Germany and Japan Rebuild Military Strength
Amid Rising Global Security Concerns
After becoming allies to
disastrous effect in the 1940s, Berlin and Tokyo are finding new reasons to team
up — including rebuilding their militaries.
·
Germany
and Japan are expanding military and strategic cooperation.
·
Collaboration
includes sharing defence technology, expertise, drones, helicopters, and security
know-how.
·
Both
countries are working more closely as like-minded democratic powers.
·
Growing
concerns over:
o
Russia’s
actions in Ukraine.
o
China’s
increasing military and economic influence.
o
North
Korea’s security threats.
o
Uncertainty
about long-term US security commitments.
·
Both
nations are significantly increasing defence spending and military capabilities.
·
Germany
and Japan view stronger defence preparedness as necessary for national security.
·
Chancellor
Friedrich Merz has backed a major increase in military spending.
·
Germany's
defence budget could soon exceed the combined military spending of France and Britain.
·
Berlin
is also deepening defence cooperation with Ukraine and European partners.
·
Prime
Minister Sanae Takaichi is pursuing stronger defence policies.
·
Japan
has:
o
Deployed
long-range missiles in southern regions.
o
Expanded
defence exports.
o
Increased
military spending to about $58 billion.
·
Focus
remains on countering regional security challenges.
·
Both
countries are diversifying security partnerships.
·
Japan
has expanded defence cooperation with Australia, the Philippines, and Indonesia.
·
Germany
is strengthening defence ties within Europe.
·
Leaders
stress that military strengthening is intended for defence and stability.
·
Both
countries continue to support international law, multilateral institutions, and
global cooperation.
·
In
Germany, public support for higher defence spending has increased since the Ukraine
conflict.
·
In
Japan, some citizens have protested against military expansion, fearing a departure
from the country's post-war pacifist traditions.
·
The
United States has generally welcomed increased defence spending by allies.
·
President
Donald Trump has long encouraged allies to assume greater responsibility for their
own security.
Eighty
years after World War II, Germany and Japan are undertaking major military modernization
efforts driven by evolving geopolitical challenges, concerns over regional security,
and uncertainty in the international order. While their cooperation is defensive
in nature, it marks a significant shift in the security policies of two countries
that long maintained limited military roles after the war.
[ABS News Service/15.06.2026]
In 1940, the imperial regimes of Germany and Japan joined what would
be known as the Axis powers, bound by mutual opposition to the United States. They fought a world war, and they lost it, and their populations
spent the next 85 years with shrunken militaries and a heavy reliance on their former
enemy, America, for security.
Now, both countries’ wariness of America has resurfaced, alongside
heightened fears about a surging world power, China, and an aggressive Russia. Tokyo
and Berlin are rushing to rebuild their militaries. And, once again, they are strengthening
ties.
Their cooperation is expected to gather momentum at the meeting of
the leaders of the Group of 7 nations in Evian, France, this week. It already includes
sharing know-how, technology and weapons, like drones and helicopters, critical
to the countries’ respective efforts to rearm.
It is hardly an Axis redux. This time, Japan and Germany are banding
together from a defensive posture, with Berlin supporting Ukraine’s defense against
Russia, and Tokyo wary of threats posed by China and North Korea. They are joining
other like-minded “middle powers,” like fellow Group of 7 members Britain, Canada
and France — their enemies in World War II. And they are casting themselves as champions
of international law and institutions that serve as bulwarks against the bullying
behaviors of the world’s most powerful countries.
As Boris Pistorius, the German defense minister, said in March at
a Japanese naval base, nations like Germany and Japan, “who still stand by the rules-based
international order, must move even closer together and make clear what we stand
for.”
Both Germany and Japan emerged from the devastation of World War
II with a focus on rebuilding ravaged cities and stoking economic growth. They allowed
the United States and other allies to shoulder much of the burden of keeping their
citizens safe.
After Germany split in two, America built large military bases and
stationed tens of thousands of troops in West Germany, a frontline outpost in the
Cold War with the Soviet Union. The governments of both East and West Germany maintained
their own large armies, but after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the end of the
Cold War, the reunified country spent far more on social programs than on defense.
