分类： politics

TOKYO – Japan’s Ministry of Defense has laid out its preliminary 8.9 trillion yen ($55.6 billion) defense budget request for the 2025 fiscal year, outlining a sweeping shift toward integrating cutting-edge uncrewed weapons, artificial intelligence and modern combat tactics into the country’s national defense strategy. The request represents only a minor uptick from the 8.8 trillion yen proposal for the current fiscal year, but the final total is expected to grow substantially later in 2024, after Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s cabinet signs off on an updated national security and defense framework focused on expanding Japan’s counterstrike capabilities.

This new investment push aligns with a 2022 five-year defense roadmap that committed Japan to doubling its defense outlay to 2% of gross domestic product, a major shift that redefines the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) to take on a more robust offensive posture in response to China’s growing regional influence. Beijing has repeatedly pushed back against this military buildup, labeling it a resurgence of dangerous 20th century Japanese militarism.

In official briefing materials accompanying the budget request, the Defense Ministry emphasized that the core goal of this proposal is to deliver a “transformative overhaul of defense capability” to drastically strengthen deterrence and response capacities, drawing direct lessons from the widespread use of drones in the ongoing war in Ukraine.

### Uncrewed Weapons to Cut Costs, Offset Demographic Decline
A central pillar of the new strategy is the domestic development and mass production of low-cost uncrewed weapons systems. Defense officials argue that these tools will not only reduce operational costs and troop casualties, but also help build a far more cost-effective layered air defense network.
Under the plan, attack drones will operate in coordinated tandem with long-range cruise missiles to amplify the effectiveness of counterstrike operations. The ministry has also requested unspecified funding to develop submarine-launched and underwater-deployed attack drones by the 2027 fiscal year. Beyond combat effectiveness, uncrewed systems are seen as a critical solution to Japan’s growing demographic crisis: a rapidly aging and shrinking population has driven a steady decline in available military personnel, a gap drones can help fill.
Despite these ambitions, defense industry experts note a major barrier to full domestic drone production: Japan’s commercial drone market is currently dominated by Chinese imports, and building a competitive, fully homegrown supply chain will require years of targeted investment and policy support. The proposal also continues Japan’s multi-year effort to fortify its southwestern island chain near disputed regional territories, with additional funding for extended-range missiles and defensive interceptor systems, alongside new research into submarine-launched hypersonic weapons to further boost counterstrike capacity.

### AI Integration to Modernize Command and Control
To match the new generation of weapons technology, the Defense Ministry is rolling out a major overhaul of its command and decision-making infrastructure through the integration of artificial intelligence. The core of this push is a planned next-generation system called the “AI orchestrator,” a unified platform that will integrate multiple independent AI tools to enable autonomous system selection and operational management. The goal is to drastically cut down decision-making time and improve accuracy across core battlefield functions, from situational assessment to target selection.
Officials confirmed Japan is exploring multiple pathways for AI development: it may adapt proven foreign AI technologies (including systems developed by the United States), scale up indigenous AI research, or combine the two approaches to meet JSDF requirements. The ministry also plans to build a purpose-built “Defense Ministry cloud” infrastructure to enable secure transmission of highly sensitive classified data and maintain stable communications during emergencies or large-scale natural disasters. No specific cost estimates for these AI and digital infrastructure projects have been released publicly.

### Government Intervention to Strengthen a Stagnant Domestic Defense Industry
To sustain long-term military modernization, Japanese officials have also identified a critical need to shore up the country’s domestic defense industrial base. For decades, the sector has struggled under multiple constraints: Japan’s post-war constitution limits military activity to self-defense only, creating an uncertain business outlook for arms manufacturers. Poor profit margins, combined with reputational risks associated with producing lethal weapons, have driven dozens of major suppliers to exit the defense sector over the past 50 years.
While recent military expansion has lifted profits at Japan’s largest defense contractors, including Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and IHI Corp., the broader supply chain remains fragile and at risk of critical component shortages if existing suppliers exit the market.
To address this risk, the Defense Ministry has requested unspecified funding to launch a new public-private production framework: the government will own key defense manufacturing facilities, while contracting out day-to-day operations to private sector firms. This model is designed to guarantee stable production and supply of critical defense equipment. The budget request also includes targeted funding to support private companies’ defense research and development, as well as corporate restructuring to improve production efficiency and competitiveness across the sector.

