Preparation, Not Pacifism, Defines Japan's Defense Policy

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Every major news outlet has explained that the new regulations break with the country's“pacifist” orientation. (In some cases, Takaichi's phrase is translated as“Japan's postwar path as a pacifist nation.”) Indeed, every time Japan revises defense policy, this charge is batted about. It dominated reporting a little over three years ago when Tokyo issued three new national security documents.

Japan's constitution does restrict war-fighting capabilities. Article Nine famously forbids the country from using force to settle international disputes and from possessing the tools to wage war. That is why Japan has“Self Defense Forces” (SDF), not a so-called military. It's the rationale for the previous restrictions on arms exports and it has become the cornerstone of the country's postwar identity.

But Japan isn't pacifist in the sense that it isn't willing to use force at all. Existence of the SDF – since 1954 – is repudiation of that position. It will use force to defend itself. Note, too, that successive Japanese governments regularly call on the US to reaffirm that Article 5 of the Mutual Defense Treaty applies to the Senkaku Islands, meaning Tokyo wants its ally to use force to defend it.

Japan has slowly improved both its military capability and the ability to use it.

In 1992, Japan passed laws that enabled SDF participation in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

In 1997, revisions to the Guidelines for Japan-US Defense Cooperation extended the jurisdiction of the SDF to address“situations in areas surrounding Japan.”

The SDF joined international efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, supporting Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom.

In recent years, the SDF has reorganized its forces to make them more capable.

As Christopher Hughes detailed in Japan as a Global Military Power, the country has the world's third- or fourth-largest military budget, the largest F-35 advanced-jet fighter inventory outside the US, military satellite constellations, mini-aircraft carriers and amphibious forces. And it has pursued counterstrike capabilities, the right to partake in collective self-defense operations and a proactive cyber defense.

Every action has been circumscribed or slowed by national law and political consensus, but those actions were not those of a“pacifist” nation. Eagle-eyed observers argue that Japan has used Article 9 to avoid being pushed into military action except on its own terms.

I checked in with Andrew Oros, professor of political science at Washington College and author of Japan's Security Renaissance: New Policies and Politics for the Twenty-First Century. He explained how Japan's leaders have clouded the picture, making reference to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, Takaichi's mentor and avatar for conservatives who chaff against postwar constraints:

None of this supports the claim that Japan is embracing military revanchism, a charge that Chinese officials have been making with increasing urgency as relations between Tokyo and Beijing continue their downward slide. After this week's Cabinet decision, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman called the move contradictory to Japan's identity as a peaceful nation and evidence of“new militarism.”

Hughes would disagree. In an earlier email exchange, he insisted that Japan's overall evolution in defense policy“in no way implies a rewind to the wartime period of Japanese military adventurism and imperialism, as is the knee-jerk reaction of some to the term who would like to overly-relativize and thus obfuscate the extent of contemporary change in Japan's security policy.”