Post war Japanese rearmament and entry into NATO

Well by definition NATO is the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, meaning basiclly an alliance of Western Powers.

Second, unless war broke out with the Soviet Union or China(a non nuclear war at that, if nukes get involved anything Japan does is nulled), I seriously doubt the US would allow Japan to rearm.

I could possibly see a postwar resistance driving the US out, but that'd eliminate any possibility of Japan joining an alliance with the US. Even the possibility of a postwar Japanesse resistance is a stretch being Emperor Hirohito did more to pacify Japan after World War II than we ever did.

As I mentioned before, the only way I see Japan being allowed to rearm is if a large scale land conflict breaks out with the Soviets. Japan would then be in an ideal position to lauch an eastern invasion and we'd be needing every soldier we could get our hands on in a land war with Russia.
 
NATO? I don't think so.

In a wider organisation with Global security perhaps with Australia and New Zealand etc.

  1. Sooner Korean War. The Korean War stopped major political reforms and turned the US attention to economic growth. The sooner Korea is aflame perhaps no Article 9 at all.
  2. Perhaps a Soviet victory in the Korean War? Which would truly place Japan on the frontline of the Cold war and give the West incentive to accept Japan.
  3. Earlier Japanese official apology and a far more friendly post war relationship with its former colonies. You will need to build support in NATO or the global organisation for Japanese membership and the best time for that is late 1940s etc when the Japanese government with a big push could put the war behind them the same way their people has.
 
Let's keep in mind that it's traditionally been the Japanese government unwilling to pay for a large military no matter how much the US government has pushed them. The "no rearming" bit didn't last for very long.

Hmm….

Ok. POD. IOTL the US abandoned Japan halfway through the largest cultural re-engineering project ever attempted. They hared off, to go fight Communism, and left the thing half done, unfinished, deeply weird.

In the alt-timeline the USA stays, but with a slightly different purpose. Instead of leaving to go fight communism they (and, presumably, also with Germany) take a different tack: they stay, in order to create proxies to fight communism for/with them.

Perhaps this is because of a more pro-active China position, thus requiring a stable contributing Japan earlier. With a broader spectrum of American advisors the KMT manages the economy somewhat better, and demobilizes somewhat slower.

This weakens the Communists, in turn making the staying involved position more attractive for America (i.e. weaker ChiComs means the US sees it as winnable, instead of hopeless). However the USA is busy demobilizing themselves, and so they begin to shift position regarding Japan. Meanwhile the USSR is busy taking over their Chinese commie comrades as much as possible as their weaker position means they are far more dependent than OTL.



A little while later the Japanese are involved in naval and air operations against the ChiComs, the US remains deeply embedded continuing their cultural re-engineering, and so forth.

Taiwan flares up as the Nationalists are weakening and the Japanese subtly demand it back. They point out that the US can't literally make them fight against the ChiComs, and perhaps the domestic pacifist forces are gaining in power.

The US is just realizing how messy this whole thing is, but they're too deeply involved to pull out now. So the ROC gets a big new infusion of cash and guns, and the Japanese take over Taiwan again.

However the US does want to formalize this, so they come up with the Asian Pacific Treaty Organization (APTO). Incorporating Australia, New Zealand, the Philippines, ROC, Korea, and Japan into basically the anti-communist alliance.

In return for yet more American cash and guns the whole thing comes together, not least because the Nationalists keep losing (ITTL they kept the economy together, but they're still pretty incompetent) and the USSR and their presumed ChiCom proxies are becoming more and more scary.


This goes on for a few years, until it settles down (either the Nationalists or ChiComs win, or they de facto divide up the country to whatever extent seems reasonable).


So. Japan is rearmed, actively fighting communists. In return, the US continues to screw with Japan and god knows what comes out the other side (half-finished, they produced a pretty darn weird Japan IOTL). There's a NATO analogue Asian alliance. In return the ChiComs are pretty dependent on the USSR and could come with an Asian Warsaw Pact if they wind up with a North Korea, or if India swings commie later on.



Eh. Probably not that plausible, but it was fun :).
 
Let's keep in mind that it's traditionally been the Japanese government unwilling to pay for a large military no matter how much the US government has pushed them. The "no rearming" bit didn't last for very long.).

? We wrote it into their constitution that they aren't allowed more than a defensive military - it seems weird to blame it on them.

If the Soviets had somehow been way, way more dangerous in the East then we would have rearmed Japan. This would require a serious POD, since the Soviets were no threat at all to our hegemony in the Pacific.
 
The reason Japan was never allowed to rearm to the degree of Germany is that it faced much less threat of invasion. I could see Japanese rearmament being possible only if Soviet dominance in East Asia were much more successful at the end of WWII, i.e. Soviet partition of Japan. This scenario would result from a later date of Japanese surrender. This would also mean all of Korea would probably be united under a Communist regime.
 
Basically Japan needs a different '47 Constitution, a weaker antimilitarist domestic movement, and a major external threat that the Americans want/need to counter.

? We wrote it into their constitution that they aren't allowed more than a defensive military - it seems weird to blame it on them.

Article 9. That's why Japan lacks any aircraft carriers. Technically they're not allowed to have any military, but heavy US encouragement and liberal interpretations resulted in the Self-Defense Forces being created in 1954 (although, again, technically they're staffed entirely by civilians).

However, you misunderstand me. The Japanese historically restrict their military spending to 1% of GDP or less, regardless of any other factor. Despite that they retain the fifth largest military budget in the world[1]. (Because of cultural reasons their military is also chronically undermanned.)

Expanding that budget to a United Kingdom like 2.5% of GDP as well as either exporting arms or buying from non-Japanese corporations would result in a very large and capable military, the second largest in the world and only marginally behind the United States in capability and quality overall (primarily in high end stealth items, large nuclear powered carriers & submarines, and the size of their ground force), but with an edge in certain areas—mostly electronics.


[1] Indigenous Japanese equipment has a per unit cost of 3-10 times that of Western military equipment (Russian equipment is 30% lower than Western in costs) for a variety of reasons. This inflates their military cost quite a lot in certain areas.

In adjusted terms this means Japanese military spending is roughly similar to Taiwan or South Korea.
 
Just talking what-if, Japan would be a superpower by now. Their military production would further boost their economy, putting it on perhaps US levels. China gets majorly screwed, because Japan would become the economic hegemony of East Asia, with a military to back it up. And this is assuming they don't have nukes.
 
Japan will only be able to compete with China for a while, because it has only 1/10th the population.
 
Japan will only be able to compete with China for a while, because it has only 1/10th the population.

I'm not sure what this has to do with a Japanese military starting in the '40s coupled with cultural reforms and American occupation to allow that.

Anyway, if one were to carve up China in the late '40s, have Japan seize Taiwan, the Brits force indefinite control of Hong Kong, etc… China certainly wouldn't be competing for any economic prizes.
 
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