In a landmark ruling that has sent shockwaves through South Korean political and religious circles, 83-year-old Han Hak-ja, the current leader of the highly controversial Unification Church, has been sentenced to two years behind bars over charges of bribing former South Korean first lady Kim Keon Hee and committing multiple violations of political funding regulations. The Seoul Central District Court delivered the sentence on Monday during a public sentencing hearing that Han attended in person, marking the culmination of a high-profile probe into opaque ties between the religious group and national political elites.

The court found clear evidence that the Unification Church, led by Han, provided Kim Keon Hee — wife of ousted South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol — with luxury gifts valued at a total of 80 million won (equivalent to approximately $57,900 and £42,500): two high-end Chanel handbags and a diamond necklace. This conviction follows an earlier ruling from earlier this year, where Kim Keon Hee herself was sentenced to 20 months in prison after being found guilty of accepting the improper bribes from the religious organization.

Han, who is the widow of Unification Church founder Sun Myung Moon, has maintained a consistent stance of denying all allegations against her throughout the investigation and trial, dismissing the charges as entirely fabricated. A special independent counsel team assembled specifically to investigate this case outlined that the luxury gifts were transferred to Kim between April and July 2022, in exchange for promised business advantages and political favors for the church and its affiliated entities.

Prosecutors emphasized that this investigation marks the first time South Korean law enforcement authorities have formally verified and documented the Unification Church’s deliberate efforts to purchase political influence within the country. As part of the probe, investigators also uncovered $19 million (£14 million) in cash stored inside a personal safe owned by Han, photos of which have been released to the public.

Kim has publicly acknowledged receiving the Chanel handbags, but has claimed that she returned the items before ever using them. When called in for questioning last August, Kim issued a public apology to the South Korean public, stating, “I am truly sorry that a nobody like me has caused concern to the people.”

The Unification Church, officially registered under the name The Family Federation for World Peace and Unification, was established in South Korea in the 1950s by Sun Myung Moon, who publicly claimed to be the messiah. The group gained global attention primarily for its large-scale mass wedding ceremonies, where thousands of couples were blessed and married by Han and Moon in massive stadium venues. For decades, critics have labeled the organization as cult-like, with legal representatives of former members alleging that it coerces followers — colloquially referred to by critics as “Moonies,” a term most church members reject as offensive — into making exorbitant monetary donations to the group.

The Unification Church was thrust into the global spotlight in 2022 following the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. The suspect who assassinated Abe publicly blamed the organization for ruining his family’s finances, and held Abe responsible for his alleged public support of the group. The church has long claimed to have extensive political connections across multiple world capitals, including Seoul, Tokyo, and Washington D.C. In 2021, a range of high-profile global political figures sent pre-recorded video messages to congratulate the launch of the church’s new policy think tank; the list included former U.S. President Donald Trump, former U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, Shinzo Abe, and the mayors of South Korea’s two largest cities, Seoul and Busan.

Currently, the group is banned entirely in multiple jurisdictions around the world, including Singapore. Last year, Japanese courts ordered the Unification Church to be formally dissolved in the country, following years of public outcry over predatory fundraising practices.

In a landmark ruling that caps a year of seismic political upheaval in South Korea, the Seoul Central District Court sentenced Hak Ja Han, the leader of the Unification Church and widow of the movement’s founder Sun Myung Moon, to two years in prison on multiple corruption charges on Monday.

Court public affairs officials confirmed the verdict against Han, who was taken into custody last year. The charges against her span a web of graft that entangled the country’s former presidential administration: prosecutors allege Han instructed senior Unification Church officials to deliver bribes to Kim Keon Hee, wife of conservative former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol, and to a prominent pro-Yoon politician when Yoon held the nation’s highest office.

Beyond the bribery scheme, Han faces convictions for two additional serious offenses: embezzlement of millions of dollars in church funds, and ordering the destruction of evidence documenting her gambling activities in the United States.

