I'm skeptical that Japan will ever truly rearm given that pacifism is so ingrained in the national psyche. In a global survey Japanese were less likely than any other nationality to answer affirmatively when asked whether they'd fight for their country. Even though factions within the LDP have been interested in revising Article 9 since 1955, nobody has managed to do so and even Abe moderated the proposed revision to a simple acknowledgement of the SDF's legality. Realists might argue that external pressures will force Japan to rearm, but there haven't been serious pushes in that direction. Kishida's call for raising defense spending to 2% of GDP was scaled back due to lack of support for tax hikes, and most of the percentage increase is just due to redefining R&D as a defense expenditure.
Germany has a similar attitude toward pacifism but they are currently re-arming, so I think it's possible. Just not something that will happen during American occupation, so probably not within our lifetimes.
I don't really see them as analogous because Germany was never disarmed to the same extent. West Germany was armed to the teeth during the Cold War and had military conscription. Japan's constitution states that Japan "forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force" and that "air, land, and sea forces will never be maintained." Germany's also been part of NATO for decades, which comes with collective security obligations, whereas Japan only legalized collective security in 2015 under strict conditions, namely if there's an existential threat to Japan, there's no other means to repel the attack, and it's kept to the minimum force necessary. The US-Japan alliance is pretty one way. Japan would have to revise its constitution which would require a supermajority in both houses of the Diet and a simple majority in a referendum to rearm, and even constitutional revision would probably continue to ban offensive capabilities due to public opinion
Yeah I agree that Japan is different than Germany, this was a hypothetical "what-if" of America disappearing, which is unlikely if not impossible in the near future.
A Zeihan appreciator I assume? Tbf Ive used to be more confident in his assertions then I am currently. China's industrial capacity is nothing to scoff at. I am not confident in Taiwan's odds of survival, thou besides that Im more or less on the same page. China is more of a lesson for the West then a true global contender. A modern day Tojo would surely elicit cold sweats in a way old Winnie the Poo cant.
I don't scoff at Chinese industrial production. I just suggest that military technology will become less dependent on the number of factory workers and more dependent on innovation in the future.
I disagree with precisely the point you are making, that "sheer production capacity is the key factor." I think it's the opposite: production capacity is trivial. Anyone can spit out a million drones. But what about cyber attacks? Bioweapons? I think the tech available is already sufficient to break China (and maybe the whole world), but we've neglected to use it (just as hypersonic missiles only started being used in 2022, despite being developed in 1945). The point of this article is to demonstrate that offensive capacities have far outstripped defensive capacities, to the point where any sufficiently advanced country (Japan) can sufficiently punish China to the point of mutually assured destruction.
You mean unconventional warfare. Which includes WMDs and such. Things would need to get really desperate for a conflict to evolve into such drastic circumstances. The fact is that for most tiers of escalation a million drones, ammunition pieces, missiles etc do make a difference. Warfare on the short-medium term is going to revolve around Ukraine-war type stuff, which in itself is still part of the broader industrial warfare paradigm (i.e WW2). The broader shift towards more advanced systems will mean less manpower, but in turn it will be compensated by loads and loads of hardware.
Japanese demographics are still a big problem. Japan and China may have similar TFRs, but Japan has a sky-high dependency ratio while China still has a generation or two to burn through before it reaches a similarly shaped population pyramid.
Sure, wait till the 2040s and China will hit a demographic crisis hard and fast, but by then Japan will be in an even worse state.
Check out the numbers for elderly dependency ratios. Basically, if half your population are 80-year olds collecting state pensions, unable to be meaningfully put to work due to mental and physical decline, that's bad.
Japan has a crazy high elderly dependency ratio, a huge % of their population are retirees who need to be supported by a shrinking working age population. China still has a decent percent of their population as working age, though that'll change once they burn through the last big generations left.
I don't completely agree with Noah Smith here (I'm a bit more pessimistic on how soon it's gonna get bad), but he basically has the right idea in the essay below. Birthrates are a medium-term issue for China, if we don't summon clippy by mid-century China will become Japan-level fucked, but Japan is already Japan-level fucked now.
surely a country where its demographic's very high capacity threshold being is combined with maximalist policies would resulted in a very mighty adversary against anyone else right?
I'm not advocating for fascist/stalinist US economy but, maybe. . . .
I haven't looked at it at all, but if the birthrates of Japan's (former) samurai caste are higher than the average, this would bode very well for them.
Japanese export industry would need a lot of imports from overseas. Even in a small scale war Japan would need to overcome Chinese anti shipping and missile systems close to home. Bad odds.
