New And A Bit Alarming: The Abe Cabinet's "Self-Defense" Category Of Action

We'll wait and see
A few days more
There might be something there that wasn't there before.

- Howard Ashman and Alan Menken
"Something There" (1991)

The above is a screen shot from the question time of the New Komeito's Toyama Kiyohiko yesterday (May 28) on the change that the Abe Cabinet is suggesting in Japan's ladder of response to threats to the security of Japan's citizens.

On the left is the current ladder, where there are only two steps, in between which is a thick line dividing

- those threats that can be handled by constabulary forces (the National Police Agency and the Japan Coast Guard), labeled "Police Power" and

- those that must be handled by the Self Defense Forces, labeled "War Power."

On the right of the panel is the New Komeito's understanding of the Yanai Commission's recommendation to the Abe government of a new, three step ladder. There is still a thick line separating "War Power" from that which is below it. However, in between "Police Power" and "War Power" is a new step, "Self Defense Power," which an assistant is helpfully indicating with the pointer. Graphically and in a real sense the new "Self Defense" zone extends down into some of what is now considered purely constabulary and up into what is currently considered purely military. The boundary line between "Police Power" and "Self Defense" is furthermore shown as being thin as compared to the boundary delimiting "War Power."

All in all a nifty little graphic representation of just one facet of the ongoing argument over the proper paradigms for Japan's security.

A lot of other panels in the battle of minds can be seen in the 7 hours and 15 minutes of yesterday's House of Representatives Budget Committee testimony, available on the Shugiin TV website at:

http://www.shugiintv.go.jp/jp/index.php?ex=VL&deli_id=43975&media_type=wb

The Banana Defense

Before long in his new post, the voluble Mr. Kahn, shunning "recession" as a euphemism, warned of a "very serious depression" if inflation were not tamed, prompting a private rebuke by the president’s chief domestic policy adviser, Stuart E. Eizenstat.

So instead, Mr. Kahn began referring in public to a possible economic downturn as a "banana," only to be chided by the president of the United Fruit Company and induced to shift once again to a different euphemism, "kumquat."

Source: "Alfred E. Kahn Dies at 93; Prime Mover of Airline Deregulation,", New York Times, 28 December 2010.

Abe Shinzo has a problem.

It is about how to protect Japan, its rights and its interests in the 21st Century.

Prime Minister Abe and many, many members of the Diet wish to vote for legislation enabling Japan to engage in collective self-defense (CSD) with other nations, a legal right it has under Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.

Unfortunately for Abe and his many allies, the Government of Japan declared many decades back that exercising the right of collective self-defense is unconstitutional. Furthermore, as they have discovered to their chagrin over the course of the current Diet session, once the executive branch of government uses the word "unconstitutional," it cannot take it back.

Ostensibly, Article 81 of Japan's U.S.-drafted Constitution grants the Supreme Court the power to undo CSD's unconstitutionality. However, it could only do so as the result of a lawsuit based upon some incident occurring where plaintiffs can complain of injury due to a government action classifiable as CSD, such as a government official (an SDF officer) being reprimanded for refusing an assignment based on his/her personal view that the assignment requires participation in CSD.

In other words, the Supremes cannot just come out tomorrow and say, "We think CSD is entirely cool so go for it, Prime Minister Abe!"

Perversely, even if a lawsuit made its way to the Supreme Court, the Court could toss the issue right back to the executive branch by declaring the issue political and thus outside its jurisdiction. This is what the Court did in its sweeping Sunagawa Decision (1959).

In the face of this constitutional impasse, the Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner the New Komeito are weaving webs of words verging on the surreal. The LDP seems to be arguing that while CSD is nominally unconstitutional, a very careful expansion of SDF activities into a limited number of areas that have heretofore been considered CSD might be constitutional. The New Komeito, for its part, has indicated a willingness to go along with many proposed loosenings of restrictions on the actions of the Self Defense Forces as long as these can be plausibly argued to not be CSD but instead a form of ISD.

The response to these manoeuvres from the nation's editorialists has been predictably unenthusiastic. At best the scribbling classes find the ruling coalition's arguments to be gibberish. (Link)

Hence the neat idea bubbling up today. According to the Mainichi Shimbun, some smart puppies in government and the LDP have come up with a new way around the constitutional ban on CSD:

Do CSD -- but don't call it CSD. Call it "self-defense" (jiei) instead -- with the feeble caveat of restricting this evasion to "situations where if we do nothing, Japan could be attacked as well." (Link - J)

Now before we guffaw too heartily at this "I will not say the word 'recession' and cannot say 'depression' so I will say 'banana' instead" subterfuge in order to get around a constitutional ban, should we not admit that this is precisely the way we came to have army, navy and air forces called the Ground Self Defense Forces, the Maritime Self Defense Forces and the Air Self Defense Forces?

