By Clint Richards
Abe moves closer to passing collective self-defense, despite public protests.
The coalition that makes up the Japanese Cabinet will announce its final unified position on the government’s reinterpretation of collective self-defense on Tuesday. Lawmakers told reporters in the morning that the ruling LDP and its junior partner New Komeito had agreed to lift the ban on Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, and that an official Cabinet resolution would be released later in the day. There have been some very public and shocking displays of protest, and poll numbers indicate the Japanese people remain unchanged in their opposition to the government’s attempts to transition Japan toward a more normalized military.
There is little surprise about Tuesday’s announcement. The LDP and New Komeito reached an agreement last week that gave the more pacifist junior partner enough concessions to broadly accept the ruling party’s proposals. As The Diplomat reported, last Tuesday the LDP changed parts of its new interpretation to state that Japan can assert collective self-defense if an attack on “a country with a close relationship with Japan” would “clearly cast a danger” on Japan. New Komeito also wanted wording to be included that most of the hypothetical scenarios the coalition had considered could be addressed without resorting to collective self-defense. Nevertheless, it appears the LDP has gotten the majority of its reinterpretation included in the draft, at least in spirit, if not in codified law. The draft will be put before the LDP-controlled Diet during its next session this fall, after which (if it passes) Abe will have completed his legal end-around changing Japanese pacifism, enshrined in Article 9 of its Constitution.
Read the full story at The Diplomat