Media coverage of the Liberal Democratic Party's plans to bolster Japan's military position in the world has largely focused on the constitutionality of the two bills that allow the Self-Defense Forces to come to the aid of allies overseas. Those who oppose these bills have used this constitutional question as a tool, and when the argument gets bogged down in legal niceties they appeal to the public's fears and sentiments: Do you want young Japanese men to die for others' causes?

But if there's anything we've learned since Shinzo Abe regained the premiership in 2012 for the LDP, it's that the public is more concerned about the economy than hypothetical conflicts in countries they've never heard of — or even with China, which Abe implicitly cites as a threat to Japan. If the opponents of remilitarization really want to get more people on their side, they should be talking about defense spending, because the mainstream press isn't.

The Japan Communist Party, which is opposed to anything the LDP proposes, says that Japan's military buildup is encouraged by the United States in order to tip the trade balance in its favor by getting Japan to buy more weapons, even when those weapons are made by Japanese companies. Because the media looks on the JCP as a far-left organization, it rarely pays attention to what the party says, but a 2011 post on the JCP blog, Jinmin no Hoshi, pointed out that if Japan could legally export weapons — which became possible last year — it could start producing more, something America approves of. It was the U.S. that suggested to Australia that it buy submarines from Japan.

The JCP says it is to America's advantage if Japan sells weapons, because Japan's arms industry is almost all about licensing. Mitsubishi Heavy Industry manufactures the F-15 fighter planes flown by the Air SDF. When the U.S. buys an F-15 from Boeing, it costs the government between $30 million and $50 million dollars, or ¥3 billion to ¥5 billion. When the Japanese government buys an F-15 from Mitsubishi, it costs ¥12 billion. Much of the difference is licensing fees paid to Boeing, but how much? The government says it can't talk about it since the fees are defense-related and thus a national security issue, which is why the media doesn't try to find out.

But there are ways of finding out. Some years ago, the Defense Ministry decided to buy 62 Apache helicopters from Fuji Heavy Industry, but in the end the ministry only ordered 13 helicopters, and Fuji sued the ministry to get back the money it had invested in production facilities it assumed it would earn back with the order. Legal documents revealed that the company paid ¥700 million in licensing fees for each aircraft, or about 9 percent of the cost. That's peanuts compared to what Japan pays for the Aegis weapons tracking system. In 2012, Japan built its sixth Aegis destroyer for ¥139 billion, ¥51 billion of which paid for the system licensed by Lockheed Martin.

As demonstrated by the never-ending U.S. base standoff in Okinawa, Japan's subservient relationship to the U.S. is hardly a secret, but the Japanese government is also being exploited by its own military. A long article in the Sept. 3 issue of Diamond Online by Toshitsugu Taoka, a journalist who covers defense matters, went through the LDP's proposed defense budget for 2016, which at more than ¥5 trillion is 2.2 percent bigger than the 2015 budget and the largest in Japan's history. Specifically, Taoka wanted to figure out how effective the spending will be in terms of achieving one of Shinzo Abe's main goals, which is to protect Japanese territory from Chinese incursions.

The Ground SDF needs about ¥30 billion to buy property on two southern islands and build facilities on it for 3,000 troops, who will be on standby to fend off any Chinese actions over the Senkaku Islands, which both Japan and China claim as territory. Then it needs ¥27 billion for vehicles to carry troops and ¥23 billion for cargo planes to transport these vehicles to the Senkakus. The GSDF also wants 12 Osprey, the controversial airplane that can take off vertically, for rescue purposes. Each Osprey costs ¥12 billion, and that doesn't include training for pilots and maintenance crews, which adds another ¥2 billion per plane and goes straight to the U.S. military. That, however, is the GSDF estimate. The U.S. Congress has to approve such weapons exports and they did so last May, but somehow their price came to about ¥21 billion per Osprey.

Taoka thinks it's a waste of money, given that what Japan really needs to keep China off the Senkakus is air power. China is believed to have 700 latest-generation fighter planes, a third of which are positioned near the East China Sea, meaning within range of the Senkakus. Japan would deploy, at most, 40 and has only ordered a dozen or so more, according to next year's budget. That's a 6-1 ratio in favor of China.

Without air supremacy, the GSDF's plan is worthless. The 3,000 troops would be wiped out, even if they managed to make it to the Senkakus. But the GSDF has to "justify its existence," which means securing as much of the budget as it can, so it came up with this plan in order to get a piece of the pie. When the Cold War ended, the GSDF lost its main reason for being, which was protecting Hokkaido from an unlikely Soviet invasion. So it turned its gaze south.

Taoka says the Marine and Air SDFs know that the GSDF plan is "laughable" but go along with it because they have self-serving requests of their own. China's defense budget is the equivalent of ¥17 trillion, or 3.5 times the size of Japan's, and though America is obliged to come to Japan's aid, any conflict over territory would be neverending, so America would make sure it didn't happen.

But even if there isn't any shooting, once the various SDF branches start demanding more weapons, it will trigger a spiraling arms race that is also neverending. The Japanese public would certainly disapprove but the government doesn't seem too worried about that. As long as the Americans are happy, everything's fine.