More generals, less pacific: Japan’s new defence policy

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See mintmobile.com. Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. In New York, I'm John Fassman.

And in London, I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

A decade ago, the rape and murder of a young woman led to reforms aimed at making India safer for women. But a more recent killing of another young woman in Mumbai is a reminder of how rampant domestic abuse there remains.

And Johnny Johnson was the last surviving member of the famed Dam Busters, the British squadron whose daring Bombing raids destroyed two huge German dams in 1943. Our obituaries editor reflects on an unexpected hero of the Second World War. First up, though, Outside the office of Japan's prime minister today, protest. Many of those taking part were elderly. They were around back when Japan's post war constitution, framed around pacifism, was first.

Drafted, outlining the results of his occupation policy to date and guiding Japan into.

The ways of democracy.

MacArthur makes a solemn plea to all nations to follow Japan's example in forever renouncing war.

Today's suitably peaceful rally was against a new set of measures that seemed to run counter to that cornerstone of Japan's defense policy. Since then, the Constitution renounces war as a country's sovereign right. Japan doesn't have an army. It has what it calls self defense forces. But geopolitics has long strained this idea, not least because Japan's powerful neighbor China looks increasingly aggressive.

So the Japanese government today approved a brand new national security strategy along with two other big strategic documents that basically set security and defense policy for years at a time. And, and they contain changes which for Japan are really unprecedented.

Noah Snyder is our Tokyo bureau chief.

We've seen the Japanese government pledge to raise its defense spending to the equivalent of 2% of GDP within the next five years, up from around 1%. Now they've plans to acquire longer range missiles that will allow them to strike targets far beyond Japan's territory. And they're also reformulating, recasting the way that they see the relationship with their neighbors, primarily China, which they're going to call a challenge, replacing milder formulations that stressed possible cooperation in the previous version of this strategy, which was released in 2013. So put together, these all mark a break with long standing precedent in Japan.

And what's behind all of these big changes then?

Well, I think it's important to note that this is really a change in pace, not a change in direction. For several years now, certainly for the last decade or so, Japan has been moving steadily, incrementally in the direction of beefing up its armed forces, of making its military more capable of responding to the new challenges in its neighborhood. Both in legal terms and also in practical terms, those challenges are myriad. They have North Korea on one side, they have Russia to the north. Russia's invasion of Ukraine this year has also had a massive impact on public perception of these issues. But really the primary thing on Japanese policymakers minds is China, which under Xi Jinping has become far more muscular and far more outspoken about its plans for its neighborhood.

And what's the backstory on the JapanChina relationship before this period?

Well, actually, as it happens, this year is also a big year in Japan China relations. It's the 50th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic relations between the two neighbors and sometime foes. And in some ways, the relationship has been a happily symbiotic one over the past decades. Japanese aid and investment helped China modernize. A growing Chinese market helped fuel Japan's growth. And the two are really deeply interdependent when it comes to trade. Last year, China was by far Japan's biggest trading partner, and Japan was China's second largest. But running through all of that, there have always been throughout these past 50 years, a handful of issues when it comes to security, when it comes to territory, and when it comes to history, that have really poisoned the relationship. Japan and China have clashed in the past over disputed islets, the Senkaku, as they're known here in Japan. They have long standing disagreements about the status and the fate of Taiwan. And these issues have been kind of left unresolved.

And things are getting more tense still because of the muscular China you mentioned.

Absolutely. And I think the striking thing is that on the occasion of this 50th anniversary, when you look at polling, when you talk to policymakers, both countries really primarily view each other as potential threats. I mean, the Japanese see the Chinese as a threat in their neighborhood, and the Chinese see the Japanese as essentially lackeys of their biggest threat, America. Polls show big majorities in both countries having negative views of the other. The zero COVID policies that China has imposed in recent years certainly haven't made things any better. People to people exchanges have basically frozen. And so there was really little fanfare at all in either country on the occasion of the anniversary. In fact, the leaders of the two countries weren't even on speaking terms at the time. And a big source of the tension is Chinese aggression around Taiwan and worries about China's intentions vis a vis Taiwan. We saw this summer after a visit to Taiwan by Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of America's House of Representatives, big Chinese military exercises around Taiwan. And during those exercises, five Chinese missiles landed in Japan's exclusive economic zone. And to many commentators, that was a clear signal from China to Japan not to get involved militarily alongside America in any potential Taiwan contingencies down the road.

