Japan inches toward a full-fledged
military By Hisane Masaki
TOKYO - Amid growing security concerns
among its people, especially after neighboring
North Korea's nuclear test, Japan will almost
certainly enact bills soon to upgrade the status
of the Defense Agency to a ministry more than five
decades after its inception.
To be sure,
upgrading the Defense Agency may be more symbolic
than substantive. Nonetheless, it is significant
because the agency has so far been kept in a
relatively low-profile position
under the nation's
postwar pacifist constitution.
The bills
to be passed into law soon will also legally
expand the "primary duties" of the Self-Defense
Forces, which were established along with the
Defense Agency in 1954, to include overseas
peacekeeping operations, including support for the
US military. Under the current law, the SDF's
"primary duties" are limited to national defense
and disaster relief at home. Overseas operations
are classified as "supplementary duties".
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who took office
in late September, has made enacting the defense
bills one of his top priorities in the current
extraordinary session of the Diet, Japan's
parliament. The Diet session, which elected him as
Japanese leader on its first day, is to run until
mid-December.
The Japanese public's
growing desire for a sturdier national-defense
system, especially amid North Korea's nuclear and
missile activities, has significantly boosted the
chances of the legislation. The ruling coalition
led by Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has
also gained political momentum from its victories
in by-elections held for the House of
Representatives in two major prefectures -
Kanagawa and Osaka - in October, and then in the
Okinawa gubernatorial election in November.
The two defense bills - one to revise the
Defense Agency Establishment Law and the other to
rewrite the SDF Law - were passed by the full
House on Thursday and sent immediately to the
House of Councilors, after being approved by the
Security Committee earlier in the day. It is now
almost certain that the bills will be enacted
during the current Diet session after being passed
by the full House of Councilors.
In
addition to the LDP and its coalition partner New
Komeito, the largest opposition group, the
Democratic Party of Japan, voted in favor of the
bills. The DPJ softened its confrontational
approach to the LDP-led coalition in the Diet
after the recent gubernatorial election on Okinawa
in which a candidate backed by the DPJ and other
opposition parties lost to another candidate
supported by the ruling coalition. The prefecture
hosts three-fourths of US bases on Japanese soil.
In the Okinawa vote, the DPJ put priority
on the campaign alliance among opposition parties,
putting aside sharp policy differences, including
over security. Although many DPJ lawmakers had
said publicly that they would support the defense
bills if they were voted on, the party had balked
at clarifying its position on the bills until
after the Okinawa election, apparently for fear of
hurting its campaign alliance with the Japanese
Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party.
These two leftist parties have vehemently opposed
the bills.
Less than a week after the
Okinawa vote, the DPJ made clear that it would
consider backing the defense bills if certain
conditions are met, including thorough government
measures to prevent a recurrence of a bid-rigging
scandal involving defense-facility projects.
In addition to upgrading the Defense
Agency to a ministry, the defense bills would
scrap the scandal-tainted Defense Facilities
Administration Agency, an affiliate of the Defense
Agency, and integrate its functions into the
ministry.
DPJ secretary general Yukio
Hatoyama said last Friday, "Upgrading the Defense
Agency to a ministry is basically a sure thing."
On the eve of the vote, the DPJ formally
decided to support the bills - on the condition
that they are attached by a resolution calling for
strict civilian control on defense issues as well
as a thorough probe into the bid-rigging scandal
and measures to prevent a recurrence of such a
scandal - apparently in hopes of maintaining
support from conservative voters amid the nuclear
crisis involving North Korea. The DPJ condition
was accepted by the LDP-led coalition.
The
defense bills were submitted to the last ordinary
Diet session, which ended in mid-June, but were
carried over to the current extraordinary Diet
session because deliberations in the previous
session were shelved over the bid-rigging scandal
involving senior officials of the Defense
Facilities Administration Agency.
A bill
to revise the Fundamental Law of Education,
another of Prime Minister Abe's top priorities in
the current Diet session, is also expected to be
enacted soon. The education bill is aimed at
instilling patriotism among students at school. It
will be the first revision of the basic education
law since it took effect in 1947, replacing the
Imperial Rescript on Education, a symbol of the
nation's prewar education system..
If the
defense and education bills are both enacted soon,
as widely expected, it will give a boost to Abe's
conservative credentials. Upgrading the Defense
Agency to a ministry is a long-cherished dream of
conservatives. The current basic education law has
also been criticized by conservatives as putting
too much emphasis on individual freedom at the
expense of love of country and respect for the
public interests and traditional culture and
values.
