By PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU
TOKYO — By the end of this week, a key panel will recommend Japan adopt the right to collective self-defense, a move that would fundamentally change Japan’s deterrence posture, according to a senior member of the Japanese government who requested anonymity.
The Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security, which first convened Feb. 8, 2013, under the express wish of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to push the changes through, will provide the parameters within which the government will reinterpret Japan’s constitution to allow Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense under certain circumstances and to come to the aid of another nation under attack.
Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies, called this “a major change in one of the basic principles of Japan’s post-war defense policy.
“If we can use this new opportunity well ... we’ll be able to maintain the balance of power in the region against the might of China,” he said.
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