Japan Press Weekly

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2013 July 24 - 30 [POLITICS]

Abe gov’t rushes toward military expansion because of ‘changes in security environment’

Akahata editorial (excerpt)

Japan’s Defense Ministry on July 26 published its first interim report of the National Defense Program Outline since the government led by Prime Minister Abe Shinzo, who is the president of the Liberal Democratic Party, was inaugurated in December last year. It clearly shows the administration’s aim for military expansion.

Since its inauguration, the Abe government has moved ahead on a review of the defense guideline compiled by the former administration led by the Democratic Party of Japan. The interim report openly puts forward a policy to strengthen the military alliance with the United States and to reinforce the Self-Defense Forces on the pretext that the regional security environment has changed, citing a string of provocative actions by China and North Korea. With insistence that “the environment has changed”, is it allowed for the government to consider attacking “enemy’s military bases” abroad and adding a marine assault force to the SDF, which even past LDP administrations had not been able to do?

The report is filled with various demands for military expansion: building a capability to attack enemy’s missile launchers; adding to the SDF new functions like the U.S. Marine Corps under the guise of defending remote islands; the introduction of drones to monitor foreign troops; and the virtual repeal of Japan’s three nonnuclear principles (not to make, not to possess, and not to allow the entry of nuclear weapons into the country). Past LDP administrations had stated that they would limit the armaments to the bare minimum required for self-defense. The report reveals the government’s dangerous intention to achieve their long-time ambitions for full remilitarization all at once on the pretext of “changes in the surrounding environment”.

If Japan expands its military capacity and solely depends on it to deal with conflicts with neighbors, it will lead to exacerbating tensions in the region as well as threatening world peace. What is needed now is not to turn Japan into a country that can wage war overseas, but to build a peaceful nation in line with the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.