The Japanese Government is in the process of preparing a new Defence Plan, titled Outline for a Defence Plan, to replace the present one approved in December 2004. . As an input for deciding on the new Plan, an advisory committee has submitted a report on ‘Security and Defense Capabilities in a New Age’ to the Prime Minister on 27 August. It is astounding in many ways in view of the conditions in which we find ourselves at present. Japan’s present Plan.
Civilian Way: First of all, the report says that North Korea(DPRK) and China, both of them our immediate neighbours, have been strengthening their military might in recent years, and are posing possible threats to Japan. By all accounts, it is true that these countries are building their military muscle. DPRK’s nuclear power and China’s aircraft carriers now under construction are two of the outstanding examples.
The relevant point here, however, would be how we should cope with the above threat, granting that they are a threat, in a non-military manner. It is a sad characteristic, perhaps inevitable, of the media that they tend to give the impression that those neighbours are arming themselves unilaterally, forgetting that Japan is also being armed. We have, for example, been provided with the first-class main battle tanks for decades, the 74-type with a 105 mm gun, and then the 90-type with a 120 mm. They have been mainly deployed in the northern part of the country to fight the Soviet armoured divisions. One may well presume that after the disintegration of the threat from that quarter we would not need any more of the first-class tanks, expensive and too heavy for our roads. But behold, they have released the photo of the new 10-type tank, whose main armament is not yet unknown, just the other day.
Therefore, pointing to the threat and arming ourselves also is decidedly a vicious cycle in continuation of the folly in the past. There should be another way of coping with the threat. What else could it be other than bi-lateral disarmament, involving both our neighbours and ourselves, in other words mutual disarmament at least on the East-Asian scale? No doubt it would take all the wisdom on the side of us all. One might wish that the report had contained at least some such thinking, civilian and civilized, in its recommendations. It is too much military-centred.
Nightmare: Secondly, the report says that Japan’s right for collective self-defense should be made exercisable. This would call for an explanation. Japan, by Article 9 of her Constitution, has renounced war, and has renounced having ‘land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential’ and denies the right of belligerency. In spite of all this, we have developed powerful Self-Defense Forces(SDF) in the last nearly six decades. It is usually taken for granted that Japan has got a right for individual self-defense, and according to the Governments sources, for collective self-defense also. Can Japan then exercise her right for collective self-defense? Even the past Governments, most of them conservative, have been negative on this score. They feel restrained that much by the Article 9. The media also support this and try to give the idea that the Constitution stops short of allowing the exercise of this right.
What the report says is that the Government now should go a step further and make this right exercisable. How can it be possible in view of the fact that the past Governments have at least paid a lip-service respect to the Article 9, and have been of the opinion that the exercise of this right will amount to its violation. But the report very light-heartedly crosses this bar by simply saying that it is not important as a Constitutional or a legal matter but a matter of political will. Hardly has the Constitution, popularly known as the Peace Constitution, been side-tracked so non-chalantly.
Suppose the recommendation is accepted, what would happen? It will be recalled that one US official, whether civilian or in uniform, after another has been meeting their Japanese counterparts, both in Washington and Tokyo, and has been pressing that Japan should forget about the argument that right for collective self-defense is not allowed to be used by the Constitution. Some of them have gone so far as to say that if necessary the Constitution should be amended to make it possible for the SDF to go into action with allied forces. It often amounts to blatant intervention. The US is the only country that Japan officially calls an ally. We have been under the Japan-US Security Pact for nearly six decades. But it is since 1981 that we have called the US an ally. Clearly the military partnership has been strengthened. It is no open secret any more that the elements of the SDF have been together with the US forces in joint military exercises. Therefore it is only with the US forces that the exercise of the above right may be brought into a question, and it is precisely this that the committee has got in mind.
