Japan's new army to the rescue of US
forces? By Axel
Berkofsky
Japan's soldiers will be able to fight
alongside their United States' comrades in and beyond
Asia - at least that's the idea behind the recent
package of proposed national security laws aimed at
equipping the country's military to fight evil at home
and abroad. The Self-Defense Forces may even be renamed
the "army".
Critics say the laws would violate
Japan's war-renouncing constitution and could turn Japan
into a global US ally, on call to support the US
anywhere in the world where the US and Japan have common
interests, such as the Middle East. And the laws could
mean actual combat, read shooting, but the government
doesn't emphasize that.
The military, on the
other hand, likes the idea of shedding its
Japan-as-military-laughing-stock image and becoming a
real army.
If Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro
Koizumi gets his way, soon he will not only be
authorized to dispatch the country's armed forces (at
his own discretion, Koizumi likes to add) in the event
of an attack on Japan, but also in the event that the
Self-Defense Forces (SDF) are needed to defend the
47,000 US military personnel on Japanese territory - and
beyond. The North Korean military threat is a major
factor in the rethinking of Japan's security
relationship with the US.
In theory, if trouble
erupted in the Taiwan Strait for example, Japan could be
called upon to aid US warships or send its own high-tech
destroyers into troubled waters.
On the basis of
the so-called "War Contingency Law" enacted in June
2003, the Japanese government announced recently that
the prime minister could order his military to defend US
troops "in and around Japan", implementing the right to
individual self-defense.
All that needs to be
done, Koizumi said, is to change the interpretation of
"individual self-defense", adding the defense of US
troops stationed on Japanese territory to the concept.
War-contingency laws Last June, the
first set of three national emergency laws
("war-contingency laws", as the government called them)
were enacted, setting an overall framework for defending
against a military attack on Japan. They explained in
detail for the first time the concept of a military
attack on Japan and the need for response. Until Koizumi
took over in April 2001, policymakers were very
reluctant to discuss countermeasures against an attack
on Japan.
The government announced back then,
however, that it wasn't yet finished equipping the armed
forces with the authority to fight terrorists, foreign
armies, North Koreans and other regional and global
evil-doers.
Sure enough, there was more to come.
In March the cabinet endorsed another set of seven
national security bills. They were submitted to the
parliament without delay (or hastily as usual, the
critics complained). The bills aim at defining the
division of roles among the government, the public, the
armed forces and US troops stationed in Japan.
Out of the seven bills, four deal with a
large-scale military attack on Japan, providing the
Japanese military with the legal basis for transporting
ammunition and weapons for the US military stationed on
its territory. Furthermore, Japan's navy will be
authorized to inspect and fire upon ships suspected of
shipping weapons to an "enemy state".
The other
three bills deal with violations of international
humanitarian law, the handling of prisoners of war and
the protection of citizens' rights in the case of a
national emergency.
Further, the cabinet also
adopted three additional bills to approve agreements
signed with the US government, among them are the
Japan-US Acquisition and Cross-Servicing Agreement
(ACSA). The accord enables Japanese and US forces to
share and exchange goods and services in the event of an
armed attack on Japan.
Swift enactment
unlikely The Japanese government is hoping that
the package of national emergency bills will be enacted
during the current parliamentary session ending in June.
The inevitable controversial debates in parliament and
the deliberative pace of Japan's decision-making
process, however, suggest otherwise. Japan's lawmakers
are almost certainly in for another round of
incomprehensible parliamentary debates and even
"brain-dead parliamentary sessions", as the liberal
Asahi Shimbun suggests.
The laws are necessary
because Japan's constitution in Article 9 prohibits
Japan from engaging in combat operations - and even from
having armed forces in the first place. "Land, sea, and
air forces, as well as other war potential, will never
be maintained in Japan," it says.
Prime Minister
Koizumi's plans to dispatch his troops regionally and
globally, coming to the rescue of US military, however,
go even further. He wants to authorize Japan's armed
forces to defend US military beyond Japanese territory
if an attack on US forces threatens Japanese territory
or Japan's national security. Critics say this new - and
Koizumi's very own interpretation of the right of
individual self-defense - could turn Japan into a
full-fledged global US military ally, encouraging the US
to request Japanese military support all over the globe.
It doesn't have to go as far as that - any
US-Japan military cooperation in Asia is bad enough -
from China's point of view. While contingency plans for
US-Japan military cooperation in a North Korea crisis
scenario hardly raise any eyebrows in Pyongyang and
elsewhere, prospects of US-Japan military cooperation in
the Taiwan Strait on the other hand has been worrying
Beijing ever since Japan and the US expanded the scope
of military cooperation to the "areas surrounding
Japan".
In the late 1990s, Washington and Tokyo
redefined their bilateral military alliance through the
so-called "US-Japan Guidelines for Defense Cooperation",
charging Japan with actively supporting US military
operations should North Korea or anybody else decide to
run amok in Asia. Although the US and Japan never
defined the concept of the "areas surrounding Japan"
geographically, China always has suspected that it is
the Taiwan Strait where the US would request Japan to
sweep mines, refuel US warships and deploy its own
high-tech destroyers.
