The New York Times
TOKYO — After years of watching its international influence eroded by a slow-motion economic decline, the pacifist nation of Japan
is trying to raise its profile in a new way, offering military aid for
the first time in decades and displaying its own armed forces in an
effort to build regional alliances and shore up other countries’
defenses to counter a rising China.
Already this year, Japan crossed a little-noted threshold by providing its first military aid abroad since the end of World War II,
approving a $2 million package for its military engineers to train
troops in Cambodia and East Timor in disaster relief and skills like
road building.
Japanese warships have not only conducted joint exercises
with a growing number of military forces in the Pacific and Asia, but
they have also begun making regular port visits to countries long
fearful of a resurgence of Japan’s military.
And after stepping
up civilian aid programs to train and equip the coast guards of other
nations, Japanese defense officials and analysts say, Japan could soon
reach another milestone: beginning sales in the region of military
hardware like seaplanes, and perhaps eventually the stealthy
diesel-powered submarines considered well suited to the shallow waters
where China is making increasingly assertive territorial claims.
