By BA Hamzah
The Sun Daily
Malaysia
The Sun Daily
Malaysia
PRIME Minister Shinzo Abe will be sending strong signals of defiance to the international community if he were to scrap Article 9 of Japan’s 1947 Constitution.
He is not the first Japanese prime minister wanting to revise the constitution, which prohibits Japan from becoming a military power. Others before him have entertained the idea considered taboo in the past.
However, it is a myth to think that Japan has not rearmed after WWII. Many are under the impression that Japan has been constrained by Article 9.
Despite promising to renounce war as a sovereign right and not to maintain any form of land, sea and air forces – Japan has, since 1954, quietly built a potent military force – known innocuously as the Japanese Self Defence Forces (JSDF).
Japanese politicians and bureaucrats have circumvented the constitutional restriction to bear arms. This makes Abe-san’s policy statement passé in many respects.
However, the timing of Abe-san’s statement is important. It comes at a time when Tokyo is broiling in territorial disputes with China, South Korea and Russia. It also comes on the heels of Pyongyang’s successful launching of a long-range rocket in December 2012, ostensibly for satellite purposes.
Tokyo is evidently alarmed by many regional events including its own economic malaise as well as the financial cliff and the stubborn recession in the US.
Many pundits view the Pentagon’s decision to cut military spending by a few billion dollars over the next decade, amid changes in the geo-political landscape in East Asia, as undermining its power projection capability.
Against the backdrop of the changing complex strategic relationship between Washington-Moscow-Beijing-Seoul-Pyongyang and Tokyo, the perception of a US in a state of strategic decline can change the security outlook in the region.
Besides this, Japan is worried by developments in the Korean peninsula. The president-elect of South Korea has indicated that she would engage the Pyongyang regime; she even promised to give them food aid without any pre-condition.
Moreover, in recent years, Seoul and Beijing – which have separately challenged Tokyo’s territorial claims in the East China Sea, have deepened their economic ties. Among others, this has caused Tokyo to reassess its military posture.
Russia and China have been aligning ever more closely on a number of international issues affecting the region. For example, both powers are suspicious of Obama’s military policy to deploy more troops to the Asia-Pacific region.
Under the rubric of the Air Sea Battle Strategy, America plans to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems to blunt China’s military capabilities that “can slow, limit or deny US forces from conducting threatening military operations”. Washington terms these capabilities as Anti-Access/Area-Denial (A2/AD).
It is perfectly understandable for Tokyo to feel insecure; it has a besieged mentality, especially in the East China Sea and the Sea of Okhotsk. While Japan administers Diayou; South Korea and Russia have respectively occupied the Dokdo and the Kuriles.
The surprise visit by South Korea’s outgoing president, Lee Myung-bak, to Dokdo/Takeshima in August 2012 and China’s decision to fly over the Diaoyu/Senkaku in December 2012 have exposed Tokyo’s vulnerability.
When faced with a similar strategic dilemma in the 1930s, Japan re-armed itself.
Japan abandoned the Washington Treaty (1921-1922) and the London Naval Treaties of 1930 and 1936 which imposed a limit on the number of new hulls and tonnage for its growing Imperial Navy in favour of rearmament. Subsequently, it waged a long war, which it lost.
Humiliated, upon its surrender in 1945, Japan accepted the terms of the San Francisco Treaty in 1951, which officially ended WWII. Despite its formal surrender, Japan has refused to apologise officially for its brutal past.
Like the 1930s, Japan may come under heavy domestic pressures to revamp the 1947 Constitution and renegotiate the 1951 Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security with the US. Japan should be mindful of history if it chooses to do that.
Let me return to the JSDF, which is a full-fledged modern conventional military outfit. Despite its low-sounding name, the JSDF is a leader in robotics-warfare technology and laser-beam technology. Its cyber space offensive capabilities are impressive too.
Many scholars believe Japanese scientists can develop nuclear weapons within months. Before it surrendered in 1945, Japan had a nascent research programme in nuclear weapons.
Although America bombed the research reactor facility – Nagasaki and Hiroshima in August 1945, according to some writers, it did not obliterate the institutional memory and knowledge of the nuclear programme.
On the contrary, the scientific knowledge has been instrumental in the early development of its efficient nuclear energy programme.
Japan’s nuclear energy infrastructure provides a strong scientific base for it to develop nuclear weapons, if it chooses to.
Despite its espousal of a “three-principle nuclear policy” since 1964, some say Japan is a “screw driver’s turn” away from developing nuclear weapons. Missing from the equation is, of course, the political will, which changes with time.
As a footnote, before the Fukushima nuclear plant reactor meltdown in March 2011, Japan had 50 nuclear power reactors, producing more than 30% of its electricity.
The JSDF has 250,000 soldiers in active service plus 60,000 reservists. With more than 50,000 American troops in Japan, the number of armed military personnel in Japan is relatively large.
The military budget for the JSDF (and the US forces) in Japan was close to US$60 billion in 2011; about one per cent of its GDP. Japan spends more than India or Germany on defence; but US$3 billion less than the military budget in the UK or France in 2011.
By comparison, the military budget for 10 Asean countries in 2011 was only US$23 billion. The JSDF is well-equipped and well-led too.
The Maritime Self-Defence Forces of Japan boasts more frigates, submarines and mine warfare craft than the Royal Navy or the French Navy. Japan has more ships in its merchant marine fleet and a more advanced ship building industry than the UK or France.
Japan has a slight edge over the UK and France in terms of sea-power capability. Sea power is defined as the capacity of a state to optimise the use of maritime assets in support of its national interests.
Japan may lack the naval capability to project power as its counterparts in the UK or France, but its sea power assets are impressive.
These assets include its merchant marine, the ship building industry, marine science education, oceanography, maritime technology, and the maritime enforcement agencies like the Japan Coast Guard. Like all other states, Japan needs these assets to develop a coherent national ocean-cum-sea power policy.
Although the JSDF land forces are small by comparison, they are well armed and reportedly, well-trained. Its land forces have more towed artillery pieces than the land forces in the UK or France.
Similarly, its air force boasts more aircraft than those in the inventory of the French Air Force or the Royal Air Force.
A proper assessment of the quality of defence planning and capability of the JSDF must account for the dynamic factors, which is outside the scope of this article.
Flawed though this bean-counting method is, it does provide base-line data for comparison. This article merely points out the number, not the quality, of the assets, in the JSDF.
Finally, the shape and size of the Japanese military is very much contingent on domestic politics and its assessment of the fast changing regional geo-political dynamics and their impact on its security. Within this overall context, the JSDF is slated to play a more prominent role in Japan’s foreign policy.
The writer is a student of politics, international law and education. Comments: letters@thesundaily.com
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