By Huang Jiayu and Sun Peng
Japan recently released a draft budget proposal for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for fiscal year 2026, in which funding for the "Official Security Assistance" (OSA) program has increased sharply to 18.1 billion yen—more than double the amount of fiscal year 2025. Under the pretext of "improving Japan's surrounding security environment," the program seeks to break through the constraints of Japan's postwar exclusively defense-oriented policy by expanding external security cooperation, which reveals its ulterior intent to accelerate its push toward becoming a "major military power."
Established in April 2023, OSA is Japan's first postwar security assistance mechanism that allows the direct provision of military equipment to foreign countries. The OSA mechanism is legally based on Japan's "Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology." Through the free provision of military equipment to so-called "like-minded countries ," as well as assistance in improving relevant infrastructure, the OSA mechanism aims to enhance recipients' military capabilities and security capacity. Since its launch, OSA has become an important tool for Japan to accelerate its "outward-oriented" defense strategy.
In terms of budget scale, OSA funding has risen from 2 billion yen in fiscal year 2023 to 18.1 billion yen in fiscal year 2026. As for the scope of assistance, when OSA was first established in 2023, Japan selected four pilot countries, namely the Philippines, Bangladesh, Malaysia, and Fiji, to strategically position the program at key geopolitical nodes in Southeast Asia and Oceania. By fiscal year 2025, the number of recipient countries had expanded to 12, including Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia, as well as several Pacific island countries and some other countries.
To reduce international vigilance toward Japan's military expansion, its external assistance has mainly focused on non-lethal surveillance equipment such as coastal surveillance radars, small patrol boats, and satellite communication systems. As the OSA mechanism matures, the aid list gradually includes equipment such as small reconnaissance drones and advanced long-range radar systems, and the types of equipment are gradually shifting towards those with greater strategic value and high technologies.
Japan's use of the OSA mechanism to accelerate the provision of free weapons and equipment to multiple countries is not simply an act of foreign security assistance. It harbors multiple strategic intentions. On the one hand, Japan seeks to use OSA to simultaneously promote revisions to the "Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology," gradually breaking postwar taboos against exporting weapons, and pushing toward the normalization and facilitation of overseas military equipment transfers to extend its military reach abroad. On the other hand, Japan attempts to establish close security cooperation with key geopolitical pivot states in the Indo-Pacific region through low-sensitivity forms of involvement. While aligning with the US "Indo-Pacific Strategy", Japan also aims to build a regional security network that serves its own interests, accelerating its transformation from a "follower of the US" into a "regional security leader."
In addition, the OSA mechanism may become an important channel for Japan to develop its defense industry and expand overseas defense markets. Japan can export its domestic military industry products to recipient countries through foreign aid, and then form long-term industrial ties under the pretext of equipment maintenance and upgrades. This would create a closed-loop defense industry chain of "aid–procurement–maintenance", which would not only absorb Japan's domestic defense production capacity but also open up stable overseas markets for its military industry.
What is even more alarming is that the Japanese government led by Sanae Takaichi recently announced plans to further loosen the "Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology" and abolish the restrictions that limit exportable equipment within the rescue, transport, vigilance, surveillance, and mine-sweeping categories. Such a move would open a policy pathway for Japan to export more offensive weapons. On this basis, Japan could use the OSA mechanism to supply lethal weapons to these so-called strategic frontline countries, causing greater uncertainty in the regional and even global security dynamics. The international community must clearly recognize the ulterior motives of the Japanese government, prevent the revival of Japanese militarism in a new form, jointly safeguard the postwar international order, and resolutely uphold regional and global peace and stability.
(The authors are from the PLA Academy of Military Sciences)