Japan ruling party wants offensive capability amid N. Korea threats

Since its defeat in the World War II, Japan has limited its military to self-defense, while relying on the US 'nuclear umbrella'.

Tokyo, Mar 30: Japan's ruling party urged the government on Thursday to consider arming itself with more advanced and offensive capability, such as striking enemy targets with cruise missiles, further loosening the self-defense-only military posture the country has had since the end of World War II.

The Liberal Democratic Party's council on defense policy urged the government to immediately start studying ways to bolster Japan's capability to intercept missiles with a system such as the Terminal High-Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD system, that the U.S. and Seoul have agreed to install in South Korea.

The panel cited a 'new level of threat' from North Korea, which fired four missiles this month, three of them landing inside Japan-claimed exclusive economic waters.

"North Korea's provocative acts have reached a level that Japan absolutely cannot overlook," the party's security panel said in the proposal given to Abe.

"We should not waste any time to strengthen our ballistic missile defense." the panel said the government should immediately start studying a possibility of introducing THAAD and the shore-based Aegis missile defense system, among other equipment, while pursuing upgrades to two existing missile defense systems, ship-to-air SM-3 interceptors and the ground-based PAC-3.

Japan is bound by its postwar pacifist constitution, and the proposal does not call for a first-strike capability. Japan since its World War II defeat has limited its military to self-defense, while relying on the US 'nuclear umbrella' and its 50,000 troops stationed in Japan under a bilateral security alliance as deterrence.

But Abe has started stretching those restrictions since taking office in 2012 by easing a self-imposed ban on weapon exports and enacting legislation that reinterprets the war-renouncing constitution to allow Japan's military to defend allies under attack.

Japan's defence budget has steadily risen over the past five years under Abe, who ended a decade of defense budget cuts. The annual increase is currently just over 2 per cent, and Abe says he is ignoring a customary cap of 1 per cent of GDP. The panel noted that North Korea's test-firing of missiles in the past year demonstrates advancing technology, with a capability to launch from a mobile facility or submarine, use solid fuel, as well as fired to a high-altitude trajectory which makes it harder to trace and respond.

PTI