NYTimes.com Article: Japan Faces Burden: Its Own Defense

This article from NYTimes.com 
has been sent to you by tganesh@stlawu.edu.


Japan's reassessment of its defense options: (1) the country spent $47 billion 
on defense in 2002; (2) it still has not developed a "correct view of history" 
for any rapprochement with China; and (3) it still relies on US security.  MS.

tganesh@stlawu.edu

/-------------------- advertisement -----------------------\

Explore more of Starbucks at Starbucks.com.
http://www.starbucks.com/default.asp?ci=1015
\----------------------------------------------------------/

Japan Faces Burden: Its Own Defense

July 22, 2003
 By HOWARD W. FRENCH 




 

TOKYO, July 21 - Not long ago, Nisohachi Hyodo, the author
of a four-year plan for nuclear armament of Japan, was part
of the lunatic fringe, his ideas so far from the pacifist
mainstream that he was published only in obscure journals. 

These days, though, he has his own program on a major
Tokyo radio station and is a popular speaker on college
campuses. With everyone from the academic establishment to
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi advocating that Japan
become more assertive militarily, Mr. Hyodo scarcely stands
out. 

More than a half-century after two atomic blasts forced
Japan's surrender in World War II, talk of acquiring
nuclear weapons - long one of the country's most sacred
taboos - is but one illustration of how Japan is grappling
openly with the challenge of becoming what is known here as
a "normal nation," one armed and able to fight wars. 

By no means do all Japanese support nuclear armament. But
the world has changed since Japan accepted a Constitution,
written by the United States during its postwar occupation,
that renounces war as a tool of diplomacy. The question now
is, can Japan change too? 

The country's 13-year economic slump is pushing forward a
host of issues - immigration, the role of women, a steep
decline in population - that are testing whether this
tradition-bound society will adapt or face inevitable
decline. 

No issue is likely to have a greater impact on the region
than how Japan takes up the burden of its defense after a
20th-century past that traumatized it and its neighbors. 

During its long postwar boom, Japan's security rested on
two pillars: the protection of the United States, which
still bases 47,000 troops here, and pockets so deep that it
could buy its way out of almost any unpleasant situation.
Today both elements are subject to nagging doubts. 

"We are becoming much more realistic about defense matters,
and the reason for this is our economic stagnation," said
Koji Murata, an expert in international relations at
Doshisha University. "In the past we could depend on our
overwhelming economic strength as a sort of cushion.
Generally speaking, Japanese are beginning to feel that
this margin is getting smaller and smaller." 

For the first time in three generations a shift in public
opinion has rendered ordinary the discussion of a more
assertive Japan and left defenders of the "peace
Constitution" on the defensive. 

While China's expanding power is a growing concern, the
most immediate spur for this change has been a year of
starkly increased tensions with North Korea, which already
possesses ballistic missiles and is pursuing nuclear
weapons. 

In March, Mr. Koizumi's defense minister, Shigeru Ishiba,
told a parliamentary committee that if North Korea started
fueling its missiles, "then it is time to strike." 

But even if Japanese are more comfortable with such
assertiveness, their neighbors may not be. Many continue to
harbor suspicion of a country that they feel has yet fully
to acknowledge the damage done by its militarization last
century, or to atone for its colonial past. Relations with
China have been strained for two years by Mr. Koizumi's
repeated visits to a controversial shrine to Japan's war
veterans, including 14 people judged as Class A war
criminals. 

When Mr. Koizumi reasserted last month that he would
continue his visits, in what has become a summer ritual,
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Kong Quan, warned,
"Without a correct view on history, there is no guarantee
to healthy and stable ties between China and Japan." 

During the same time, there have been no visits between
leaders of the countries, and China has watched the move
toward a more muscular Japan with concern. While it is
unclear precisely how much China spends on defense, Japan
spent $47 billion on defense in 2002, according to the
Center for Defense Information. 

By almost any ranking China and Japan are among the world's
top five military budgets, and some analysts warn of the
dangers of an unmediated military competition in the
region, which could include the unpredictable North Korea. 

For a long time the United States served as a buffer in
the region by providing for Japan's defense. But many say
that this relationship cannot last forever and that Japan's
neighbors, like the Japanese themselves, may have little
choice but to accept the inevitability of a bulkier
Japanese military presence. 

In an era of weapons that can project power over vast
distances, and with pressing security commitments elsewhere
after Sept. 11, 2001, America may simply tire of
shouldering the defense burden here, many Japanese analysts
fear. 

Indeed, some are already drawing that conclusion from a
recent decision to reduce the presence and profile of the
37,000 United States troops in neighboring South Korea. 

At the same time, Japan's economic problems have begun to
reveal the limits of an approach to foreign policy that
critics here call "happo bijin," or the "eight-faced
beauty," strategy, under which the country showers its
wealth around the globe, hoping to win the good will of
all. 

