Chairman's Message: What Japan's Third National Defense Program Guidelines Should Have Said
Admiral Dennis Blair
February 1, 2019
In December of last year, Japan published its third National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG). These guidelines, written under the supervision of the five-year-old National Security Council Staff, provide guidance for the development of Japan's defense capability for the next decade.
Earlier this month Sasakawa USA held a conference on these guidelines, and the consensus of the Japanese and American expert participants was that the guidelines were a glass both half full and half empty.
Although there are many positive features of the NDPG, they are inadequate in the very important area of achieving joint operations by the Self Defense Force. NDPG documents are always the tip of an iceberg, indicating the presence of much more substance unseen below the water line. However even tips of icebergs indicate overall direction and speed. The 2019 NDPG show a positive direction for Japanese joint capabilities, but the speed is disappointingly slow, much too slow for the security environment that the document itself accurately describes.