New Japan SDF Legislation Breaks from History

In the wee hours from the morning yesterday, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)–Komeito coalition muscled a collection of security-related bills through the higher house of the Diet. The debts, now certain to become legislation, fundamentally re-draw the legal parameters of security cooperation where the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) may now participate.

The new laws will allow japan government to exercise a restricted form of the right to collective self-defence (CSD) and assist an ally during a army contingency, even if Japan is not directly under attack. Pm Shinzo Abe’s private advisory panel experienced argued that the potential to weaken trust in the US–Japan connections — and thereby its prevention capability — if Tokyo didn’t assist during a contingency should itself be a sufficient basis to exercise this right. The actual LDP bosses too had held out for a lenient reinterpretation.

Due to pressure from the LDP’s pacifist junior coalition partner, Komeito, the legislation allows Tokyo to exercise the right only if ‘an armed attack against a foreign country that is in a close relationship with Japan happens.  It also states … [which] poses a clear danger to [the Japanese people] …and there are no appropriate means available to repel the attack and ensure Japan’s survival’. The United States is for now envisaged as the only such collective self-defence partner.

The legislation also expands the range of the SDF’utes logistics support functions throughout a regional contingency or multinational mission not considered ‘incorporated with the use of force’. Abe’s advisors had called for the discontinuation of the concept altogether, while the LDP experienced sought to authorise most forms of logistics support to international troops even in combat areas. However, after more stress from Komeito, support activities may henceforth conduct in a military theatre only if it is ‘not the actual scene of actual fight activities’. The U.S. and Australia during regional contingencies and Tokyo’s multinational partners in ‘coalition of the willing’ peace enforcement missions expect to be the beneficiaries of such assistance.

Two key rationalisations underpin the security expenses: that Japan’s external security environment is rapidly deteriorating; and that US deterrent power in Asia is decreasing, with knock-on effects for US–Japan security arrangements. Hence, the imperative to reinterpret the SDF’s ‘self-defence’ and ‘use of force’ powers to enable smooth alliance cooperation and ‘preemptively reduce the potential for conflict by improving deterrence’.

Both rationalisations are contestable. The withering of Japan’utes security environment is a purpose of the insecurity generated through its own economic decline (instead of China’s rise) and its discomfiture in striking up a mutually beneficial political equation with Beijing. Meanwhile, the pre-eminence of US hard power in Asia seems assured. ‘Escaping the post-war regime’ and it is pacifist constraints, rather than deterrence, appears to provide a more likely motivation.

The laws received a groundswell of popular criticism, including by a host of non-partisan establishment voices ranging from ex-Supreme Court justices to Cabinet Legislation Bureau chiefs. Critics argue that the factors that trigger the physical exercise of the right to CSD are obscure, overly broad and excessively complex. What, for example, exactly is a ‘survival threatening situation’ why is an ‘imminent armed assault situation’ not also sufficient to workout the right to CSD? A key example given by the LDP of a ‘survival threatening situation’ — a blockade of the Strait associated with Hormuz — has also been criticised as misleading given that the Abe government itself projects oil to comprise just 3 per cent of the energy mix by 2030. Besides, had not Manchuria and Mongolia too, as sea lines of communications today, constituted indispensable lifelines during a darker current period in history? In addition, the integrated use of force beyond the ‘Far East’ theatre seems to overstep Article 6 of the US–Japan security treaty.

The security bills additionally take aim at two of 3 key tenets of Japanese pacifism: the dispatch and exercise of force overseas and the minimum exercise of force. The laws permits incursions into other countries’ property, sea and airspace with the purpose of using force by way of CSD-linked minesweeping operations and strikes on enemy army bases. And while current vices on the minimum use of pressure remain, the SDF’s strategies support assistance (which includes moving toxic gas weapons and supplying depleted uranium munitions) to partners in close proximity to the battlespace would successfully make it an accessory to the utilization of force that bears no correlation with minimum amounts necessary for ‘self-defence’.

Constitutional barring from working out the right to CSD is misplaced and is a cardinal criticism. It is true that Abe has adapted the actual interpretation of the constitution to suit the security bills. Post-war Japan offers always located its legal rights to self-defence and deterrence within the preamble and in Article 13, which states that people’s life, liberty and pursuit of happiness shall be the supreme consideration within legislation. Article 9.Two affords space to maintain a military capability. The This summer 2014 reinterpretation of the constitution and the protection bills operate, for the most part, inside the construction and constraints specified by subsequent Cabinet Legislation Agency interpretations.

Future Japanese governments could be wise to limit their physical exercise of the right to CSD to the Post 6 ‘Far East’ area of procedures, defined as the area north from the Philippine islands. Involvement in disputes neither clearly associated with Japan’s interests nor spelt out persuasively to the public, such as in the South China Ocean, would degrade, not enhance, deterrence. Future governments might also be prudent to limit their logistics support-related participation to peacekeeping or peace enforcement tasks that have clear UN authorisation.

Most of, future governments must reconstruct the bases of Japan’utes geo-political relationship with China. Tightening deterrence arrangements without a strategy of comprehensive diplomatic engagement that offers a principle of shared self-restraint with a rising potential enemy is a recipe for further low self-esteem. Japan’s ‘silver pacifism’ — with its aversion in order to military adventures, near and remote — will require that its frontrunners exercise their newly mandated security prerogatives with patience and discretion.

Abe’s new security laws doubles-down on the US alliance is actually republished with permission from Eastern Asia Forum