Russia’s war in Ukraine, China’s decades-long militarization and threats to reunify with Taiwan by force and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction on the Korean peninsula have exposed the flawed rationale for post-Cold War demilitarization and the dismantling of the capacity to produce munitions and defensive equipment to meet 21st-century security challenges.
Putin’s neoimperialist invasion of Ukraine has further revealed to Japan and many like-minded countries and political entities such as Taiwan the reality that authoritarian states are pursuing a path toward a multipolar world in which power, not the rule of law, is the basis of our international order.
Moscow has been able to do that with the massive use of military force to engage in a full-scale invasion of a sovereign country. The aggression has revealed the inability of European powers to produce enough munitions to support Ukraine’s resistance, let alone have any surplus to deal with other contingencies that could affect their interests.