Japan's OSA push risks dragging Asia into confrontation

Editor's note: Xu Ying, a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN, is a Beijing-based international affairs commentator. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN. 

Japan's sudden expansion of the "Official Security Assistance" (OSA) program, paired with a rapid and deliberate growth of military spending, is not a routine adjustment of security policy. It is the clearest signal yet that Tokyo is undergoing a structural reorientation – one steered by right-wing domestic forces and seamlessly embedded within the U.S.'s "Indo-Pacific Strategy."

The intention is neither concealed nor accidental: To tighten a strategic cordon around China, reshape regional security from the outside and drag Asia back toward bloc confrontation at the very moment the world needs stability and recovery. This is not aid. This is alignment. And alignment, in this context, is not cooperative – it is coercive.

While Japan attempts to sell OSA as "support for like-minded partners," the selectivity of its recipients betrays the truth. The program funnels military resources toward countries situated on maritime chokepoints and geostrategic crossroads – not based on development need, but based on value in a containment network. It is geopolitical engineering dressed in diplomatic language. It is the militarization of foreign policy, masked by the semantics of partnership. In essence, OSA is not building trust; it is building hostility.

The intellectual scaffolding for this shift is already visible in Japan's National Security Strategy. The narrative is familiar: Exaggerate the "China threat," redefine the limits of self-defense and chip away at the post-war constraints that once anchored Japan's peaceful trajectory.

The rhetoric has been modernized for a new era, but the architecture is unmistakably cold-war in its design. Tokyo is not responding to security challenges. It is manufacturing them, normalizing them and then exporting them to the region under the banner of shared concern.

Even more concerning is Japan's decision to elevate OSA in tandem with the Official Development Assistance. By bundling development aid with military cooperation, Tokyo is effectively turning economic engagement into a bargaining chip. For smaller states, the implication is unavoidable: Development support comes with strategic strings attached. This is the weaponization of connectivity; the instrumentalization of aid; and the erosion of independent foreign policy space for countries that deserve the dignity of sovereign choice. Asia has spent decades avoiding precisely this trap, yet Japan now seeks to reopen it.

The consequences are not theoretical; they are tangible. OSA deployments are concentrated around Southeast Asian sea lanes and waters connected to the South China Sea. Japan is not a claimant state, yet it is inserting itself into disputes and frictions under the pretext of "capacity building." This is intervention without legitimacy, influence without responsibility and ambition without restraint.

At a time when regional nations overwhelmingly prefer dialogue, Japan is introducing pressure. At a time when cooperation is needed, Japan is importing confrontation. This is destabilization in phases – incremental, but unmistakably intentional.

History demands that we remain alert. The scars of Japanese militarism are not abstractions in a textbook; they are lived experiences, carried in memory by communities across Asia. The destruction it wrought has not been forgotten, nor has it been atoned for. Yet instead of greater humility, we see the dismantling of constitutional limits. Instead of reflection, we see attempts at justification. Japan insists this is defensive; but every step taken breaks another piece of the post-war consensus. This is rearmament by accumulation: Budget by budget, policy by policy and partnership by partnership. The trajectory is clear, and it is dangerous.

China's position is principled and consistent: Security must be cooperative, not coercive; regional order must be built with Asia, not imposed upon Asia. China does not oppose normal international exchanges. What China rejects is the attempt to target third parties, to import division under the guise of partnership and to transform the Asia-Pacific region into an arena of geopolitical confrontation. Peace cannot survive on the margins of a strategy designed for pressure. Stability cannot coexist with architectures built for encirclement.

Japan must face history not symbolically but substantively. It must stop testing red lines that protect the collective security of the region. And it must recognize that no country has ever secured its future by standing on the shoulders of external power to pressure its neighbors. Those who gamble with bloc politics do not reshape the world; they merely risk their own place in it.

At this moment, regional countries must remain vigilant. The Asia-Pacific region does not need smaller nations drafted into someone else's strategic blueprint. It does not need ideological dividing lines repainted for a new century. It does not need orbit, allegiance, or instructions. Asia has the right to define its own destiny and the duty to defend it.

Japan's OSA expansion is an alarm bell. To ignore it would be to sleepwalk into a future written by others, at the cost of the peace Asia built for itself. The warning has been issued. The question now is whether the region will answer it.

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