The security legislation proposed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration moved a step closer to becoming law when Parliament’s lower house approved it. The bills, which seek to rewrite the country’s post-War pacifist security policy, are now before the upper house. Over a period of seven decades, Japan’s security policy, shaped under a war-renouncing Constitution following the misadventures of the imperial regime, has been focussed on self-defence. But the present bills seek to replace the self-defence doctrine with “collective self-defence”, that would allow Japan to send troops abroad to rescue allies under attack. This big shift in approach makes the legislation controversial and unpopular. According to recent polls, only a quarter of the Japanese population supports the legislation. But Mr. Abe seems determined to take it forward.
This is mainly because of two inter-connected factors. First, Japan has come under huge pressure from the U.S. to revise its security doctrine. During > Mr. Abe’s visit to the U.S. in April 2015, both Japan and the U.S. announced new security guidelines which urged Tokyo to take “more responsibility” in their bilateral security arrangement. Mr. Abe promised U.S. lawmakers to approve a new defence bill package “by this summer”. This explains why the Prime Minister is in a hurry to get the bills passed despite opposition. Second, the nationalist politician that Mr. Abe is, sees it as a necessity to have an outward-looking security policy to contain China’s rise. He had earlier proposed to have a “strategic diamond” of four maritime democracies — Japan, the U.S., Australia and India — to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific. Mr. Abe has criticised China’s territorial ambitions in the South China Sea, and Tokyo and Beijing have a dispute over islands in the East China Sea held by Japan. But the question is whether the move to reorient the pacifist security posturing, which ensured peace over the last seven decades when Japan rose as an economic powerhouse from the ruins of the Second World War, would help Tokyo address its security challenges, or lead to a flare-up of tensions in an already volatile East Asia. If the latter happens, that would create wrinkles in East Asian stability as the rivalry between China and Japan, that has historical dimensions, would worsen. That will not be in the interest of either Japan or Asia. Japan should also be wary of joining the great game between the U.S. and China in the Pacific — one an existing super power and the other a rising super power. Instead, it should focus on solving its problems with China bilaterally, and work towards essential regional stability. For that to happen, the best way will be to continue its acclaimed policy of renunciation of war.
