[ Sekai, July 2009 ] – precis translation
A Call for Escape from American Domination / Ideological Stasis
[ 1 ] – The Guam Re-location Agreement and US-Japan Security Framework
The Guam Re-location Agreement, which lays out the plan for the movement of part of the US Navy forces located in Japan to the island of Guam and the payments required from the Japanese government in return for leaving their country peacefully, was signed on 13th May 2009. There are actually two documents that led up to this ‘agreement’ and the agreement lays out in concrete terms who will bear the brunt of the cost for the troop re-location : the first is the “US-Japan Treaty : Reform and Revision for the Future”, known within Japan as the “Intermediary Notice” and the “Working Roadmap” – which lays out the work needing to be done towards fulfilment of the conditions of the agreement – known in Japan as the “Final Notice”. The Guam Re-Location Agreement is particularly based on the “Final Notice” and its stipulations relating to the extensive US military presence in Okinawa. The question is why the stipulations of the “Final Notice” came to be enshrined in the final Agreement, rather than those of the “Intermediary Notice” or other proposals discussed by both sides.
The “Working Roadmap” or “Final Notice” came about as a consequence of the US side being unable to rationally explain its requirements and therefore took the shape of a ‘package’ that had to be accepted as a whole; its central tenet is also that Japan should bear the majority of the costs involved in the transfer. The document implies that the financial burden on Japan will lighten as a result of the troop movements from Okinawa to Guam, but in actual fact the burden will not decrease at all and, if anything, is likely to become less negotiable in the future.
The following points are clear :
- Despite its claim to increase security while reducing the financial burden on Japan, the Guam Re-Location Agreement will do nothing of the sort;
- The Agreement is biased heavily in favour of the American side, and while stipulating Japanese obligations in detail – eg., $2,800,000,000 ‘contribution’ to the re-location costs of US Navy forces to Guam – lays out no concrete obligations on the US side whatsoever;
- The only stipulations relating to the US side in the agreement refer to ‘taking the necessary steps’, which action is apparently dependent upon the following conditions : (1) that the funds for the re-location should be available in a readily-usable form, (2) that the Japanese government take concrete steps towards the re-location within Okinawa of the Futenma Air Base and (3) that the Japanese contribute the funds made explicit in the Agreement without deviation. Failure to fulfill these conditions will remove any obligation on the US to take any of the ‘necessary steps’ – whatever it may imagine those to have been in the first place.
- The funds contributed by Japan will not be spent on visible, physical materials and the only evidence of the contributions will be in un-publicized military book-keeping records.
- The Guam Re-Location Agreement has been ratified by both the Upper and Lower Houses of the Diet and it is arguable that a change in the ruling party may be the only way for there to be any possibility of any kind of re-negotiation.
[ 2 ] – Breaking Out of the State of Submission
From the US point of view, the Guam Agreement was surely an expression of the Obama administration’s intention to maintain the ’status quo’ and American privileges in Japan. US priorities start with ‘economic strategies’ and ’security considerations’ are a secondary issue; likewise geographical priorities place the Middle East higher than relations with East Asia and we can expect little fundamental ‘change’ when it comes to the US-Japan Security Agreement. As much can be read in the faces of the staff chosen to work under Hilary Clinton in the East Asia Department of the Defense Department – they are all so-called Japan experts with detailed knowledge of the re-location negotiations, but with their argument for the maintenance of the status quo they reveal their loyalty to vested interests in the Security Agreement.
No-one believes that the current economic crisis has been contained in the economic world – the cancerous cells released by the US financial industry have infected the international political system and moved also into other fields. The American economic crisis showed that the two principles of the state strategy that propped up the former Bush administration – ‘neo-conservative economics’ and ‘unilateral action / the ideology of pre-emptive attack’ which found their true bankruptcy not only on Wall Street but also in the killing fields of Iraq and Afghanistan – were no more than an empty bluff and the US – though loud and fearsome – no more than a scarecrow.
America does not have the strength to withstand the drain on its economic resources of both domestic needs and the enormous costs involved in foreign military action. The current re-assessment of the ‘un-ending war on terror’ and ‘reduction in size of the world-wide network of military bases’ is an inevitable result of this economic analysis. Such a re-assessment could not be said to be complete unless it extended to the US-Japan Security framework. Looking in the long term, the appearance of the Obama administration could give rise to an opportunity for change in Japanese security policy-making.
