Link to article:https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/with-an-eye-china-japans-ruling-party-makes-unprecedented-defence-spending-2021-10-13/
One of the United States allies, Japan, looks to slowly but steadily increase their military budget over the years. Japan plans to increase spending and eventually spend one hundred billion dollars to forego the now 1% GDP military budget and push it to 2% which may not seem like a big increase but it is. They plan to spend this money on United States aircrafts and other weapons such as cruise missiles. With this money they could specifically buy f-35 stealth fighter jets, osprey, and surveillance drones. Eventually they will end up buying aircraft carriers and submarines.
The reason that Japan is increasing their military budget is because of where they sit with China. Japan is known as a country that mainly focuses its military strategy on defending.”The Self Defence Force is well trained and well equipped, but its sustainability and resilience is one of the most serious problems,” said a Japan fleet commander. In a Japanese survey conducted at the end of last year 86% of Japanese citizens said China poses a threat to Japan and in the same survey 82% of citizens expressed concern about a very powerful nuclear North Korea.
As the United States being one of Japan’s closest allies the United States was pushing allies to spend more money on military and defense. If Japan follows through with this and spends 2% or 100 billion dollars this will put them within NATO (which is an IGO) pledge. This should also increase relations with not only the United States but possibly Taiwan because of the continued threats China is putting on Taiwan. If China happens to put threats on Japan like they are threatening Taiwan there could possibly be a military IGO formed between South Korea, Japan, United States, and Taiwan.