But it's very much in both countries interests to resolve this without missiles. Right. Have there been diplomatic efforts to cool things down?

Absolutely. And in fact, there's been a recent flurry of diplomacy. I mean, this summer, the national security adviser of Japan went to China for seven hours of talks with his counterpart. It's been a kind of a subtle diplomatic dance to try and reopen channels of communication. Xi Jinping sent a get well letter to Kishida Fumio, Japan's Prime Minister, when he came down with COVID that was seen as a sign that they were getting ready to open up to talks. And then finally, on the sidelines of the APEC summit on November 17, Kishida and she got into the same room and met for the first time since Kishida became Japan's Prime Minister last year. So the two exchanged warm greetings as the cameras clicked away. And it was a short meeting, but it was one that left both leaders sounding slightly more positive notes. So in public, Xi was talking about building a relationship that meets the demands of a new era. Kishida, in turn, talked about the relationship getting back on track. But for all of the warm atmospherics, the tensions still remain. And we saw, just days after their meeting, heavily armed Chinese coast guard vessels sailing into Japanese territorial waters near those disputed islands.

So what China's done there and what Japan has approved today looks very much like a situation of we're friends, but don't mess with me.

I think there's a lot of that going on. I mean, both sides have, as we've discussed a huge economic interest in keeping trade going. The Chinese, especially as they're coming out of zero Covid, they need the foreign investment and technology that Japan can help provide. And Japan, its economy really wouldn't survive without trade with China. As one senior Japanese official put it to me recently, decoupling is mission impossible for Japan. And going forward, the strains are likely to increase. The lines between security and the economy, between defense and trade, are becoming a lot more blurred. It's becoming a lot harder to keep these spheres separate. Whether because of changes to legal frameworks in both countries that are aimed at protecting sensitive technology and supply chains, whether because of measures that America has taken in its trade war with China, it's going to continue to get ever more complicated. Before the pandemic had hit, there had been plans afoot for Xi to visit Tokyo. And China's ambassador here in Tokyo recently suggested reviving that plan. So there clearly are some efforts to manage the tensions in the relationship. But even if this visit does come off, there's really little prospect that things get much better. The realistic hope is that they don't get any worse.

Thanks very much for your time, Noah.

Thank you for having me.

We hope you enjoy listening to the intelligence as much as we enjoy making it. We're always thinking of ways to improve and to do that we'd like to know more about you. Do us a little favor and fill out a short questionnaire@examiner.com intelligencesurvey. The link is in the notes. Thanks. It's 10 years to the day since India was rocked by one of the most disturbing and sadistic crimes in the country's recent history. The 23 year old medical student was attacked after she boarded this Delhi bus, shown here in CCTV footage. Jyoti Singh was raped and mutilated on a bus driving around the streets of Delhi in December 2012. After the attack, she was thrown out of the bus and left for dead. She was rushed to hospital, but her injuries were so severe that she died two days later. Protests in response to her killings spread like wildfire. Up and down the country. Thousands took to the streets. In 2024, men were hanged for the crime. Her death ushered in a national conversation about gender based violence in India and led to a number of reforms. But the threat of violence against women never went away. And earlier this year, the country was reminded of just how far it has left to go.

Very sadly, gender based violence is still a really big problem in India.

Laina Shipper is the Economist South Asia Bureau Chief.

This was brought into Focus again recently following the murder of a 27 year old woman by her partner in Delhi and she'd reported him to the police previously, quite a long time before she was killed. But that didn't help. And the whole case really underlines how terrible the situation still is for women in India.

Now you said it was a big problem. Do we have a sense of just how big it is, how prevalent it is?

It's really difficult to know exactly, partly because statistics are pretty poor, partly also because it's a taboo subject. There's a lot of shame associated with talking about it. Women who are affected don't necessarily want hard to tell anybody and reliable statistics are very hard to come by. But those that do exist suggest that domestic abuse is routine. About 30% of currently or previously married women between 18 and 49 told a national Family Health survey, which was done in the past couple of years, that they'd been subject to it. And of those who said that they had experienced sexual violence, 96% said it was a husband or former husband who was the perpetrator. So it's all from people that you know well and that you're intimate with. There are police statistics which tell us something about the cases that are reported. In Delhi, the capital of India, recorded six cases a day of rape and 15 of cruelty by husband or in laws during the first half this year. And activists tend to assume that in the case of rape at least those numbers reflect about 10th of the total incidents.