Yeah Japan has a huge natural resource problem. I'm assuming here that Japan can successfully cooperate with Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and India to secure shipping lanes and obtain raw materials. It's incredibly difficult to predict, but this is a reason for China to support America's domination over Japan, because that's a lot more stable than Japan "unleashed."
The problem with that is that india would be easy to buy out of a conflict by promising to stick it to Pakistan in some way. I think the CCp would much rather take their chances vs Japan, India , Australia rather than all three plus America.
I don't dispute that India would be shy to participate in war directly, preferring instead to materially support Japan. If China was able to "grant" Pakistan to India, that would certainly help establish a détente. It might end up backfiring in the long-term -- a defeat of Pakistan would embolden India even further down the line.
Your analysis of China and the scenario of a nuclear confrontation between it and Japan is very lucid. In fact, it can be extended to the confrontation with Russia to alleviate Western neurotic Western fears of its "nuclear arsenal", which, by the way, hasn't been tested for more than 30 years. So, it's highly doubtful whether Russia has any nuclear weapons that can reach enemy territory without exploding on its own. And yes, anti-missile systems able to intercept nuclear warheads is most likely a thing, which will neutralize Russia's perceived "trump card" even further.
I disagree however with the designation of Ukraine as a proxy of NATO in this war. As you also defined in the article, a proxy is an entity goaded by another entity. Ukraine was not goaded by NATO against Russia, however. If anything, the West was perfectly fine to see Ukraine devoured by Russia and was reluctant initially to help Ukraine's war effort. I would even say Western governments were secretly wishing that Ukraine easily falls so that they can have their peace of mind and return to business as usual with Russia as they have ways seen Russia as an integral part of the global order. It's Ukrainian grit and defiance that put the West into a morally indefensible position and forced its governments to help Ukraine against their will. So, instead of being a proxy war, this is rather a war that Ukraine fights on two fronts: against Russian invasion and Western intransigence.
When you accuse "Western governments" of having one attitude or another, I think you're making the mistake of lumping all "Western governments" into one basket. America is different from Germany, from France, from Britain, from Italy. Within these countries, there are opposed factions with different opinions. Similarly, before the war, Zelensky posed as an appeaser to Putin. None of these countries is monolithic until the die is cast and the decision is made, forcing everyone into line. I am more cynical than you, and I don't think that "morality" compels any geopolitical decisions, at all.
Yes, I lumped them together for simplicity's sake, to get the point across. At least for the start of the Russian invasion this holds true. All major Western powers, with the exception of UK probably, would have preferred to see Ukraine fall. It's Ukraine who forced them to help so that it could continue to fight, not the other way around.
I disagree. America's involvement in Ukraine goes back 20 years, and there was no desire on the part of those investors to see that investment go to waste. Conflating business interests, the state department, Russian agents, Trump, and the intelligence community into a single "person" with a single "opinion," to anthropomorphize the country, assigning moral guilt on "the west," does not produce the best analysis, in my opinion. I would be more sympathetic if you differentiated Europe from America in your shaming and blaming.
Bullshit on all counts. Russian anti-missile defense is first-rate and if da west aka Gay American Empire thought Russia would be push-over in their engineered war against it NATO would have placed troops directly in Ukraine against the Russian military with no fears of retaliation.
Da West has been interfering in Ukraine and engineering a conflict with Russia since 2024 and the George Soros funded and western intelligence orchestrated ‘Maidan Revolution’ that eventually resulted in a minor Jewish comedian by trade becoming president of Ukraine and doubling down on things unacceptable to Russian geopolitical interests such as aggressive pursuit of NATO membership.
As for Japan, it is literally dying. I hope they can survive and preserve their ethnicity and culture but it won’t happen while remaining a vassal of the USA.
Japan will counter while trading and engaging with it. Neither side has anything to gain from warfare.
Russia fires missiles daily into Ukraine that work. Certainly some of their nuclear arsenal has probably degraded. But how much are you willing to bet all of it has? That’s what could be called Russian roulette…
Western intelligence initially thought that Ukraine was toast in an invasion. Since that ended up not being immediately true, they’ve gone deeply in on assisting Ukrainian war efforts.
I'm skeptical that Japan will ever truly rearm given that pacifism is so ingrained in the national psyche. In a global survey Japanese were less likely than any other nationality to answer affirmatively when asked whether they'd fight for their country. Even though factions within the LDP have been interested in revising Article 9 since 1955, nobody has managed to do so and even Abe moderated the proposed revision to a simple acknowledgement of the SDF's legality. Realists might argue that external pressures will force Japan to rearm, but there haven't been serious pushes in that direction. Kishida's call for raising defense spending to 2% of GDP was scaled back due to lack of support for tax hikes, and most of the percentage increase is just due to redefining R&D as a defense expenditure.
