On Japan and Nation Building

[Annie]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2006/07/dawn_over_tokyo.html

July 12, 2006
Dawn Over Tokyo
By Jules Crittenden

Sixty-one years after the end of World War II, Japan is on the verge of becoming a mature, responsible democracy.

Once Japan's troops raped and murdered their way across China, enslaved women as prostitutes for their soldiers, and starved, beat and worked Allied POWs to death. Taken with Germany's blitzkrieg and Holocaust, it stands as history's most naked, unbridled and unprovoked case of aggression.

At war's end the Japanese, finally brought to submission by two atomic bombs, got religion. It was a rebirth, one of the most remarkable transformations of history, as the chastened Japanese and Germans foreswore the projection of military might. Their once war-obsessed people became some of the noisiest advocates of peace in the world, presuming even to lecture the United States on the subject, ignoring the glaring irony that the United States had been compelled to level their cities to end their warmongering and then took on the costly burden of defending them from the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China.

Japan was content to allow the United States to handle its defense for six decades, while Japan prospered and assumed the appearance of a leading nation in the world. Japan was in fact a nation-sized factory and merchandizing operation. With the exception of some aid programs, Japan's primary contribution to world stability has been to act as a convenient naval port and airfield for American forces off the coasts of North Korea and China.

That has been shifting slightly. There has been talk for the last couple of decades of Japan assuming more responsibility for its own defense and Japan has shown increasing interest in the plight of poorer nations. Then, to howls of domestic protest, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi took the audacious step in 2003 of dispatching military engineers -- strictly non-combatant and defended in no subtle irony by Australian troops -- to give the people of Iraq clean water.

But North Korean despot Kim Jong Il has at longlast provided the impetus for what could be a sea change in modern Japan's role in the world. In 1998, North Korea fired a missile through Japanese airspace. Last week, the Taepodong II -- purportedly an intercontinental ballistic missile -- was test-fired and crashed into the Sea of Japan, along with half a dozen Scuds. These incidents followed several decades of the unimagineable national insult and injury of North Korean agents abducting Japanese youths from Japanese beaches, to be used in spy programs against Japan.

The July 4th launches were seen as a message to the United States, another effort to boost Kim Jong Il's international prestige and angle for attention and aid. But the chances that North Korea will credibly threaten the United States in the foreseeable future are remote. Japan is demonstrably already in range, and Japan's government is in no mood to play games with Kim.

Japanese officials said Monday they believe negotiations may not be the answer to the Korean problem. Dawn over Tokyo.

"If we accept that there is no other option to prevent an attack ... there is the view that attacking the launch base of the guided missiles is within the constitutional right of self-defense. We need to deepen discussion," Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said.

"It's irresponsible to do nothing when we know North Korea could riddle us with missiles," said Tsutomu Takebe, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. To legally allow such an attack, he said, "We should consider measures, including legal changes."

Japan's military currently remains on a defensive footing, and would at best be strained by the execution of such a plan. A Japanese ramp-up to offensive capability probably could be achieved in relatively short order, once legal issues are resolved. Japan may then also have to tackle the issue of whether to go nuclear, as an added defensive measure in a bad neighborhood that includes two aggressive nuclear players -- China and North Korea. These are not only reasonable steps for a mature democracy to consider in that kind of environment, they are vital to stabilizing a region where the United States has not only had to provide security but is regularly blamed for creating tensions it is there to defend against.

As Japan mulls its right to projecting military power in its own self-defense, expect an uproar from homegrown peace advocates who believe that pacifism is the highest international virtue, and fail to recognize that mature, responsible democracies must be prepared to act aggressively in defense of themselves and others.
Jules Crittenden is a Boston Herald city editor and columnist for bostonherald.com. Crittenden has covered foreign policy, military affairs and social issues in India, Pakistan, Israel, Kosovo, Armenia, Iraq and Kuwait.