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<\/a><\/p>\nJapan\u2019s prime minister announced a reinterpretation of the country\u2019s pacifist Constitution on Tuesday [1 Jul 2014], freeing its military for the first time in over 60 years to play a more assertive role in the increasingly tense region.<\/p>\n
The decision by the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will permit Japan to use its large and technologically advanced armed forces in ways that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago when they were limited to defending the country. The revision will allow the military to come to the aid of friendly countries under attack, including the United States.<\/p>\n
Japan\u2019s stance is part of a rapidly shifting balance of power in Asia, where China and its growing military are mounting a serious challenge to the regional dominance of the United States and its allies, including Japan, and making assertive claims to vast areas of two strategically important seas. The hawkish Mr. Abe\u2019s response is certain to anger the Chinese \u2014 who have never forgiven Japan for its World War II-era invasion \u2014 and could set Asia\u2019s two biggest powers even more on edge.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe growing pressure from China has changed the political debate within Japan,\u201d said Kazuhisa Kawakami, a political expert at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.<\/p>\n
The Abe government\u2019s decision, which appears likely to go into effect this fall, was announced as China\u2019s leader was set to arrive in Seoul for what many analysts viewed as an attempt to begin to pry away South Korea from its traditional ally, the United States.<\/p>\n
The new policy is the culmination of a quarter-century of debate in Japan over whether pacifism was the best way to assure the world that it would never again fall into the mind-set that led it to conquer much of Asia and pursue a disastrous war, or whether, decades after Japan\u2019s defeat, that thinking had made the country vulnerable to new threats.<\/p>\n
The antiwar Constitution remains enough of a touchstone for many in Japan that the reinterpretation has spurred rare street protests, and even the self-immolation of a lone protester in Tokyo this week. But at least so far, the pushback against the change, termed \u201ccollective self-defense,\u201d seemed fairly limited after years of headlines about Chinese military planes and ships challenging Japan\u2019s near disputed islands.<\/p>\n
While Japan\u2019s military, known as the Self-Defense Forces, would still face severe restrictions on what it could do, it would be allowed for the first time to take such actions as come to the aid of an American ship under attack, or shoot down a North Korean missile heading toward the United States.<\/p>\n
The Obama administration said Tuesday that it welcomed Japan\u2019s action, adding that it would aid the country\u2019s armed forces to \u201cdo more within the framework of our alliance.\u201d But the Abe government\u2019s move also posed challenges for the president. His administration has struggled to patch up differences between Japan and South Korea, which is also bitter over Japan\u2019s imperialist history, and managing the tensions with China may now prove more difficult than ever before.<\/p>\n
Japanese leaders for years have been edging their country away from its passive security stance. They agreed to join Western efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan by transporting cargo and refueling other navies\u2019 ships, bought weapons that blurred the lines between defensive and offensive, and under Mr. Abe, doled out increasing military-related aid to neighbors who share Japan\u2019s anxiety over China.<\/p>\n
But the latest move differs from many of those actions in that it fundamentally changes the reading of the postwar Constitution and seems to take Japan further than ever from the renunciation of force as a way of settling disputes.<\/p>\n
Mr. Abe, a longtime influential conservative, has tried in the past to win approval for a wholesale rewriting of the Constitution, part of his campaign to make Japan what he calls a more \u201cnormal\u201d country that no longer hides its power out of shame for wartime transgressions. Lack of public support for those attempts, in part, cost him his job seven years ago, the last time he was prime minister.<\/p>\n
Since then, the region has been transformed not only by China\u2019s rise, but also a deterioration of American dominance that is leading several countries in the region to try to beef up their own military abilities.<\/p>\n
Although Asia is not yet in an outright arms race, Richard J. Samuels, director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Japan\u2019s move showed that it and other countries were having to think more seriously about their own security than ever before.<\/p>\n
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