Lena, how does the justice system deal with these cases?

So the justice system really struggles still to deal with these cases. The problem starts with reporting and a lot of cases obviously don't get reported at all. So there is no justice for those. But even women who do go to the police and where charges are filed, securing a conviction is very difficult, can take years. The justice system is extremely slow. So if you take the case of Shah Dawalka, the woman who was killed by her partner in Delhi, she had previously complained to the police about him, but that didn't ultimately save her life. And in the wake of her case, you've had a lot of women come forward and speak out about times where they've gone to the police and warned them about their partners. And a lot of the time then they decide to go back or the police decide not to do anything. It's very tricky. Overall, access to justice for those kinds of cases still weak.

And by way of context, how does India compare in terms of gender based violence to other countries?

Obviously this is not a problem that's exclusive to India. Domestic violence and other violence against women is a problem all over the world. So if you look at the UK for instance, victims of sexual assault can also wait years for justice. A very small percentage of recorded rapes result in charges and even fewer result in convictions. But the thing about India is that in terms of gender equality, which tends to be the main predictor of violence against women, India is one of the worst places in the world for women in terms of gender inequality. It's below average in the UN's gender inequality index. Essentially, sexual violence against women is a bigger problem in places that are more unequal. And there's still a long way to go for India in terms of fixing gender inequality.

Why is this problem so acute?

Ultimately, the violence against women is a function of the position of women in society generally. India is still a very conservative society. The majority of people hold very traditional views about gender roles, both at home and at work. Both men and women generally tend to agree that wives should obey their husbands. A lot of people believe earning money is the responsibility of the man. And when there are no jobs, then men should take precedence. This has improved a little bit, but families still tend to put greater value in having sons rather than daughters. The imbalance of births still persists, but in general, the very traditional attitudes to gender norms just shape what women can and cannot do and how they're treated, and violence as part of that.

So given the state of the problem in India, what's being done about it?

So the protests that followed the rape and murder of Jyoti Singh in 2012 did lead to some progress. The protests were joined by a lot of elite and middle class women because they realized it really could have been them. And there was a very strong reaction to it all over the country. That resulted in a lot of pressure which led the government to create a special commission that formulated recommendations for parliament. And several laws were passed that made it easier to prosecute sexual assault related offences like stalking, voyeurism. There were fast track courts set up to try rape cases. And the police really tried to improve hiring of female cops. They created women's help desks and all female police stations in several states, which has been shown to at least improve reporting levels of violence against women. And if you look at the more structural level, the Supreme Court has actually played a very big role in promoting gender equality. That's expanded in recent years. Women's right to inherit property, it's expanded access to abortion for single women and has also stressed the importance of sexual autonomy in relationships. Specifically in a ruling that decriminalized adultery. So it's obviously illegal to commit violent acts against your wife. But rape in marriage is not recognized as a specific crime in and of itself at the moment, and there's an ongoing campaign to change that.

Ultimately. Lena, do you think these shifts will lead to a material improvement in women's safety in India?

One reason for hope is that if you look at the percentage of women who say that they've experienced domestic violence, it's obviously still disturbingly high, but it's lower than it was a couple of decades ago. And there's a lot of evidence that that fall is associated with improving economic development. And because India continues to get richer, there's no reason to assume that that improvement won't continue. Ultimately, I hope that all of these things will lessen gender inequality and improve the situation of women. But as we saw, sexual violence is only one aspect of the generally sort of disempowered position of women in a country, and that's underwritten by social norms and beliefs and particular roles. And as long as these things don't change, it'll be very difficult to substantially improve the situation for women.

All right, Lena, thanks very much for joining us today.

Thanks very much for having me, John.

When Johnny Johnson got to the Zopa Dam in Germany during the Second World War on the night of May 16, he was very surprised to find no other aircraft were there.

Ann Roe is the Economist's obituaries editor.

