How China Has Provoked A Shift In Japan’s Attitude Towards 'Self-Defense'

Beijing’s assertive and often hubristic approach in its foreign relations has got a justifiable reply from Tokyo.

Lee Kuan Yew once observed that what China’s leaders called their nation’s “peaceful rise” was a contradiction in terms.

The contradiction got a jarring edge after Xi Jinping became China’s supreme leader in 2012, as the country started flexing its military muscles by laying claim to disputed islands in the seas of the Pacific, staking out a so-called ‘nine-dash’ air identification zone and building artificial islands to be used as staging posts for its armed forces.

It had prompted countries in East Asia, including Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines, to shore up their defences and alliances with the US, even though all of them are careful not to annoy China. Now, it has produced a worrying reaction in Japan, too, in the form of the Peace and Security Preservation Legislation, which the law’s domestic critics say is another contradiction in terms.

Following weeks of protests outside and tumult inside, Japanese parliament, on early hours of September 19, passed the law moved by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party. The law will expand the powers of Japan’s military, which had been limited to self-defence activities by the Constitution enacted in 1947 under US supervision. Since the end of World War II, the Japanese armed forces, called the Self-Defence Forces (SDF), have been prohibited from overseas combat.

It’s not that the SDF is weakly. It has an army of 150,000 (very small compared to China but larger than most in East Asia), a sophisticated navy and air force. According to BBC, “given the potential threat from North Korea’s missile arsenal, Japan has a growing interest in ballistic missile defence”, too.

The SDF had participated in multilateral efforts overseas such as anti-piracy operations, joint military exercises, and controversially at home, non-combat rebuilding role after the 2003 American occupation of Iraq. But the Constitution’s Article 9 declares that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes”.

The changes made through the Peace and Security Preservation law passed re-interpret rather than formally change the Constitution, but its critics say this violates the pacifist constitution and could lead Japan into unnecessary US-led wars abroad. The NYT quoted an expert with a policy research group in Tokyo summing up the country’s dilemma: “Japan is caught between fear of entanglement and fear of abandonment.”

These fears relate to the US dragging Japan into unnecessary wars in a combat role (like the Iraq invasion) or whittling down the security shield it offers Japan. However, the SDF will be ordered to mobilise forces overseas only when three conditions are met: when Japan is attacked, or when a close ally is attacked, and the result threatens Japan’s survival and poses a danger to people; when there is no other practical means available to repel the attack and ensure Japan’s survival and protect its people; and use of force is restricted to a minimum.

The US could still strong-arm Japan into needless entanglements through dissembling, and the law’s critics have a point there (for many Japanese, the US base in Okinawa is a longstanding irritant). Maybe, with the change, Americans have prodded the Japanese half-way already.

However, it appears that for the government headed by the nationalist Abe, the overriding factor in changing the constitutional narrative was China’s growing self-conceit and increasingly hostile attitude. Despite burgeoning economic ties, China regards Japan as its geopolitical rival —at times, even as a historic enemy. The Communist Party of China continues to use Japan’s brutal 1937-45 occupation of China to whip up nationalist frenzy. The party is used to spinning new political fables, including nationalism, to replace the old ones of Maoist socialist utopia to legitimise the one-party rule.

On September 3, the message was not lost on those unsettled about how peaceful China’s rise is, when it held a massive show in Beijing of its military prowess to commemorate the anniversary of the end of World War II (which it calls Anti-Japanese War), the first time ever it chose to do so. In “Xi’s history lessons,” as the magazine headlined its leader in an issue last month, The Economist pondered: “How much better it would be if China sought regional leadership not on the basis of the past, but on how constructive its behaviour is today.”

These words echo the sentiment shared by many of China’s neighbours, including India. Even President Xi’s announcement at the parade to slash PLA troops by 300,000 could not cut ice (because it signaled not an end to armed build-up, but a major step towards, China Daily reported, a “joint operational command system” to project power further afield). Many analysts believe that the hardening of Chinese power abroad is one of Xi’s favourite tactics (suppression of dissent and a long-drawn anti-corruption drive are the others) to consolidate power as the unchallenged emperor, just as economic growth slows.

Even more alarming than military parades, nine-dot demarcations or island-building exercises is the risk of a calculated, miscalculated or accidental escalation of simmering conflicts over Japan’s control of Senkaku (or Diaoyu) islands in the East China Sea.

Now that Beijing’s assertive and often hubristic approach in its foreign relations has got a justifiable reply from Tokyo, it’s paramount that both nations prevent containment of each other.

The author is a Delhi-based journalist. Email: rajiv.jm@gmail.com