Japan's holy grail: A UN Security Council
seat By Jamie Miyazaki
For
years, Japan's international holy grail has been a
coveted seat on the United Nations Security Council, a
permanent seat with veto power. Despite its larger
international role and its non-combat work in
Afghanistan and Iraq - neither is an UN operation -
Japan's war-renouncing constitution may stand in the way
of a permanent council seat. Permanent members are not
supposed to flinch from overseas combat, but fight if
necessary to maintain international peace and security.
If Tokyo ever attains that seat, which may mean
attendant combat responsibilities, pacifist Japan could
find it a poisoned chalice.
Prime Minister
Junichiro Koizumi goes before the new session of the
199-member UN General Assembly on Tuesday to argue
Japan's case for a permanent seat on the organization's
highest decision-making body, the Security Council, the
only body that can authorize military action to enforce
its resolutions.
Koizumi's speech comes at an
opportune time. The UN High-Level Panel on Threats,
Challenges and Change, appointed by Secretary General
Kofi Annan last November, will submit its report this
December on how best to reform the world body to deal
better with new global security threats.
Expansion of the 15-member Security Council -
long urged by new powers and developing nations - is
believed to be one of the panel's recommendations. At
present the council has five veto-wielding permanent
members - China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and
the United States - plus 10 two-year-term, non-permanent
rotating seats based on geographic regions. The
presidency rotates monthly among all 15 members.
Unlike the UN's ill-fated predecessor, the
League of Nations, which it spent most of the 1930s
discrediting, Japan has long held the UN in high esteem
and lobbied for a permanent Security Council seat. But
it is not the only country hoping to gain a permanent
seat on the council in a new makeup better reflecting
the realities of the world today, rather than a snapshot
of the world after World War II. Brazil, India and
Germany are also known to be lobbying for a permanent
Security Council seat. Egypt and Nigeria might be
considered major African candidates. It is expected that
when the council is expanded, a number of nations will
be admitted as permanent members.
Japan's case,
though, appears to be a strong one; it is the
second-biggest donor to the organization. Brad
Glosserman of the Center for Strategic and International
Studies' (CSIS) Pacific Forum, a US think-tank, told
Asia Times Online, "Japan provides too much money to the
UN for it not to have a real voice ... the [Security
Council] is the only place that voice is [not] heard.
Japanese diplomats chafe when they are not privy to
those [council] discussions. They feel they have a right
to be there; they may be right."
Japan has
long be a staunch UN supporter Glosserman also
pointed out that Japan has placed great faith in the UN
"primarily because they have seen first-hand the
destructiveness of a lawless society, internationally
that is. They have been conditioned for more than half a
century to believe in the UN. That is not necessarily a
bad thing."
However, Tokyo's efforts may be
hamstrung by Article 9 of its pacifist, war-renouncing
constitution, which in effect prohibits the right to
collective defense and severely circumscribes Japan's
use of military force except in self-defense.
Indeed, the most UN-friendly officials in the
current US administration - and there aren't many of
them around - Secretary of State Colin Powell and Deputy
Secretary of State Richard Armitage, have both publicly
raised questions over Japan's ambitions for a Security
Council seat, given the constraints of Article 9.
Permanent membership on the Security Council means that
members are willing and fully able to shoulder all
responsibilities of members in maintaining international
peace and security - that means taking part in
peacekeeping missions and even military intervention. So
far, Japan has played only limited, non-combat roles, as
in providing medical and logistical assistance, in UN
operations. Its role in Iraq has been a humanitarian
one, rebuilding in the southern area of Samawa, though
its troops are equipped for combat if necessary.
Although Koizumi has been a big proponent of
constitutional reform, he has so far refused to link a
bid for a permanent council seat with revision of
Article 9. Ironically, the prime minister has until
recently been far more lukewarm about a permanent
council seat than he has about reforming Japan's
constitution.
But he now argues that Japan's
national interests would be served better by a place on
the council and that Japanese membership would bring a
fresh voice and perspective to council debates. "It
would be better to get a say as a permanent council
member in order to reflect in the international
community Japan's own ideas that are different from
those of other countries," the prime minister said
recently.
In fact, despite Article 9's
restrictions, Japan has been engaged in UN peacekeeping
operations (PKOs) since 1992, after it was famously
omitted from Kuwait's thank-you list after the first
Gulf War, because of its purely financial contribution
to effort to drive out invading Iraqi forces.
