Pacifist Japan will adopt new defence guidelines next week paving the way for its military to respond more quickly and forcefully to perceived threats from China and North Korea, officials said Thursday.
The government of conservative Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will approve rules intended to help air, land and sea forces work together more effectively in the face of danger, an official from Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) said.
The move comes amid the continuing row between China and Japan over the sovereignty of a small island chain in the East China Sea, a dispute that has escalated over the last year to include military hardware from both sides.
Lawmakers from the ruling bloc on Wednesday endorsed the plan, which would create what it called a “Dynamic Joint Defence Force”, the official said.
“For the first time, we will be able to obtain mobility, or the capability to deploy swiftly in an integrated manner,” Defence Minister Itsunori Onodera said on Thursday.
“When we deploy troops to remote islands... we need to respond with ground, marine and air defence forces,” Onodera said in a speech at a private think tank in Tokyo.
“Or if we faced a North Korean missile, Japan would first attempt to shoot it down from the sea, then from the ground.