9
Figure 1: Leading Defense Spenders, excluding USA: US$ billion, 2000
16
Source: IISS, The Military Balance, 2001-02 (London: IISS, 2001).
Note: The United States spends more than seven times as much as any of the countries in this figure. The U.S. is
excluded because including America would mask the significant changes over time in the relative defense spending
of the other major powers.
A second way to measure Japan’s military power is to assess its capabilities across a
broad range of military missions. This analysis suggests that while Japan has little capability for
ground warfare (either on the defense or the offense), Japan has significant capability for
offensive or defensive air superiority or sea control operations.
L
AND
W
ARFARE
: Japan has little combat power to bring to bear in ground warfare, even
in defensive operations. Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) has only approximately
one armored division’s worth of modern equipment. The GSDF has about 200 first-rate main
battle tanks, and about 300 other modern armored vehicles.
17
Although several of Japan’s
neighbors have large land armies (e.g, China, North Korea, South Korea, Russia), Japan is
16
The United States is the world’s leading defense spender ($291 billion of defense expenditure in 2000). I omit the
United States from this table because including it makes it difficult to distinguish the differences between the other
countries spending at much lower levels.
0
1 0
2 0
3 0
4 0
5 0
6 0
7 0
Russia
Japan
China
France
UK
Germany
I t a l y
C o u n t r y
PPP-Adjusted
Exchange Rate
Convention