New Three Conditions

Discussion over collective self-defense right between Liberal Democratic Party and New Komeito is now stuck in restrictive principles for exercising it. LDP presented new three conditions for using self-defense right, as a replacement for current three conditions. But what the administration is willing to do is not restrict Japan’s military activity, but expanding it.

Traditional three conditions to exercise self-defense right have been that A) there is a situation of immediate and unjust violation, B) there is no other appropriate measures against that, and C) it should be limited within minimum necessity. Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, and LDP are interpreting them as not dividing self-defense right between individual and collective. They are focusing on reinterpreting the Constitution as it is allowing exercising self-defense right, if it is limited for minimum necessity.

New three conditions are revising A) into “when there is a concern of threatening existence of our nation and fundamentally overturning rights on life, liberty and pursuit of happiness by occurring military attack on another country. No change would be added to B) and C). The Constitution of Japan does not allow use of force unless Japan is attacked. By replacing “situation” into “concern,” the government can arbitrarily wage a war, even an aggressive war, when it has that concern. This is a typical maneuver by bureaucracy.

New Komeito is no longer against allowing minimum exercise of collective self-defense right and require drawing a line of “overturning life, liberty and pursuit of happiness.” But it strongly opposed the expression of “concern” and demanded to include “situation of immediate and unjust violation.” Komeito is trying to get a breakthrough by having actual limitation as strict as current one, and by giving nominal achievement of unleashing “collective” self-defense right for Abe.

However, Abe’s fantasy goes to preemptive attack to other nations, whether or not Komeito realizes. He required LDP to discuss removing floating mines, namely in Hormuz Straint, to secure Japan’s crucial interest. If Japan removes them in wartime, it is recognized as an act of war in international laws. The country that laid mines will determine Japan’s action as preemptive attack against it. In contingency in Korean Peninsula, North Korea may recognize Japan’s action as a preemptive attack, when Japan support U.S. vessel carrying Japanese evacuees from the peninsula.

Necessity minimum is actually an imaginative concept, which does not exist at all in terms of collective self-defense right. Exercising collective self-defense needs to be approved as a whole, if they want to do it. As long as Abe is relying on bureaucracy in this issue, distorted interpretation of the Constitution and confusion will not be settled in Japan politics.