In the Persian Gulf war of 1991, instead of sending troops,
which it said its Constitution barred, this oil-dependent
country spent $13 billion to placate the United States,
Kuwait and the other victorious allies. 

But diplomats and foreign policy experts say that heyday as
a donor and practitioner of checkbook diplomacy is past. In
the past year, Japan has quietly relinquished to the United
States its place as the world's top international aid
donor. Its aid budget has been slashed by 10 percent.
Public debt has soared to 140 percent of gross domestic
product. Opposition to handouts is growing. 

"For years I have been saying that nuclear armament is an
inexpensive solution," said Mr. Hyodo, a former member of
the country's armed forces, officially called the
Self-Defense Forces. "We should take the example of France,
which has a minimal nuclear deterrent force. This allows
them to spend far less on defense than Japan, while
remaining safe from attack." 

That may not necessarily be so. For Japan, building up a
military may ultimately prove more costly than handing out
money, supporting the United Nations lavishly and
underwriting American military moves. 

But arguments like Mr. Hyodo's may prove persuasive
nonetheless. The difference, analysts say, is that the
extra spending will leave Japan with something tangible -
military hardware - and that this may at least create a
feeling of greater security, which in politics is
everything. Such a shift would also buy jobs as Japan
expands the large quasi-defense industry that already
exists here. 

Groups within the governing Liberal Democratic Party have
yearned for Japan's return to a "normal," militarized
status since the 1950's. Today the signs of the change in
thinking abound. 

Prime Minister Koizumi has urged the abandonment of the
peaceful-sounding name, the Self-Defense Forces, which
allows Japanese to pretend, as their Constitution demands,
that that they have no army, though they have 240,000
forces engaged in national defense, according to Armed
Forces of the World. 

Mr. Koizumi would prefer for them to be known simply as
armed forces, and for two years he has been pushing
aggressively to expand their role. That began with support
in the Indian Ocean for United States operations in
Afghanistan, the first time Japan's naval forces have
deployed so far away. In recent weeks Mr. Koizumi's
government has upped the ante, offering to send troops to
Iraq and arguing for a relaxation of restraints on how they
could be armed. 

Throughout the postwar period, the joke about Japan's
foreign policy was that it did not have one, instead
following ritually in the wake of the United States. 

Now Mr. Koizumi is pushing for the creation of a national
security council, to be drawn up along American lines,
bolstering the country's diplomacy and giving the defense
and security bureaucracies far more access to the prime
minister's ear. 

Those legal and statutory changes are being matched in the
country's armory. Although Japan's richly financed military
forces boast some of the world's most sophisticated
hardware - weapons systems like the Aegis destroyer and
F-15 fighter jets - their actual configuration, as well as
training for their use, has been overwhelmingly defensive. 

That, too, is changing abruptly. The country is acquiring
in-air refueling capacity for its fighter force, as well as
developing a sophisticated air support ship - part
destroyer, part helicopter carrier - that news reports say
is intended to allow operations near the Korean Peninsula. 

Such changes have increasing political and popular
support. During a vote this spring on a series of national
emergency laws, which greatly expand the government's
ability to deploy the Self-Defense Forces, even the main
opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, lined up
in support of the bill. 

Advocates of continued pacifism complain that the
government has carefully exploited the tensions with North
Korea to heighten fear among voters. 

The Japanese public, some of them warn, is being dragged
unawares into a revival of militarism. 

"I cannot conceive of a war in which North Korea, a far
smaller, far poorer country, attacks Japan first," said
Ryuichi Ozawa, a professor of constitutional studies at
Shizuoka University. 

"The point here is that there is no confidence that the
people of Japan and their government can control a
military," he said. "This is a contemporary concern, and
not just an issue of our past history." 

But public opinion is turning against such sentiments.
"Whenever there is any talk about the security needs of
Japan, people say we are reverting to militarism," said
Tetsu Takahashi, 20, a university student. "I don't
necessarily support nuclear weapons, even if we can't rule
them out. Whatever the case, our policies have been too
meek." 

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/22/international/asia/22JAPA.html?ex=1060094832&ei=1&en=28d8506a71371b07


---------------------------------

Get Home Delivery of The New York Times Newspaper. Imagine
reading The New York Times any time & anywhere you like!
Leisurely catch up on events & expand your horizons. Enjoy
now for 50% off Home Delivery! Click here:

http://www.nytimes.com/ads/nytcirc/index.html



HOW TO ADVERTISE
---------------------------------
For information on advertising in e-mail newsletters 
or other creative advertising opportunities with The 
New York Times on the Web, please contact
onlinesales@nytimes.com or visit our online media 
kit at http://www.nytimes.com/adinfo

For general information about NYTimes.com, write to 
help@nytimes.com.  

Copyright 2003 The New York Times Company