With Communist Chinese warplanes and warships maneuvering around Taiwan, Japan’s prime minister, Fumio Kishida, will meet  with President Biden at Washington on Friday in a bid to win American support for Tokyo switching its defense strategy to spear from shield.

Breaking with Japan’s post-World War II “self-defense” military strategy, Mr. Kishida announced last month a doubling of military spending over the next five years, to 2 percent of GDP. The plan includes procuring American-made Tomahawks.

With a range of 1,000 miles, these missiles could be thrown at targets in North Korea and on mainland China. If implemented, the plan would give Japan’s the world’s third-largest military budget, after America and Communist China.

Japanese popular support for a defense strategy shift is being fueled by Communist China’s increasing military pressure on Taiwan and by a record number of North Korean missile tests last year. In advance of Mr. Kishida’s Washington visit, China sent 71 planes and seven ships toward Taiwan on Wednesday. Taiwan is midway between mainland China’s Fujian Province and the westernmost islands of Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture.

Japanese public opinion polls show tepid support for raising taxes to pay for $315 billion in new military spending by 2017. “There is a consensus in the Japanese establishment that they have to spend more on defense,” Temple University’s Robert Dujarric said in an interview Thursday. “Are they going to double defense spending in five years? Probably not.”

A strong White House endorsement would strengthen Mr. Kishida’s hand to get approval by the Diet next month of the budget hikes, Mr. Dujarric, who co-directs Temple’s Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies, said. “Japanese want to see how far would the U.S. go. Is the U.S. convincing that it would deter China, and Japan would not have to do anything on itself? Would Japan fight alongside the U.S.? Would Japan provide logistical support?”

In a new Atlantic Council poll of 167 “leading global strategists,” 70 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that China could launch a military campaign to reunify Taiwan with the mainland at some time over the next decade. Among government officials polled — largely Americans, Europeans, and Japanese — this conviction rose to 88 percent.

Russia’s attack on Ukraine has prompted America’s military to plan ahead for a Chinese attack on Taiwan. American and Japanese armed forces are integrating their command structure and scaling up combined operations, the commander of Marine Forces Japan, Lieutenant General James Bierman, told the Financial Times last week.

“Why have we achieved the level of success we’ve achieved in Ukraine?” the American officer asked. “A big part of that has been because after Russian aggression in 2014 and 2015, we earnestly got after preparing for future conflict: training for the Ukrainians, pre-positioning of supplies, identification of sites from which we could operate support, sustain operations.”

General Bierman noted that the Philippines is doubling its bases — to 10 — where Yanks can pre-position weapons and other supplies. The general, who commands the only Marine crisis response force permanently based overseas, says: “You gain a leverage point, a base of operations, which allows you to have a tremendous head start in different operational plans.”

Delaying American entry in a China-Taiwan war by as little as one week could hand victory to China, a Taiwan war game conducted by the Center for Strategic and International Studies indicates, as was first reported by C.M. Vik of The New York Sun.

On Wednesday at Washington, American and Japanese officials unveiled plans for heightened military cooperation, including protecting Japanese satellites and upgrading Marine forces in Okinawa.

Secretary Austin, asked about China’s maneuvers around Taiwan, said: “We’ve seen increased aerial activity in the straits, we’ve seen increased surface vessel activity around Taiwan. But whether or not that means that an invasion is imminent, you know, I seriously doubt that.”

The defense secretary renewed America’s commitment to defend Japan “with the full range of capabilities,” which includes nuclear weapons and underscored that these commitments under the Mutual Security Treaty apply to all the islands of Okinawa.

America has two-way security treaties with five nations in the area: Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, South Korea, and Australia. In face of growing Chinese military spending, the democracies in the region are reaching out to coordinate their militaries.

At London on Wednesday, Mr. Kishida signed an agreement with Britain to allow more joint military exercises. This followed a similar deal with Australia.

Five years ago, America, Japan, Australia, and India revived a dormant group, the Indo-Pacific Quadrilateral Security Dialogue. Known as the Quad, the group aims to defend a “free and open Indo-Pacific.”

Last November, Britain, Australia, and Canada joined a U.S.-Japanese war game that repelled a hypothetical attack on Japan. Dozens of aircraft and ships and 36,000 soldiers from America and Japan took part.  Next week, Japan and India start two-way fighter-jet drills.

So far, these bilateral and regional groupings fall far short of NATO, with its famous all-for-one, one-for-all self-defense clause. China, though, worries about the re-emergence of a bloc similar to the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization.

This anti-communist, eight-nation self-defense group lasted from 1954 to 1977. No doubt in memory of this group, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Wang Wenbin, said this week that U.S. allies shouldn’t “replicate the obsolete mind-set of bloc confrontation in the Asia-Pacific.”