There is a rowing discontent among
many conservatives that Abe has changed his coat
since taking office. Abe is widely known for his
nationalist views on history and hawkish stance
toward such countries as China. But in a concerted
attempt to repair damaged relations with China and
South Korea, Abe has either toned down or even
reversed his previous rhetoric, at least in
public. Less than two weeks after being elected,
Abe made a whirlwind fence-mending tour to Beijing
and Seoul.
Under such circumstances,
suspicions seem to be brewing on both sides of the
political spectrum, with his conservative supports
fearing that Abe might further deviate from the
path they initially expected him to tread as
premier, while critics of his hawkish and
nationalist views expressed in the past on history
and other issues apprehending that he might revert
to type before long.
What
differences? If the bill to revise the
Defense Agency Establishment Law is enacted soon,
as widely expected, the agency will officially
become the Defense Ministry in January, and the
director general of the agency will become the
defense minister. It will be the first time the
name of the agency has been changed in its 53-year
history.
At present, the Defense Agency is
under the direct control of the prime minister as
an affiliate of the Cabinet Office. One of the
state ministers at the Cabinet Office heads the
agency as its director general.
Unlike
ministries, the current agency cannot call snap
cabinet meetings to make big decisions, nor can it
submit bills to the Diet on its own. Instead, the
agency has to go through the Cabinet Office. The
agency also has to make budget requests in the
name of the Cabinet Office rather than the agency
chief. The change in status to a ministry will
enable the defense entity to follow administrative
procedures more smoothly.
To be sure,
upgrading the Defense Agency may be more symbolic
than substantive. Probably, what matters more is
pride, as well as morale among the agency staff
and SDF personnel. Agency officials often complain
that their counterparts at foreign countries'
defense ministries or departments do not
understand that they are dealing with people from
a less important institution.
But
nonetheless, it is significant because the agency
has so far been kept in a relatively low-profile
position under the nation's postwar pacifist
constitution.
The current constitution is
widely interpreted as forbidding the possession of
a military. In reality Japan has about 240,000 SDF
troops and one of the world's biggest defense
expenditures. Successive governments have
explained away the contradiction by claiming that
SDF is not a military but a kind of police force.
The LDP's junior coalition partner, New
Komeito, dropped its long-standing opposition to
upgrading the Defense Agency to a ministry after
the last election in September last year, in which
the LDP under Abe's predecessor, Junichiro
Koizumi, won big, resulting in the significant
reduction of New Komeito's weight in the
coalition.
New Komeito, which is a
self-proclaimed party of peace and welfare backed
by the lay Buddhist organization Soka Gakkai, does
not want to see the enactment of the defense bills
delayed until next year, because it fears an
adverse effect on its prospects in unified local
elections next spring and a triennial House of
Councilors election next summer.
Growing sphere of activity The
focus of public attention has been on the bill to
revise the Defense Agency Establishment Law to
upgrade the agency to a ministry. But the bill to
revise the SDF Law to expand the SDF's "primary
duties" may have much more far-reaching effects.
The revision of the SDF Law will put such
activities as international emergency assistance
missions, participation in United Nations
peacekeeping operations and support for the US
military during emergencies near Japan on par with
national-defense and disaster-relief operations at
home.
Japan has beefed up its security
alliance with the United States in the past
decade. The pace of this move has been accelerated
since the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in
the US. The two countries signed a final agreement
on the realignment of US bases and troops in Japan
in May. This agreement will further cement the
bonds between the close allies through increased
integration of their military operations and pave
the way for Tokyo's greater involvement in US-led
operations not only in Asia but globally.
The postwar constitution imposes strict
restrictions on Japanese military activities
abroad. Like his predecessors, Koizumi stretched
the boundaries of the constitution by supporting
US operations in Afghanistan and by deploying
non-combat troops to Iraq, the first SDF mission
to a combat zone since World War II. Now Abe
appears determined to stretch the constitutional
boundaries further. Heightened security concerns
among many Japanese have apparently made it
politically possible or at least easier for him to
do so.
Abe has already called for studying
whether the SDF can shoot down a missile flying
over Japanese territory en route to the US. Chief
Cabinet Secretary Yasuhisa Shiozaki also said
recently that the government may review a 2003
statement in which it vowed not to use the planned
missile defense system to defend Japan's allies.
The government's current interpretation of the
pacifist constitution bars collective defense - or
coming to the military aid of an ally under
attack.
The soon-to-be-made revision of
the SDF Law to upgrade overseas activities to
"primary duties" has already raised concerns among
many critics, who say that the LDP-led coalition
government, taking its cue from the legislation,
might rev up its dispatch of SDF troops abroad,
especially in step with the US.