As we have already seen, the Guam Re-location Agreement suggests that the future of US policy vis-a-vis Japan will centre on “a return to a path of international cooperation” and “an increase in the responsibilities of treaty countries (Japan)” and will seek to reduce the burden on America of its unilateralism by a ‘kind of division’ of labour with Japan. Such being the case, it is inevitable that some fairly heavy demands are going to be made of the Japanese. It is clear that the ‘Japan experts’ group in the Defense Department have designed a policy vis-a-vis Japan that seeks to pressure Japan not through the hitherto favoured carrots/sticks of ‘Re-alignment of US forces in Japan’, ‘Missile Defense’ and ‘Foreign Mobilization (of the SDF)’, but through demands for cash to finance the new foreign policy ambitions of the Obama administration.
It is now only a matter of time before the LDP, which has toed the US foreign policy line on Asia all along, loses power to the DPJ. And that will be an opportunity to finally bring to a close a security sphere that with its “Sovereign Military Base Financial Support” has functioned as a war chest for the US military.
Of course, the security framework lies at the heart of the issue, but there is no need to immediately make the abolition of the current security agreements into a major political controversy. What is necessary, and fully possible, is to set in motion a change of course in Japanese diplomatic and security policy-making away from the current submissive position. The situation needs to be frozen for a while to create an opportunity for the kind of re-negotiations that will enable the removal of the loose language that has placed Japan in this position – rather like the regular hacking-off the crusty shell-fish and other sea life that have attached themselves to the smooth hull of a ship. The ship need not be dismantled completely, but needs to be put in dry dock. From there, policies need to be drawn up that will set US-Japan relations on a new course.
Just like the EU since the end of the Cold Way, US-Japan relations need to be based not on secret agreements and bilateral treaties but on UN-centred cooperation and take into consideration the security concerns shared with other East Asian countries; in other words, the emphasis needs to be moved from confrontation and threats – where winners and losers are locked into a zero-sum power game – to a broader state of mind based on fairness and trust – where either side wins – upon which a common security policy can be built.
This is exactly the direction indicated in the Japanese Constitution. It represents a return to the introduction of that document : “We state our wish and intention to support our life-style and security as a peace-loving people engaging with other nations in relationships of trust and fairness.” The new direction we seek to take starts from the will to maintain and creatively develop the posture with regard to the rest of the world encapsulated in Article 9 of the constitution.
Without even really touching US-Japan Security itself it is possible to change the emphasis from ‘zero-sum security policy’ to ‘win-win security policy’; put in other words, from ‘bilateral collective defense (against a conjectural enemy)’ to ‘a multilateral common security guarantee (that does not conjecture an enemy)’; also, a central pillar of this multilateral security should be the United Nations. There is nothing wishful or impractical about such a choice [from the Japanese point of view]. To achieve such a goal, a consensus needs first to be established within Japan through decision-making backed by consultation and discussion and then the political world needs to move to bring the US to a negotiating position. Opposition political parties need then to use their manifestos or other public documents to put the new consensus and political will before the broader society, which will place political pressure on the LDP.
To ‘escape from submission’, one needs only to change and/or reverse the policies whose enactment created the situation in the first place.
- Domestically : free US-Japan security relations from ‘loose interpretation’ and the world of ’secret agreements’ (including the greater release of information freeing diplomacy from the narrow and secretive channels it currently operates within);
- Diplomatically : the new guidelines particularly on ‘Overseas (military) missions’ need to be re-considered (within a broader, multilateral framework of military cooperation);
- Asian : the construction of an Asia-focused diplomatic and foreign policy over one with our hands tied by military agreements with the US.
Scraping the ‘Oyster Shells’ ‘off the hull’ of the Security Agreement
The following policy principles should be written into the manifesto :
–> Secret security agreements should be made public : the new administration should publish an ‘open statement’ about security policy. Those aspects of the US-Japan security agreement that have been kept secret up till now (for example, the specific minutes of and clauses of agreements made at meetings of the ‘US-Japan Unification Committee’ – the final authority on matters of joint security – the majority of which are never released in the public domain, should be openly published. Were the legally-unfounded financial burden imposed on Japan as a result of secret decisions made about the continuing US military occupation of Okinawa and the subsequently agreed ‘Generous Budget’ revealed to the Japanese public, they would likely understand that the Security Agreement has been implemented in ways contradictory to its stated purpose – ie., its implementation has involved actions and decisions being taken that are illegal under the very terms of the agreement itself.
