Adjusting to a big-power era, Germany and Japan enhance militaries

Japan and Germany, World War II’s two great vanquished powers, are both enhancing the role and stature of military power in their diplomatic and security policies. Their adversaries may differ, but their motivations are similar.

At his White House visit this month with a supportive President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio laid out Japan’s assertive new national security strategy, which includes a commitment to substantially higher defense spending.

A week later, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in Germany taking stock of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s commitment to bigger military budgets and to rebuilding Germany’s armed forces as a tool not just of his nation’s defense but of European security policy as well.

Indeed, Chancellor Scholz’s announcement Wednesday that Germany will send a contingent of its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine – a step it had resisted taking over recent weeks despite intense pressures from Washington and some European partners – underscored Germany’s new openness to asserting military power in Europe.

Following Germany’s announcement, President Biden announced at the White House Wednesday that the United States will send 31 of its M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine. The move was widely seen as intended to quash any doubts about the U.S. commitment to Ukraine, while in turn prompting additional commitments of assistance from Western partners before an anticipated spring offensive by Russian forces.