If peace is to endure in Asia, Japan needs to be proactive

US security interests would be better served by a more confident Japan that assumes greater responsibility for its own defence, writes Brahma Chellaney

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The spotlight on Japan’s prolonged economic woes has obscured one of Asia’s farthest-reaching but least-noticed developments – the political rise of the world’s third largest economy. By initiating reforms and seeking an active role in shaping the balance of power in Asia, Japan wants to take its rightful place in the world.

Japan’s quiet political resurgence is reflected in various ways – from the government working to strengthen security arrangements with the US to a grass roots movement for changes in the pacifist constitution.

Japan’s passive diplomacy is giving way to a proactive approach focused on the Asian mainland, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The single biggest factor driving Japan’s political rise is the ascent of a muscular China.

Japan is the world’s first constitutionally pacifist nation. The constitution says “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained”. No other national constitution goes so far as to bar acquisition of the means of war or to renounce “the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes”.

Critics of the constitution say it does not reflect the values and traditions of Japan.

In fact, the Japanese constitution was hastily written and imposed by an occupying power. Douglas MacArthur made his occupation staff write the constitution in a week so that it was ready by Abraham Lincoln’s birth anniversary on February 12, 1946, although it did not come into force until May 1947.

The American success in disarming Japan by disbanding its military, imposing a new constitution and overhauling its education system engendered its own challenges. It did not take long for the US to realise that it had gone too far in creating a demilitarised Japan.

America’s Cold War with the Soviet Union, the Communist takeover of China and China’s entry into the Korean War changed US policy towards Japan. Through a major reinterpretation of the constitution it had imposed, the US encouraged Japan to reconstitute its military as “self-defence forces” so as to make the country the linchpin of America’s Asian strategy.

Japan’s recent reinterpretation of the constitution to assert its right to collective self-defence was small in comparison. Tokyo has also relaxed its self-imposed ban on export of arms.

With Japan’s nationalist impulse to play a bigger international role now rising, its domestic debate on national security and constitutional reform is set to intensify.

The Japanese constitution is also unique in that it defines no head of state. It stripped the emperor of all but symbolic power. This was by design: the US wanted to have the emperor as merely the symbol of Japan. Likewise, the force-renouncing constitution was designed to keep Japan as America’s client state.

But today, US security interests would be better served by a more confident Japan that assumes greater responsibility for its own defence

The constitution, however, is among the hardest in the world to revise. It is doubtful that any proposed change – even after winning approval with the two-thirds vote in both chambers of the national assembly – can secure majority support in a national referendum to take effect.

The large protests against Shinzo Abe’s 2015 security legislation permitting the self-defence forces to engage in “collective defence” were a reminder that the US-instilled pacifism remains deeply rooted in Japanese society. For example, a 2014 survey revealed that just 15 per cent of Japanese (compared with almost 75 per cent of Chinese) were willing to defend their country – the lowest figure in the world.

Let’s be clear: enduring peace in Asia demands a proactive Japan. If Japan fails to carry out further reforms of its postwar institutions and policies to meet the new regional challenges, it could erode its security.

The US spawned the problem that Japan confronts today – how to cast off the constitutional albatross. America must now be part of the solution because its own strategic interests demand that Japan plays a proactive role in regional affairs and does more for its own defence. This Japan can do within the framework of the long-standing security treaty with Washington. If the US were to openly support constitutional revision in Japan, it would require blunt criticism from the country’s powerful pacifist constituency and from China.

Constitutional and national-security reform in Japan would underpin the central goal of America’s Asia-Pacific strategy – a stable balance of power. Although rising powers tend to be revisionist powers, a politically resurgent Japan, strikingly, is seeking to uphold the present Asian political and maritime order. Washington would do well to aid the continued political rise of the country, which is determined to reinvent itself as a more competitive and secure state.

Brahma Chellaney is the author of nine books, including, most recently, Water, Peace, and War