Missile makes Japan twitch new
muscle By Yong Kwon
Japan has been one of the most active
players in the North Korean "satellite" crisis. As
a country well within the range of Pyongyang's
ballistic missiles, Tokyo has good reason to be
concerned, but the implications of its
assertiveness in the past month are interesting in
their own right.
When South Korea said on
March 26 that it would intercept Pyongyang's
Unha-3 rocket if the satellite's trajectory
appears errant, the warning came three days after
Japanese Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka's
announcement that Tokyo was readying Aegis-class
warships and PAC-3 surface-to-air missiles in
preparation for North Korea's rocket launch. That
was quite a move for a country that
constitutionally renounces the use of force as
means of settling international disputes.
Tokyo's aggressively defensive posture
towards Pyongyang is
indicative of the shift
in Japanese foreign policy since the end of the
Cold War. In particular, the Yoshida Doctrine,
established by Japanese prime minister Shigeru
Yoshida in the immediate aftermath of World War II
to renounce coercive foreign policy and focus
entirely on economic development, appears
increasingly passed over by Japan's new leaders.
The doctrine had allowed for the
relatively quick mending of political relations
with victims of Japanese imperialism and had
ensured rapid economic growth that secured Tokyo's
prestige and power in the international community.
But the Cold War is over and new conditions force
the state to adapt or face the consequences.
While the basic posture of pacifism and
neutrality is anchored to Article 9 of the
Japanese constitution, there are several ways to
bypass the law. In recent years, Tokyo has
deployed forces abroad, relaxed its self-imposed
arms export ban and expanded the capabilities of
Japan's armed forces. [1]
While a complete
revision of the constitution is unlikely in the
near future, Japan's general trend towards
rearmament has worrisome implications. Competing
interests in the South China Sea could easily
escalate into military confrontation and reaction
from North Korea will be unpredictable as always.
This move away from the Yoshida Doctrine
has been explained as Tokyo's reaction to China's
growing political and military assertiveness in
the Asia-Pacific. However, threats to Japan have
always existed and it will be difficult to
quantify exactly the difference between the new
security threats emanating from China and North
Korea compared with those during the Cold War.
The biggest difference between the worlds
of Shigeru Yoshida and present Prime Minister
Yoshihiko Noda is the change in the regional
dynamic since the end of the Cold War. The key
variable in Japan's policy reorientation is not
just the rise of China but mainly the decline of
the United States.
The problem is that the
Yoshida Doctrine was not born out of idealism. It
was a calculated and pragmatic compromise between
competing political factions that had interpreted
the realities of post-war Japan in several
different ways. [2]
Left-leaning
politicians and economists wanted a demilitarized
state that pursued a neutral foreign policy;
right-leaning public figures wanted closer ties
with the United States and to suppress communism;
meanwhile, everyone wanted to rebuild the country.
The optimal compromise was reached to
constitutionally adopt an anti-war stance while
depending on the United States for security,
enabling Tokyo to expend its efforts on
reconstruction entirely.
Ever since
signing the American-Japanese Security Treaty in
1952, Tokyo has played a delicate balancing game.
The United States constantly pressured Japan to
take a more active role in the security of the
region. Various forces within the country also
wanted Japan to become a normal country again (aka
for the state to reclaim the right of
belligerency). At the same time, there were those
who saw entanglement in US foreign policy as
hurting Japan's economic interests abroad and some
die-hard constitutionalists even saw the
self-defense force as a breach of the law. (See East
Asian energy dilemma over Iran Asia Times
Online, January 24, 2012.)
As long as
Washington could provide security for the Japanese
archipelago, Tokyo had no reason to seek
rearmament. Japanese leaders did attempt to
militarize in order to adapt to the needs of the
US and maintain close ties. The result was Japan's
shift in the 1990s from a home island defense core
to a regional security focus.
Under
then-prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, Japan went
as far as assisting the US in Operation Enduring
Freedom in 2001 and dispatching forces to Iraq
(albeit as a humanitarian mission). However, all
of this was before the collapse of the global
financial markets in 2008, since when
circumstances are vastly changed.
The
status of the United States has rapidly shifted
from that of an indomitable superpower to
international sick man. Defense obligations to
South Korea provide one of many examples where
Tokyo can see immediate shortfalls in America's
capabilities. Under current contingencies against
a North Korean invasion, the US promises to
dispatch a force to the Korean Peninsula that
would be equivalent to the entire size of the US
army after budget cuts. [3] These are impossible
promises, and despite assurances from Washington
the bottom line is that the United States does not
have the economic stamina to support operations in
East Asia.
Meanwhile, in the economic
sector, increasing numbers of economists and
observers suggest that Japan is no longer
suffering from a recession. [4] Despite the burden
of reconstruction after the tsunami of March 2011
and as social welfare costs mount, Tokyo seems to
have a fairly manageable situation on its hands.
In addition, while economic growth may have
slowed, many point out that the relatively low
figures may simply be a reflection of how Japanese
society has matured demographically. [5]
Surveying the realities around the
Asia-Pacific, the basic needs that produced the
Yoshida Doctrine are either no longer applicable
or can no longer be satisfied via the status quo.
Prevailing economic conditions suggest that Japan
has a relatively stable economy and that Tokyo
could raise the defense budget if it needed to
defend the home islands against provocations. In
addition, threats to the Japanese economy, such as
volatile conditions in the Middle East and China's
monopoly over rare-earth metals, are not
difficulties that Washington can resolve on
Tokyo's behalf.
While current events will
not cause an abrupt end to Japan-US relations,
Tokyo will ultimately set out to produce its own
policies in the region. The assertive call on
Pyongyang's satellite launch was an indicator of
this imperative. If the current global conditions
hold out, one may very well see the return of
Japan's active military and diplomatic presence in
the world. However, the full ramifications of
Tokyo's return may not be evident until long after
the coming decades.
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