After getting nuked twice and having the USA act as the external military for over 50 years, Japan has voted to begin re-militarization in the face of looming external threats. This means a couple things to me. 1) Japan’s near threats, like North Korea and China, have been pressuring them and they need to react. 2) The United States is no longer in a position to guarantee the safety of Japan in the face of their mounting external threats. While the second one seems scarier, likely it is a combination of both. Since the US fights in the Middle East (an area that should have been put under complete Allied control and colonization after WW2 and remained that way forever–instead they just have Israel), it’s unlikely they could fire up another major theater of war in the East and do much with Japan only fielding 75,000 in their local defense force.
Needless to say, this is the end of an era and an historic shift in power balance in the East.