Germany has a similar attitude toward pacifism but they are currently re-arming, so I think it's possible. Just not something that will happen during American occupation, so probably not within our lifetimes.
I don't really see them as analogous because Germany was never disarmed to the same extent. West Germany was armed to the teeth during the Cold War and had military conscription. Japan's constitution states that Japan "forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force" and that "air, land, and sea forces will never be maintained." Germany's also been part of NATO for decades, which comes with collective security obligations, whereas Japan only legalized collective security in 2015 under strict conditions, namely if there's an existential threat to Japan, there's no other means to repel the attack, and it's kept to the minimum force necessary. The US-Japan alliance is pretty one way. Japan would have to revise its constitution which would require a supermajority in both houses of the Diet and a simple majority in a referendum to rearm, and even constitutional revision would probably continue to ban offensive capabilities due to public opinion
Yeah I agree that Japan is different than Germany, this was a hypothetical "what-if" of America disappearing, which is unlikely if not impossible in the near future.
A Zeihan appreciator I assume? Tbf Ive used to be more confident in his assertions then I am currently. China's industrial capacity is nothing to scoff at. I am not confident in Taiwan's odds of survival, thou besides that Im more or less on the same page. China is more of a lesson for the West then a true global contender. A modern day Tojo would surely elicit cold sweats in a way old Winnie the Poo cant.
I don't scoff at Chinese industrial production. I just suggest that military technology will become less dependent on the number of factory workers and more dependent on innovation in the future.
Perhaps, but how far into the future? China is getting ready for it now and shear production capacity is the key factor for now.
I disagree with precisely the point you are making, that "sheer production capacity is the key factor." I think it's the opposite: production capacity is trivial. Anyone can spit out a million drones. But what about cyber attacks? Bioweapons? I think the tech available is already sufficient to break China (and maybe the whole world), but we've neglected to use it (just as hypersonic missiles only started being used in 2022, despite being developed in 1945). The point of this article is to demonstrate that offensive capacities have far outstripped defensive capacities, to the point where any sufficiently advanced country (Japan) can sufficiently punish China to the point of mutually assured destruction.
You mean unconventional warfare. Which includes WMDs and such. Things would need to get really desperate for a conflict to evolve into such drastic circumstances. The fact is that for most tiers of escalation a million drones, ammunition pieces, missiles etc do make a difference. Warfare on the short-medium term is going to revolve around Ukraine-war type stuff, which in itself is still part of the broader industrial warfare paradigm (i.e WW2). The broader shift towards more advanced systems will mean less manpower, but in turn it will be compensated by loads and loads of hardware.
If China is sending a million drones at Japan I think that qualifies as "desperate" and "drastic."
Japanese demographics are still a big problem. Japan and China may have similar TFRs, but Japan has a sky-high dependency ratio while China still has a generation or two to burn through before it reaches a similarly shaped population pyramid.
Sure, wait till the 2040s and China will hit a demographic crisis hard and fast, but by then Japan will be in an even worse state.
Can you cite exact numbers for the "dependency ratio" and explain it to me like I'm 5?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_dependency_ratio#List_(2020)
Check out the numbers for elderly dependency ratios. Basically, if half your population are 80-year olds collecting state pensions, unable to be meaningfully put to work due to mental and physical decline, that's bad.
Japan has a crazy high elderly dependency ratio, a huge % of their population are retirees who need to be supported by a shrinking working age population. China still has a decent percent of their population as working age, though that'll change once they burn through the last big generations left.
I don't completely agree with Noah Smith here (I'm a bit more pessimistic on how soon it's gonna get bad), but he basically has the right idea in the essay below. Birthrates are a medium-term issue for China, if we don't summon clippy by mid-century China will become Japan-level fucked, but Japan is already Japan-level fucked now.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/chinas-demographics-will-be-fine?utm_source=publication-search
That's quite astonishing. Thanks for the info.
is maximalism sustainable?
surely a country where its demographic's very high capacity threshold being is combined with maximalist policies would resulted in a very mighty adversary against anyone else right?
I'm not advocating for fascist/stalinist US economy but, maybe. . . .
I suppose the issue with maximalism is that seems to focus on hard power rather than soft power.
I haven't looked at it at all, but if the birthrates of Japan's (former) samurai caste are higher than the average, this would bode very well for them.