Postwar Japan adopted an American-imposed Constitution, drafted under
Gen. Douglas MacArthur. It forced the Japanese to renounce war and prohibited keeping
armed forces except for defensive purposes. That led to the creation of the Self-Defense
Forces, which remains the official name for the country’s military.
In the decades after the war, anti-militarist movements gained traction
in both countries, promoting the ideals of peace, diplomacy, free trade and cultural
exchange.
But that sentiment has waned in recent years, especially since Russia’s
full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 and China’s increasingly assertive military
and economic policies under its leader, Xi Jinping.
President Trump’s threats to abandon security commitments in Europe
and his eagerness to strike a trade deal with Mr. Xi accelerated both countries’
pushes toward rearmament.
Thomas Berger, a professor at Boston University who has studied the
postwar history of Japan and Germany, said that the two countries were responsible
for “perhaps the greatest catastrophe of the 20th century,” a reference to World
War II, and that their defeats had “shattered their ideals and beliefs in empire
and militarization.”
But the recent change in the global security landscape, particularly
Mr. Trump’s volatility, has fueled anxiety and urgency for the countries’ relatively
new leaders, both of them conservative and defense-minded. “There is this justifiable
fear that the United States might sell them out,” Mr. Berger said.
Shortly before taking office a year ago, Friedrich Merz, the German
chancellor, led a successful effort to suspend limits on Germany’s government borrowing in order to drastically increase military spending. In a few years,
Germany’s military spending could be larger than that of France and Britain — combined.
Japan commits half as much as Germany, but it is still one of the
world’s top spenders on defense, with a budget this year of about $58 billion.
Prime Minister Sanae
Takaichi, a conservative lawmaker, won office
last year with nationalist calls to revive the military. She has deployed long-range
missiles — capable of reaching China — in southern Japan, and has reversed postwar
bans on arms exports.
Both Mr. Merz and Ms. Takaichi have made a point of trying to maintain
warm ties with Mr. Trump, but both have also looked beyond Washington, increasingly,
for military alliances.
Japan recently sealed a $6.5 billion deal to supply warships to Australia,
and it is in talks with the Philippines and Indonesia about exporting warships.
Germany has forged close
ties with Ukraine in developing and deploying
new weapons and has asked France to help provide it with a nuclear deterrent.
China and Russia have accused Ms. Takaichi of seeking to revive World
War II-era militarism. But she has said her policies are necessary because Japan
faces the “most severe and complex” security environment since that era, citing the threat of China and North Korea.
“No single country can now protect its own peace and security alone,”
she said recently. “There is absolutely no change in our commitment to upholding
the path we have followed as a peace-loving nation for over 80 years.”
The German public has embraced rearmament reluctantly, but faster
than the Japanese have.
Recent surveys suggest a majority of Germans see the world now as
more dangerous than it
was during the Cold War. They also suggest
that two-thirds of the country backs higher spending on the military, even though the German armed forces, which do not enforce a draft,
have struggled to persuade young people to enlist.
In Tokyo this spring, tens of thousands of people protested Ms. Takaichi’s
security policies, including the decision to export more weapons and to establish
a national intelligence agency. The protesters were concerned that Ms. Takaichi
might next seek to scrap Article 9 of the Constitution, which renounces war.
Nahoko Hishiyama, 37, who helped organize some protests, said Ms.
Takaichi’s “policies are deeply concerning, as they aim to turn Japan into a military
power.”
Alexandra Sakaki, a scholar at the German Institute for International
and Security Affairs in Berlin who studies Japan, said that rearmament would require
further shifts in mind-set in Germany and Japan, especially if officials turn to
policies like conscription.
“They need to think about military and society in a whole different
way,” she said. “Will they be ready for combat, will they be ready to fight? Japan
and Germany need the public to back that vision.”
One country has applauded the German and Japanese shifts: the United
States.
Mr. Trump has long pushed allies to spend more on their own defense
so the U.S. military can focus elsewhere. Meeting last year with Mr. Merz, he welcomed
Germany’s spending surge — though not without reservation. In a quip, Mr. Trump
noted that a remilitarized Germany might not please the American leaders who defeated
Nazi Germany in World War II.
“I’m not sure that General MacArthur would have said it was positive,
you know?” he said.