Because he was engaged in one of the most important, although top secret, missions of the the Second World War, which was to breach three German dams, the Zora, the Eder and the Mna, and therefore flood the Ruhr, which was the industrial heartland of Germany as it is now. It was where the Nazi war machine drew all its steel to make its armaments. And therefore this was a huge mission which was possibly going to change the course of the war. He and two other formations of Lancaster bombers had been sent over from Britain in order to destroy the dams. And it seemed very odd to him that at the Zorpa Dam, at least there was nobody else around. He was the bomb aimer on the mission. He had joined the RAF at 18. He'd volunteered because he really wanted to give Hitler a bloody nose. But apart from that, he was very keen to escape his background, the poverty he'd known growing up. He was a farm boy. His father was a farm foreman, a very brutal, ignorant man. Johnny's mother had died when he was just a toddler, and he was brought up by his father, or really just beaten by him whenever he didn't do something right. He managed to find a little bit of solace in the company of an elder sister, but otherwise he had a miserable life until he went away to boarding school, to a special college set up for farm boys who had lost a parent. Then eventually, at 18, joined the RAF. He and his crew, which was first of all called Squadron X, rather mysteriously, and then Squadron 617, had been training for months for this particular mission over Germany. They didn't know anything about it as they were doing it. It was supposed to be top secret. All they knew was that they were flying very low level over lakes in the English Midlands and training on practice bombs. They were bombs that were set spinning in the bomb bay and then released and they bounced over the water. The crew that Johnny Johnson was attached to was going to make for the Zorpa Dam. Now, this one was different from the other two and you couldn't use the sort of fancy bomb sighting equipment that went with the new weapons. He simply would have to rely on instinct to know where to drop the bomb. And they would have to fly along the whole length of the dam at very low level in order to drop it where it would breach and let all the water out. So on the night of the raid, they got over the dam and did their flights backwards and forwards. And he simply couldn't for a long time find the right place to drop the bomb. He took nine goes at it until the rear gunner, the comedian of the crew, suddenly said to him, will somebody just get that bomb out of here? And on the next, as it happened, the 10th run, he delivered it, he realized that he was at the exact spot he needed to find. He had found it purely by instinct. And as he let it go, there was a heartfelt thank Christ from the rear gunner. And when they got home, they found that the plane was really in some state of dilapidation. But at least they had survived it much worse. And fairly soon they learned that in fact, it had been an appalling night as far as losses went. For a single operation, they'd lost eight aircraft and three had had to turn back. And out of 133 crew members who went, 53 had been killed. And Johnny Johnson said the mood back at base that evening, instead of being celebration, which it could have been, because the other two dams had been extremely successfully breached, and in fact the water had poured out and the whole area, as he looked at it, out of the plain, was like an inland sea. So the Other two formations of Lancaster's had actually done their job well, even though there had been considerable losses there. But still the general mood about the raid was one of commiseration, not celebration. However, it brought a huge surge in morale in Britain to think that this raid had happened, that it had severely damaged Germany's industrial capacity and it brought fame to him. There was a film made of the raid called the Dam Busters, with a very catchy tune.

Tonight they are 617 Squadron tomorrow the world will know them as.

He was only sorry about that film, that there was no mention of the Zorpa Dam in it, because that had not been the grand success of actually breaking the dam. They'd only managed to crack the top of it for about 20ft. He was a very busy man afterwards. He was training to be a navigator. He had a lot of family duties, very happy and involved marriage to his wife, Gwyn. He didn't really think about the raid, as people often don't after a war. He didn't particularly want to talk about it. But after Gwyn died and he was disposed just to hide away and not see anyone, his children encouraged him to come out and speak about the raid himself because gradually the members of the crew were dying and he needed to speak up for those who had made this sacrifice and in particular for those who hadn't returned.

Ann Rome on Johnny Johnson, who's died aged 101.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. The show's editors are Marguerite Howell and Chris Impey. Our sound engineer is Will Rowe. Our senior producers are Sam Westrin, Jack Gill, John Jo Devlin and Rory Galloway. Stevie Hertz is our US Audio correspondent and our creative producer is William Warren. Our producers are Alize, Jean Baptiste and Kevin Koenors, with extra production help this week from Emily Elias, Maggie Khadifa, Sarah Laurinuk and Alan Haberchak. We'll all see you back here on Monday.