Japan cannot hope to match China’s defense spending. Although Japan has raised defense spending two years in a row, the increases have been modest and in line with Japan’s mediocre economic performance. An A2/AD strategy is an economical way to deter China in peacetime and defeat it in wartime.

Kyle Mizokami is a writer based in San Francisco who has appeared in The Diplomat, Foreign Policy, War is Boring and The Daily Beast. In 2009 he co-founded the defense and security blog Japan Security Watch. You can follow him on Twitter: @KyleMizokami.

Image: Wikimedia/Angelique Perez, U.S. Air Force