LONDON -- British defense and security policy has been undergoing a radical reappraisal, as security gurus in their think tanks and military commanders in their operations rooms ponder the unfolding implications of defending a vulnerable island in a world of global terror, rogue states, international instability and ever higher technology-based threats. A British "white paper" review of defense policy has appeared, stuffed with new jargon, new theories and new doctrines.
Is any of this relevant to Japan, where revolutionary developments, such as planning a missile defense system and troop deployments to Iraq, are also under way?
At the broadest strategic level most experts would have argued until quite recently that the situations of the two nations were fundamentally different, so that comparisons were pointless. Britain was a committed world player with a nuclear deterrent; Japan was constrained by the pacifist tradition stemming from the utter disaster of World War II.