Whether the Japanese
government, however, would have the stomach to dispatch
combat troops any time soon to defend Taiwan or help the
US fight its (so-called) "war on terrorism" remains to
be seen. Japan's recent troop deployment to Iraq,
however, is already an indication that Tokyo is becoming
more willing to secure its national interests far beyond
Japanese territory and East Asia.
A Japanese
standby force for UN peacekeeping On the home
front, in the meantime, the Democratic Party of Japan
has additional and somewhat different plans for Japan's
armed forces. Establishing a stand-by force for UN peace
keeping missions,as a separate organization from the
armed forces,is what senior party executive Ichiro Ozawa
and the party's vice president, Takahiro Yokomichi,
requested in a recently released party memorandum on
Japan's national security.
Japanese
peacekeepers, the "Basic Principles Concerning Japan's
National Security and International Cooperation" reads,
would be recruited from the armed the forces as well as
from the national police and firefighter force to take
part in multilateral military operations with the
blessing of the United Nations Security Council or UN
General Assembly.
Creating an organization
distinct from the Self-Defense Forces, the Democratic
Party of Japan (Minshuto) claims, would enable the
country to undertake peacekeeping missions without the
unpleasant questions on the constitutionality of SDF
deployment, the party hopes.
Not a good idea at
all as far as the government is concerned. It dismissed
these plans as "irrelevant" pointing out that Japan's
soldiers are well-trained and equipped to take part in
UN peacekeeping missions and be in charge of defending
Japanese territory at the same time.
Instead,
Prime Minister Koizumi announced, Japan's SDF should
finally be renamed and be called an "army", bringing
back the sense of pride the troops in the defense
establishment and the conservative and
ultra-conservative press were missing for a long time.
An army in all but name? "To the rest
of the world, the SDF is considered to be an army, while
due to constitutional constraints, it cannot be referred
to in that way in Japan," the prime minister complained
in a recent interview with Britain's The Times. "Several
points in the constitution are not logical in the light
of common sense, the issue of re-naming the armed forces
will be part of the debate", Koizumi added, indicating
that his plans to revise the constitution will go along
with enhancing the military's standing and prestige.
But by lack of common sense, Koizumi may have
referred to his own security policy rhetoric or,
alternatively, to the second paragraph of the
constitution's war-renouncing Article 9.
While
many critics have repeatedly wondered aloud how armed
forces with a budget of US$50 billion (yen) can co-exist
with the constitution's war-renouncing article, Japan's
policymakers introduced a semantic dimension to the
debate when the armed forces came into existence the
early 1950s.
By calling the troops "Self-Defense
Forces", Japanese governments reasoned over the last
decades, Japan cannot be accused of maintaining an
"army" in violation of the constitution.
Japan's
Supreme Court, guardian of the country's constitution,
preferred never to rule on the constitutionality of the
armed forces, even though the communist party as well as
other associations and unions opposing the existence of
armed forces repeatedly requested a ruling on the
legality of Japan's military over decades. In the
mid-1990s, the government's explanation started to sound
plausible, even to the Japanese Communist Party, which
like the Socialist Party in 1994, finally acknowledged
the constitutionality of the armed forces in 1999.
Defense Agency too wants a new
name And the Defense Agency wants to be renamed
too - preferably as the "Ministry of Defense", which,
according to Defense Agency officials, is only fair
enough, given that the agency's premises are second to
none among Japanese ministries since the military moved
its headquarters to Ichigaya in downtown Tokyo back in
2000.
All of this is not exactly music to the
ears of Japan's neighboring countries, which usually
associate news of Japan's armed forces with the revival
of Japanese war-time militarism and aggression.
Koizumi's January visit to the controversial Yasukuni
Shrine, last resting place for 14 convicted Japanese
A-class war criminals, has done its share to increase
suspicion towards Japan's newly won enthusiasm for
defense and security issues.
Only a few days
ago, Prime Minister Koizumi was reportedly "puzzled"
about China's and South Korea's criticism of his visits
to the shrine, which over the last decade became the
place of pilgrimage of Japan's ultra-nationalists and
right-wing extremists.
While the prime minister
announced that more visits to Yasukuni were in the
offing, his military is confident that the armed forces
are finally getting rid of the
Japan-as-military-laughing-stock image that numerous
military analysts and commentators mocked in the past.
The last laugh though won't be at Japan's expense,
however, but at the expense of those who thought the
country's armed forces exist to conduct earthquake
disaster relief exercises in downtown Tokyo, a
high-ranking Defense Agency official told Asia Times
Online recently.
"With troops on the ground in
Iraq, the international community has stopped laughing
about Japan's army rather abruptly," he said, adding,
"Don't write that."
Dr Axel Berkofsky
is a research fellow and policy analyst at the
Brussels-based European Institute for Asian Studies
(EIAS) where he is dealing with EU-Asia/EU-Japan
Relations. He also teaches EU-Asia relations/East Asian
and Japanese security at European universities and
think-tanks.
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