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Japan Moves to Permit Greater Use of Its Military Japan Redefines Antiwar Stance For Its Military
(about 5 hours later)
TOKYO — In a dramatic change that could position Japan’s military to play a more active role in Asia, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a reinterpretation of the country’s pacifist Constitution to allow Japanese armed forces to aid friendly nations under attack. TOKYO — Japan’s prime minister announced a reinterpretation of the country’s pacifist constitution Tuesday, freeing its military for the first time in over 60 years to play a more assertive role in the increasingly tense region.
The decision by Mr. Abe’s cabinet changes the long-held reading of the Constitution that had strictly limited Japan’s forces to acting in the country’s defense. The new interpretation will allow Japan to use its large and technologically advanced military in ways that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago, such as coming to the aid of an American ship under fire or shooting down a ballistic missile aimed at the United States. The decision will permit Japan to use its large and technologically advanced armed forces in ways that would have been unthinkable even a decade ago when they were mainly limited to defending the country. The revision will allow the military to come to the aid of friendly countries under attack, including the United States.
The announcement is likely to feed already-high tensions in Asia, where China is mounting an increasingly serious challenge to the regional dominance of the United States and its allies, including Japan, and making assertive claims to vast areas of two strategically important seas. Japan’s stance is part of a rapidly shifting balance of power in Asia, where China and its growing military are mounting a serious challenge to the regional dominance of the United States and its allies, including Japan, and making assertive claims to vast areas of two strategically important seas. The hawkish Mr. Abe’s response is certain to anger the Chinese — who have never forgiven Japan for its brutal occupation during World War II — and could set Asia’s two biggest powers even more on edge.
Although the region is not yet in an outright arms race, Richard J. Samuels, director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Japan’s move showed that it and other countries were having to think more seriously about their own security than ever before. “The growing pressure from China has changed the political debate within Japan,” said Kazuhisa Kawakami, a political expert at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo.
“This is a recognition among these nations that U.S. capabilities are not what they were,” Dr. Samuels said. “They are looking for a way to keep the U.S. in the neighborhood while also reaching out to each other in new ways.” The Abe government’s decision, which appears likely to go into effect this autumn, was announced as China’s leader was set to arrive in Seoul for what many analysts view as an attempt to begin to pry away South Korea from its traditional ally, the United States.
The hawkish Mr. Abe had sought even broader leeway for his nation’s military, but he was forced to compromise amid resistance from both his governing Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, a small Buddhist party. In a sign of how divisive the change could be among voters, some 10,000 demonstrators gathered in front of the prime minister’s residence the past two nights to protest noisily against it. The new policy is the culmination of a quarter-century of debate within Japan over whether pacifism was the best way to assure the world that it would never again fall into the mind-set that led it to conquer much of Asia and pursue a disastrous war, or whether, decades after Japan’s defeat, that thinking had made the country vulnerable to new threats.
Still, most Japanese seemed to at least tentatively accept the reinterpretation — a sign, analysts said, of the growing anxiety here over China’s rising military might and increasingly forceful claims to disputed islands now controlled by Japan. They said these fears of China had made the public more willing to accept the more assertive security stance espoused by Mr. Abe, who has long called for Japan to shed its postwar passivity and become a “normal” nation. The antiwar Constitution remains enough of a touchstone for many in Japan that the reinterpretation has sparked rare street protests, and even the self-immolation of a lone protester in Tokyo this week. But at least so far, the pushback against the change, dubbed “collective self-defense,” seems fairly limited after years of headlines about Chinese military planes and ships challenging Japan’s near disputed islands.
“The growing pressure from China has changed the political debate within Japan,” said Kazuhisa Kawakami, a political expert at Meiji Gakuin University in Tokyo. “For the first time, Japanese are finding that they have to start thinking realistically about defending their own country.” While Japan’s military, known as the self-defense forces, would still face severe restrictions on what it can do, it will be allowed for the first time to take such actions as come to the aid of an American ship under attack, or shoot down a North Korean missile heading toward the United States.
The new policy cannot go into effect until at least this autumn, because Parliament must still clear legal barriers to broader military action by revising more than a dozen laws, experts and lawmakers said. However, with Mr. Abe’s governing coalition enjoying a comfortable majority in both houses, the change seems all but certain to become reality.  The Obama administration said on Tuesday that it welcomed Japan’s actions, saying it would aid the country’s armed forces to "do more within the framework of our alliance,” it also poses challenges for the President. His administration has struggled to try to patch up differences between Japan and South Korea, which is also bitter over Japan’s colonial history, and managing the tensions with China may now prove more difficult than ever before.
Still, even under the new policy, the Japanese military, called the Self-Defense Forces, will face strict limits that will allow it to act only when there is a “clear danger” to Japan or its people, and to use only “the minimum level of force necessary,” according to the text of the cabinet decision. Japanese leaders for years have been edging their country away from its antiwar stand. They agreed to join Western efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan by transporting cargo and refueling other navies’ ships, purchased weapons that blurred the lines between defensive and offensive, and under Mr. Abe, doled out increasing military-related aid to neighbors who share Japan’s anxiety over China.
In a speech broadcast live on national television, Mr. Abe sought to allay opponents’ concerns by stating that the new policy would not lead Japan down a slippery slope by dragging it into distant, American-led wars. But he also said it would help Japan forge closer ties with the United States, which has 50,000 military personnel stationed in the country under a Cold War-era security treaty that obligates it to come to Japan’s defense. But the latest move differs from many of those actions in that it fundamentally changes the reading of the postwar Constitution and seems to take Japan farther than ever from the constitution’s renunciation of force as a way of settling disputes.
