Thursday, December 30, 2010

Japan's New Outline for a Defence Plan

On 17 December, the same day the Prime Minister of Japan requested the reelected Governor of Okinawa to agree to the transfer of the US Hutemma base to Henoko, and got refused, the Japanese Cabinet approved a new Outline for a Defence Plan. It is largely based on a report by an advisory committee. When the report was submitted on 27 August, this writer wrote an article which can be approached under the title "Thoughts for Japan's New Defence Plan" dated 23 September in Observer Research Foundation(Analysis). I will add a few things more on the document.
It stresses a shift from the 'basic defence capability', a concept which has been adhered to since the first Outline in 1976, to the 'mobile defence capability', by which the SDF will be quickly mobilized against certain conceived external threats. It will be easily understood that, after the trouble with China over Senkaku islands in September and the North Korean bombardment on South Korean territory in November, these two are considered to be the threats. Or, that is how the Outline, in fact the whole process leading to it, would like to have us believe, instead of talking how the territorial questions should have been discussed between the interested parties, and how the violence could have been averted. To make the matter worse, both China and DPRK are not capable of knowing how their own behaviour have strengthened the fear of their military among the Japanese people, and have made them susceptible to the warlike mantras. This is a fatal flaw of dictatorship.
Anyway, in accordance with the above shift, the SDF will have less tanks and artillery from now on, but more submarines and anti-missile aegis ships. The SDF, however small in number, will be deployed in the outer islands of Okinawa. Hints are dropped here and there that ways and means will be under consideration on how to send the SDF out more easily for international peace-keeping operations. There is an indication that rules concerning the export of weapons will be loosened.
All these measures have a doubtful validity in terms of the Article 9 of the Constitution discussed before in these columns, and are likely to lead to a vicious circle of more mutual arming. If I may quote from my own book, Japan(National Book Trust, India, 2006), the role of Japan in the world can be seen in 'the fact that nobody in the last sixty years has seen any weapon in any remote corner of the world that was exported from Japan, and nobody has heard of any person who was killed by the Japanese military'(p.178). This is what everybody wishes to see in the New Year 2011, and in the years to come.

Sunday, December 26, 2010

India and China

India and China are the two giants of the world. Both are among the BRICs, or BRICS. Indians have been looking at China with suspicion for fifty years. Even then they have come to terms with such expressions as 'rising China and emerging India', knowing that China is ahead of India in deregulating economy by 10-12 years. But they have keenly felt that between India and Pakistan China has consistently supported the latter.
In the past six months India has been visited by the new Prime Minister of Britain, President of France, President of the US, Prime Minister of China, and President of Russia, the top leaders of all the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council. Of these, the Chinese Premier has gone to Pakistan after India, and promised much more than he did in India by way of economic cooperation in the private sector. The Pakistan sources have stressed the importance of the corridor about to be completed from Gwadar port near the mouth of the Persian Gulf to the southwestern part of China. In fact both China and Pakistan openly talk of their special relations.
If the Chinese move has helped to ease age-old tensions between India and China, and India and Pakistan, all is well on the eve of the new year. There is, however, a question mark.
A friend from Taiwan who studied and taught in Japan once told me that the Chinese people, no matter where they come from, easily get mixed and make friends. Not so with the Indians, meaning, for want of a better term, the greater Indians, not only of the present India but also of Pakistan and Bangladesh. The scar of the partition of 1947, and the divide and rule which led to the partition, is still deeply felt. An Indian historian B.R.Nanda, who has been making biographical research of the political leaders of India, has published a new book, Road to Pakistan : The Life and Times of Mohammad Ali Jinnah(2010). The whole book is a discussion of "an Anglo-Muslim plot to thwart Indian nationalism"(p.18). And then the unspeakable violence, destruction, bloodshed, dislocation, not only around 1947 but right up to Gujarat, India, in 2002.
Until this legacy is overcome, the greater Indians stay divided, and China will remain ahead of India in development. But China herself is able to do something for India and Pakistan to overcome it, and the best way is not to support Pakistan too much against India, thus to continue the divide and rule policy. Here the stake is extremely high. The last of the above-mentioned visitors contracted with India the sale of 126 fighter jets and their joint development involving enormous money. What for? Already experts have written about India "arming without aiming". Does not the same apply to Pakistan and China? This is a vicious circle which started at least in 1971. An overall disarmament among the three countries is the only way out.