If the accumulation of deception and cover-ups over many years were revealed through the publication of classified Foreign Ministry documents (secret agreements over Okinawa and the records of meetings of the US-Japan Unification Committee), the Japanese people would discover the extent to which the US-Japan Security Agreement has been completely misrepresented to them and that the US-Japan Union over the years has not only lacked transparency but also a proper legal basis for its enactment. This is the process of ’scraping the oyster shells from the hull’ of Japan’s security structure.
–> A moratorium on all current US-Japan security activities : the new administration will first have to draw up an ‘exit strategy’ for the SDF regiments sent on foreign missions : the re-fueling of US ships in the Indian Ocean, and the policing of the seas of Somalia should be aborted and the troops re-called. These orders should be given – before the ‘Terrorism Special Measures’ Law is abolished – by the the government as part of the already-existing ‘Plan for Fundamental Change in the Principles of Sending SDF on Foreign Missions’ legislation. If this position is clearly stated in election manifestos and political agreements, the voice of the Japanese people will be represented clearly and directly. Other examples of countries which withdrew troops from foreign missions after general elections are Spain and Italy, who re-called their troops from Iraq without America taking any steps against them.
Along with these steps, the US government would need to be asked to take part in talks based on clause 4 of the current Security Agreement; naturally, if the Agreement itself states that “the US-Japan Security Agreement will be strictly enforced”, the obligation to “obey the Constitutions of both countries” stated in clause 3 cannot be ignored. Many aspects of current security cooperation, for example the sharing of information on regional issues, the mutual provision of required materials, stop-and-search cooperation, etc., could be judged as ‘collective self-defense’ measures and therefore in breach of the Japanese Constitution. In the same way, the granting of permission for nuclear-powered or nuclear-bearing vessels to harbour in Japanese territory (in breach of the 3 non-nuclear principles), missile defense (in breach of the principle of non-military use of space), cooperative development of weaponry (in breach of the 3 principles of military hardware exportation), the Indian Ocean and Somalia missions (in breach of the law banning foreign dispatch of military forces) could all be regarded as “un-constitutional activities” (indeed the Nagoya High Court judgement of April 2008 on the illegality of the “Iraq Special Measures Law” is an example of support for such a view).
With regard to the majority of the above ‘agreements’ – which were brought into effect not by discussion and ratification by the Diet, but through secret meetings – the new Japanese administration will seek discussions with the US government while insisting on her right to refuse to enter into agreements not covered by official agreement documents.
–> The cancellation of the ‘Generous Budget’. According to “clause 6 of the US-Japan Cooperation Agreement on Security”, “all costs related to the maintenance of US forces in Japanese territory will be borne not by the Japanese but by the United States of America. In spite of this, Japan has been burdened since 1978 with the costs of forces stationed in Japan under the so-called “Generous Budget”. Covering ‘facilities maintenance’, ‘personnel costs’, ‘light, heat and water costs’, ‘training transfer costs’, and so on, the cost of this ‘budget’ to Japan has been around 200,000,000,000 yen each year. The total cost (since 1978) amounts to 5,500,000,000,000 yen.
While the Agreement does stipulate certain provisions that are the responsibility of the Japanese side – the surrender of the land required for the bases, etc., but the costs involved in maintaining and running the bases, along with those relating to the construction of housing for military personnel and their dependants have no place on a Japanese balance sheet. In spite of this, such payments have been introduced into the administration of the bases, at first in a ‘temporary’, ‘limited’ fashion or as ’special measures’; these have then been allowed to balloon and concretized into the ‘Okinawan Secret Agreement’ or the ‘Ron Yasu Treaty’ – duties introduced as temporary ’special agreements’ have weaved themselves into permanent fixtures, extending now to the ‘welfare costs of American military families’.
These kinds of impositions have no legal justification. Therefore, all agreements concluded by the LDP administrations hitherto should not be renewed when they reach their expiration – such an attitude is in no way illegal.
