By Jin Yi’nan
On November 4, local time, the Japanese defense minister announced Japan’s official joining of the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence (CCDCOE) and its plan to strengthen the cooperative relationship with NATO members. As an Asian country, Japan seems a little too eager to join NATO’s cyber defense center. That’s by no means just to safeguard its cybersecurity – it is a disguise of its real intention to break through the Pacifist constitution.
Ever since the Cold War ended, several Japanese prime ministers have tried to realize “national normalization”. A key principle enshrined in the Pacifist constitution is “defense only”, but Japan joining the CCDCOE has presented a perfect excuse to break away from that restriction without causing too strong repercussions in the international community, for people generally don’t give too much importance to the virtual cyberspace, let alone linking the move with Japan’s attempt to free itself from the Pacifist constitution.
What they don’t know is that the NATO cyber defense system contains all military services of land, sea, air, space and electronics. Doing way more than just defense, it is mainly tasked with identifying its own vulnerabilities and weaknesses, searching for the weak points of enemy systems, and launching targeted attacks. Japan’s joining CCDCOE is by no means just to safeguard its own cybersecurity – its real purpose is to acquire a strong group offensive capability through the military alliance.
Cybersecurity is indeed a major issue faced by all countries at the moment, Japan being no exception, but the key to solving that is how to defend one’s cybersecurity. For instance, China has independently built its cyber defense system and security system, but it doesn’t defend its network through a military alliance. Whether Japan is trying to break the Pacifist constitution and militarize cyberspace depends on the means and approaches it uses to defend its cybersecurity. Doing that by joining a military alliance is aggressive in itself. Judging by Japan’s current technological level – either the research and development of chips or the manufacturing of computer hardware or its own cyber capacity, it is more than able to defend its cybersecurity independently. Under such circumstances, its eagerness to join NATO’s cyber cooperative and defense system is just telling everything.
It is learned that joining CCDCOE isn’t the end of Japan’s list. After forming the Cyber Defense Unit in March 2022, the JSDF recently announced its plan to expand the unit to 5,000 people. Japan’s new Cybersecurity Strategy said the country will see cybersecurity threats as national security threats through 2024, and it singled out China, Russia and the DPRK as posing such threats. It also put forth the guideline of cooperating with countries such as the US, Australia and India. Japan’s recent moves are not just aiming at militarizing cyberspace, but also to break through the Pacifist constitution.
Another thing that’s worth close attention is that now that both ROK and Japan have joined CCDCOE, NATO has factually extended its antenna to West Pacific and Northeast Asia. After Asian Pacific countries join the CCDCOE, they will use the same orders, software and hardware as other NATO members and exercise cyber attacks with them, posing grave threats to other countries in the region. It’s becoming increasingly clear that NATO, starting with the virtual space, is attempting to take the Asia Pacific off guard and push its military expansion in reality.
Editor's note: Originally published on military.cnr.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