Han’s conviction is the latest development in a sprawling corruption scandal that has already fundamentally reshaped South Korea’s political landscape. Earlier this year, the same Seoul Central District Court found Kim Keon Hee guilty in January of accepting over $100,000 in luxury gifts from the Unification Church, including a high-end Graff diamond necklace and a Chanel handbag, in exchange for political favors the church sought from the administration. The former first lady was initially handed a 20-month prison sentence, but an appeals court in April upped the sentence to four years after adding additional convictions, including that she accepted a second Chanel handbag from the church and manipulated publicly traded stock prices for personal gain.

The scandal triggered a rapid, dramatic collapse of the Yoon administration. After Yoon attempted to impose martial law amid growing public outcry over the corruption revelations in late 2024, the South Korean National Assembly moved to impeach the president, ultimately removing him from office. The series of convictions this year marks the formal legal conclusion to a political scandal that ended the careers of both South Korea’s former head of state and his wife, while holding the leader of one of the country’s most powerful religious organizations accountable for systemic graft.

A coalition of over 40 leading figures from Britain’s Arab community has issued a high-profile call for the UK government to translate its verbal condemnation of illegal Israeli settlements into tangible, legally binding action that cuts off British economic support for continued settlement expansion.

In an open joint letter addressed to Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband, dated August 24, 2026, the signatories argue the UK must now uphold the international legal obligations it has already publicly acknowledged. These obligations, they note, include the core duties of non-recognition of illegal settlements, non-assistance to settlement activity, and formal legal differentiation between the state of Israel and the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel since the 1967 Six-Day War.

The letter frames the current global conversation around settlements as having moved far past the debate over whether the settlements themselves are unlawful under international law. Instead, the central question now facing Western governments like the UK is whether the current mix of voluntary industry guidance, limited tariff differentiation, and narrow targeted sanctions is actually sufficient to meet the country’s binding international legal commitments. This includes the clear obligation outlined by the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in its landmark 2024 advisory opinion to block any trade or investment activity that serves to sustain or expand illegal settlement construction.

Signatories to the letter span multiple sectors of British civil society, including leading voices from Palestinian advocacy groups, legal associations, health worker coalitions, and grassroots solidarity movements. Notable signatories include Adnan Hmidan, chair of the Palestinian Forum in Britain; Sabah Almukhtar, president of the UK’s Arab Lawyers Association; Dr. Omar Abdel-Mannan, head of Health Workers 4 Palestine; and Feda Shahin, secretary general of the Palestine Solidarity Movement, among dozens of other prominent public figures. The letter remains open for additional public signatures from across British society.

Among the concrete policy measures the coalition calls for are legally binding restrictions on all UK economic activity that generates profits for or supports settlement expansion, the extension of existing UK sanctions to cover both individual actors and private companies tied to settlements, mandatory full differentiation between Israel and occupied territories in all UK government procurement processes and public sector engagements, and coordinated action with international allies to prevent bad actors from circumventing restrictions via third-country corporate structures.

The letter emphasizes that the UK already holds full domestic legal authority to implement these measures under the 2018 Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act. It also anchors the demands in prior UK diplomatic commitments: the UK’s 2016 vote in support of a binding UN Security Council resolution that confirmed Israeli settlements have no legal validity, and the ICJ’s July 2024 advisory opinion that ruled Israel’s prolonged presence in the occupied Palestinian territories is unlawful and ordered an immediate end to all settlement activity.

Beyond economic measures, the coalition is pushing the UK to work with global partners to establish a formal international protection mechanism to shield Palestinian civilians from escalating settler violence. This request draws on a 1994 UN resolution that the UK itself co-sponsored, which laid the groundwork for international protection for Palestinian communities. The proposed mechanism would include independent third-party monitoring of violence, systematic documentation of displacement and abuses, and targeted protection support for communities at highest risk of attack.

The letter explicitly clarifies that these demands do not amount to a call for hostility toward the state of Israel or ordinary Israeli citizens, nor do they seek indiscriminate restrictions on fully legal trade with Israel within Israel’s 1948 borders. Instead, the signatories argue that Britain’s long-stated commitment to upholding international rule of law cannot only be expressed through rhetorical statements of principle—it must be demonstrated through consistent, effective policy implementation.