Worthwhile Reads for October 3

Two essays worth reading...

1) While I find the stated positions of Abe Shinzo regarding the sexual slaves of the Imperial Forces, love of the national government nation and the options as regards the Senkakus so disturbing I cannot think dispassionately about a potential Abe premiership, others are not so hobbled by their emotions. Andrew Levidis of Kyoto University has produced a level-headed essay on Abe's foreign and security policy:

Shinzo Abe and the dream of a conservative Asia

Do not be turned off, as I initially was, by the Ivan Morris reference in the introduction. Bull through it, ignoring the glaring contradiction between the Morris thesis and the political resuscitation of Abe's career.

2) As is his wont, Okumura Jun has offered an interesting exegesis on the most recent public opinion polls and speculates why the Kyodo News poll is probably the most reliable indicator of the popularity of particular parties.

Some Thoughts around the New Noda Cabinet Polls… on the Japan Restoration Party

Okumura's theory that the voters in the less-populous prefectures are getting their news from the prefectural paper, where national political news comes from the Kyodo News wire service, has significant electoral implications, especially since the less populous prefectures are over-represented in the Diet.

The most recent polls from Kyodo, The Asahi Shimbun and the Yomiuri Shimbun repeat the truly peculiar phenomena of the polls of last week and the weekend:

i) a rise in the popularity of the Noda Cabinet,

ii) a majority of those polled having no positive expectations from Abe Shinzo and his lieutenants,

iii) the popularity of Liberal Democratic Party soaring, often to their highest levels since the August 2009 election defeat, with the percentage of those polled supporting the LDP now double the percentage supporting the Democratic Party of Japan,

iV) support levels of the DPJ remaining flat.

The results in the aggregate seem senseless. How can the LDP become so much more popular when it elects a leader the majority of those polled find unimpressive. How can the popularity of the Noda Cabinet rise while the popularity of the DPJ declines -- in every single poll?

I see two major forces as likely pushing up the LDP party support figures:

I) The "Anyone But Tanigaki Sadakazu" effect -- The fall of Tanigaki from power has brought back into the fold traditional LDP supporters among the patriotic fantabulist crowd, the social conservatives and the strong leadership worshippers. These voters, finding Hashimoto Toru a distasteful parvenu, had been hiding out among the voters on the record as supporting no party. With Tanigaki gone, these traditional LDP voters are standing up and being counted.

II) The "Let's Slap China Around" effect -- All of the LDP's candidates in the LDP presidential election, not just the winner Abe, spent weeks making loud and extravagant promises that if put in charge of the nation, they would protect Japan's territories and territorial waters from the Chinese threat, showing the Chinese that Japan cannot be pushed around.

Given that Chinese government has been ratcheting up the war of words with Japan over the Senkakus, and now sends its constabulary ships on daily violations of the territorial waters about those islands, the LDP's fantasy tough guy rhetoric has been stirring and falsely reassuring.

The key question is whether with its popularity in the 30% range and the DPJ's in the 10-15% range, does the LDP have the ability to lure disaffected members of the DPJ to vote against the Noda Cabinet in a no-confidence motion, toppling the Noda government?

The snap answer would seemingly be "Yes."

Circumlocutions - Why It Has To Be A Missile

Scholar Earl Kinmonth, who has very little tolerance for ungrounded concepts, has a post up on the SSJ Forum on the proliferation of phrases describing the North Korean launch vehicle as being "really a missile" -- with the emphasis on the adverb -- a subject I touched upon in my bantamweight post of Saturday.

Last night, NHK tried out a brand new phrase describing the DPRK launch vehicle:

人工衛星としている、実情にミサイル

"The what-is-in-reality-a-missile, acting out the part of an artificial satellite..."

On Saturday, I half out of facetiousness, half out of actual confusion, asked the reader to chose a potential force mandating these verbal tangles.

Yesterday, I played around with the idea that refusing to call the DPRK launch vehicle a "rocket" was a way of expressing contempt for the DPRK's history of sophistry and duplicity. However, that theory had a weakness in that it is hard to get everyone to share a feeling, even in a mass-market society with a strong conformist streak.

