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Japan's battle for a Security Council seat
By Phar Kim Beng
HONG KONG -
Despite the economic malaise besetting Japan, it remains
unrelenting in the pursuit of one goal: to be a
permanent, and therefore veto-wielding, member of the
United Nations Security Council.
The aim is not
to be taken lightly. Since 1956, Japan has been a full
member of the United Nations. It has also served on the
Security Council on seven separate occasions, the most
recent term being 1991-93. Over the past six years, the
efforts to be a permanent member have been intensified.
The first official bid was made in March 1994 by Yoshio
Hatano, then the Japanese ambassador to the UN.
In tandem with this objective, Japan's top
diplomats have been routinely sent to its UN missions in
New York to strengthen the government's effort. These
included Ambassador Hisashi Owada, father to Crown
Princess Masako Owada. Currently the initiative is
spearheaded by Ambassador Yukio Satoh, long known in the
region as a strategic thinker.
Although Asian
countries, including China and South Korea, have not, in
principle, mounted any formal opposition to the Japanese
petition, doubts have been raised in certain circles in
the United States. That they come from the US is ironic,
as Japan is after all its most "important ally" in the
Pacific. Yet US opposition clearly exists.
In
1994, under the leadership of senator William Roth, the
US Senate passed two resolutions affirming that the US
government should not support Japan's attempt to gain a
permanent seat. The Senate's objection was based on
uncertainty over Japan's overall commitment to engage
fully in UN peacekeeping and peacemaking operations.
Oblivious to the resolutions, however, Japan has
not held back from its goal. In September 2000, Japan's
intention to become a permanent member was again
reiterated by foreign minister Yohei Kono.
The
US Senate's doubt of Japan's qualifications to be a
permanent Security Council member is due in part to
Japan's peacekeeping laws. Under the International Peace
Cooperation Law, which took effect in the Diet in August
1992, five conditions must be met before Japan can send
its Self Defense Force (SDF) abroad to serve under the
UN.
As outlined by Mayumi Itoh, a scholar on
Japan's UN bid, the five principles are:
1. The
parties in the armed conflict must have already agreed
to a ceasefire.
2. The parties in the armed conflict
and host countries must have given consent to the
operation and to Japan's participation in it.
3. The
operation must ensure strict impartiality.
4. The
Japanese contingent must withdraw should any of the
above requirements cease to be satisfied.
5. The use
of weapons is limited to the minimum necessary to
protect lives.
The above principles, while
clearly advantageous to Japan, are deemed perilous to
other members of the UN peacekeeping operations. The
fourth principle clearly allows Japan to pull its forces
out should conflict recur.
More important, the
laws are based on a sanitized notion of a ground
conflict. For one, it is premised on the belief that if
and when a ceasefire comes undone, the SDF would have
the time and opportunity to phase itself out of the
conflict. Yet post-Cold War peacekeeping missions have
pointed to the contrary. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the
multinational United Nations Protection Force (UNPROFOR)
could not withdraw without first seeking the armed
backing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The
withdrawal operation was so fraught with dangers that
NATO had to create another peacekeeping force to protect
the withdrawing UN battalions. Thus, when a ceasefire
does collapse, it is well-nigh impossible to pull the
troops out without endangering one's personnel or that
of other participating members.
That Japan has
such laws in its constitution does not augur well for
its bid to become a permanent member of the Security
Council.
Thus far, the efforts of the Ministry
of Foreign Affairs have been primarily focused on the
privilege attached to a permanent seat. Ostensibly, the
seat would strengthen Japan's profile and presence in
the post-Cold War order. It would also change the
stereotype of Japan as a political pygmy while its
economy is in the doldrums.
What Japan has
failed to address, however, is the critical issue of
whether in its present shape it would be able to
exercise an enlarged international role.
During
Operation Desert Storm in 1991, for example, Japan
contributed US$13 billion to the UN alliance. Yet it was
not involved in the military operation in any form. Only
after the end of the conflict did Japan resort to the
token gesture of sending its mine-sweeping fleets.
In the event it becomes a permanent member,
Japan would no longer enjoy such a luxury. If anything,
it would be obliged not just to contribute cash, but
forces as well. That Japan, at the height of the
violence in East Timor, did not send any SDF members
there further underscores its ambiguous approach to
peacekeeping.
Even now, the hypothetical issue
of how Japan should react to international contingency
has not been properly raised nor debated openly.
Moreover, the Japanese media have been guilty of
gross oversight. Some pundits have argued that the
Security Council could be reformed into an efficient
entity that does not have to take on that many
peacekeeping missions. The Security Council should, it
is argued, divide its responsibilities among regional
groupings such as the Association of Southeast Asian
Nations (ASEAN), the Arab League and others. The
argument goes that these regional organizations are
better at solving regional problems.
Yet when
conflicts do occur, it is the regional organizations
that approach the Security Council. Observe how
Indonesia approached the UN, rather than ASEAN, to
station peacekeeping forces in East Timor, and not the
other way around. Indeed, with the exception of ASEAN
and the European Union, the world has not seen any
effective regional organizations at all, let alone one
that can take on peacekeeping tasks.
To be sure,
given Japan's role as the second-largest contributor to
the regular UN budget, currently at more than 16
percent, its quest for a permanent seat is a serious and
deserving one. But the many missions undertaken by the
Security Council are invariably laden with substantial
risks, both physical and political. Unless Japan changes
its peacekeeping laws, no one can be sure that it would
not attempt a precipitous pullout when UN forces are
under fire.
For those who continue to deny Japan
a role in the Security Council, however, the goal should
not focus on whether Japan has learned from its actions
in World War II; rather, whether Japan has understood
that its domestic peacekeeping laws are incompatible
with the demands of contemporary international
relations.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All
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