I am extremely skeptical that any sub-group of Japanese has positive birthrates. Never heard of it. Open to evidence.
I'm going to take the easy way out and try to contact their national statistics center.
Japanese export industry would need a lot of imports from overseas. Even in a small scale war Japan would need to overcome Chinese anti shipping and missile systems close to home. Bad odds.
Yeah Japan has a huge natural resource problem. I'm assuming here that Japan can successfully cooperate with Taiwan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, and India to secure shipping lanes and obtain raw materials. It's incredibly difficult to predict, but this is a reason for China to support America's domination over Japan, because that's a lot more stable than Japan "unleashed."
The problem with that is that india would be easy to buy out of a conflict by promising to stick it to Pakistan in some way. I think the CCp would much rather take their chances vs Japan, India , Australia rather than all three plus America.
I don't dispute that India would be shy to participate in war directly, preferring instead to materially support Japan. If China was able to "grant" Pakistan to India, that would certainly help establish a détente. It might end up backfiring in the long-term -- a defeat of Pakistan would embolden India even further down the line.
Your analysis of China and the scenario of a nuclear confrontation between it and Japan is very lucid. In fact, it can be extended to the confrontation with Russia to alleviate Western neurotic Western fears of its "nuclear arsenal", which, by the way, hasn't been tested for more than 30 years. So, it's highly doubtful whether Russia has any nuclear weapons that can reach enemy territory without exploding on its own. And yes, anti-missile systems able to intercept nuclear warheads is most likely a thing, which will neutralize Russia's perceived "trump card" even further.
I disagree however with the designation of Ukraine as a proxy of NATO in this war. As you also defined in the article, a proxy is an entity goaded by another entity. Ukraine was not goaded by NATO against Russia, however. If anything, the West was perfectly fine to see Ukraine devoured by Russia and was reluctant initially to help Ukraine's war effort. I would even say Western governments were secretly wishing that Ukraine easily falls so that they can have their peace of mind and return to business as usual with Russia as they have ways seen Russia as an integral part of the global order. It's Ukrainian grit and defiance that put the West into a morally indefensible position and forced its governments to help Ukraine against their will. So, instead of being a proxy war, this is rather a war that Ukraine fights on two fronts: against Russian invasion and Western intransigence.
When you accuse "Western governments" of having one attitude or another, I think you're making the mistake of lumping all "Western governments" into one basket. America is different from Germany, from France, from Britain, from Italy. Within these countries, there are opposed factions with different opinions. Similarly, before the war, Zelensky posed as an appeaser to Putin. None of these countries is monolithic until the die is cast and the decision is made, forcing everyone into line. I am more cynical than you, and I don't think that "morality" compels any geopolitical decisions, at all.
Yes, I lumped them together for simplicity's sake, to get the point across. At least for the start of the Russian invasion this holds true. All major Western powers, with the exception of UK probably, would have preferred to see Ukraine fall. It's Ukraine who forced them to help so that it could continue to fight, not the other way around.
I disagree. America's involvement in Ukraine goes back 20 years, and there was no desire on the part of those investors to see that investment go to waste. Conflating business interests, the state department, Russian agents, Trump, and the intelligence community into a single "person" with a single "opinion," to anthropomorphize the country, assigning moral guilt on "the west," does not produce the best analysis, in my opinion. I would be more sympathetic if you differentiated Europe from America in your shaming and blaming.
Bullshit on all counts. Russian anti-missile defense is first-rate and if da west aka Gay American Empire thought Russia would be push-over in their engineered war against it NATO would have placed troops directly in Ukraine against the Russian military with no fears of retaliation.
Da West has been interfering in Ukraine and engineering a conflict with Russia since 2024 and the George Soros funded and western intelligence orchestrated ‘Maidan Revolution’ that eventually resulted in a minor Jewish comedian by trade becoming president of Ukraine and doubling down on things unacceptable to Russian geopolitical interests such as aggressive pursuit of NATO membership.
As for Japan, it is literally dying. I hope they can survive and preserve their ethnicity and culture but it won’t happen while remaining a vassal of the USA.
Japan will counter while trading and engaging with it. Neither side has anything to gain from warfare.
Russia fires missiles daily into Ukraine that work. Certainly some of their nuclear arsenal has probably degraded. But how much are you willing to bet all of it has? That’s what could be called Russian roulette…
Western intelligence initially thought that Ukraine was toast in an invasion. Since that ended up not being immediately true, they’ve gone deeply in on assisting Ukrainian war efforts.