This morning I think I have it...and it is one these, "Duh, MTC, what else could it have been?" answers that leaves one thankful there is coffee for solace's sake:

Japanese media outlets do not call the North Korean rocket a rocket because if it were a rocket, then the Self Defense Forces could not shoot it down.

The Japanese government is a stickler about terminology most of the time. On defense and security issues, however, it is outright fanatical. Fall into any kind of linguistic fuzziness on security and one runs the risk of slamming right into the wall of Article 9 of the Constitution.

Ballistic missile defense (BMD) has been judged permissible under Article 9. The term is translated directly; in Japanese it is "dando misairu boei" (弾道ミサイル防衛). If one is to use BMD to bring down anything, that thing had better be a missile. Shooting at anything else would be unconstitutional.

So, as is so often the case with these tortured circumlocutions, the reasoning is transparently practical. Call it a missile and you can shoot at it. Call it anything else and you are left with nothing but watching and praying.

Redefining Normal For Japan

Thwack!

That is the sound that this essay by Soeya Yoshihide, Director of Keio University's Institute of East Asian Studies, makes. It delivers a punishing blow to the arguments of a raft of U.S. and U.K. monographs and op-eds published over the last two decades on the significance of Japan's normalization in military affairs.

Given the number of targets it hits, it is the whack-a-mole of blog posts.

Thwack! Thwack! Thwack!

Let's Try This, One More TIME

TIME magazine blogs has a post (E) about the government's possible use of the Self Defense Forces' anti-ballistic missile capabilities should North Korea proceed with its planned rocket launch.

I here reproduce the TIME text, with my annotations.

TOKYO – Japan knows just what to do if North Korea goes ahead with a thinly disguised test of a new ballistic missile next month: shoot the @#$! thing down.

Japanese Defense Minister Naoki Tanaka told Diet members Monday that “We will take the (necessary) procedures in the event of a contingency that threatens our country’s security,” and pointed out that Japan has Patriot PAC-3 and Aegis destroyers that could do the job. Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Forces began deploying Patriot batteries to Japan’s southern islands today.

What Defense Minister Tanaka Naoki has said is that he is thinking about giving the order to shoot down the rocket, pending the prime minister's approval. In the event of pieces of the rocket falling or such a similar contingency (implictly, the rocket falling as a whole) in a manner threatening Japanese territory, the SDF under existing law can attempt an intercept of the threatening material. (J)

Not exactly "Shoot the @#$! thing down."

The Japanese are still traumatized by a 1998 test in which nuclear-armed North Korea lobbed a ballistic missile directly over the home islands. The incident prompted the Japanese to join the US in missile-defense R&D, and it remains a cornerstone of Japanese defense policy.

North Korea said Friday it will attempt to put an Earth observation satellite into orbit sometime in April. But that’s seen as a cover for a testing a long-range ballistic missile, capable of carrying a nuclear warhead, of course. Technically, the launch would violate UN Security Council Resolution 1874. Tokyo could claim it was enforcing the mandate, although it does not authorize use of force.

First, the nuclear anachronism. In 1998, North Korea was not nuclear-armed. Yongbyon's spent nuclear fuel rods were under IAEA seals until 2002. The DPRK did not claim to have weaponized the plutonium it extracted from the fuel rods until 2004. It did not carry out a nuclear test until 2006.

Second, according to the Ministry of Defense, cooperation with the U.S. on BMD research began in 1978. At the same time, Japan was asked to prepare facilities for U.S. BMD systems on Okinawa. (J)

Third, a launch of a space vehicle does not violate UN Security Council 1874. The North Koreans know this. That is why they are calling the launch a space vehicle launch.

Fourth, Tokyo cannot claim it is enforcing the mandate if the resolution does not authorize the use of force.

North Korea said the missile will be fired in southerly a location, which means Tokyo-ites won’t see contrails flying overhead. Nevertheless, Foreign Minister Koichiro Genba said he couldn’t rule out the possibility that the missile would pass over Okinawa or other southern islands.

Whether the Japanese could actually take out the missile would depend on whether an Aegis destroyer or Patriot battery were in the right place. The Patriot missile travels has a published range of about 70 kilometers.

If Japan does try to take out the missile, it would be its first shot fired in anger since World War II. That’s one reason it’s unlikely to happen. In addition to annoying the North Koreans, it could also make the Chinese and South Koreans — ever suspicious of Japan — nervous.