–> Review of agreements on US Military re-location : The current situation where Japanese communities are being forced to bear the costs and other social burdens of the American military presence must be resolved without delay. The supposed and stated purpose of the re-location project, the ‘reduction in the Burden borne by the people of Okinawa’, is an illusion; costs have increased and will continue to do so into the future. This is principally because alongside the re-location plans are clauses in the imposed agreements that prioritize the ‘maintenance of current military oppressive power’. Thus it is that a moratorium needs to be called and the conditions of the re-location agreement need to be renegotiated in a way that will actually lead to some improvement in the situation of the people of Okinawa and other regions burdened by the presence of US military installations. The Guam Re-location Agreement should be scrapped as a matter of course.
–> US-Japan Status Agreement revision : There are many other problems with the US-Japan Status Agreement – the right of US soldiers to evade trial for crimes commited in Japan (Article 17), the right of US military to deny compensation to local citizens (Article 18), the right of US military to use Japanese ports and airports, the right to execute low-flight manoeuvres anywhere in the country (Article 5), the provision allowing the US military bases to return used property/land in any condition and with no obligation to address pollution issues (Article 4), the toothless ‘Respect for Japanese Environmental Standards ‘ which contains no actual obligations, and so on – which cause suffering and anxiety for citizens living in the area of military installations.
Deliberations in the Diet focussed exclusively on the written Agreement itself and once passed the daily handling of such issues was left to bureaucrats – the adopting of resolutions and conclusion of negotiations behind closed doors and with results kept secret became a normal aspect of US-Japan security policy-making – leading to a situation now where we have a mountain of secret agreements but the only area open for debate is the officially-agreed document that no longer bears any relation to the actual situation in the country.
Germany has been through a similar experience of bearing an extensive US military presence; their way of balancing the issue was to aim for ‘homogenization’ and ‘mutual security’ as key policy aims and in negotiations managed to establish the principle of ‘Precedence of German Law’ in the Bonn Agreement (1992-94) thereby reducing some of the arbitrary rights of the US military’s freedom of action in the country. As a result, the US government closed many of their bases and returned the land; the German government continued by banning low-flying, insisting on the application of German environmental standards and the return of used property/land in its original condition.
The US-Japan Status Agreement states explicitly that ‘either government may seek revisions of any clause of this agreement at any time’ – there is no procedural fashion in which the US side can refuse to take part in re-negotiations.
Native Priorities
At the same time as freeing itself from secret agreements of dubious legal nature, Japan should seek to build an environment for a common East Asian Security policy. If neighbouring countries were all ‘friends’, the current Security Agreement would lose its meaning. One of the reasons that Germany managed to reduce the US military presence on its territory was through the realization of a ‘European Common Security Framework’ based on ‘effort to create a favourable and non-threatening international environment’. Japan should also seek to work for such an Asian environment based on Article 9 as a creative force for peace rather than simply a ’stubborn denial of war’.
A Non-Nuclear East Asian Security Sphere
A Spiral of Loss : hysteria and ’satellite launches’
When the DRNK launched a Space Launch Vehicle (SLV) from Musdanri at around 11am on 5th April 2009, US intelligence reported that the SLV was most likely carrying a satellite as the North Korean government were claiming. Experts and NGOs drew the same conclusions, while the Japanese government moved quickly to demand that North Korea ‘cease conducting further nuclear tests and/or missile launches’ – the SDF mobilized PAC3 MD systems and Aegis ships, both houses of the Diet passed resolutions condemning North Korea on the same grounds. An appeal to the UN Security Council to impose heavier sanctions was vetoed by Russia and China. In the end a non-binding resolution was announced by the President of the Council.
North Korea responded by withdrawing from all agreements and stating their intention to address the threats to their security by re-starting nuclear testing. This could have been a bluff to up the ante and force the Americans to a negotiating table – a dangerous gamble on the part of the DRNK but not unusually so for them. This kind of ‘adventurism’ in foreign policy deserves serious criticism – the future of the 6-party Talks is uncertain.
Which raises the key question – what should the next step be with regard to North Korea after the use of ‘criticism’ and ’sanctions’? Some groups in political circles were calling for retaliatory attacks on North Korean installations. PM Aso stated before gathered journalists on the evening of 26th May that such counter-attacks would be ‘legally permissible’. Such ‘venting’ has occured before and been regarded as having a calming effect. In practice, such military offensives are ‘forbidden by the constitution and would be entrusted to American forces.’ This leads to greater dependence on the part of Japan on US military cooperation/impositions (eg., missile defense).
