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I would have thought they needed to rewrite their constitution before building these, not a few years after!

• SllX 9y ago
  Japan's constitution bans war and sets a percentage of GDP limit on their military, but it doesn't force them to forego having a military altogether. Japan is also a very rich nation, still 3rd in the world by GDP I believe and were only relatively recently overtaken by the PRC in that regard as they were 2nd in the world for a very long time. So even with a limit of 1% of national GDP, that is a pretty large budget and they still rank among the big spenders in terms of absolute dollars spent on their military every year. Given they live under the American nuclear umbrella, and American treaty obligations state that the US will come to Japan's aid should it be attacked, the Japanese have focused their defense dollars around a Self Defense Force, less blue water and more green water for their navy for example. Helicopter carriers rather than large aircraft carriers because their focus is on anti-submarine warfare, not force projection. If their focus had been on force projection and the restrictions in their constitution didn't exist, then the PRC would most likely have been stymied long ago trying to project power out into the South China Sea.