Cabinet panel seeks a more militaristic Japan

Japan Press Weekly

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Cabinet panel seeks a more militaristic Japan
Akahata editorial

The Cabinet panel on national security and defense policy submitted to Prime Minister Kan Naoto a report which will provide the foundation for a scheduled revision of the National Defense Program Guideline later this year.

The panel report encourages Japan to strengthen and expand its military in proactively creating a “peaceful nation,” and suggests that the government ease the “Three Principles of Weapons Exports” and the “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” which have put brakes on Japan’s military buildup. The suggestion seeking a militaristic Japan will pose a dangerous provocation, particularly to Japan’s neighbors.

Hostile to peaceful principles

The National Defense Program Guideline is the government’s policy on military buildup. The current Guideline set in December 2004 should have been revised late last year. However, the revision was postponed until the end of this year due to the political power change after the 2009 August general election.

It is noticeable that the report anticipates that the United States is expecting its allies to play a further role in favor of U.S. security and proposes that Japan possess the willingness and capability to maintain stability in the region. The 2004 guideline enables the government to send the SDF to Iraq by defining “international peace cooperation activities” as an SDF primary mission. The panel report suggests that the present government go even further.

The important point is that the panel report intends to remove constitutional restrictions on Japan’s military activities by calling for a revision of a “fundamental defense capability”.

The government itself has stated that if the SDF intercepts ballistic missiles on the way to the mainland U.S. during Japan-U.S. joint military operations, it will be considered as the exercise of collective self-defense and that the use of force by the SDF to protect U.S. warships would be in violation of the Constitution. The panel report, however, proposes that the government openly remove these restrictions and change its conventional interpretation of the Constitution.

The panel report also argues that the existing “Three Non-nuclear Principles” prohibiting Japan from possessing nuclear weapons and other countries from bringing such arms into Japan are unwise because these rules are one-sidedly tying U.S. hands. What the panel calls for is equivalent to letting the United States wage a nuclear strike on other countries from Japan. It is absolutely intolerable for Japan as an atomic-bombed nation to become a nuclear-attack forward base.

The panel report criticizes Japan’s “arms embargo” for impeding international cooperation and recommends that Japan be able to export weapons abroad. The recommendation has been obviously made in response to the demands of financial circles and the war industry.

Government attitude called into question

The panel report constitutes a danger to the general public while accepting everything that the United States and the business world are looking for. The government will start working on the process to revise the “National Defense Program Guideline” based on the panel report, and how the government responds to the report will be called into question.

The panel report represents the old-fashioned idea under which it tries to deal with everything with military force. The panel report only helps increase military tension in Asia and the rest of the world in opposition to the growing international trend to seek a peaceful, political, and diplomatic solution to any disputes and establish a “world without nuclear weapons”. The general public wants the government to reject what the panel report calls for and choose to not be a military superpower.

- Akahata, August 28, 2010