Japan's Cabinet approves new defence plan
In a shift away from its post-Second World War pacifism, Japan’s government overhauled its defence guidelines today, easing an arms exports ban and singling out North Korea and China as security threats.
The plan, approved in a morning Cabinet meeting, also called for Japan to participate in international peacekeeping missions and underscored Tokyo’s efforts to play a global security role that better matches its economic strength.
It also fits with Japan’s decade-long effort to increase security cooperation with the United States. The pro-US government yesterday approved a one-year extension of the military’s humanitarian mission in Iraq.
The government today eased its long-time ban on arms exports to allow it to develop a missile defence program with the United States. The new guidelines also cited the threats posed by North Korean missiles, China’s military build-up and terrorism.
“This is about ensuring security and dealing with new threats as the times change,” Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told reporters.
Acknowledging the budget pressures Japan will face as its population rapidly ages, however, the guidelines call for cutting the number of ground forces and tanks. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party yesterday approved a 3.7% cut in defence spending.
Pyongyang became one of Tokyo’s biggest security worries after it test-fired a long-range ballistic missile over Japan in 1998, prompting Tokyo to begin researching missile defence. Pyongyang also has an active nuclear weapons development program.
Japan has maintained an arms export ban since 1976. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said, however, that the government would make exceptions to pursue missile defence with Washington because of the contribution this would make to the Japan-US security alliance and Japan’s own national security.
Critics have raised concerns about the slow erosion to the pacifist society Japan has built since it adopted its current war-renouncing constitution after the Second World War.
The opposition Social Democratic Party, one of the smallest parties in Parliament, criticised the government for removing self-imposed controls on military development.
“This plan reorganises and strengthens the military around the pillars of modernisation and greater power,” the party said in a statement.
The changes have been watched uneasily by some of Japan’s Asian neighbours, who suffered under Tokyo’s expansionist policies in the first half of the last century. The guidelines sought to allay such fears, saying Japan’s military would not go on the offensive.
“Our country, under our constitution, will adhere exclusively to self-defence,” the report said. “Following our policy of not becoming a major military power that would pose a threat to other countries, we will secure civilian control.”
The guidelines also vowed to maintain the current policy of not possessing nuclear weapons, not making them and not allowing them into Japan, which was the only country to have been attacked with nuclear weapons, in 1945.
The guidelines underscore Japan’s willingness to participate in peacekeeping, but troops will still have to adhere to the constitutional ban on using force to resolve international disputes. In more dangerous areas, as in Iraq, they will likely be limited to humanitarian work while leaving policing to other countries.
Ken Jimbo, director of the Japan Forum on International Relations, said the plan signalled that Japan’s defence policy was adjusting to a post-Cold War world.
“It’s epoch-making that the guidelines now call for a flexible, multi-faceted military instead of the stiff military foundation that’s been in place until now,” said Ken Jimbo, director of the Japan Forum on International Relations.
The new defence outline, which covers the nine years after 2005, also singles out China as a security concern, pointing out that Beijing has expanded the range of its military activities at sea and has been modernising its naval and air force.
Hosoda played down the reference, however.
“It does not mean that we consider China a threat,” Hosoda said at a news conference.
Japan’s navy went on alert last month when a Chinese submarine was detected in the country’s waters between the southern island of Okinawa and Taiwan. Japan says that China apologised, but tensions remain high.
The new guidelines followed Tokyo’s extension Thursday of its largest foreign military operation since the Second World War. Japan currently has 550 ground troops in Iraq on a humanitarian mission to purify water and rebuild infrastructure. The mission follows the dispatch of the navy to provide logistical support to Allied forces fighting in Afghanistan launched in 2001.