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution

Finally we will examine the constitutional status of the US bases in Japan. The Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution says in its first part 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". It is based on the Treaty of 1928 on the renounciation of war and the Article 2(4) of the UN Charter. So there is not much new here. It is the second part that is really new, goes ahead of any other document even after nearly sixty-five years of its existence, and is looked up to by great many people in the world. It says that "In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized". Why there are the SDF in spite of the Article is another matter, to be looked into some other time.
The Security Pact, in its both versions, talks of Japan's inherent right of individual or collective self-defense. It does so in direct connection with the Article 51 of the UN Charter, without any reference to the Constitution. It is as if there are two conflicting legal systems side by side. The question is not whether Japan is able constitutionally to exercise her right of collective self-defense, in other words, to fight a war on the same side with the US. The answer is self-evident in terms of the Constitution. The point here is that the Constution is silent even on Japan's possessing the right of self-defense.
There was a Gubernatorial election in Okinawa, one of the Prefectures of Japan, an archipelago by itself, where three-fourths of US bases are concentrated, on 28 November. The US and Japan have long been agreed that the US base at Hutemma is in the midst of a dense residential district and be transferred to Henoko, another part of Okinawa, where a new base was to be built. Both the two main contenders were not in support of the transfer. In a debate which appeared in the Asahi newspaper on 5 November, Nakaima, the incumbent, said that the Security Pact was needed as deterrent, while Iha, the challenger, said that the US forces in Japan should be curtailed as the US bases are for fighting war over the globe, the Security Pact is useless for the security of Japan and had better be transformed into a Friendship Treaty, respecting the relations with China and others. As to the governmental plan to deploy SDF in the southwesternmost islands of Okinawa, near Senkaku which is disputed between Japan and China, Nakaima was of the view that the deployment was necessary to some extent but the residents should be well informed, while Iha said that no such step should be taken as the area is a rich fishing field where creating tension is most undesirable. Nakaima won by a narrow margin.

Monday, December 13, 2010

US Bases in Japan for What?

One of the questions left over from the 'North Korean Bombardment' is why there are US bases in Japan. It is because of the Security Pact between the two, making it possible, together with Article 6(a) of the Peace Treaty, for the occupation forces to stay on in Japan under a different name. Its original version, signed in 1951, said the US would defend Japan. The new one of 1960 says, reflecting the growth of Japan's SDF(Self-Defense Forces), that each will act (if not jointly) against "an armed attack against either Party in the territories under the administration of Japan". Its letters have remained the same for the last fifty years, but its substance has greatly changed, particularly after both started calling each other an ally in 1981. The US bases have been used as a stepping stone to deploy their forces to Iraq and Afghanistan, far outside the "Far East" stipulated in the Pact. Thus the Pact could serve as a mechanism to involve Japan in a US-led war with Asian nations. Or could invite attack on Japan. Closely following the joint US-Korean exercises already mentioned, US-Japan exercises were held from 3 to 10 December under the command of an American officer. It is as if they are preparing the ground, or rather the air space and the sea, for the exercise by Japan of the right for collective self-defense, not allowed by the Constitution(more on this later). It was an exercise for waging a war.
With the US, South Korea and Japan's SDF thus getting ready, with Japan's contingency act in place since 1999, and with the "provocation" by DPRK, we would be wise not to minimize the risk in the current situation. The Japanese Prime Minister talked about the possibility of sending SDF planes to South Korea to evacuate Japanese nationals. It was reported yesterday that the US military sources have described the situation as getting dangerous. Was it really provocation on the part of DPRK as the media would like us to believe?. Not necessarily. But even if it is so there are ways to defuse the tension. The two Koreas are to be advised to come to an agreement on the two separate armistice lines drawn on the sea. In the absence of an overall armistice between the two ending the Korean War, the initiative for peace started at the second Korean summit of 2007 may well be followed up. The bombardment could well have been averted then. China at the moment is proposing that the chief negotiators of the six-party conference should have an emergency meeting. Why are some of the others hesitant to accept it? There might not be plenty of time left.