Military
commentator Tetsuo Maeda is critical of the
defense bills. Testifying at the House Security
Committee recently as an expert witness, he said
the revision of the SDF Law "will drastically
change the SDF's nature away from one dealing
exclusively with self-defense. Rather than await
constitutional revision, the move is designed to
push reality further ahead."
He maintained
that including overseas operations in the SDF's
"primary duties" will be incompatible with Article
9 of the constitution and condemned the move as
something like "the inferior SDF Law overthrowing
its superior, the constitution" or "a
mini-constitutional revision".
Critics
have said the LDP-led coalition has dispatched SDF
troops to the Indian Ocean and Iraq through ad hoc
legislative measures "on the easy-payment system",
out of political consideration to the US.
A special two-year anti-terrorism law was
enacted to provide support to US-led coalition
forces in Afghanistan, and has now been extended
three times - most recently in October - since it
was enacted in November 2001. To enable the
provision of humanitarian and reconstruction
assistance to Iraq, the government pushed through
a special four-year law for Iraq in July 2003 and
dispatched Ground SDF troops there.
Japan
pulled out some 600 non-combat ground troops,
deployed in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah, in
July, but the Air SDF unit, stationed in Kuwait,
is continuing its mission, with its C-130 cargo
planes transporting personnel and materials for
multinational forces and the UN between the two
Middle Eastern nations.
To enable Japan to
contribute more smoothly and in a timely manner to
international efforts to establish peace, instead
of enforcing a special law that is effective for
only a limited period each time an emergency
occurs, the LDP has already finalized the outline
of a draft bill for a permanent law to dispatch
SDF personnel overseas. The draft bill would allow
such an overseas mission even without a UN
resolution or a request from an international
organization.
Toward constitutional
amendments About a year ago, the LDP
adopted its draft of a new constitution to replace
the current war-renouncing, pacifist constitution,
written by the US occupation forces soon after
Japan's 1945 defeat in World War II. Establishing
a "self-imposed constitution" has been the LDP's
credo since its 1955 founding. But this was the
first time the LDP had actually proposed a new
constitution in writing.
The LDP draft
calls for rewriting Article 9 to acknowledge
clearly the existence of a "military for
self-defense". It also calls for more active
participation in international peacekeeping
activities.
Political momentum for
revising the constitution has mounted since the
LDP's landslide victory in general elections in
September 2005. The LDP-New Komeito coalition
garnered more than a two-thirds majority in the
House of Representatives. And Abe, a nationalist
and staunch advocate of a new constitution, became
the new LDP president and prime minister in late
September this year.
Abe has said he will
seek to have constitutional amendments realized
within five years. It remains to be seen, however,
whether the supreme law can be revised while he is
in office. Under Article 96, any amendments must
be proposed with support of two-thirds or more of
both houses of the Diet and then be approved in a
national referendum with a simple majority vote.
Legislation setting procedures for such a
referendum is still pending in the Diet. It is
expected to be carried over to the next ordinary
Diet session, to convene in January for a 150-day
run. The LDP-New Komeito coalition is far short of
a two-thirds majority in the House of Councilors.
In addition, New Komeito remains reluctant about
rewriting Article 9.
Abe is widely
believed to be determined to begin addressing the
issue of constitutional amendments in earnest
after next summer's House of Councilors election,
the first full-scale national election he faces as
premier. Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the opposition
DPJ, has vowed to deprive the LDP-led coalition of
a majority as a significant stepping stone to
power. If that actually happens, the Abe
government would be left lame-duck.
The
growing political momentum to change the
constitution has been hailed by many security and
foreign-policy experts in Japan's most important
ally, the US, as clear evidence that Tokyo is
going in the right direction to become a more
reliable and responsible security partner
regionally and globally.
But it has raised
grave concerns among many of Japan's Asian
neighbors who fear that any revision would let
loose Japanese militarism, 60 years after the
World War II. Many in Japan's neighboring
countries, especially in China and South Korea,
still harbor bitter memories of Japan's wartime
aggression and atrocities.
Hiroshi Masuda,
professor at Toyo Eiwa Women's University and
proponent of the soon-to-be enacted defense bills,
testified recently at the Security Committee as an
expert witness. He said the government should give
a sincere explanation to Asian neighbors,
especially China and South Korea, to dispel their
anticipated concerns over the bills.
Hisane Masaki is a Tokyo-based
journalist, commentator and scholar on
international politics and economy. Masaki's
e-mail address is yiu45535@nifty.com.
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