Dangerous attempt to serve arms industry’s greed

Japan Press Weekly

Japan Press Service Co., Ltd. is the only news agency providing information of progressive, democratic movements in Japan

Dangerous attempt to serve arms industry’s greed
-Akahata editorial

Moves have increased in the government to include a “review” of the three principles banning arms exports in a new Defense Outline to come out by the year-end.

Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi in an Upper House Budget Committee meeting on October 14 said that the ministry is preparing a new proposal to review the Three Principles on Arms Export. Chief Cabinet Secretary Sengoku Yoshito also referred to the need for a study of the review. Thus, the moves to undermine the principles on the arms embargo have entered a serious stage.

Promise with US in breach of Diet resolution

Kitazawa revealed that during his talks with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on October 11, prior to his Diet reply, he declared his hope for new legislation on arms trade with the help of the report by the advisory panel to the prime minister on defense. This statement is grave because it contradicts the Diet resolve repeatedly made to support the principles on banning arms exports. A review of the three principles is not an agreed policy of the government. For the defense minister to call for U.S. official consent and use it as a lever to urge its legislation is untenable.

In the past, the U.S. government forced the Koizumi government to make exceptions to the three principles to further enable Japan-U.S. joint development/production of the missile defense system. Defense Minister Kitazawa’s statement is a more detailed commitment than that of the Koizumi government. No wonder U.S. Secretary of Defense Gates enthusiastically welcomed it.

The Three Principles on Arms Export, under which Japan prohibits any weapon to be exported has its origin in Prime Minister Sato Eisaku’s Diet statement in 1967 that export of weapons should not be allowed to “communist countries,” countries to which United Nations resolutions prohibit arms export, and countries involved in international disputes. In 1976, Prime Minister Miki Takeo confirmed the arms embargo to countries in these categories, and also expressed the government view that Japan should refrain from exporting arms to other countries as well. Both the Diet and the public have welcomed the decision as it is in compliance with the peace principles of the Constitution.

Defense Minister Kitazawa is enthusiastic about reviewing the three principles because he is a spokesperson for the interests of the financial circles and the arms industry. The Japan Business Federation (Nippon Keidanren) in its proposal toward a new defense program outline released in July called on the government to establish new principles regulating arms exports to replace the present three principles, using as a pretext the need for taking part in international joint R&D over fighter jets. Obviously, this is a call for more opportunities for the Japanese arms industry, a merchant of death, to join international R&D projects on weapons and military equipment.

Keidanren’s proposal states that the need is to study the possibility of re-exports from co-producing countries in the stage of joint production to follow the co-development stage. It is clear that it is possible for fighters and other weapons/equipment produced by Japan under international joint development projects to be exported to countries involved in international disputes through co-developers, with the possible result of killing or injuring people in other countries.

Support arms embargo as national policy

In the postwar years, Japan has never taken the lives of people in other countries with weapons produced by Japanese firms because Japan has observed the principles of the arms embargo embodied in the three principles. A high level foreign ministry official in 1981 assessed the three principles as a national policy based on pacifism.

The principles of arms embargo should be maintained in the future. It is absolutely unacceptable to review the arms embargo principles and turn Japan into a merchant of death.

-Akahata, October 18, 2010