Japan needs intelligence reform, but it is angering China

A secret directorate of the GRU, Russia’s military intelligence service, tasked with acquiring Western technology for the war against Ukraine, has one of its main operational bases in Tokyo. Its front organisation is the headquarters of Aeroflot, the Russian national airline, which is located right under the noses of those who are supposed to be monitoring it – namely, “a 10-minute walk from the headquarters of the National Police Agency” in the Japanese capital. An investigation by The New York Times published the day before yesterday shows that part of the problem with controlling exports of sensitive technology to Russia concerns the coordination of intelligence between countries that – officially and in practice – are aligned with Ukraine’s defence. 

Japan, in this respect, is a textbook case – one that bears a very dangerous resemblance to Italy, at least as far as the sensitivity of the issue in public opinion is concerned. Following the end of the Second World War and the Japanese Empire, the Allied forces imposed on the country a very rudimentary security system, strictly limited to public order and law enforcement. For decades, Tokyo was forced to rely on the intelligence agencies of allied countries for information vital to its security, and the debate over normalising intelligence-gathering is often exploited by opposition groups – and by external forces – to accuse the leadership of a new form of militarism. However, it is also thanks to this regulatory vacuum – and the limited scope for coordination amongst those involved in domestic intelligence within Japan, who are scattered across the police, the Ministry of Defence, the Foreign Ministry and other government departments – that countries such as Russia, China and even North Korea have been able to operate almost undisturbed in the country for decades.

At the start of her term as Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi announced a normalisation of national intelligence – a reform intended to bring Japan into line with the major Western powers, modelled on American and European systems. Just over a month ago, the Diet, the Japanese Parliament, passed the law establishing the National Intelligence Council, a body that will serve to centralise and coordinate the country’s intelligence apparatus, and the National Intelligence Bureau. But this is only the first step towards approving, in the not-too-distant future, the establishment of a fully-fledged foreign intelligence agency. To achieve this, according to sources cited by the New York Times, the Japanese government is reportedly seeking help and advice “on technology, personnel and priorities” from allied nations. For example, from Germany, which for months has been preparing its reform of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (the Federal Intelligence Service, BND) with the aim of transforming it from an agency primarily dedicated to the collection and analysis of information into a service capable of also conducting active operations against hybrid threats. Behind this acceleration lies the danger of the Trump Administration’s disengagement, and the exponential rise in so-called Foreign Information Manipulation and Interference (often abbreviated to FIMI), which require a more coordinated response at government level and, at the same time, greater transparency towards the public – the day before yesterday, the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs launched a public communication campaign specifically on FIMI.

Of all the industrialised and democratic countries that are putting new regulations and institutions in place to adapt their national security levels to new threats, Japan is, however, the only one to be subjected to constant, systematic and coordinated attacks by China and Russia, which accuse the Takaichi government of building a new form of imperial militarism. The fierce economic and political boycott against Tokyo began last November, when Prime Minister Takaichi spoke of Japan’s possible involvement in the defence of Taiwan in the event of an armed attack by Beijing. Eight months on, however, with anti-Japanese sentiment steadily rising in China, more than a few are beginning to suspect that Taiwan is no longer the main issue; rather, Beijing’s priority is to mobilise a section of the world – the part most dependent on China and most receptive to its political demands – against a Japan that is taking a more active stance on its security.