However, it is important to remember that North Korea’s nuclear weapons development is a response to the US conventional and nuclear military threat to their own country. The deeper Japan gets tied into military/defense coooperation with the US, the North Korean response will be to strengthen their military forces and conduct nuclear development in proportion to the threat they sense around them. This would create a vicious circle and represents the classic ’security dillemma’; it is this from which an escape road must be sought.
An East Asian Non-Nuclear Zone Framework is the answer.
A Non-Nuclear Zone – the global spread of the non-nuclear umbrella
The officially non-nuclear regions of the world as of June 2009 include 123 countries with around 30% of the world’s population (2,100,000,000 people) living in their borders which cover over 50% of the planet’s land surface. Listed in order of their non-nuclear declarations/agreements, they are :
- Latin America and the Carribean region’s Nuclear Prohibition Treaty (Toraterolco Treaty), since 1969, 33 countries;
- South Atlantic Region Non-Nuclear Weapon Treaty (Rarotonga Treaty), since 1986, 13 countries;
- South East Asia Region Non-Nuclear Weapon Treaty (Bangkok Treaty), since 1997, 10 countries;
- Central Asia Region Non-Nuclear Weapon Treaty (Semipalachinsk Treaty), since 2008, 5 countries.
An African Region Non-Nuclear Weapon Treaty was agreed in 1996 (the Belindaba Treaty), but has not been ratified yet. In 1998, Mongolia was recognized by the General Assembly of the United Nations as a Non-Nuclear Weapon Region, and in 2000 through related domestic legislative moves achieved ‘Non-Nuclear Weapon Status’. These non-nuclear agreements share the following common points :
- The non-existence of nuclear weapons and their non-proliferation – their development, testing, manufacture, production, receipt, possession, storage and conveyance are forbidden. This is the basic and fundamental condition of Non-Nuclear Weapon Status;
- The principle of “Non-Aggressive Security Agreements” – based on the principle of prohibiting nuclear attack or the threat of nuclear attack. Non-Nuclear Weapon Regions append a protocol to this effect to their agreements and seek to obtain the assent of countries which possess nuclear weapons; these NSAs are a powerful tool for freeing people from the fear of nuclear weapons – moving them from under ‘the nuclear umbrella’ to the ‘non-nuclear umbrella’;
- The obligation to create a framework and system of checks for the strict observance of the non-nuclear agreements.
The Reality of the East Asian Non-Nuclear Weapon Region : 3 Plus 3 Non=Nuclear Weapon Region
The NPO ‘Peace Depo’ has developed a model agreement for an East Asian Non-Nuclear Weapon Region. The initial document has been revised numerous times – in response to the development of the 6-country talks and other aspects of the international situation – since its original conception in 2004. The most recent (fourth) draft was published in December 2008. Next, we will consider this document as a basis on which the three non-nuclear weapon principles mentioned above could be applied in the region to free East Asia and Japan from the vicious circle of security policy engendered by nuclear weapons and the threat of their use.
–> The three currently-non-nuclear countries as the core of the region. The three non-nuclear countries in East Asia that will form the heart of an East Asian Non-Nuclear Weapon Zone are North Korea, Korea and Japan. With the political will, the formation of such a zone is possible. Japan has held to an its 3 non-nuclear principles ( “not to make, not to possess, not to bring in” ) since 1968. The military application of atomic technology has been forbidden in Japan since 1955. North and South Korea have had a non-nuclear policy since their joint declaration in 1992 ( a promise “not to test, construct, produce, admit, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons” and “to use atomic energy for only peaceful purposes” ). These represent sufficient qualification for these three countries to take the lead in the formation of an East Asian Non-Nuclear Weapon Zone.
–> Moving the three main Nuclear Countries to a Non-Aggressive Security Agreement. The three main nuclear-armed countries that are deeply involved in East Asia are America, Russia and China; persuading these countries to adopt Non-Aggressive Security Agreements will seal the future of East Asia as a non-nuclear zone. NPO ‘Peace Depo’ proposes that these three nuclear countries should be signatories to the East Asian Region’s Non-Nuclear Agreement itself (rather than to a separate NSA).
