With the U.S. increasingly on board, the remaining constraints on Japanese remilitarization are internal political, legal and budgetary factors. This is illustrated by the Abe government’s quixotic quest to amend or reinterpret the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Japanese constitution. It’s also illustrated by Japan’s cautious approach to keeping vital sea lanes open in the Middle East.
Article 9 hasn’t kept Tokyo from building out its military capabilities or from blurring the legal lines on their use. Japanese anti-mining capabilities are considered elite, for example, making it an ideal partner in the effort to keep maritime traffic flowing around the Arabian Peninsula. In 2014, moreover, the government approved a reinterpretation of Article 9 to permit the military to exercise the right of collective self-defense – essentially allowing Japanese forces to come to the aid of allies under attack during operations deemed necessary for Japanese security. Two security laws implemented in 2016 formalized the reinterpretation and expanded the scope of the type of operations that the Japanese military can support. Since then, Abe’s government has been gradually lifting informal caps on military spending, activating the first Japanese marine unit since World War II, while pursuing weapons systems – such as the aforementioned carriers and long-range cruise missiles capable of striking ballistic missile launch sites in North Korea – that underscore the idea that the best defense is a good offense.
Still, the legal and political constraints embodied by Article 9 have certainly limited the military’s ability to contribute to maritime stability beyond Japanese waters or prepare for a future crisis on its doorstep. In a real crisis, the Japanese public would probably support whatever measures Tokyo deemed necessary to secure the country. But Japan can’t wait until a crisis erupts to shift course. Its ability to respond will depend on peacetime decisions made years in advance over issues such as spending, training and doctrine. And preventing a crisis from erupting in the first place means taking part in multinational stabilization coalitions like the one developing in the Middle East. Japan is willing to join, but the unsettled legal and political constraints on the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force have left it with tightly restrictive terms of engagement, forcing it to steer well clear of the areas where risks of conflict are highest (and where its contributions would be most valuable).
No country likes to be told what to do, and Abe’s government can ill-afford to be seen as flouting or changing Japanese law at the bidding of an outside power. But fact of the matter is that there remains strong opposition to remilitarization. Tokyo’s timeline for revising Article 9 keeps getting pushed back, despite Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party’s holding a supermajority in both branches of the Japanese legislature. Abe may therefore welcome the public push from the Pentagon to gun up, just as he likely welcomed Trump’s call this summer for Japan to take responsibility for securing oil shipments through the Persian Gulf. The more the Japanese public grows concerned about threats from China and North Korea, and the more it feels uncertain about U.S. willingness to protect it from those threats, the more likely it will be to back Abe’s revision push.
Whether or not Abe succeeds in revising the charter this year, Japan’s long-term trajectory is clear. The country has little choice but to take greater responsibility for its far-flung interests. And Japan has the technological and industrial base and national cohesion to pivot more quickly than most countries if and when the public consents to it. But given how long it will take, and how expensive it will be, for Japan to fulfill its inevitable geopolitical role, and given the scale and speed with which threats to Japanese interests are mounting, politically-driven decisions can have a disproportionately large impact. Hence the sense of urgency in Tokyo and Washington to press forward.
|
0 comments:
Publicar un comentario