiscal 2002.

In the past 10 years, defense expenditures in surrounding countries have soared. Russia, for example, is spending 5.8 times its level a decade ago and China is spending 3.7 times what it did 10 years ago. The Chinese military’s rapid modernization and expansion of its activities have caused particular concern throughout Asia.

In addition to the rising nuclear and missile threat from North Korea, the Russian military in the Far East has markedly beefed up its activities recently, as illustrated by large-scale exercises in the Sea of Okhotsk.

Given the military buildup under way in neighboring countries, continued cuts in defense spending in Japan alone are strange and even dangerous.

The peace and security of this country cannot depend only on the deterrence of U.S. forces in Japan. The United States, for that matter, has repeatedly expressed concern over Japan’s diminishing appropriations for defense.

Based on the National Defense Program Guidelines newly charted at the end of last year, the nation must bolster its “dynamic defense capabilities,” and place higher importance on the defense of the southwestern waters off Kyushu.

The year-on-year cuts in defense spending have had a multitude of harmful effects, primarily because a great portion of defense spending is on so-called mandatory expenditures. These include personnel and food supply costs, which account for more than 40 percent of the entire defense budget; the “sympathy budget” to help cover the expenses of U.S. forces stationed in Japan; and years-long installment payments for equipment contracts.

As a result, there tends to be pressure to curtail discretionary defense spending, which is about 14 percent of the defense budget. The Self-Defense Forces’ acquisition of new equipment, including tanks, ships and aircraft, has been delayed across the board.

In one example, the Defense Ministry has only managed to buy a very few state-of-art P-1 patrol planes, so the cost per airplane is higher than it would have been with a bulk purchase. Some out-of-date equipment has been remodeled to put off decommissioning, but repair costs have inevitably been rising because old equipment is prone to break down. Defense equipment is caught in a vicious circle.

Because of the lack of latitude in securing stockpiles of fighter components, it tends to take longer time to have fighters repaired. There have even been incidents of cannibalization, in which components are exchanged between disabled aircraft. As a result, the operation ratio of equipment has been declining, hindering the operational capabilities of SDF personnel.

It is also of grave significance that many defense-related industries have stopped making defense equipment because of falling sales. If experts in defense equipment production drop precipitously, it will become extremely difficult to recover human resources, threatening the very basis of production and technological competence in the defense industry.

In light of the increasingly stringent fiscal conditions of the government as a whole, it is only natural that costs should be reduced as thoroughly as possible, through such means as revising the SDF’s current personnel system and conducting structural reform of equipment procurement. However, defense spending has already been reduced as much as possible.

In the forthcoming budget compilations for next fiscal year, which are scheduled for late December, the Cabinet of Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda should do its utmost to increase the nation’s defense budget, even if only slightly, to show the rest of the world Japan is serious about ensuring its own security.

(Editorial, The Yomiuri Shimbun)

(Asia News Network)