Key panel would shoot down Japan's
pacifism By Axel Berkofsky
A
high-powered advisory panel has urged the Japanese
government to scrap some basic principles of the
country's defense and security policy to make it more
"flexible", less defensive and less pacifist. In fact,
quite a few of those virtually sacred war-renouncing
principles would be jettisoned, judging by the panel's
report, "The Vision for Future National Security and
Defense Capabilities".
The "good news" is that
the panel says Japan should not go nuclear at this time.
In essence the 10-person panel, chaired by
Hiroshi Araki, adviser to Tokyo Electric Co, called for
a fundamental review of Japan's 1957 Basic Policy for
National Defense founded in its war-renouncing
constitution. This review would provide the basis for
the country's new so-called National Defense Program
Outline, if the government accepts the panel's
recommendations next month.
The
not-so-bipartisan panel advising the government is
composed of businessmen, ex-diplomats, academics and
other self-declared national security experts close to
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. It was clearly on a
roll, spelling out in detail what the government only
had dispensed in small doses to the public in the past:
Japan needs to get tougher about security and serious
about its global role.
The panel is urging the
government to revise the country's "defense only"
security policy and reconsider the notion that Japan
should only maintain the minimum number of forces
necessary to defend Japanese territory. Furthermore, the
panel says, Japan should consider developing the
capabilities for preemptive attacks on foreign missile
bases (read: North Korea).
The idea of attacking
North Korea preemptively if "necessary", however, is
anything but new and it already was advanced last year
by former Defense Agency chief Shigeru Ishiba. Back
then, Ishiba urged his government to bow to the
country's defense establishment and buy a couple of US
Tomahawk missiles to attack North Korean missile bases
if Pyongyang resumed missile tests over Japanese
territory - that call was inspired by increased activity
at North Korean missile sites, which happens
periodically. Pyongyang last fired a missile over
Japanese territory in August 1998, but the memory is
still vivid. Shortly after that, Japan decided to join
the United States in developing a missile defense
system. Since then intelligence reports have suggested
on a number of occasions that North Korea is preparing
to test-launch ballistic missiles.
Peace
constitution permits only self-defense The
panel's recommendations released last week are not bad
for a country whose constitution does not even allow it
to maintain armed forces.
And that is just for
starters. The panel's recommendation to scrap the
"outdated" ban on exporting weapons and weapons
technology, adopted in 1967 and tightened in 1976, is
surely music to the ears of the country's weapons
manufacturers. For some time now they have been lobbying
for the go-ahead to sell their dangerous toys abroad.
The business-minded prime minister put a word in
for his multinationals earlier this year, suggesting an
easing of the ban on a "case-by-case" basis.
Weapons-technology exports to the US especially, Koizumi
reasoned, would be necessary to secure the defense of
Japanese territory. Besides, he found, they could not
really be called exports since the missile defense
system would also be stationed on Japanese territory.
That, however, only sounded plausible to himself and the
country's defense hawks, forcing him to put the issue on
the back burner back then.
As usual, Ishiba, the
former Defense Agency chief, didn't give up hope that
the idea of making a few billion yen could put the taboo
issue back on the agenda. To fill some gaps in the
government's household finances, he suggested dumping
second-hand Japanese military equipment in Southeast
Asia. This plan too, however, was dismissed as
"unfeasible" and ascribed to Ishiba's well-known habit
of excluding common sense and wisdom from his rhetoric.
The panel's report concludes that scrapping the
ban on arms exports is necessary to strengthen the
US-Japan military alliance and provide Washington with
the Japanese components needed to make progress in
jointly developing a missile defense system. The US and
Japan have been working on such a system since 1998 and
the US has long complained that Japan's self-imposed ban
makes it impossible to jointly shoot down incoming North
Korean (or Chinese, for that matter) missiles over East
Asia and elsewhere.
In addition to urging more
flexibility, preemptive strike capability, and easing
the export ban, the panel also recommends:
Downsizing the military.
Updating the US-Japan military alliance, including
further implementation of the 1997 US-Japan Defense
Guidelines.
Increasing Japan's participation in United Nations
peacekeeping missions.
Creating a permanent law to authorize the deployment
of Japanese troops to international military missions.
(The situation now requires a new and separate law for
each mission abroad.)
Speeding up the security-policy decision-making
process and putting the prime minister in charge as
commander-in-chief of the armed forces.
Prime
Minister Koizumi surely liked the part of the report
that said: "Japan has to establish capabilities allowing
us to respond swiftly and flexibly to various threats."
Coincidentally (well, maybe not entirely
coincidentally), "flexible defense capabilities" is the
key concept of the report, suggesting that the
government will take the report's recommendation as a
basis next month when it files the outline of a revised
national-security strategy.
"Flexible" stands
for "offensive" as far as the political opposition is
concerned, and opposition figures fear that the hawkish
panel has given the government a helping hand in turning
Japan before too long into a military bully with an
attitude.
