Visiting Japan, Trump Pushes Abe to Buy US Arms

Brags Japan Could Shoot North Korean Missiles With Ease With US Arms

by | Nov 6, 2017

Visiting Tokyo, President Trump is making a big push to secure more weapons sales deals for top US arms-makers, something which has been a high priority for US presidents on foreign tours for years.

Trump meets Abe Shinzo

President Trump was very transparent about his interest in selling more arms to Japan, hyping the threat of North Korea and playing up the idea that the best way for Japan to defend itself would be to buy “lots of additional military equipment from the United States.

Trump hyped the notion that Japanese officials would be shooting North Korean missiles out of the sky with ease using US-made defensive missiles, which appears to dramatically oversell the capabilities of US interceptor missiles.

Indeed, anti-missile systems have already been present in Japan, and there’ve been no attempts to shoot down North Korean missiles shot over Japan, specifically because of concerns that the interception attempt would likely fail, and harm confidence in the costly interceptor systems.

Join the Discussion!

We welcome thoughtful and respectful comments. Hateful language, illegal content, or attacks against Antiwar.com will be removed.

For more details, please see our Comment Policy.