Japan's new strategic posture

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See the Sol Sanders Archive By Sol Sanders SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM

Like a sleep-walker, Japan is bolstering its security in ways which only a few years ago would have been unthinkable, creating a government crisis and a feeding frenzy among the predominantly liberal media.

There are no portentous enunciations by Junichiro Koizumi, JapanÕs Kennedyesque prime minister. KoizumiÕs unprecedented star quality appears to be burning out but not because of these weighty strategic decisions. His ÒI-will-go-to-PyongyangÓ gambit turned into a soap opera revealed by vicious North Korean abductions of his countrymen. But it did not set off a popular or sophisticated discussion of PyongyangÕs strategic threat.

It has to be emphasized TokyoÕs security moves would have been considered ÒnormalÓ in another powerful nation. For decades, proponents and opponents have argued the case for the worldÕs second largest economy playing a greater role, possible only with a more elaborate strategic view than simply sheltering behind the U.S. nuclear shield.

But JapanÕs catastrophic 1930s imperialist adventure, its U.S. Occupation-dictated ÒpeaceÓ constitution, its vociferous pacifist minority [often naively manipulated by the Soviets], all had dictated virtual see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. And, of course, it was instrumental in pursuing what seemed the only national goal: doubling the national income each decade.

Many of us wondered, decade after decade, how long a people with a martial tradition in a uniquely ethnocentric culture would continue this path. It was being eroded, of course, slowly. The so-called Self-Defense Forces were created, constantly fudging the constitutionÕs no-war clause, and now stand at 250,000.

Yet the last few months have seen, again by the standards of postwar Japan, radical shifts, incremental but adding up to a new strategic posture. In mid-January, for example, Tokyo announced a new intelligence cabinet seat. The media said it was directed at China, Korea, and the Mideast. Its public rationale was to handle satellite intelligence gathered after their inauguration following the 1998 North Korean missile flight over Honshu, and what Tokyo saw as less than adequate information from Washington. Police have been cracking down on the North Korean underworld, long rumored linked to politicians. Additions to antiterrorism legislation enacted after 9/11 is contemplated. Shigeru Ishiba, Japan's Defense Agency director-general, during a Moscow visit [as he had earlier in Washington] staunchly defended Japan's intention to build a missile shield with the U.S.

The Japanese dispatched an Aegis missile cruiser to the Indian Ocean in support of a possible U.S. Iraq strike. This was a tacit response to one of the last hurdles in bypassing the Òno warÓ constitution: whether Japan could participate in collective defense. That, of course, had followed dispatch of Japanese logistics support for the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.

JapanÕs Achilles heel ø dependence on imported oil ø is being attacked. Koizumi and the Russians dusted off an old project, a pipeline connecting the Central Asian oilfields to the Pacific. That it would be an alternative to a parallel pipeline route from Russia to China has not escaped regional attention. It could supply 15 percent of JapanÕs imported petroleum now met by the increasingly imperiled South China Sea route.

Japan earlier offered surveillance assistance to the region to ward off increasing piracy, some of it linked to the China coast. And despite some minor accidents and the historic anti-nuclear allergy, a new series of nuclear power plants is envisaged.

Announcement of an American nuclear-powered Yokosuka-based aircraft carrier ø until now included in the allianceÕs three no-nuclear principles, no possessing, no manufacturing and no importing nuclear weapons Ñ touches the nerve of JapanÕs rearmament. If WashingtonÕs efforts to end PyongyangÕs nuclear blackmail fail, the ÒunthinkableÓ, Japanese nuclear weapons, may no longer be excluded, whatever the fulminations of its neighbors.

Protests against KoizumiÕs most recent [his third] visit to TokyoÕs Yasukuni Shrine, seen by some Koreans, Chinese and Overseas Chinese, as tied to wartime atrocities, are signposts of foreign opposition this new search for security may entail. But other neighbors will welcome balance for ChinaÕs growing power. JapanÕs massive investment and often concessional trade with Beijing may or may not fit into a grand strategy [but it is hardly more convoluted than U.S. China policies].

The collapse of JapanÕs Òbubble economyÓ and the hubris it had engendered, the 1998 North Korean missile episode, and 9/11 in the U.S. have all had their effect. KoizumiÕs team includes young politicians who have a more cogent view of JapanÕs security issues. Yet ø as when Koizumi announced his Pyongyang trip before he informed Washington ø they donÕt always seem to be able to steer the ship.

Like the scholars and journalists who for half century have searched for a neat conspiracy theory to explain TokyoÕs blundering into war with the obviously more powerful U.S., we may not soon locate the strategic roadmap [if it exists] behind this new and important more assertive Japan. But its importance is self-evident.