SNA (Tokyo) — The Kishida government has declared that all Japan taxpayers have a “responsibility” to support its policy of dramatically increasing military expenditures, accepting the premise that Japan’s neighbors are likely to launch an armed attack unless deterred from doing so. This marks the effective end of “New Capitalism.”

Kishida announced last week his plans to massively boost military spending, starting with an initial hike to about ¥6.5 trillion (US$48 billion) next year until it reaches about ¥9 trillion (US$67 billion) in FY2027 (these US Dollar values are calculated at the current exchange rates in which the value of the Yen is much lower than it has been in recent years).

To give a sense of scale, this means, for example, that in five years Japan will be spending about the same annual amount on its military as Russia did at the time it invaded Ukraine this February.

Japan is currently the world’s No. 9 military spender, and after the dramatic budget hike it will certainly rise higher in this ranking. Japan will not come anywhere close to catching up to the United States or China, but depending on events in other countries, it could potentially rise as high as the world No. 3 in military spending.

This military buildup comes as Japan still has a constitution mandating that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” The constitution also states that “war potential” will not be maintained.

Indeed, for all the talk of “rules-based order” and commitments to the “rule of law,” discussions of constitutional limitations have basically disappeared from the mainstream political debate on security policy, tending only to be mentioned by the Japan Communist Party or a few others on the political left. Apparently, one can now uphold “rule of law” even while disregarding the nation’s basic law.

At any rate, the question roiling the political scene is how Japan, with its economy stagnant for over three decades, is going to pay for all this new military equipment.

One way would be to once again pull out the national credit card and let future generations grapple with the problem.

This is the policy favored by the disciples of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, including Sanae Takaichi, Yasutoshi Nishimura, Koichi Hagiuda, and Masahisa Sato. Security hawks are celebrating the fact that they’ve finally gotten Prime Minister Fumio Kishida to come on board with the massive military budgetary hikes which they have advocated for many years, with a big background push provided by the US government.

The problem with this approach is that Japanese governments have repeatedly tried to spend their way out of troubles since the Bubble Era ended in 1990, and it has led the nation into ever deeper debt without achieving intended economic results.

Indeed, one of the “three arrows” of Abenomics was to spend public funds like a drunken monkey while structural reforms were simultaneously carried out. What Shinzo Abe managed to actually accomplish, however, was to spend all that public money while shying away from implementing controversial structural reforms which might have propelled future economic growth.

A decade after the celebrated Abenomics launched, economic growth remains anemic, the same structural problems remain, most industries possess little international competitiveness, and the national debt has ballooned to about 260% of the annual GDP–far more than any other advanced nation.

Professional economists debate how much national debt is too much for Japan, but there seems to be a general consensus that it won’t be a problem… until it is. And then it may become a huge problem.

At any rate, Kishida has made it clear that he doesn’t agree with the Abe disciples. He says the military budget hike cannot be dealt with by pulling out the national credit card.

“Stable funding sources are critical,” Kishida stated last weekend. “In this respect, issuing government bonds is not an option when we think about our responsibility for the future generations.”

So if the military budget is going to massively increased, and new debt is not going to be used to pay for it, then the tools remaining are non-military spending cuts and tax hikes.

This is the difficult policy arena which Kishida is now entering.

But there has been little debate, even in the mainstream media, whether or not it is truly a struggle worth having.

For example, it has become commonplace to assert that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has created a more threatening security environment for Japan. This is open to question.

It’s quite apparent, for example, that the Ukraine war has not gone well for Moscow, and it has chewed up a significant portion of its military capability. Couldn’t the narrative just as easily be that Russia’s military and other resources are now being consumed on the western front, its fighting strength has been compromised, and therefore the security environment for Japan has become significantly less threatening?

Likewise, the notion that Moscow’s use of force against Ukraine automatically makes it more likely that Beijing will use military force against Taiwan is based on logic which is tenuous at best. The Chinese authorities could just as well be viewing Russia’s military engagement in Ukraine with horror, making them less likely to want to trigger any similar scenario in their own neighborhood.

The notion that Japan is under increased threat from Russia and China is largely based on a kind of psychological character study of the “evil” of President Vladimir Putin and President Xi Jinping; they are bad men from whom bad things must be expected.

The logic of this kind of personalization of international politics might be dismissed by recalling how the “evil” of former Iraqi President Saddam Husain was once presented as “evidence” that Iraq was secretly hiding weapons of mass destruction. Simplistic tropes about “mad dictators” arise again and again in the mainstream media, and they routinely lead to bad decision-making based on false premises.

Even in this century, there have been repeated instances of military aggression perpetrated by democratic nations. Indeed, the number of such cases is higher than the number of cross-border invasions carried out by dictatorial regimes.

So as much as Japan’s policy community insists that the security picture is darkening in their neighborhood, it remains debatable whether or not this is true. This is especially so if one subtracts the impact of recent US actions in the region which seem to be unnecessarily provocative.

It is also worth noting that the very same Abe disciples who are pushing for massive military spending have done everything in their power to undercut Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi in his cautious effort to improve bilateral diplomatic relations between Tokyo and Beijing.

They seem to have already decided that Japan will certainly be fighting a future war with China, and if such an event isn’t inevitable, they are going to make sure that it is.

While Kishida does not share such views, he is, in his own way, now beginning to facilitate them.

As part of his argument to the Japanese people why more must be spent on the military, Kishida declared that “it is the responsibility of all of us living in this era to take on the heavy burden and respond.”

When he rose to power last year, Kishida’s signature policy was New Capitalism, originally presented as an initiative to enhance the livelihoods of ordinary Japanese after a long period of deepening poverty and growing economic disparities.

Now, instead of lifting up the vulnerable, the new priority is for the people to take on a heavy burden. Kishida is embracing the exact opposite approach–massive spending on a military equipment, which will enrich US defense contractors but not the Japanese people. It’s now all about guns, not butter.

This may be regarded as the epitaph for New Capitalism: It was proposed by a leader too weak to advance his own uplifting vision. Post-Kishida Japan will be better armed, and more impoverished.

Kishida seems to have forgotten the insightful words of US President Dwight Eisenhower: “Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed.”

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