–> A ‘Non-Nuclear Weapon Region Council’ should be formed to guarantee the maintenance of the zone. The Council should monitor and assess the strict observance of the conditions of the non-nuclear agreement and the harmonization of non-nuclear political policy – its presence would give the agreement legal force.
This ‘3-plus-3′ (3 non-nuclear countries and 3-nuclear countries) agreement would continue on where the 6-country agreement of 19th September 2005 – which called for a ‘non-nuclear Korean peninsula’ – left off and take the matter further than that agreement has managed to.
–> How a Non-Nuclear Weapon Zone would open the way to Cooperative Regional Security. The establishment of a Non-Nuclear Weapon Zone would not only contribute to the de-nuclearization of East Asia, it would also bring about a breakthrough in the broader calming of military tensions in the region. Through the validation of Non-Nuclear status and the adoption of Non-Aggressive Security Agreements, the Non-Nuclear Weapon Zone would provide a foundation for greater mutual trust with vastly-diminished threat levels. The de-nuclearization of North Korea and China would remove the justification for Japan moving to strengthen its conventional military capability and, from the North Korean point of view, a Non-Aggressive Security Agreement with the US would remove the incentive to develop a nuclear deterrent and missile technology.
The realists can be heard beginning the next sentence with a ‘but’… Isn’t a Non-Nuclear Weapon Zone a mere pipe-dream while the US-Japan Security Agreement remains in place? And our answer : “US-Japan Security does not have to be based on the concept of the ‘nuclear umbrella’”. The US-Japan Security Agreement makes no mention of this ‘nuclear umbrella’ – Japan must decide the course of policy from here on. It is possible for Japan to exchange the nuclear umbrella for a non-nuclear umbrella. The Japanese government claims that the reason for continuing dependence on US military strength is ‘to stand firm against the threat from nuclear weapons’. If the threat from such weapons were removed, dependence on military force would also cease to be a necessity.
“But isn’t North Korea running from the 6-country talks and into nuclear weapon development?”, asks our next realist. “Look at that second nuclear test – North Korea has surely lost the non-nuclear status it claimed in 1992. Of course, this is an important thing that must be accepted. But there is still time before North Korea becomes a full-fledged nuclear weapon-equipped power with the ability to launch missiles with nuclear warheads like Pakistan or India. This time must be used to prevent the situation being allowed to get worse. It is time for suggestions on how to guide North Korea away from the path to nuclearization.
North Korea feels the threat from the Security Agreements between Japan, Korea and the US with perhaps greater intensity than Japan feels the threats facing her. Without even having concluded a peace treaty with its neighbour after the Korean War, North Korea feels surrounding threats more than we can imagine. As a strong step to remove this sense of intimidation it is time to bring a proposal for an East Asian Non-Nuclear Weapon Zone to the negotiating table. Japan must give up its dependence on the US nuclear deterrent as a guarantee of its own security.
Should Japan get involved in foreign conflict zones?
The question here is whether Japan can stop sending the SDF on foreign missions and contribute to international peace purely by financial contributions. Whether Afghanistan or Somalia or Sudan, the major conflict zones of the world are regions that have been ‘abandoned’ by the world. Poverty, famine, the crushing of human rights – it cannot be denied that from these regions spring the terrorism, violence, drugs, etc., that are threatening us all over the world.
The majority of these conflicts and ‘crimes’ are brought about through moves at self-preservation by the local people in these regions. Without a sense of security for individual people in these regions, it is not going to be possible to bring about true peace. So, how should Japan get involved in these regions?
Review of Police Powers
Against most threats facing our societies – global warming, food shortages, the spread of new viri and diseases, global financial crises, earthquakes, tsunami, local conflicts, terrorism, piracy, crime – military strength is is not funamentally useful.
The first reason for this is that conflicts can no longer be resolved in the military-centred way that dominated up until the end of the last century. The age has changed – with the end of the Cold War, state-led conflicts have been replaced with local conflicts between groups within societies. The aim of conflicts has also changed from territorial expansion and competition for natural resources (or incitement to revolution as in the Cold War) to ethnic, religious struggles for independence or struggles arising out of state bankruptcy and crushing poverty. Thus, as the reasons for the conflicts change, so the ways of dealing with them change – conflicts involving large armies using WMDs have become few and, generally speaking, the size of operational military groups has decreased and weapons have become smaller. As wars involving WMDs disappear, so the need for a nuclear deterrent loses its meaning.
