Japan


	May 16, 2002	atimes.com

Japan

Japan navy's salvo catches politicians off guard
By Axel Berkofsky

Just when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his government had made it through another round of explaining to the Pentagon why Japan could not and would not deploy state-of-the-art Aegis destroyers to the Indian Ocean as part of the country's contribution to the US-led military campaign against terrorism, the Japanese Navy stabbed its government in the back.

Nothing less than the deployment of Aegis warships in support of the US-led military operation in Afghanistan was on the agenda of a meeting in April between high-ranking Japanese naval officers and US Rear Admiral Robert Chaplin, commander of the US Naval Forces Japan, as the Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun reported last week.

Without the prime minister or any of his cabinet members being informed, the US-Japanese talks took place on April 10 on a US military base 100 kilometers from Tokyo and, unlike the Japanese government, the naval officers were seemingly eager to see their Aegis destroyers sent to the Indian Ocean sooner rather than later.

While commentators in Japan fear that the navy was dangerously undermining civilian control over the country's cooperation with the US, by putting Koizumi in the unpleasant position of last to know, the navy officers urged the US admiral to persuade his government to "strongly request" the deployment of Japanese Aegis vessels and P-3C anti-submarine patrol aircraft to the Indian Ocean.

Analysts suspect that the deployment of Japanese Aegis ships, which are equipped with interceptor missiles, radar and weaponry that closely complement US systems, might encourage the US military to ask for Japanese military support beyond refueling US and British vessels in the Indian Ocean closer to where military action takes place.

The Japanese Navy appears to be ready, and for some time has been wondering why the country spent so much money buying the sophisticated warships from the United States when the destroyers are mainly used for US-Japan military peacetime training and advertisement campaigns to recruit young Japanese for the armed forces.

The US government took the Japanese Navy's advice to put pressure on Tokyo's policy makers and, three weeks later, on April 29, during a meeting with visiting Japanese government officials in Washington, US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz informally requested the deployment of the Aegis ships and P-3C anti-submarine patrol aircraft to the Indian Ocean.

The information on the secret lobbying on the part of the Japanese Navy only made it to the press later when US government officials reportedly voiced "dissatisfaction" with what they called "one-sided reporting" on the US request to dispatch the Aegis destroyers. Translation: The US was not going to take the blame for asking the Japanese government what the Japanese Navy encouraged them to ask.

Only a few days later, on May 7, however, the Japanese news agency Kyodo reported that Pentagon officials had offered yet another version, this time denying any connection whatsoever between the US requests and the talks between Admiral Chaplin and Japanese Navy officials in April - leaving room for speculation that the truth might lie somewhere between the first and second US statements.

To avoid further "misunderstandings", as a Japanese government official put it, answers to the question of "who asked whom when to do what" are likely to be discussed behind closed doors, and Japan's policy makers will certainly try to avoid admitting in public that the navy was fiddling with their policies.

For now, the Japanese government has approved a six-month extension of Japan's logistical support for US troops in the Indian Ocean beyond the May 19 deadline for the first set of support measures agreed between the US and Japan last autumn.

Koizumi was careful to stress that deployment of Aegis destroyers was still not an option for a Japanese contribution to the US campaign, although the Self-Defense Forces might not want to take "no" for answer just yet.

"If the Self-Defense Forces use their Aegis destroyers, they cannot only justify the expense of having them, but it may open the door for future orders and budget increases," says Christopher Hood, director of the Japanese Studies Center at the Cardiff Business School in Wales, indicating that Japan's armed forces are somehow seizing the opportunity to make sure that the country's military will remain one of the best-equipped forces on the globe.

Then again, the Japanese military and the Defense Agency have always been keen on upgrading the country's military capabilities, shopping in the US, according to Dirk Nabers, researcher and expert on Japanese security politics at the Hamburg-based Institute for Asian Studies in Germany. "Japan's Defense Agency is constantly lobbying for new acquisitions, especially when sophisticated weaponry is on the agenda," he says, suspecting that despite the navy's growing self-confidence, there is still a difference between what the Defense Agency wants and what the government is willing to deliver.

What the Defense Agency wants is also an upgrade from "agency" to full-fledged "ministry", according to the Defense Agency's fiscal 2002 white paper to be issued in July, as the Japan Times reports.

The call to upgrade the status of the agency comes roughly two years after the new, flashy Defense Agency in central Tokyo was inaugurated, and many believed then that it would only be a matter of time until the biggest and most modern government building in the country's capital became a ministry.

Discussions to make a ministry out of the agency have been going on for decades and, unlike true government ministries, the Defense Agency is still an organization under the Cabinet Office headed by the prime minister, and it cannot submit bills independently to the cabinet for approval.

"It is important to establish a ministry as an administrative organization in charge of national defense, as the importance of defense is increasing in national politics. We, the Defense Agency, hope for the enactment of a law on establishing a Defense Ministry at an early stage," the white papers says, urging the government to put this request at the top of its political agenda.

Now that the government has decided to continue supporting the US military operations beyond May, and with the prospects of further unpleasant US requests to dispatch vessels beyond the Indian Ocean and toward the Persian Gulf, making a ministry out of the agency might indeed be necessary, thinks Hood.

"If Japan is to cooperate in international military operations, it is best that ministers can meet on an equal footing, although an agency trying to flex its muscles and demonstrate its importance is potentially an unstable factor," he points out.

Taking the navy's recent unwelcome enthusiasm to expand Japan's role into consideration, the Japanese government might be uninterested in further demonstrations of its soldiers' self-confidence and less impatient in seeing the Defense Agency turning into a full-fledged ministry any time soon.

The Defense Agency's white paper also presents, for the first time, plans to review Japan's 1995 basic defense-policy guidelines, which stipulate that Japan will possess a "necessary minimum" level of defense. While some commentators in Japan fear that this is clearly a request to upgrade the country's military capabilities beyond a level necessary for self-defense, Nabers is less alarmist, maintaining that the problem is likely to resolve itself in the long term.

"Officially, it is impossible to go beyond the necessary minimum to defend Japan because this would be unconstitutional. Nevertheless, the Self-Defense Forces have long held the military capabilities to operate in missions going far beyond the defense of Japanese territory and the constitution is likely to be revised in the coming years anyway," he says, indicating that the question of legality was never really the issue.

How far any upgrade of Japan's military capabilities goes will still very depend on the US strategy in East Asia, according to Hood, who thinks that Japan should get ready to do more for its own defense.

"The necessary minimum will vary and depend on how much US military support is around. If there is a belief that the US will move a larger proportion of its forces elsewhere, then it is logical to suggest that Japan will need to increase the size of its necessary minimum forces to bridge the gap. Ultimately, Japan should be looking to be able to provide all of its own defense," he says.

Japan's neighbors, however, suspecting a latent Japanese militarism, will disagree and US troops are unlikely to be withdrawn from Japan any time soon, as very recent US comments on the "strategic importance" of American bases on Japanese soil suggest. The Japanese government, for its part, appears to be too busy keeping the Pentagon and its own navy from taking over the country's defense policy to worry about defending Japan on its own. Koizumi might instead be beginning to wonder whether announcing a "new assertive" Japanese security policy a year ago was really such a good idea when his soldiers are ready to take him by his word.

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