"There has been endless change in the
framework for the exclusively defense-oriented policy
for the armed forces, and people may start to say that
it doesn't matter what the pacifist constitution says,"
sighed Takahiro Yokomichi, vice president of the
Democratic Party of Japan, the country's main opposition
party. The opposition Social Democratic Party, whose
influence on day-to-day politics has approached zero
over the years, went even further by claiming the
panel's report, if implemented, would enable Koizumi to
wage global war. "Koizumi is aiming at reforming the
country to be able to conduct war boundlessly," said
Seiji Mataichi, the party's secretary general.
Japan could be armed to its teeth The
Northeast Asian neighborhood and domestic
party-spoilers, the government counters, have nothing to
worry about a "normal" Japan that happens to be armed to
its teeth.
A "normal" Japan equipped with a
missile defense system, spy satellites, offensive
missiles, and an appetite to attack North Korea
preemptively, however, is unlikely to go down well with
Japan's neighbors. While China and South Korea, at least
for the time being, limit themselves to being "worried"
about Tokyo's enthusiasm for defense matters, many
analysts suspect that North Korea might express its
discontent by "testing" a ballistic missile over
Japanese territory as it did in 1998.
After US
intelligence, gathered from spy satellites, reportedly
detected increasing activities at North Korean missiles
sites this month, the Japanese government instantly
picked up on the bad news, adding a dramatic spin.
"My understanding is that they could right now
shoot a missile any time they want. They are pretty well
prepared to do it," claimed an unidentified Japanese
government official, suspecting that Pyongyang is up to
no good and filling rockets with liquid fuel. "It would
be only a matter of hours before a missile was ready for
launch," he said, sounding almost as credible as British
Prime Minister Tony Blair, who once warned that Iraqi
nukes could be flying to toward the United Kingdom
within 45 minutes.
The Japanese government,
however, chose not to take any chances, and dispatched
its high-tech Aegis destroyers to the Sea of Japan to
intercept any incoming missiles, just in case. In the
recent past, Japan has dispatched its Aegis destroyers
on a regular basis to the Sea of Japan even if most
analysts agree that shooting down North Korean Rodong
missiles could be next to impossible. Rodongs are merely
a 10-minute flight away from downtown Tokyo, according
to the usual warnings from those in Japan opting for the
"attacking North Korea preemptively option".
The
military, of course, is all for redefining Japan's
defense agenda, except maybe for the panel's proposal to
downsize the armed forces dramatically.
Report calls for drastic troop
reduction Creating a "multifunctional defense
force", the report reads, would go along with cuts in
military hardware, including aircraft, artillery,
destroyers and tanks. This has already led to long faces
in the military, who do not exactly agree with the idea
of being put out of work. Whereas the Defense Agency
called for an increase in ground troops from the current
145,000 to 152,000 men in arms, the panel calls for a
"drastic" reduction in the number of ground troops.
The problem of laid-off soldiers aside, the
timing indeed seems favorable to do away with what until
very recently were the sacred principles of Japan's
defense and security policy. Yoshinori Ono, recently
appointed chief of the Japan Defense Agency, sounds as
hawkish as his predecessor and lost no time making the
deterrence of North Korea and other evildoers his top
priority on his agenda.
In accordance with
advisory panel's report, Ono urges his government to
allow the armed forces to engage in multinational
military operations and execute the right to collective
defense. Although those who deny that Japan is already
executing the right to collective self-defense through
its troop deployment to Iraq are limited to the Japanese
government itself, Japan does not yet officially execute
or implement that right in light of Article 9 its
war-renouncing constitution. Help, however, is already
on the way, confirms the Defense Agency's new boss.
"Fortunately, we have constitutional research
committees working at both houses of the Diet. I'd like
to discuss this issue further," he warned. No doubt he
will, and the outspoken Ono is certain to continue
complaining about the government's strategy not to
execute a right guaranteed under international law and
formulated in Chapter 7 (concerning the use of military
force authorized by the Security Council) of the United
Nations Charter.
And Japanese pacifists are not
what they used be either. New Komeito, the ruling
Liberal Democratic Party's coalition partner and a
supposedly pacifist party, decided to cave in and throw
overboard the rest of its pacifist principles for good.
Scrapping Japan's weapons-export ban, the party's
leaders announced last week, is no longer a taboo if it
serves Japan's national interests. To make it sound like
their own idea, they hastily put together a position
paper, reserving the right to change fundamental
positions and principles when it appears necessary.
Whereas New Komeito was until very recently
strongly opposed to easing in any way the ban on
exporting weapons, the party is now in favor of
exporting weapons technology to the United States. "The
transfer of new technology emerging from joint Japan-US
research for a missile defense should be allowed," the
New Komeito paper reads. Komeito's request that the US
should still consult with Japan before transferring
Japanese weapons technology to third countries can only
be small consolation to those who thought Komeito could
keep Japan's defense hawks in check.
The good
news is that this panel that urged "flexibility" also
advised the government not to go nuclear just yet,
although analysts agree that the country already has the
capability to produce and deploy nuclear weapons. Japan
has in the past undertaken secret research to develop
nukes in case the US decides to withdraw its troops from
the region, leaving it up to Seoul and Tokyo alone to
keep North Korea from running amok.
With or
without nukes, Japan is already getting ready to do so.
Dr Axel Berkofsky is senior policy
analyst with the Brussels-based European Policy
Center.
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