Saying ‘Boo’ to the Ghosts of the Axis

It’s amazing. Eight decades after the end of World War II, the two countries everyone wants to step up and take a bigger military role are Germany and Japan. Only 77 years ago we disarmed the Axis powers, and even ginned up for Japan a constitution renouncing “war as a sovereign right of the nation.” Yet now Germany vows to rearm, while Japan weighs a deterrent force to hold Communist China at bay. Is this a sign of success or failure?Our answer is yes. Then again, too, is that the question? After all, Germany and Japan have evolved into democracies and regional economic powerhouses. Some would contend that they can now — unlike in, say, 1939 — be entrusted to help maintain global peace and serve as a military counterweight against threats from China and Russia. President Trump and others have suggested they start pulling their own weight on defense spending.In that light, Germany’s defense minister announcing it “must assume a leading military role in Europe,” as the Financial Times reports, is not unwelcome. Christine Lambrecht concedes Germany’s “war of destruction” between 1939 and 1945 had made “skepticism about the military into a kind of virtue.” Yet the Russian threat means Germany has to drop its “old self-image” and embrace security as Germany’s “central task.”“We are called on to do more than before for Europe,” Ms. Lambrecht says, contending a duty based on Germany’s “size, our geographical location, our economic power,” its “heft,” in short. “That makes us a leading power whether we like it or not — in the military sense, too.” She follows the lead of Chancellor Scholz, who in March broke with years of pacifism by saying Germany’s armed forces should reflect its “size and importance.”Herr Scholz’s remarks lead journalist Anne Applebaum to applaud this “fundamental change in Germany’s definition of itself.” Germans have learned “the lesson of their history is not that Germany must remain forever pacifist,” she says. They embrace the need to “defend democracy.” The worry now seems not a fear of German revanchism but, as the Journal well-marked this week, its lack of alacrity in supplying Ukraine with promised tanks.Ms. Lambrecht, far from trumpeting a new course of unilateral German aggression, is careful to frame her remarks in the context of American predominance. She envisions that America “would remain Europe’s main protector,” the FT reports. She sees “no substitute for the American nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future.” This would appear to be a sine qua non for European, or American, acceptance of German rearmament.In respect of Japan, Foreign Policy reports, Beijing’s aggression after Speaker Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan has brought “a new sense of urgency to heighten Japan’s defense capability.” That means at least boosting defense spending and even imposing “new rules that would for the first time allow preemptive military steps if Japan is at risk,” the magazine says. That, of course, would require revising its constitution, a dream of the late premier, Shinzo Abe.In 2014, Abe’s government hatched a scheme to “reinterpret” the constitution “to allow Japanese armed forces to come to the aid of friendly nations under attack.” We were, and are, troubled by the idea of fiddling with the explicit letter of the nation’s bedrock law. We were glad to see that Mr. Abe later shifted his goal to a formal amendment, a goal he cherished right up until his assassination in July. The votes, so far, haven’t been there. That may change amid Beijing’s saber-rattling.Post-Cold War America saw itself as a latter-day Atlas, carrying the free world’s security burden. It is not our purpose to suggest laying down this burden. Nor is it to endorse maintaining such a posture, at great expense, as a mere reflex. The question is whether nurturing a military revival in Germany and Japan could serve to enhance global security — sharing with these allies the responsibility of keeping the peace without sacrificing what we won in war.

Saying ‘Boo’ to the Ghosts of the Axis

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