Newspapers have indicated the day when the new security
bills would pass the Diet as Thursday 17th. 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 15th 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.’”
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