The "first shot in anger" statement is true only for the SDF. The Maritime Self Defense Force's predecessor, the Coastal Safety Force, had a gun battle with a Soviet spy ship off the coast of Hokkaido in 1953. So Japan has fired shots in anger.

Shooting down a space-bound vehicle would more than just "annoy" the North Koreans. That I can assure you.

Why would Japan firing a defensive missile at a rocket make the Chinese and the South Koreans any more nervous about Japan? Japan is already deeply bought into BMD. Japan has liquid and solid-fueled rockets capable of boosting payloads into space. Now that capacity represents a threat to China and South Korea, but it is one that has existed for a long time.

Japan has conducted tests of the Patriot and Aegis systems, but has never fired at a real ballistic missile. That’s another reason the Japanese are unlikely to make good on the threat, says Ralph Cossa, president of Honolulu-based Pacific Forum CSIS: “It would be embarrassing if they missed.”

Part of the testing of the Aegis-linked Standard III system has been the intercepting of missile warheads over the Pacific. Those were real missile warheads. If by "real" the writer meant "in battle" - well, he should have said so.

Cossa's comment on how embarrassing it would be should the SDF's anti-ballistic missile systems miss their target makes sense only if Japan fires willy-nilly at a rocket headed in its direction, which would be akin to an act of war. Since the rules of engagement outlined by the Minister of Defense preclude a rash and unnecessary act, the comment is superfluous. If the Standard III and Patriot systems miss their target and a piece of or a whole rocket lands in Japanese territory, with consequent damage or casualties, the result would be a lot worse than merely embarrassing to the SDF.

An academic of great standing recently complained to me about blogs, how even the ones with editors allow any idiot with a computer and an opinion to vomit forth some perverse piece of nonsense, which thanks to the the low cost of computer storage and search is kept alive, rendering the world just a little bit stupider, non erit finis.

What can I say?

More On That Damn Plane

Like I have been saying (Link).

White elephant, pink elephant, millstone...whatever.

Oh Well, It's The F-35

It is official now: the national security council and the Cabinet have both signed off on the procurement of the Lockheed Martin F-35 as Japan's replacement for the F-4 (J and E).

I would not hold my breath in anticipation of when the Air Self Defense Forces accepts its first delivery of the plane, nor of any of Japan's beset heavy industry giants getting much in the way of ancillary contracts.

Guess that the timing of this announcement is proper: near to the darkest days of the year and amidst a flurry of speculation about the situation in North Korea post-Kim Jong-il. This decision has all the attributes of a snowjob.

A Plane Without A Policy, Revisited

Today's Tokyo Shimbun editorial "Making Japan's Next Generation Fighter The Unfinished F-35: Is This Safe?" (Jiki sentoki mikansei F35 de daijobu ka - Link) lists a series of problems with the rumored decision of the Government of Japan to procure F-35 Lightning II's as replacements for its aged F-4 fighters.

The Tokyo Shimbun's main arguments are not the usual ones about the range of technical problems and delays that have plagued the program so far. Instead, the editors worry about the way the cost of each plane will be calculated, if the heretofore undeployed aircraft can even be delivered to Japan at the promised time.

What makes the editorial bite, however, is its final paragraph, where the editors go out on a limb to point fingers at who seems to responsible for the F-35 decision -- and it is not the usual or proper policy makers:

「最新鋭機がほしい」という航空自衛隊のがむしゃらな突っ張りが日本をとんでもない方向に導くおそれが強い。

One has the strong fear that Japan is being led in ridiculous direction by the reckless defensiveness of an Air Self Defense Force that says, "We want a cutting-edge aircraft."

What was it that our current Defense Minister Ishikawa Yasuo said, that his ignorance of military affairs was the very essence of civilian control of the military?

A Plane Without A Policy

Michael Auslin of AEI has produced an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal taking quite a different view of the likely Japanese government decision to purchase Lockheed-Martin F-35s than I did the other day. At least in terms of which direction the author's thumb is pointing.

As far as I can tell from the essay, the clear advantage for Japan in owning a set (and by a set I mean 40, the number of planes being jiggled about in the mainstream press) of F-35s is that the plane will be invisible to pilots of the current generation of Chinese and Russian attack fighters. Which is all very well and good up to the point where the F-35 actually fires something, when its presence will then become very much known.