The call comes as the UK government has already signaled it is preparing new action over Israel’s controversial E1 settlement plan, a proposed expansion east of Jerusalem that would cut the occupied West Bank into two disconnected parts and effectively eliminate the territorial contiguity required for a viable Palestinian state under a two-state solution. Earlier this month, Foreign Secretary Miliband publicly condemned the E1 plan, warning it poses an existential threat to the two-state solution and confirming he had formally called on Israel to halt all settlement expansion. Miliband also noted that the UK would lay out a broader package of new measures in the coming weeks, leaving space for the government to adopt some of the changes the British-Arab coalition is calling for.

For nearly 30 years, Sonia Gandhi has stood as one of the most consequential and closely watched political figures in modern Indian history. When the Italian-born widow of former Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi took the helm of India’s historic Indian National Congress party in 1998, few observers expected the once-reticent outsider to emerge as the backbone of the country’s main opposition movement.

From her unexpected entry into politics to the seismic 2004 decision to reject the prime ministership despite holding full party and coalition support, Gandhi’s career has been defined by pivotal choices and enduring public mysteries. Now, at 79 years old, she is preparing to share her own firsthand account of a life marked by extraordinary love, unthinkable tragedy, and unrivaled political power with the upcoming memoir *Belonging: A Journey of Love*, set for publication this November. The book will be released by Alfred A Knopf in the United States and William Collins in the United Kingdom.

The memoir traces Gandhi’s life from her 1965 days as a 19-year-old student at Cambridge University, where she first met and fell in love with Rajiv Gandhi – grandson of Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister – through her decades at the center of Indian political life. Publishers describe the work as a revelatory, candid reflection on a journey that carried her from a quiet childhood in small-town Italy to the core of India’s most influential political dynasty. For Gandhi, the memoir is deeply personal: in a statement from her publisher, she frames it as “a testament of my heart’s journey through the tender joys and dark despair that have marked my life.”

Gandhi’s life has been indelibly shaped by the violence that cut short two generations of her family’s political service. She was present when her mother-in-law, then-Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was assassinated by her own bodyguards in 1984, and just seven years later, she lost Rajiv to a suicide bomber’s attack. These losses, which reshaped the course of Indian politics, pushed the woman who had spent years avoiding public life into the political arena she now dominates. When the Congress Party fractured and declined through the 1990s, Gandhi agreed to join the party in 1997, and just 12 months later, she was elected its president – despite being dismissed by rivals as nothing more than an inexperienced “housewife” and an outsider foreign to Indian politics.

What makes this memoir one of the most anticipated political books in recent Indian history is the long list of unresolved questions it could finally answer. At the top of that list is the 2004 decision that redefined modern India: after leading Congress to an unexpected election victory, Gandhi turned down the prime ministership and instead nominated Manmohan Singh, the architect of India’s 1990s economic liberalization, to the post. Political observers have debated the decision for decades: Was she stepping down because of widespread political backlash against her foreign origins? Or, as former Congress leader Natwar Singh claimed in his own memoir, did Sonia step aside after her son Rahul Gandhi vehemently opposed her taking the role, fearing she would suffer the same fatal fate as Indira and Rajiv?

Beyond that defining moment, readers and political analysts are eager for insight into other lingering mysteries: What pushed her to enter politics full-time after years of rejecting a public role? How does she reflect on the controversial Bofors corruption scandal that undermined Rajiv Gandhi’s government, and what does she know about longstanding allegations linking the family to Italian businessman Ottavio Quattrocchi? How does she view the 2004-2014 Congress-led UPA government, which passed landmark progressive policies including the Right to Information Act and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act but ended its second term mired in corruption allegations and policy gridlock? What does she think of her son Rahul’s leadership of the Congress, and why did she choose Rahul over his more charismatic sister Priyanka to carry the family’s political legacy?

Even before its release, the memoir has been entangled in political controversy in India. Reports that Penguin Random House India requested edits to portions of the manuscript sparked allegations from Congress leaders that the publisher faced political pressure from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to remove passages critical of the current government. Penguin Random House has disputed these claims, stating it remains fully willing to publish the book and that any discussions about the manuscript are standard industry practice.

