Japan Press Weekly

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2022 April 27 - May 10 [POLITICS]

Taking advantage of Ukraine crisis, LDP seeks to double military spending to more than 2% of GDP

The Data that the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI) released on April 25 show that the total amount of military expenditures in the world hit a record-high of about 2.1 trillion dollars (about 270 trillion yen) in 2021, up 0.7% from the previous year. The governing party in Japan seeks to increase its military spending to "2% of GDP", more than double the level of previous budgets.

In recent years. China has been a major factor contributing to pushing up global military expenditures. Now, Russia's invasion of Ukraine is becoming another factor behind the global arms buildup tendency. The U.S. administration has pressured NATO member states into increasing their military spending to at least 2% of their GDP. Germany, which had been reluctant to meet this U.S. demand, has announced its intent to raise the rate to more than 2% of its GDP.

A Liberal Democratic Party panel on security strategy on April 27 submitted a proposal to Prime Minister Kishida Fumio, calling for amendments to Japan's security strategy. The proposal gives great attention to the German move and suggests that Japan also "improve its defense capability drastically within five years" with a view to increase "military spending to at least 2% of GDP".

Japan's military expenditures in the initial budget for FY2022 is about 5.4 trillion yen, accounting for less than 1% of its GDP. An increase to 2% would exceed eleven trillion yen and Japan would have the third largest military budget in the world after the United States and China.

It is impermissible for Japan with its war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution to take advantage of the situation in Ukraine to follow the global tendency toward military expansion.