JEFF JACOBY

Japan needs military optionsBy Jeff Jacoby | G L O BE C O L U MN IS T MA Y 0 7 , 2 0 1 4

A P

Members of a Japanese Self-Defense Forces honor guard march in Tokyo. Japan marked the

67th anniversary of its postwar constitution with growing debate over whether to revise the

war-renouncing document. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s ruling conservative party has long

advocated revision but been unable to sway public opinion.

NAOMI TAKASU thinks her country’s constitution deserves the Nobel Peace Prize.

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Opinion

The Japanese homemaker launched a campaign last year to persuade the Norwegian

Nobel Committee to bestow its prestigious prize on Article 9 of Japan’s constitution,

which famously renounces “forever” the right to resort to war and prohibits Japan from

maintaining a traditional army, navy, or air force. Last month came word that the Nobel

committee had officially accepted Article 9 as one of the 278 nominees for the 2014

peace prize, which will be announced in October. Of course it’s a long shot. But if Japan’s

constitution actually wins the Nobel prize, Takasu was asked at a press conference, who

should travel to Oslo to receive it? Her answer: Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should “do so

willingly as the representative of Japan.”

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That would be . . . awkward. Abe has been pushing hard to reinterpret Japan’s pacifist

constitution ever since his Liberal Democratic Party surged back to power in December

2012. He has long been in favor of boosting his country’s military profile, for reasons

both ideological and strategic.

As a matter of national pride and patriotism, Abe regards the postwar restrictions

imposed on a vanquished Japan by the United States as a humiliation yet to be

overcome. But the issue has become decidedly more pressing lately, thanks to China’s

menacing brinksmanship over the Senkaku Islands and its aggressive declaration of an

air-defense zone over the East China Sea. Abe has likened the worsening relationship

between Japan and China today to the tensions between Britain and Germany in 1914 —

tensions that ultimately resulted in World War I.

The prospect of war erupting between Japan and China is ominous enough. What’s

worse is that just as Japan finds itself more and more anxious about Chinese power and

intentions, it finds itself less and less certain that it can rely on the United States for

protection.

“There is real fear about whether the US will step up to the plate if Japan is threatened

by China,” says Thomas Berger, a professor of international relations at Boston

University and a specialist on Japanese politics. “Japanese feel they have their backs

against the wall; they see China trying to bully them.” Japan wants the reassurance of

America’s security guarantees, “but the US seems less reliable these days.” That is

adding urgency to Abe’s determination to change the constitutional status quo.

President Obama spoke the right words when he traveled to Japan last month. “Let me

reiterate,” he said at a press conference with Abe on April 24, “that our treaty

commitment to Japan’s security is absolute, and Article 5 covers all territories under

Japan’s administration, including the Senkaku Islands.”

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That was a welcome and encouraging message, but in national security as in so much

else, deeds outweigh declarations.

“There is a clear feeling here that Americans are becoming more isolationist, less willing

to let their sons bleed for other nations,” political scientist Masaru Kohno, a scholar at

Japan’s Waseda University, told me when I reached him in Tokyo on Tuesday. US

public opinion polls confirm that anti-interventionist sentiment in America is at flood

tide. When Japanese look at the US retreat from Iraq and Afghanistan, or at

Washington’s failure to enforce its “red line” in Syria, says Kohno, it doesn’t fill them

with confidence about American resolve.

That doesn’t mean they’re about to jettison Article 9. One of the paradoxes of Japanese

politics is that the postwar pacifist charter became more popular with the nation it was

imposed on than with the one that imposed it. As far back as the 1950s Washington was

ready to see Japan rearm and share more of the burden in the Cold War. But Japan

embraced its new identity as a peace nation. Article 9 was interpreted to allow a limited

Self-Defense Force, but one barred from any belligerent fighting. As a result, the US

alliance with Japan is highly asymmetrical — American forces are pledged to defend

Japan if it is attacked, but the responsibility doesn’t go the other way.

Security-minded Japanese leaders have tried to change Japan’s defense policy, but until

recently Article 9 has been an untouchable barrier. There is a sense, however, that this

time may be different.

Let’s hope so. No serious nation can “forever” renounce the use of military force —

especially one that shares a neighborhood with China and North Korea. Japan today is

free and democratic. But it will take more than pacifism and peace prizes to keep it that

way.

Jeff Jacoby can be reached at jacoby@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter

@jeff_jacoby.