Friday, December 10, 2010

Nobel Peace Prize 2010

The Norwegian Nobel Committee decided to give the Peace Prize this year to Liu Xiaobo 'for his long and non-violent struggle for fundamental human rights in China.' The Chinese government strongly objected to this. They have not only prevented Liu and his wife from attending the ceremony at Oslo on 10 December, but detained several hundred human rights activists in the country. If many educated and qualified youth have been thus alienated it would be an enormous waste of human resources to the country. The government say Liu is a criminal. In reality he is a political prisonor, a prisonor of conscience. Moreover they have not answered the charge by the Norwegian Committee that Liu's detention is in violation of Article 35 of the Chinese constitution providing for fundamental rights of the people.
The government may say that their socialism is one of Chinese pattern and the Western model of human rights does not necessarily apply. For a long time China has judged visiting foreign dignitaries by their attitude towards Tibet, Taiwan and human rights. Innumerable legitimate demands for human rights have been suppressed in the name of this kind of specificity in China or elsewhere. After 9/11 fighting international terrorism was added as a convenient excuse for such suppression. About one third of the countries with an Embassy at Oslo have expressed their inability to attend the ceremony. One wonders if in so many countries similar suppression is going on.
What Liu and his associates have written down in "Charter 08", things like freedom as the core of the universal values, decentralization, independent legislature and judiciary, nationalization of the armed forces, sustainable development, a Federal republic, civic consciousness, are far from an agenda for toppling a powerful government. They feel suffocated. They want to breathe freely. They want to express themselves. And in doing so they are supported by millions of people, not in China alone. Economic growth does not automatically bring about democratization. It takes human effort. The examples of the Philippines, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Indonesia have testified to this. China is now in the process, which is shown by the case of Liu Xiaobo. The Norwegian Committee is to be congratulated for taking a far-sighted and courageous decision.

Monday, December 6, 2010

Japan-North Korea Relationship

The readers who have gone through 'North Korean Bombardment and "Deterrence"' last week may have come across at least three questions. Why are the US naval ships based at Japan? What is the constitutional status of those bases? Why does Japan have no diplomatic relations with DPRK? Let me discuss the last one today.
In August 1945, Japan was desperately fighting the powerful Allies. The Potsdam Declaration had already been issued, demanding immediate surrender and threatening to strike with greater force if Japan didn't. Japan didn't, at least not soon enough. If Japan had done so, there would have been no division of the Korean Peninsula, then under the Japanese rule, as the Russians would not have been in the war against Japan then. When the Russians declared war on the side of the Allies, the US forces were not yet in a position to reach the Peninsula easily. The US thereupon decided that the Peninsula should be divided at the 38th Parallel into two occupation zones, to stop the southward advance of the Russian Army and to let them take the surrender of the Japanese troops only north of the line. It had the great advantage of assigning Seoul, the capital and the largest city, to the US. The Parallel was thus not intended to be a boundary. But it soon became one when both the US and Russia brought their own men to their zones and established governments around them. It was in 1948.
When Japan regained her independence in 1952, the Korean War was going on and Japan had already been allied to the US. Between the PRC and Taiwan Japan chose, or was made to choose, Taiwan. Between the two Koreas, South Korea. The Treaty of 1965 normalizing relations of Japan and South Korea says that South Korea is the only lawful government in Korea. Establishing relations with the North would mean, therefore, that Japan will come out of the Cold War legacy in East Asia, and will also overcome her imperial past. It may also, hopefully, help the two Koreas to be united again, peacefully.

Friday, December 3, 2010

Dr.Ma Haide : A Birth Centenary

Ma Haide was already a legend in his lifetime. Born in 1910 at Buffalo, N.Y., as George Hatem in a Maronite Catholic family of Lebenese origin, he studied medicine. He came to Shanghai in 1933 for a year or two's practice. But he lived in China for fifty five years until his death in 1988. He got attracted to the revolution, participated in the last phase of the historic Long March, was given a house at Yen'an where the Communist HQ were located, married a Chinese girl, and was the first foreigner to become a Chinese citizen after the revolution.

Wednesday, December 1, 2010

North Korean Bombardment and "Deterrence"

The North Korean Army bombarded a South Korean island, reportedly with their 120mm field guns, on 23 November. This was the first act of its kind since the ceasefire of 1953. No doubt it is condemnable. Joint US-South Korean military exercises are being held in the sea southwest of the Korean Peninsula from 28 to 1 December.