Defense of Japan 2010 White Paper

You have no idea how frustrated I am that the Defense of Japan 2010 white paper is nothing more than an unsearchable PDF library. So much for hoping Japan would join the 21st century this year.

Michael J. Green and Nicholas Szechenyi of the CSIS Asia Policy blog have kicked off the discussion with their initial analysis of the upcoming strategy release in Japan, and do a good job of setting a foundation for more study. The Defense of Japan 2010 might be a good primer, but supposedly things are changing.

I'm going to read through Defense of Japan 2010, likely at a leisurely pace, before I respond to it and compare changes to the new strategy to be released. The image here comes from the digest, and if you look closer (click to enlarge) it appears to set the stage for the kind of discussion taking place in Japan - at least that is the impression I have so far. From the comments by CSIS to other random discussions observed on the topic, resourcing the requirement appears to be the challenge everyone is talking about.

I'm not so sure that is the biggest step though.

I've been thinking about this post by Kyle Mizokami over at his Japan Security Watch blog, and this blog post from 2008 at Big Lizards blog - both of which discuss professionalism of Japan's military. I think they are hitting on a very important issue, and issue that would explain why someone would post a private video of the Chinese-Japanese island skirmishes on YouTube last month, for example. In the era of Wikileaks though, I suppose I could legitimately be misguided about the YouTube videos.

2010 may look like a techno-gee-wiz military world of cool technology where unmanned systems in Asia are piloted by airmen in Vegas and drop bombs with such precision that they can actually hit the balding spot on someones head, but at the end of the day war and peace are very human endeavors. Purchasing technology is the easy part of having a military. Training a highly professional military that is creative and adaptive while disciplined - now that is difficult. It is also the distinction between a powerful military and a paper tiger.

I don't want to give the impression I believe Japan is a paper tiger, but I admit I do have concerns there is are training and potentially cultural issues in the Japanese Navy when their AEGIS ships seem to frequently accidentally ram fishing boats and their career officer system looks like the large, aged bureaucracy of any state government agency in the United States.

More later as I work through the report.