Japan’s self-defence

Defence is considered an extremely sensitive and highly complex matter in Japan. Military men are not supposed to defend the nation as they wish through their military might or strategy. There is an external link in the shape of the US-Japan security treaty signed after Word War II in 1951 at San Francisco on the eve of the signing of the Japanese peace treaty. The national check and balance system, in the shape of the Diet, virtually controls and democratises Japan’s defence policy to make it more responsible to the nation’s sensitivities and global concerns.
This makes Japanese self-defence extremely cooperative at the national and international level. By returning the Ogasawara in 1968 and Okinawa islands in 1972 to Japan, United States reposed trust amongst the Japanese. This was also an accomplishment of the US-Japan security treaty. Therefore, treaty itself seems to be a defence of Japan as stipulated in Article 5 of the US-Japan security treaty.
Since the 1990s, Japanese defence policy has been in the process of change and transformation, owing much to the national debate and the US-Japan security arrangements in order to respond to global and regional security changes brought in the waters surrounding Japan. Ever since the end of World War II, Japan has loomed large on US security and defence policy in Asia. The county is considered to be the longest, stable, and most trusted ally of the United States in Asia.
It is through Japan that United States exerted its influence particularly in East Asia; otherwise United States would have been considered as an outside power in the region. Today the US enjoys “a much stronger position in Asia than at any other time,” as admitted by US Secretary of State, Dr Rice at a speech delivered at the Heritage Foundation in Washington on June 18. This would not have happened without US-Japan strategic partnership, which is a pillar of stability in East Asia.
The US-Japan strategic alliance is working beyond East Asia and trying to find solutions to conflicts in other parts of Asia such as Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, and Palestine as well as countless global issues. The scope of the alliance was enhanced in 2003. Moreover, common US-Japan strategic thinking and cooperation led many economic miracles to happen in East Asia with a number of countries assuming a high economic status, fighting economic backwardness, eradicating poverty, and assuring a better future for the new generation. Similarly, terrorism, WMDs (Weapons of Mass Destruction), situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, Korean Peninsula, and the Indo-Pakistan peace process are matters of grave concerns for the US-Japan alliance as explained in the Japanese defence policy report from time to time.
People who criticise Japan’s self defence on the ground that there is no “self-defence” but “defence” and every nation could claim that its “defence is self-defence.” Whether or not this is true, Japan’s policy of self-defence has prevented such a huge economic super power, only after the US, from military adventures, alliances, threats, and other disruptive moves in the past 55 years as the nation remained pacifist, calm, and peaceful unlike many of its neighbours.
Japan’s self-defence is cooperative in nature. It tends to minimise the conflict rather than to aggravate it. It has largely prevented the US from undertaking unilateral military actions in Asia. However, the new potential military build-ups in the region would disturb the power equilibrium in the region by creating apprehensions leading to global conflicts.
The biggest destabilising factor could be the Sino-Japanese rivalry as the Chinese held responsible Japan for their nation’s humiliation in the past several decades before the end of Word War II. This is a serious challenge for the US-Japan strategic alliance in the Asia-Pacific. However, the Sino-American and Sino-Japanese normalisation since the early 1970s has been creating better conditions for peace and stability in the region.
The recent visit of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defence Forces’ (MSDF) vessel, Sazanami, left from the Kure naval base in Hiroshima Prefecture, to help the Chinese victims of the May 12 Sichuan earthquake, is a landmark event as the Japanese military vessel anchored the Chinese naval port of Zhanjiang in the Guangdong Province for the first after the bitter rivalry came to an end between the two nations after Japan’s defeat in 1945. Naval vessels exchanges agreement was signed by the two defence ministers in August last.
This is an example of confidence building between the two nations. This also means that changes and transformation in Japanese defence policy in recent years, has lowered down the Chinese anguish to a large extent, leading them toward practicability in defence cooperation with each other. Moreover, another breakthrough occurred when both countries also announced on June 18 to jointly develop gas deposits beneath waters in the East China Sea that were counter claimed by both side. So much so that the Chinese President Hu Jintao would attend the outreach section of next month’s Group of Eight summit of wealthy nations to be held at Toyakoho in the northernmost Hokkaido Prefecture of Japan next month. Given this scenario, it is hoped that China’s rising military spending (by 18 percent from last year) would endorse Japanese concerns as “Japan does not regard China as a security threat,” as recently told by Shigeru Ishiba to international audience of defence officials and analysts in Singapore. In the coming days, normalisation of the situation in North Korea and Afghanistan through peaceful means would be considered a big accomplishment for the US-Japan alliance.