So the change of policy on the part of the Japanese Government on this point would greatly please the US who is lamenting the paucity of fighting forces available at several points on the globe. It would also put Japan on the collision course with some of the countries emerging at different corners of the world. Japan would not be able to say ‘No’ to a US request for troops as India did on the occasion of the Iraq War. The prospect of fighting the fellow-Asians again after an interval of six and a half decades would be nothing but a nightmare for by far the majority of the people.
Nuclear Deterrence?: Thirdly, the report says that the US nuclear deterrence is necessary for the Asia-Pacific. It also says that Japan’s “Three Non-Nuclear Principles” of its non-possession, its non-storing and not letting the third party bring it into Japan is one-sidedly binding the hands of the US to the detriment of its nuclear deterrence capability. It has recently come into the open that there have been some secret treaties between Japan and the US concerning the introduction of the US nuclear weapons into Japan. The report in fact is demanding that the US be allowed the same free hand as under the secret treaties. And this in spite of the popular demand, joined by the Mayors of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that the above Three Principles should be enacted into a law. One wonders whether he is not really reading a report from some US Department.
On the recent Hiroshima Day, 6 August 2010, the day of the memorial of the dead by the atomic bomb dropped on that city, 1945, Mr.Kan Naoto, Prime Minister of Japan, spoke of his and Japan’s moral responsibility to lead a movement for the abolition of the nuclear weapons. But within an hour or so, at a press conference held also at Hiroshima, he said that the nuclear deterrence is still needed for peace. If you believe in the nuclear deterrence, by logic, you are also justifying the past use of the bombs. Among those survivors at Hiroshima who had been exposed to the radioactivity, 5,501 had died in the preceding one year, bringing the total to almost 2.7 lakhs. The corresponding figures for Nagasaki, which had its latest Nagasaki Day on 9 August 2010, were 3,114 and a little more than 1.5 lakh, respectively. Thus more than four lakhs have died till today because of the two bombs and more are dying even now. If they did not die for the sake of the world without nuclear weapons, without fear, without hunger and without poverty, what did they die for?
The report says that to rely upon the nuclear deterrence is not incompatible with the abolition of nuclear weapons. But it amounts to postponing the abolition almost indefinitely. The Japanese Government is not known for having asked the US to be in a hurry with nuclear disarmament. Rather, they have put a request to the US authorities, in view of President Obama’s non-nuclear policy, not to reduce the strength of its nuclear umbrella over Japan.
One new factor on the Hiroshima Day commemoration this year was the attendance by the UN Secretary-General and the US Ambassador to Japan, both for the first time. Unlike the Secretary-General, the Ambassador was tight-lipped, hardly showed any smile, and was observed to be taking his seat in a train back to Tokyo almost as soon as the ceremony was over. It is easy to guess that he was in a difficult position. He was close to the President, but the majority of the Americans would still say today that the bombs were necessary to save the many lives which might have been lost if the war had been prolonged.
In my view they are ill-informed. But I will refer the interested reader to my book Japan(National Book Trust, India, 2006, pp.187-8)for further discussion. Here let me take up the role of India in Japan’s nuclear problem. Ever since DPRK tested its nuclear devices in 2009, there is a growing anxiety in Japan as to whether we should also have nuclear weapons as deterrence. Some refer to the case of India and Pakistan, and wrongly claim that after having nuclear bombs they are living in peace. Several Indian and Pakistani residents in Japan are claiming the same. It is time that all the nuclear powers as well as countries like Japan who are under other powers’ nuclear umbrella should sit up and think what would be the way to nuclear disarmament.
NAM or Alliances: Fourthly, the report says that the US will raise the level of her expectation on her allies in security matters. It appears that the report is willing to go a long way to meet such expectations. It says that the Japan-US Security Pact is necessary for Asia-Pacific and the whole world, and we must be ready to bear an appropriate burden for the stationing of the US forces in Japan. A large part of the US forces in Japan are usually operating either in Asia-Pacific or some other parts of the world. In this sense Japan unwittingly is already a part of the US war machine. As for the financial burden the reader will be surprised that even outside the formal obligations we are normally paying the cost of the US forces up to about $4 billion a year.
