Adjusting to a big-power era, Germany and Japan enhance militaries
At his White House visit this month with a supportive President Joe Biden, Prime Minister Kishida Fumio laid out Japan’s assertive new national security strategy, which includes a commitment to substantially higher defense spending.
A week later, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin was in Germany taking stock of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s commitment to bigger military budgets and to rebuilding Germany’s armed forces as a tool not just of his nation’s defense but of European security policy as well.
Indeed, Chancellor Scholz’s announcement Wednesday that Germany will send a contingent of its Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine – a step it had resisted taking over recent weeks despite intense pressures from Washington and some European partners – underscored Germany’s new openness to asserting military power in Europe.
Following Germany’s announcement, President Biden announced at the
