Explanations Collapsed

Newspapers have indicated the day when the new security bills would pass the Diet as Thursday 17^th. While lawmakers in the House of Councillors are discussing relevancy of the bills in light of constitutionality, focus of the politics is shifting to what happens after the passage. However, discussion between government side including Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the opposite parties revealed that exercising collective self-defense right would not be necessary to maintain peace and security of Japan and Japan-U.S. security alliance.

In the press conference on May 15^th last year, when Prime Minister’s consultative committee submitted a report about exercising collective self-defense right, Abe explained that exercising the right was needed for rescuing Japanese citizens on an American vessel. “Suppose a conflict suddenly arises in their destinations. Suppose also that attacks is made in the sea near Japan, right when Japanese people who are escaping from where the conflict had occurred are being rescued and transported by our ally, the United States, which has the necessary capabilities to do so. Even in such cases, unless the Japanese nationals themselves were attacked, the Japan Self-defense Forces could not defend the U.S. vessels transporting the Japanese nationals. This is the current constitutional interpretation,” told him. On his back was a drawing of a mother embracing a baby on U.S. vessel heading from Korean Peninsula to Japan. People must have thought that collective self-defense was needed to help the Japanese in such a situation.

Explanation is different now. Minister of Defense, Gen Nakatani, started saying that JSDF can defend a U.S. vessel without Japanese citizens. “Whether Japanese are boarding is not an absolute condition,” Nakatani answered to a question in House of Councillors. While Abe has been stressing that exercise of collective self-defense would be strictly limited to few cases such as what he raised last year, Nakatani’s idea was genuine and full-fledged collective self-defense. Abe’s explanation was collapsed.

Another example Abe raised was removing floating mines in Hormuz Strait. Abe has been insisting that existence of Japan would be threatened, if Hormuz Strait had been blocked, because of Japan’s dependence on petroleum in Middle East. Everybody knows that Japan has ample reserve of crude oil. It is ridiculous to suppose that some states in Middle East dependent on oil exporting would clock the strait. Abe and his staffs eventually ceased raising the example of Hormuz Strait.

So, what is collective self-defense needed for? All examples Abe raised were proved to be unnecessary. That is why the people suppose something.  “It is needed for his personal delusion that Japan and his families including his grandfather, former Prime Minister Nobusuke Kishi, has been defamed by ‘post-war regime.’”