Just the other day, an influential US Senator was interviewed by the BBC and, if I was not mistaken, while discussing the current economic situation in the US, he said the US is ‘subsidizing’ some allies militarily, mentioning Japan at the top. If I am not mistaken-I repeat this because I was so surprised-this is a remarkable example of being ill-informed. But usually their officials, particularly those in uniform, talk of the stationing of the US troops, warships and aircraft in Japan involving much less cost than otherwise.
The report also says that it will be desirable for the US forces and our SDF to reinforce their complementary character. The SDF has already been playing a role auxiliary to the US forces for training and other purposes, if not in actual warfare. The above recommendation would lead one to suspect that, together with the right of collective self-defense becoming exercisable, Japan is more likely to be dragged in a war than before.
One thing this writer would like the member nations of the Non-Aligned Movement(NAM) to think in this connection is whether a military alliance like the Japan-US Security Pact, or NATO, is really necessary in terms of peace and prosperity in our time. Both the Japan-US Pact and NATO are undoubtedly the products of the Cold War, as well as the Warsaw Pact. The NAM was a powerful voice against such alliances. After the end of the Cold War, however, the NAM has been silent on the continued existence of the alliances. The NAM is not true to its name in this sense. We will not be entirely free from the Cold War mentality unless and until we are free from the military alliances.
For a Non-Militarized Economy: Fifthly, the report says that the present prohibition of the export of weapons that Japan has imposed on herself should be reconsidered. It is not sure whether this recommendation has been made under the US pressure, but it is certainly made under the pressure of our own manufacturers(the chairperson of the committee himself is the CEO of a private company). Many Japanese, this writer included, are proud of the fact that nobody has seen any weapon in any remote corner of the world that was exported from Japan in the last sixty-five years. But now they want to change this.
Japan has been in a prolonged economic stagnation. The manufacturers are not able to sell their products at the home market. They have been either exporting more or investing abroad more. They want to apply the same policy to the weapons industry. Like in the US, big industrial houses occupy a large share in the industry. Can we find any measure for preventing this from happening? Yes, we can.
Apart from the effect of the international economic environment, the current economic crisis in Japan is largely our own creation. During the past two decades the working population has been deprived of their rights, the employment status of many of them has become uncertain, their wages have been cut down, and they are still threatened with the possibility of more crisis coming. The car manufacturers are not able to sell as many cars in the domestic market. But the remedy should also lie at home rather than abroad. We can’t keep exporting, or investing abroad, indefinitely. On the other hand if you try to expand the domestic market by employing more and paying higher wages you will sell more cars etc. at home. That is also the way, the only way, to keep our economy from getting militarized. It is the responsibility of the big business par excellence, but it is where an enlightened political will is badly needed.
All in all, the security problem of Japan is something of a Gordian Knot. A shrewd observer of the Japanese scene, however, must have noticed one thing in the past year or two. It is the feeling that we have seen the American forces on our land for too long, for sixty-five years continuously, and we have fed up with them. There are many reasons for this some of which have been looked into in the above. The feeling is most intense in Okinawa, but it has spread more or less to the whole country. It is a healthy feeling, because it reflects a contradiction between a proud, mature, developed and independent-minded people and what nearly amounts to the imposition of a foreign military presence. I call it imposition, as we have never had an opportunity of discussing in the immediate World War ?U and the Cold War periods whether foreign troops are really necessary for our safety.
Let me conclude by quoting Mahatma Gandhi. Anxious to see that the British troops are withdrawn from an independent India, he had the following to say in 1946. “A nation that desires alien troops for its safety, internal or external, or has them imposed upon it, can never be described as independent in any sense of the term”(Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, vol.84).
(The writer is a former Professor, Bunkyo University, Japan, and Writer-in-Residence, Mahatma Gandhi International Hindi University, Wardha, India)
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