“This is not going to change Japan into a country that wages wars,” Mr. Abe said. “The Self-Defense Forces will absolutely not go into combat in wars like the gulf war and Iraq.” Mr. Abe, a longtime influential conservative, has tried in the past to win approval for a wholesale rewriting of the constitution, part of his campaign to make Japan what he calls a more “normal” country that no longer hides its power out of shame for wartime transgressions. Lack of public support for those attempts helped cost him his job the last time he was prime minister, seven years ago.
Rather, he said, the change was necessary for Japan to act more like a full-fledged ally of the United States, which some say it must do as it seeks a clearer show of American support in its territorial dispute with China. Since then, the region has been transformed not only by China’s rise, but Japan’s own fall from economic superpower status and a deterioration of American dominance that is leading several countries in the region to try to beef up their own military capabilities.
“A strengthened Japan-United States alliance is a force of deterrence that contributes to the peace of Japan and this region,” Mr. Abe said. He also said the change would allow Japan to participate more fully in United Nations peacekeeping operations, such as by allowing Japanese troops to come to the aid of peacekeepers under attack. Although Asia is not yet in an outright arms race, Richard J. Samuels, director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said Japan’s move showed that it and other countries were having to think more seriously about their own security than ever before.
American officials have supported the new policy, saying they welcome Japan’s shouldering more of the security burden in the Asia-Pacific region at a time when the United States faces new problems in the Middle East and budget cuts at home. “This is a recognition among these nations that U.S. capabilities are not what they were,” he said. “They are looking for a way to keep the U.S. in the neighborhood while also reaching out to each other in new ways.”
However, the change has drawn mixed reactions in Asia. While the president of the Philippines said in Tokyo last week that he supported Japan’s doing more to help offset China’s increasingly assertive claims in the region, China and South Korea have said a rearmed Japan raises bitter memories of Japan’s brutal early-20th-century march through Asia.  In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Japan experimented for the first time in joining United Nations peacekeeping operations; even that seemingly innocuous use of the military triggered major protests. American officials also spent years in secret talks about what kind of facilities in Japan would be available to them in case they needed a staging area in any conflict with North Korea; again, Japanese politicians and bureaucrats were leery of seeming to be too helpful, even though their own territory was at risk. 
A commentary by China’s state-run Xinhua news service warned that Mr. Abe was “dallying with the specter of war” by trying to remilitarize Japan.     But more nationalistic politicians, including Mr. Abe, began the debate about ensuring Japan was not so beholden to Washington for its defense. And books like "The Japan that Can Say No,” co-authored by the founder of Sony Corporation, Akio Morita, and the one-time governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, made the case that Japan needed a military policy that matched its role as the No. 2 economy in world.
While Mr. Abe focused his comments on closer ties with the United States, Japan’s postwar protector, analysts said the new policy could also make it easier for Japan to seek new military alliances with other nations, including the Philippines and Vietnam, which have similar territorial disputes with China.     Today, though, it is No. 3, having been displaced by China. And in the end it is a sense of vulnerability, analysts say, rather than any notion that Japan will be on the rise again soon, that has driven the change.
Analysts also said that the announcement on Tuesday capped a series of security-related changes by the Abe government that had already gone a long way in freeing Japan to play a larger military role in the region. These changes included lifting a self-imposed ban on selling weapons abroad, starting Japan’s first military aid to foreign countries since the end of World War II, and improving its ability to respond to a security crisis by creating a National Security Council, modeled on the American equivalent. Mr. Abe had sought even broader leeway this year for his nation’s military, but he was forced to compromise amid resistance from both his governing Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner, a small Buddhist party that is vocally pacifist. Under the revision, Japan’s self-defense forces can act only when its leaders feel an attack on a friendly nation, or that country’s armed forces, or would pose a “clear danger” to Japan.
“With not just collective self-defense but everything else that Abe has done, Japan is experiencing a security renaissance,” said Andrew L. Oros, director of international studies at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. “What is remarkable is not that things are changing, but that they are changing with so little fanfare. Japan is finally getting past old taboos to face new realities.” Parliament must still clear legal barriers to the constitutional reinterpretation by revising more than a dozen laws, experts and lawmakers said. However, with Mr. Abe’s governing coalition enjoying a comfortable majority in both houses, the change seems all but certain to become reality. In a speech broadcast live on national television, Mr. Abe sought to allay opponents’ concerns by stating that the new policy would not lead Japan down a slippery slope by dragging it into distant, American-led wars. But he also said it would help Japan forge closer ties with the United States, which has 50,000 military personnel stationed in the country.
“This is not going to change Japan into a country that wages wars,” Mr. Abe said. Rather, he said, the change was necessary for Japan to act more like a full-fledged ally of the United States, which some say it must do as it seeks a clearer show of American support in its territorial dispute with China over the contested islands.
“A strengthened Japan-United States alliance is a force of deterrence that contributes to the peace of Japan and this region,” Mr. Abe said.
But while the president of the Philippines said in Tokyo last week that he supported Japan’s doing more to help offset China’s increasingly assertive claims in the region, China and South Korea argued in the run-up to the announcement that a rearmed Japan raises bitter memories. A commentary by China’s state-run Xinhua news service warned that Mr. Abe was “dallying with the specter of war” by trying to remilitarize Japan.
While Mr. Abe focused his comments on closer ties with the United States, Japan’s postwar protector, analysts said the new policy could also make it easier for Japan to seek new military alliances with the Philippines and other nations that have similar territorial disputes with China.
“Japan is experiencing a security renaissance,” said Andrew L. Oros, director of international studies at Washington College in Chestertown, Md. “What is remarkable is not that things are changing, but that they are changing with so little fanfare.”