{"id":64343,"date":"2015-09-28T12:00:49","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T11:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=64343"},"modified":"2015-09-25T14:35:34","modified_gmt":"2015-09-25T13:35:34","slug":"jeopardizing-japanese-abnormality-rejoining-the-war-system","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2015\/09\/jeopardizing-japanese-abnormality-rejoining-the-war-system\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeopardizing Japanese \u2018Abnormality\u2019: Rejoining the War System"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"richard<\/a>23 Sep 2015 – The following post was originally published as an opinion piece in the leading Japanese newspaper, <\/em>Asahi Shimbun, and appears here with their permission. The link to the Japanese version: http:\/\/digital.asahi.com\/articles\/DA3S11975719.html<\/a> <\/em>
\nThere are two converging dangers of a new Cold War\u2014one is confronting Russia in the Middle East and Central Asia and the other is confronting China in the South China Sea and elsewhere with a containment mentality within their own immediate sphere of operations. Washington\u2019s encouragement of Prime Minister Abe\u2019s campaign for a \u2018normal\u2019 Japan represents a regressive move regionally and globally, and deserves critical attention from a wider geopolitical perspective as well as from the viewpoint of Japan. It may in the end do more to limit the flexibility of the American approach to China than to free Japan from Article 9 constraints, a post-1945 \u2018abnormality.\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Commenting on the Japanese National Security Debate<\/strong><\/p>\n

At its peril, most of the world is ignoring the intense Japanese debate that surrounds the passage by the Diet of national security legislation that fulfills\u00a0Prime Minister Shinzo Abe\u2019s vision of Japan\u2019s proper role in the world of the 21st<\/sup> century. The core of the debate is about whether famous Article 9 of the Constitution can be interpreted to permit Japan to engage in collective defense arrangements around the world. Despite various prior tests of the outer limits of Article 9, and its seeming restriction of international force to territorial self-defense, the new legislation stakes out a far broader claim to engage\u00a0militarily in a variety of situations around the world.<\/p>\n

Most profoundly at issue is whether a changed national security environment resulting from issues involving nuclear weaponry, extremist non-state actors, and cyber warfare justify this more expansive approach to the use of force. Clearly, Abe\u2019s belief that Japan\u2019s national interests require an expanded role for force, and specifically the option to take part in overseas collective self-defense underlies the crafting of this new national security legislation.<\/p>\n

There seems to be other issues at stake as well. The most salient of these is the continuing primacy of the United States in shaping of Japan\u2019s security policy. It is ironic that it was U.S. occupation policy that initially demanded an anti-war clause in the new Japanese constitution, and even more ironic that the current prime minister announced his proposed policy reform with respect to collective self-defense on a state visit to the United States prior to informing the Japanese public. This posture long urged by the U.S. was welcomed by its Secretary of Defense as signaling a Japanese shift from a \u2018local\u2019 to a \u2018global\u2019 view of national security.<\/p>\n

Most of the internal Japanese debate, pro and con, has been focused on the constitutional issues, especially on whether Article 9 can be interpreted in a manner that is compatible with collective self-defense and other features of the new security proposals. An informed consensus appears to be a resounding \u2018no\u2019 as expressed in expert testimony in the Diet and strong statements of opposition circulated among constitutional law professors in\u00a0Japan. The effective LDP control of both houses of the Diet ensured from the outset that whatever the government proposed would be approved regardless of public opinion or constitutional objections. What seems clear is that legislative endorsement is only the first step in what is expected to be a lengthy battle in court to determine whether the \u2018legalization\u2019 of this contested interpretation of Article 9 survives judicial scrutiny.<\/p>\n

There are more crucial issues at stake than raised by the legal controversy. Abe has previously argued that Article 9 was imposed on a defeated Japan when it was a helpless country without the capacity to form a national will of its own. In effect, his new approach, presented under the banner of making Japan a \u2018Proactive Contributor to Peace\u2019 is a bid to overcome the abnormal situation that existed in Japan after 1945. Flexibility for a sovereign government in defining its security priorities should not be, according to this kind of realist thinking, subject to arbitrary and rigid territorial restrictions that Article 9 has imposed. In effect, the new legislation is not militaristic at all, but a recovery of \u2018normalcy,\u2019 a restoration of full Japanese sovereignty in a manner enjoyed by other states.<\/p>\n

This raises the deepest and most meaningful question: Was Japanese \u2018abnormality\u2019 a good or bad thing for the people of Japan and of the world? As someone with a commitment to peace and justice I long ago found the Article 9 approach taken by Japan inspirational, pointing the way toward making the international law of the UN Charter come to life, an example that could beneficially be followed by others, including in my wildest fantasies, by the United States itself. It is also encouraging that the Japanese public appears to agree with the positive contributions of Article 9, opinion polls indicating that a clear majority of the Japanese people oppose the new national security legislation and its implicit endorsement of collective self-defense. As is often the case, society is more peace-oriented than the elected leadership, and when party politics endows those in control of the government a capacity to defy the values and opinions of the citizenry, a crisis for democracy becomes embedded in what is put forward as a revision of security policy in light of changed circumstances.<\/p>\n

The last question contained in such reflections is whether changed regional and international circumstances justify abandoning Article 9 and the peace mentality associated with it. Although Prime Minister Abe promises to carry forward Japan postwar tradition of \u2018peace and prosperity\u2019 this effort to normalize <\/em>Japan is a deliberate policy rupture, especially when tied so indiscreetly to a more active geopolitical partnership with the United States. From my perspective, Japanese abnormality<\/em> remains a most precious reality, a beacon pointing toward the kind of \u2018new realism\u2019 that the 21st<\/sup> century urgently requires.<\/p>\n

_________________________________<\/p>\n

Richard Falk is a member of the TRANSCEND Network<\/a>, an international relations scholar, professor emeritus of international law at Princeton University, author, co-author or editor of 40 books, and a speaker and activist on world affairs.\u00a0In 2008, the United Nations Human Rights Council<\/a> (UNHRC) appointed Falk to a six-year term as a United Nations Special Rapporteur<\/a> on “the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories<\/a> occupied since 1967.” Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies, and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. His most recent book is <\/em>Achieving Human Rights (2009).<\/em><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 richardfalk.wordpress.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Washington\u2019s encouragement of Prime Minister Abe\u2019s campaign for a \u2018normal\u2019 Japan represents a regressive move regionally and globally, and deserves critical attention from a wider geopolitical perspective as well as from the viewpoint of Japan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-64343","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-asia-pacific"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64343","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=64343"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64343\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64343"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64343"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64343"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}