It is still vivid in memory that U.S. President Donald Trump, acting like a weapons salesman, mounted an offensive on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to sell the Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter and a missile defense system by taking advantage of threats from North Korea. These weapons will be sold to Japan under the U.S. Foreign Military Sales program, under which Washington has all the right to determine the prices and delivery dates — an unequal scheme favorable to the United States that Japan must swallow.
Abe must have been fully aware that Washington is acting on behalf of the American munitions industry under the pretext of helping strengthen the defense capability of Japan, a major U.S. ally. Yet he nestled up to the U.S. leader's sales pitch because taking countermeasures to North Korea's nuclear and missile development programs is the best way to strengthen his administration's position at home.
The draft budget for fiscal 2018 starting in April calls for a 1.3 percent increase in defense spending from the original budget for fiscal 2017 to a record ¥5.191 trillion, the fourth straight year of breaking the previous high. Conspicuous in the spending is strengthening of the missile defense system, such as deployment of the land-based Aegis missile defense system known as Aegis Ashore.