Today, as the Nehru-Gandhi legacy faces unprecedented attack from the ruling BJP, which has campaigned for a “Congress-mukt Bharat” (Congress-free India), Gandhi’s memoir arrives as a defense of the dynasty she has spent decades preserving. Political journalist Neerja Chowdhury argues that the book’s title, *Belonging*, reveals its core focus: Gandhi’s long-held sense of duty to preserve the political legacy she inherited, and her journey to finding her place as a leader in India. As Gandhi notes, much has been written about her family, but few accounts have captured the full truth of their motivations, their actions, and their shared humanity. For the iconic leader, this memoir is less a political memoir than a homage to the family that shaped her life and the nation she has spent decades serving.

Over the course of his decades-long leadership, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demonstrated formidable strategic skill in rebuilding Turkish influence across territories that once formed the core of the Ottoman Empire. What makes this expansion even more striking is that Ankara has achieved these gains with a gross national product far smaller than that of traditional European regional powers like Italy, outpacing Rome in influence across several key theaters.

Today, Turkey has effectively replaced Italy as the primary external power in Libya’s Tripolitania region, gaining a critical foothold that lets it share control over the strategic Sicilian Channel. It has also cemented its position in Somalia, and extended its sway across the majority-Muslim “green backbone” of the Balkans, a central geographic corridor for the entire region. These shifts have sparked sharp comparisons: either Turkish statecraft is extraordinarily effective, or Italian foreign policy has squandered its resources to little gain.

But Erdogan’s string of diplomatic successes has now set the stage for new, unforeseen challenges, rooted in the landmark strategic treaty Ankara concluded recently in Jeddah alongside Saudi Arabia and Pakistan. This new alliance opens unprecedented possibilities for reshaping the power dynamics of the broader Middle East. Militarily, it unites Pakistan — the world’s only officially recognized nuclear-armed Islamic state — with Turkey, a country that boasts NATO’s second-largest land army and a cutting-edge defense industry that pioneered modern drone warfare. Economically, Saudi Arabia’s massive energy wealth gives the bloc the capacity to fund even the most costly defense innovations and sustain long-term strategic conflicts.

This concentrated alignment of major Islamic powers has immediately raised alarms in Israel, particularly because Erdogan has positioned himself as one of the most vocal global champions of Palestinian statehood. Just days after signing the Jeddah agreement, Erdogan launched international legal proceedings against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, cementing the perception of the new bloc as a direct strategic threat to Jerusalem.

The alliance also threatens to disrupt the long-running movement toward an Arab resurgence, often referred to as the Arab Risorgimento. This movement grew out of the uprisings that swept the Middle East and North Africa decades ago, rooted in a century-old vision first outlined by T.E. Lawrence in *The Seven Pillars of Wisdom*: the unification of the entire Arab Sunni world under a single political banner. Originally, this project was explicitly anti-Ottoman, as the Ottoman Empire controlled the vast majority of Arab lands for centuries.

It is no coincidence, then, that Egypt — the Arab world’s most populous state, home to roughly half of the global Sunni Arab population and the de facto leader of the Arab League — has refused to join the Jeddah Pact. Cairo is widely believed to be advancing its own competing regional projects that clash with the goals of the new three-party alliance.

Shia Iran has also reacted with immediate hostility to the agreement. Tehran views Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey as too closely aligned with the United States to trust their stated intentions, and has spent years building its own regional influence during its long-standing standoff with Washington and Jerusalem. Iran now holds sway over multiple smaller regional states and maintains deep ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliated movements across the Middle East.

These competing blocs have created a tangible risk of a deep split within the global Sunni world. One camp would center on Turkey, driven by Erdogan’s ambition to restore a sphere of influence matching the Ottoman Empire’s historic reach. The other would likely be led by Egypt or factions aligned with the Muslim Brotherhood, focused on advancing the century-old goal of a unified Arab Sunni state.

For Israel, this shifting landscape carries unambiguous negative implications. Israel’s strategic perimeter has expanded far beyond its traditional borders, creating new vulnerabilities that will grow increasingly difficult to defend. The country now faces a bloc of three hostile mid-sized powers, all poised to challenge the regional order that Jerusalem has sought to impose at the first available opportunity.

This analysis is by Giuseppe Cucchi, a retired lieutenant general and former military adviser to Italian prime ministers Romano Prodi and Massimo D’Alema, originally published by the Appia Institute and republished with permission.