Japan by Keiko Hirata

Author:Keiko Hirata
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780300186079
Publisher: Yale University Press

The 2012 report again urges Japan to expand the scope of security responsibilities to include defense of the United States.

Many Japanese leaders, including Prime Minister Abe, favor a lifting of the ban. During Abe’s first term as prime minister, an official government panel argued that Japan should exercise the right to collective self-defense in four specific cases: 1) to destroy a ballistic missile flying over Japan – for example, from North Korea to the United States; 2) to defend American military ships engaged in joint operations with Japan’s maritime self-defense forces (SDF) on the high seas; 3) to defend allies in UN peacekeeping operations; and 4) to provide logistical support for UN troops using force.45 These acts are currently prohibited under the strict interpretation of Article 9. But any change toward a more flexible military could heighten tensions with China and South Korea, which worry about Japan’s militarization. Given lingering concerns over its imperial past, Japan has yet to convince the skeptics that exercising the right to collective self-defense would help the country contribute more proactively to international stability.

Japan has made important, though limited, changes to its security policy since the 1990s. Perhaps the most significant has allowed the Japanese government to send the SDF abroad to support US troops in combat operations. Assisted by Foreign Ministry officials, the Japanese government has taken a series of steps to establish precedents for this power. First, in 1995, the government fought to expand the 1976 National Defense Program Outline (NDPO) to allow the SDF to support US troops in ‘situations in the surrounding areas’ of Japan. Prior to the NDPO, the Japanese government had only deployed the SDF overseas for mine-sweeping operations (from 1991) and UN peacekeeping operations (starting in 1992). The 1996 US–Japan Joint Declaration on Security, signed by Bill Clinton and Japanese Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro, incorporated the ‘surrounding areas’ concept. In 1999, the government adopted new US–Japan Defense Guidelines, which stipulate Japan’s role in providing rear-area support to US forces in operations in ‘surrounding areas.’46

When the ‘War on Terror’ began after the September 11th, 2001 attacks on the US, the government extended the notion of rear-area logistical support to locations beyond the ‘surrounding areas’ of Japan. The 2001 passage of the Anti-Terrorism Special Measures Law allowed the SDF to deploy to the Indian Ocean to provide logistical support to US-led operations in Afghanistan. Japan then adopted the Iraq Special Measures Law in 2003 to deploy the SDF to Iraq for reconstruction work. The government made these changes despite public opposition. For example, only 19 percent of respondents in a 2003 public opinion poll approved of the SDF dispatch to Iraq, while 38 percent disapproved.47 With these laws as precedents, the SDF can take part in most non-combatant overseas activities under one law or another.48

To the United States, these are positive changes, but are still a long way from the kind of flexibility that military strategists would like to see. Japan’s security policy remains severely circumscribed by Article 9 of the constitution.

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