And under Koizumi, Japan has been engaged in a
pretty active bout of constitutional reinterpretation
since the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United
States - a reinterpretation and and expansion that has
pushed Article 9 nearly to the breaking point. Japan has
given logistical support to US efforts in Afghanistan
and dispatched troops to Iraq to assist in the country's
reconstruction. This has helped increase Japan's profile
on the international stage.
UN peacekeeping
may become an SDF task More revision (read de
facto constitutional reform) is on the way. Plans are
afoot to make PKOs a primary task of Japan's
Self-Defense Forces (SDF) - the quaint name Japan gives
to its very competent military. There is in fact
conspicuous agreement between Japan's two major parties,
the governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the
opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), over
Japanese participation in UN PKOs.
Despite the
US State Department's doubts, Japan is banking on
Washington's support for its bid. According to Senior
Vice Foreign Minister Ichiro Aisawa, who made a trip to
the US two weeks ago when he met with senior White House
officials, Japan can count on full US support for its
bid, including the backing of President George W Bush
himself - somebody not normally noted for his pro-UN
tendencies.
Yet despite Bush's wariness of the
UN, he is known to be loyal to friends and allies, and
so backing from the US, one of the five permanent
Security Council members, is a big boost to Japanese
efforts.
But UN reform is notoriously difficult.
Seasoned UN observers joke that reform forever pops up
on a "seven-year cycle". A 1997 proposal to expand the
council to 24 members was never realized.
The UN
reform panel's recommendations due this December won't
actually be submitted for consideration to the full
United Nations until September next year. The panel's
reform proposals will need to be passed by a two-thirds
majority in the General Assembly and get past any
objections raised by the permanent members of the
Security Council. They could veto any expansion and
reform.
The model that the reform panel
reportedly is considering involves a three-tiered
Security Council, with the first tier of five permanent
veto-wielding members, a second tier of seven or eight
semi-permanent members with five-year terms, and a third
tier of 11 or 12 members on the current system of
two-year terms.
The best Japan can hope for
probably is a second-tier seat alongside other aspiring
candidates such as Germany, India and Brazil - not a bad
runner-up prize but probably not the great-power status
symbol Japan is after: a permanent seat with veto power.
Security Council: Anachronistic postwar
snapshot The Security Council represents a
half-century-old historical anachronism: World War II's
victorious powers. Despite public statements in favor of
expanding the council, the likelihood of any of the
permanent members giving up their veto power or
extending the veto to new members is negligible. In
fact, many seasoned diplomats are skeptical that
expanding the council beyond 15 members will improve its
efficacy, saying it might well end up making the council
cumbersome.
With the exception of China, the
council doesn't reflect any of the world's new powers.
This also raises the tricky issue for permanent council
member China, as both it and Japan are vying for the
mantle of regional leadership. A permanent council seat
would confer considerable regional status on Japan.
But it is an open secret that relations between
China and Japan have been strained, and while the
Chinese leadership may have have been quiet so far on
the issue, the Chinese press and netizens have been less
reticent in denouncing Japan's bid.
The irony is
that Japan is choosing now of all times to intensify its
bid for a permanent seat. Despite its increased
international profile due to its military assistance in
Afghanistan and Iraq, Japan's recent SDF dispatches have
fallen outside of UN mandates. Japan has been one of the
most willing members of the decidedly non-UN "coalition
of the willing" led by the UN-ambivalent Bush
administration.
In fact, since the bruising
run-up to the Iraq war, the UN appears to be at nearly
the weakest point in its existence. With the UN's
reputation badly damaged by the US go-it-alone approach
and the perception that it cannot stand up to the US in
Iraq, some Japanese are even questioning their
long-cherished love of the organization.
In a
seminar in July at the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo, former
UN undersecretary general Yasushi Akashi cautioned, "It
may no longer be realistic to seek legitimacy solely at
the UN." Akashi proposed that the government look beyond
UN missions to play a role and said the Japanese
Self-Defense Forces should be allowed to maintain
security in conflict zones, as does the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization in parts of Afghanistan.
A
middle road will probably need to be found, and as
Glosserman of CSIS insightfully pointed out to Asia
Times Online, UN reform "will be a long and messy
process ... relying on the UN exclusively is dangerous;
but wanting it to succeed and working to create the
conditions for its success is a good thing. More nations
should do that."
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