Commentary: Japan needs deterrence and renewal - not managed decline
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- A Gallup survey of 45 countries found only 9% of Japanese citizens would fight for their country — the lowest of all nations surveyed — as Japan marks the 81st anniversary of its WWII surrender.
- Japan's shrinking workforce is the central economic problem, and the FT writer argues no technological ingenuity can compensate without a serious immigration framework built on skills and genuine integration after decades of deflation.
- Japan's defense posture should expand into missiles, drones, and possibly nuclear submarines, while the country dismantles its self-imposed university ban on defense research, the FT commentary argues.
- Japan's soft power — through JICA development work, overseas aid, and cultural exports like manga and anime — has built goodwill across Asia that the writer argues is as strategically important as military hardware.
- A 'free and open Indo-Pacific' coalition with India, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea, and other like-minded nations is needed to 'raise the price of aggression,' the FT writer contends.
- The FT writer argues honest political leadership must replace subsidy-driven responses to energy prices, saying subsidies 'blunt urgency, freeze the status quo and starve the animal spirits that only genuine pressure produces.'
- The commentary concludes that deterrence ultimately starts with national confidence — 'a society that believes in its own future' — not just budgets or missiles.
Why it matters: Japan's 9% willingness-to-fight rate — the lowest of 45 nations surveyed — is the foundation the FT says must climb before any defense or industrial pivot can hold. Without immigration, dual-use semiconductor and robotics investment, and an Indo-Pacific coalition, the writer argues 'managed decline' becomes self-fulfilling and no level of defense spending is sustainable.
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