Japan's Strategic Awakening

An a nation built for peace defend it? For nearly eighty years, Japan kept the peace through a careful bargain: a pacifist constitution, American protection, and a stable Asia. That bargain is breaking. Chinese coast guard fleets circle disputed islands. North Korean missiles arc over Japanese towns. Russian and Chinese warships sail the archipelago in company. And in Washington, old certainties are giving way to hard bargaining.
 Japan's Strategic Awakening tells the story of how the world's most successful pacifist democracy is answering: record defense budgets, counterstrike missiles, historic warship exports to Australia, a lattice of new partnerships across the Indo-Pacific-and a constitutional question that can no longer be deferred.