Now, it is not military force that will resolve internal or domestic conflicts, but policing force. The Police have a negative image in Japan for various historical reasons, but it is time to reconsider the significance of police forces. While military forces ultimately aim to destroy or seriously diminish their enemy, police forces aim to control criminal elements based on the law – thus in that they seek to preserve a state rather than destroy one, their methods with regard to the use of weapons will be different.
Up till now, military force has always been used ‘externally’ and police forces ‘internally’, but we have to take into account the ways in which conflicts are changing. More often than not the non-military techniques of police forces are more effective than the use of the kind of weapons considered essential to military action.
Of course, there may be situations where military strength is required to deal with armed terrorist groups, but such action is usually only necessary in the first year of conflict resolution. The disarmament, investigation of war crimes, arrest of criminals, legal trials and imprisonment that may follow this period are not best managed by military forces. What are required are police officers, legal officers, prison officers, and other members of the civilian administration enforcement establishment.
Furthermore, the causes of conflicts are not going to be removed through even these means. The young people caught up in military-type conflicts need a process to re-adjust their lives to peaceful living – they need work, they need an amnesty so they can surrender their weapons to be destroyed, they need work training. New sources of income must be devised to replace the drug export and sex industries that tend to spring up when military control weakens the value of human dignity – it is not enough to simply seek to abolish these. Economic reform must be attempted.
While conflict zones are getting smaller, the damage and harm caused to civilian populations seems to be increasing. Civilian deaths, destruction of infrastructure, break-up of families, starvation, the movement of refugees, and spread of disease among humans and animals at refugee camps, general environmental destruction. A military response to conflict situations through the use of weapons leads to an increase in the cost to human life and communities.
If we abandon weapons?
The use of military force in war and conflict resolution attracts people’s attention through the media. But the use of military forces in peace-keeping activities receives very little attention.
The December 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Ban signed in Otawa, Canada outlawed the use, storage and production of Anti-Personnel Mines, required the destruction of all existing such mines in storage within 4 years, and the clearing of all uncleared minefields within 10 years. It represented an epoch-making ban and example of international cooperation and support with the aim of ridding the world of this kind of weapon and extending support to its victims. This small, extremely cheap weapon was – prior to the ban – manufactured in 56 countries and minefields were known of in over 70 countries with an estimated total of over 230 million mines buried in them. The estimated number of victims stood at around 500,000 people. With the signing of the agreement, the number of countries producing mines fell by 41 to a total of 15 countries, and 65 countries destroyed their stores of mines. Japan’s SDF also destroyed their stocks.
Following after the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban came the Cluster Bomb Ban Agreement signed in Oslo, Norway in 2008.
These examples show encouraging steps made by mankind towards true ’security’ for people.
A Militarily-Minor Country – the Power of NGOs
The Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty, or Otawa Agreement as it is also called got its initial momentum from the members of 2 NGOs in favour of abolishing Anti-Personnel Mines. An international campaign was started in 1992 to raise the profile of the issue and the resulting organization saw the issue spread to government levels. The countries that took up the issue were not the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council or the major military powers of the world, but militarily-minor countries like Australia, Belgium, South Africa, and Canada. In a sphere usually assumed to be the exclusive preserve of governments, it was the action of NGOs in making proposals to individual countries that led to an international agreement coming into being. The 1997 ICBL (the international campaign mentioned above) was selected for the Nobel Peace Prize due to its being ‘a leading example of international efforts towards peace and military down-sizing’. The Cluster Bomb Ban Treaty followed a similar pattern, with no sign of support from the military giants of America, Russia, Israel or China.
The time has come when international politics is beginning to be led not by the military superpowers but by militarily-minor countries or NGOs. Most of the examples of such activity given in this article are equally realizable in the case of Japan.
Faith in military might has great power, not only in Japan, but in many countries in the world. But the application of military force is rarely ever beneficial after the first year of a conflict – it cannot be used to bring about long-term, real peace. The Japanese can hold their heads high that their international activity based on Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan to contribute to the cause of peace without resort to military force is both important and necessary and Japan need not take to heart criticism of its non-contribution to military activity.
