With more of their weapons being thrown into the war in Ukraine, Western Allies worry they’re not ready for the New Axis.
(Originally published Nov. 22 in “What in the World“) Facing down growing threats from Russia and North Korea is prompting a major arms buildup from Brussels and Jakarta to Ottawa and Tokyo.
Japan is building up its defenses against North Korea’s increasingly menacing missile barrages. Last week, two brand-new Japanese destroyers successfully used U.S. Aegis-class anti-missile weapons to knock down ballistic missiles off the coast of Hawaii.
The JS Maya and JS Haguro were commissioned in the last two years as part of a Japanese effort to beef up its military. Japan has also adopted new defense legislation that allows its maritime self-defense force (Japan doesn’t call it a navy) to defend foreign allies if their militaries help defend Japan. Japan invoked the law to enable its MSDF to join U.S. and Australian forces in exercises last weekend off the southern coast of Japan.
North Korea on Friday launched an intercontinental ballistic missile 1,000km into the Sea of Japan off Hokkaido. The ICBM has an estimated range of 15,000km, meaning it could be used to strike targets in the United States.
Indonesia’s need for more materiel may help pull it more closely into the U.S. Pacific alliance against China. U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met in Jakarta Monday with his counterpart, Indonesian Defense Minister Prabowo Subianto, and won a pledge to seek greater interoperability between their two nations’ militaries.
Interoperability is military-speak for not only being able to operate together against a common threat but having weaponry that either force can use. Interoperability has been a stumbling block in Ukraine, for example, because Ukrainian forces still use Soviet-era equipment, not the weapons shared among NATO allies. Lloyd told Prabowo that Indonesia’s interoperability would be improved if it approved the roughly $13.9 billion purchase of F-15 fighter jets from Boeing. Prabowo said the decision whether to buy the jets, which would replace aging F-16s and Russian Sukhois, was in the final stages.
Austin flew to his meeting with Prabowo from Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he framed the war in Ukraine as a battle to defend democracy globally. Both men are former generals. Austin was a four-star general who helped lead the U.S. invasion of Iraq and then served in Afghanistan. Prabowo was a lieutenant general in Indonesia’s army but was discharged for allegedly ordering the kidnapping of democracy activists during the 1998 unrest that led to the fall of the dictator, President Suharto. After a brief exile in Jordan, he returned to go into business with his brother Hashim Djojohadikusumo, one of Indonesia’s richest people and then politics, running unsuccessfully for president.
Supplying Ukraine with weapons and ammunition, meanwhile, has drained Europe’s own stockpiles to the point that U.S. allies there worry they may be leaving themselves vulnerable to Russian attack. Canada is so concerned about its own preparedness that its defense chief said he paid a personal visit to General Dynamics Ordnance and Tactical Systems to see what could be done to boost production of M777 Howitzers and 155mm ammo. Similar shortages facing the U.S. military are meant to be addressed in a nearly $900 billion annual defense budget due for approval by the lame-duck Congress next month.