Author: Peter Drysdale, Editor, East Asia Forum
Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will address both houses of the Australian parliament tomorrow in an historic visit, the first bilateral visit in 12 years by a Japanese leader. This is an occasion that will provide an excruciating test not only of the measure of Abe but also of measured-ness in Japanese and Australian thinking about their joint and collective responsibilities towards stability in the Asian region.
Abe comes to Australia fresh from his cabinet’s move last week to reinterpret Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution — the expression of the pacifist intention of the Japanese people to renounce the use of military force in the resolution of international conflict. Article 9 states that the ‘Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes’. For that purpose, ‘land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained’.
The Japanese government has interpreted the constitution to allow for self-defence as has been long reflected in the name of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), created in 1954. Despite the steady accretion of Japan’s military capabilities, the ‘peace’ constitution has allayed anxieties within Japan’s neighbours — China, South Korea and the newly independent Southeast Asian nations — about Japanese military intentions and reassured the Japanese people about the limits on SDF operations. Even the US alliance framework could be properly rationalised, as it famously was by former Australian prime minister Gough Whitlam and it is still essentially conceived by some key US strategists, as a bulwark against any resurgence of Japanese militarism.
Japan now lives in a very different neighbourhood. Its position in the region has changed remarkably. The role of the United States is also evolving rapidly around the rise of China and others in Asia. Many now see the limits to US reach and there is growing acknowledgement of its vulnerability to Chinese power in the Western Pacific down the track. America’s political commitment to its security partners is being questioned in Japan and South Korea. Moreover, there is more understanding now about the inconsistencies that have confronted the deployment of the SDF both at home and abroad.
So what should the Japanese people and the rest of the world make of the Abe government’s move on constitutional reinterpretation?
Many in Japan see Article 9 as a restraint imposed upon their country under US occupation. But Abe’s effort to reinterpret the constitution is contentious among opposition legislators, including his coalition partner, the New Komeito, both because the Japanese public is notably uncomfortable with pushing the envelope on Article 9 — demanding proper consultation on constitutional change — and the lack of trust among Japan’s neighbours about Japan’s ultimate intentions, not only because of Abe’s visits to Yasukuni Shrine and his management of the Kono Declaration issue.
As Ryo Sahashi points out this week, the ‘handling of this issue … has left a lot of concerns and challenges outstanding’, both in respect of public support for even the limited changes the Abe administration wants now and the diplomatic mess in which Japan is embroiled and which fouls regional understanding of Japan’s true intentions.
On the first score, Corey Wallace notes, the new conditions for defence mobilisation will limit dispatch of the SDF to support allies under attack only if the attack poses a clear danger to Japan and threatens the integrity of the Japanese state. The SDF is also highly constrained by the basis of laws under which it has to operate. ‘This positive list approach differs from many other countries in that if a specific activity is not explicitly allowed by law, it is assumed to be prohibited’. The enabling laws for the changes announced last week are yet to pass through the Japanese Diet though it’s assumed they will with the support of the governing LDP and their coalition partners in the New Komeito.
On the second score, the Abe administration has done little or nothing to consult effectively with its neighbours about its ultimate objectives on collective self defence or to dispel both China’s and South Korea’s anxieties that the limits to these objectives are real.
Shiro Armstrong’s lead essay this week underlines the strength and importance of the Australia–Japan relationship and how strongly it plays into the quest for stability in Asia at a time of huge change. He notes that Prime Minister Abe and Prime Minister Tony Abbott ‘share a strong personal relationship, one that helped bring conclusion of the long-awaited Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) in April this year when Abbott visited Tokyo’. Although the ‘EPA will not have the transformative effect on the economic relationship of the 1957 Agreement on Commerce (which Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi signed in Canberra in 1957) or the 1976 Basic Treaty of Friendship and Co-operation’, it and the security and educational exchange agreements that will be signed during the visit will deepen the relationship significantly.
Armstrong also observes that circumstances are very different today from when Abe last visited Australia in 2007 when Sydney hosted the APEC summit — the last Japanese prime ministerial visit to this country. ‘That was before the global financial crisis and when Abe was being credited with fixing the Japan–China relationship while overseeing a stagnant economy. Today the Japanese economy is poised to escape two decades of low growth thanks to the economic policy package known as Abenomics, but the relationship with China is in disarray’.
Both countries are grappling for a broader framework within which to manage their relationships in Asia including China which is both countries’ as well as all of Asia’s major trading partner.
The Abe move on constitutional reinterpretation that permits commitments to some dimensions of collective defence may eventually thicken security ties around the Pacific but undeniably critical political aspects have not been managed smoothly at home or abroad. A reasonable conclusion is that the net immediate effect has been to destabilise security relations in the region, even among US allies in Northeast Asia, rather than to strengthen them.
As Armstrong notes, the harder heads know that there are considerable risks in projecting forward on a straight line in these security affairs and are aware that the region needs a broader economic and security framework within which to engage China and other players. Prime Minister Abe’s visit to Canberra offers an opportunity to display Japan’s willingness to invest in just such an endeavour and for Australia to respond in kind beyond the immediate warmth of the bilateral moment.
Peter Drysdale is Editor of the East Asia Forum.
This Article first appeared on The East Asia Forum and is reposted here under a Creative Commons license.