Spend more on defense, U.S. envoy urges Japan
The International Herald Tribune
News, Page 3
Published: 21 May 2008
BRIEFLY: Asia/Pacific: Tokyo
Japan should raise its military spending, as other countries in the region do, and share the costs of defending itself with the United States, Washington’s ambassador to Tokyo said Tuesday.
Ambassador Thomas Schieffer said Japan, whose defense is largely [...]

Don’t Believe Spending Cut Rumors
By Bernard Finel
Defense News
Published: 17 November 2008
Before the presidential election, reports began to circulate that the Pentagon was planning to propose a defense spending increase of roughly $450 billion over five years. That’s in addition to the increases in the base budget already laid out in the 2009 Future Years Defense [...]

In most countries, the armed forces are divided into three or four forces: an army, a navy, an air force, and often a gendarmerie or a paramilitary police force. Many countries have a variation on the standard model of three or four basic forces. Variations include China (army, navy, air force, strategic missile force), Japan [...]

The arms race in Northeast Asia undercuts all talk of peace in the region. It also sustains a growing global military-industrial complex. Northeast Asia is where four of the world’s largest militaries — those of the United States, China, Russia, and Japan — confront each other. Together, the countries participating in the Six Party Talks [...]