Japan’s new security bill - an appraisal

According to the realist theory of international relations, national security, national interest, national power and maintaining balance of power with rivals is far more sacrosanct and significant for a country than anything else in this highly anarchic world. In keeping with realism, Japan, a long pacifist state, has recently passed a controversial defence bill to fully maximise these very national interests.
Historically speaking, Japan abolished its feudal system in the second half of the 19th century while imitating western industrialised capitalism, militarism and imperialism. It defeated China in 1894 by annexing Formosa and the Ryukyu Islands, and completely absorbed Korea in 1910. Amazingly, Japan carried the day in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905, gained leasehold on Port Arthur and occupied southern Sakhaline. It supported Britain in the WWI. In the inter-war period, Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and attacked China proper in 1937. However, its grandiose dreams of militaristic imperialism ended with its crushing defeat in WWII.
After WWII, the triumphant Allied Powers laid one condition on Japanese surrender – that it would limit its military power to only national self defence. As a result of the catastrophic nuclear bombings by the US on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan had no choice but to give in to the demands of the victors. Japan signed the surrender instrument onboard Battleship USS Missouri in the presence of erstwhile foreign minister Shigemitsu of Japan and General Douglas MacArthur of the US in Tokyo Bay in September 1945.
Afterwards, the US wrote Japan’s constitution, Article 9 of which states that “aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes”.
Japan strictly followed these restrictions by refraining from mobilising its self-defence forces to unfolding regional and international conflicts since the end of World War Two. All that greatly helped Japan rebuild its devastated country, thereby benefitting its population economically. Interestingly, for the next 70 years, no Japanese was killed abroad waging another country’s war, nor did any Japanese soldier ever kill a man belonging to another country anywhere in the world. However, Japan was allowed to raise self-defence forces (SDF) in 1954, but the constitutional ban on their extra-territorial deployment remained intact.
Now, after many days of wrangling in the Japanese Diet and huge protests by naysayers, Japanese nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe-led theLiberal Democratic Party (LDP) has successfully passed a bill through the government-dominated Upper House of the Diet with 148 lawmakers voting in support and 90 against. It marks a significant departure from Japan’s pacifist posture in the post-World War II era. Evidently, the lower house would also pass it because the ruling LDP and its coalition partner Komeito enjoy a majority in both the lower and upper houses of the Japanese parliament.
According to the new security bill, Japan will be able to deploy its armed forces to wage wars overseas on three conditions – first, when a menacing situation arises in which Japan is attacked, or when a close ally is attacked, and the result threatens Japan’s survival and poses a clear danger to its people; second, when there is no other appropriate means available to repel the attack and ensure Japan’s survival and protect its people; and third, if military use of force is restricted to the necessary minimum.
In PM Abe’s perspective, this peace security bill is necessary to protect people’s lives, provide peace, inhibit wars and counter an increasingly belligerent China, an unstable North Korea and their tentacles in the region. Intriguingly, Japan’s all-weather friend, the US, warmly welcomed the bill. However, the Chinese leadership vehemently condemned it as an aggressive “Japanese gesture”.
This defence decision of Japan does not bode well for dispute-ridden East Asia and will fundamentally change the balance of power in the region. Chinese President Xi has vowed to make China a great maritime power and tasked its navy with defending the country’s sovereignty throughout the world.
The Japanese move is calculated to foster deterrence against increasing Chinese military muscle, the latest demonstration of which came this month in the form of gigantic military firepower in Beijing to commemorate the 70th anniversary of China’s triumph over Japan and end of World War II. Since China lost 15 million people because of Japanese aggression during the World War II, it fervently opposed the change.
Menacingly, it would tremendously embolden Japan to aggressively reply to Chinese assertiveness in the restive South China Sea where Japan has had contentious disputes over islands with China and Chinese military and naval build up in the same region. Moreover, any Chinese muscle-flexing, sabre-rattling and assertiveness in the region could well rapidly prompt similar Japanese response. Possibly, such a precarious situation would insidiously end up in confrontation, thus dragging the US into the conflict as well.
Furthermore, Japan would be able to provide all-out logistical support to South Korea if a belligerent North Korea invades it, though Abe unambiguously said that it would still be against the constitution to send Japanese troops to fight on Korean soil. It would also be legal for Japan to shoot down a North Korean missile headed for the US, though North Korea is thought to be several years from being able to hit mainland US. Besides, Japan will deploy its armed forces in hostage rescues; in January 2013, 10 Japanese hostages were killed at the Amenas gas plant in Algeria.
Moreover, Japanese troops will also be caught up in battles on behalf of the United States on distant shores such as a war in the Korean peninsula or blockade of sea lanes of communications in the South China Sea, which could seriously jeopardise Japan’s security and national interest. It also allows SDF forces to legally participate more actively in peacekeeping operations across the world under the banner of the United Nations.
Resultantly, such a situation will expedite the ongoing conventional arm race in the region. South Korea and the Philippines already have disputes with China’s Self Defence Identification Zone and Exclusive Economic Zone. Apparently, after Japan’s decision of armament – and imminent conflicts in the region – their security apprehensions would immensely increase, thus instigating them into purchasing more sophisticated and lethal arms from the US.
The only country that will expectedly reap rich economic and military dividends in the unfolding situation in the Far East is the US as is patently clear from it warmly welcoming the bill. The Pentagon intends to shift 60 percent of US Navy to the Pacific region by 2020, and Japan’s defence bill will greatly help US foreign policy and economic objectives in the region.
In a nutshell, America will kill two birds with one stone: it will join hands with Japan aimed at containing China’s economic and military rise in East Asia, as well as augmenting its arm sales to the security-phobic nations in the region.
According to Plato, only the dead have seen the end of war on this earth. So, Japan is going to prepare itself militarily for futuristic wars against China in the region.
The writer is an independentresearcher, blogger, columnist based in Karachi.
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