Japan’s defence minister has issued a stark warning: to prevent war, the nation must rearm with British speed and decisiveness. This is not a comparison to be taken lightly, given that Britain’s own rearmament in the 1930s was a frantic, desperate scramble against the clock. The minister’s remark is a tacit admission that Japan’s current military posture is insufficient for the threats it faces.
We live in an age where the ghost of the Third Reich’s Blitzkrieg meets the reality of a rising China, and Japan, like Britain before it, must shed its pacifist delusions. The parallel is uncomfortable but apt. Britain’s rapid rearmament, though costly and chaotic, gave it the tools to survive 1940.
Japan must now ask itself: does it have the political will to emulate that? Or will it, like so many decadent empires, wait until the guns are at its gates?
