Japan's 🎌 strategy is greatly affected by the sea. Over the years, the Japanese governments foreign policy strategy has been influenced by the changes in the international security environment. First against 🇷🇺Soviet Russia and now against 🇨🇳China's expansionism strategy, Japan has been at the side of 🇺🇸US forces in the Pacific.
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Table of content:
00:00 Japan's Strategic Environment
01:10 Japanese Sea Lanes
02:50 Rising Tension between China, Korea and Japan
03:16 Japanese Maritime Strategy of containing China
04:42 Soviet Containment
05:53 Japan's constitutional constraints
06:18 The birth of Japanese Self Defense Forces
07:07 Japanese Straits Containment Strategy
07:41 Importance of Vladivostok Port
07:55 China's threat containment
08:16 First Island Chain
08:58 Chinese Strategic Po
11:43 Bashi Channel

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With the fall of the Soviet Union in the 90s’ and the Rise of Chinese economic and military clout in the first years of the 2000s’, Japanese strategic planners started to slowly but steadily shift their strategic locus from the north of the archipelago to its south.

In a similar fashion to the encirclement of Russian naval bases in the sea of Japan and Oshkosh, Tokyo’s military commanders set for a containment strategy against Chinese expansion towards the first island chain.

The first island chain concept represents an imaginary string starting from the southern tip of Kyushu, all the way down to the South China Sea, encompassing the Japanese Nansei Shoto archipelagos, aka the Ryukyu, Taiwan, and the northern tip of Luzon island, in the Philippines.

The first island chain in Chinese eyes, represents its immediate “backyard” and its therefore an essential buffer region in securing its coastal border.

Over the years, Beijing’s strategic planners have been focused on figuring out a way to secure its maritime borders and the few passageways linking its eastern and northern ports to the Pacific Ocean.

The home ports for the northern and eastern fleets, Qingdao (pronounced as ching·dau) and Ningbo (pronounced as ning·bow), are cut off from directly accessing the western pacific by the Japanese archipelago and Taiwan.

Indeed, the only few passageways connecting the east china sea with the open ocean are through a series of straits and chokepoints, all under the crosshairs of China’s regional competitors.

While, In the South China Sea the PRC has in over two decades developed a network of bases built on man-made islands, on the East China Sea it has been struggling to assert its influence.

Beijing has been trying for many years to expand its control over the first island chain, by aggressively contesting the disputed islands with Japan and Korea but also by pushing these countries fishing and oceanographic vessels out of these international waters.

Some analysts have argued that China might even push for building artificial militarized islands, like the one in the South CHina Sea.

On the flip side, Japanese strategy is focused on opposing Chinese expansionism plans. Tokyo is looking to stop Beijing advance by installing anti-ship and anti-aircraft batteries on the islands stretching from the tip of Kyushu, down to the Miyakojima archipelago.

Equipping these islands with long range anti-ship missiles capabilities, would create a powerful barrier cutting off, or at least hindering, direct access to the western pacific for chinese warships and submarines. As of now for the Chinese navy there are two main passageways that hold particular strategic relevance.

These are the Miyako strait and the Bashi Channel.

The Miyako strait is the only international waters passageway into the Pacific, spreading from Okinawa islands at the north and Miyakojima’s archipelago at the south, close to Taiwan. Any ships sailing through this, would have to pass the crosshairs of Japanese radars and anti-ship batteries, making it a formidable obstacle for every navy.

For China this strait offers the most direct access into western Pacific from its north and eastern coasts, and the lack of control over this body of water drastically dampens its blue waters power projection capabilities and mines the security of its coastal border.

The Bashi channel instead, is a much wider body of international waters, expanding from Taiwan's southern coast to the northern tip of Luzon island in the Philippines, connecting the South China Sea with the Pacific Ocean.