Now the possession of F-35s could have a deterrent effect, making Chinese or Russian commanders less willing to invade Japanese airspace or attack a Japanese ship or aircraft in international airspace or waters on the chance that an F-35 could be nearby, ready to retaliate. However, in the event that such an intrusion or attack would occur, it would certainly only be carried out as a part of a coordinated and multi-asset planned attack, which the presence of F-35s would not deter.

An F-35 could ostensibly be used to loiter around in the wake of an attack squadron of F-15s and/or F-2s, serving as an invisible friend of these planes should they be set upon by more acrobatic Sukhoi 27 and Sukhoi 30 variants. However, not even the role of silent protector works out in terms of Self Defense Forces doctrine, because stealth is only really advantageous when given the chance to fire first, without warning, which no ASDF commander has the authority to order and no ASDF pilot is trained to do. Firing on the Sukhois after they have engaged the F-15s or F-2s may be psychologically rewarding, but will not bring back the lost F-15s and F-2s. Firing on the Sukhois while they are engaging the F-15s and F-2s will make a messy situation only messier (Missiles here, missiles there -- missiles, missiles everywhere...).

As for ASDF F-35s invisibly intruding into Chinese, Russian or DPRK airspace, what would be the mission? Destroying the opponents command and control systems? Destroying fixed missile sites? Destroying mobile missile launchers? Engaging fighters over the other country's territory? All of these acts are not just contrary to Japanese defense doctrine, they are unconstitutional -- and no seriously proposed revision to the Japanese constitution gets within even shouting distance of permitting such missions except as a response to an attack on Japan, which is already covered under the Japan-U.S. Security Arrangements -- i.e., it is a problem for the United States to handle, whereupon the F-35s that would be responding will be U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy planes.

No matter how one slices it, one cannot come up with a mission for Japanese F-35s to perform, save keeping the U.S. government happy and the reputation for paying exorbitant amounts of money for a small number of fighters intact.

As for the Russian and Chinese stealth fighter programs, which are themselves responses to the threat posed by the U.S.A.'s F-22s -- a threat that, every so often (twice this year, at least) does not exist -- neither of them are going anywhere soon, either because the generals are kidding themselves (the Russians) or the generals know damn well that test flying a prototype stealth fighter in daylight is not something a country with a serious stealth program does (the Chinese).

And if the policy problems were not enough to kill interest in the F-35, the plane itself, as Tobias Harris passes on in a Facebook link, has so far been a dud.

So I would agree with Michael Auslin in thinking a Government of Japan decision to acquire the F-35 has Tokyo taking security to another plane (Hardy, har har har!). Unfortunately, it is another astral plane.

Later - It probably means nothing...but it seems the announcement of the F-35's having won the contest to become Japan's next generation fighter has been delayed.

The People's Prime Minister

It was a small item, but it looms large in my imagination.

On October 14, Prime Minister Noda Yoshihiko visited a day care center in Yokohama, joining the children for lunch. Here is the photo of the PM saying "Itadakimasu" seated at table with what look like the five year olds.

Considering how small the chair he must be sitting on, the PM's placid, almost beatific composure is remarkable. He looks utterly at ease and in his element.

It is hard to imagine Noda's predecessor Kan Naoto, an incorrigible adult, being able to pull this off. It is flat out impossible to imagine Hatoyama Yukio in this pose, nor any of the trio of Liberal Democratic Party prime ministers who preceded Hatoyama.

Could Koizumi have pulled it off? With teenagers, maybe. But with small children, probably not. Koizumi was cool, not child-like.

In the coming months and quite possibly years, we will have keep a sharp eye on the low key, accommodating style of this prime minister. His common touch -- arising from his literally being from nowhere, or as close to nowhere as one can get (both his parents being the youngest child of a large family -- i.e., the inheritors of nothing -- and his father's being a Ground Self Defense Forces member, meaning that the family had no town to call its home) and his necessary reliance on the national safety net (of all prime ministers in history, he is the one with the fewest assets) is linked to an inspiring, if sometimes overwhelming, desire to get things done. The economist and former minister Takenaka Heizo has warned the Noda Administration that it is tackling too many issues at once, that it should concentrate on two or three main issues, so as to guarantee they receive the attention necessary for success.

Noda and his advisors are ignoring this sound advice, tackling issues both pressing like Japan's galloping demographic imbalance and ancillary, like the recent blowup over participation in the Trans-Pacific Partnership. The PM and the Democratic Party of Japan's policy makers have proposed tax rise after tax rise, even grasping the third rail of Japanese politics -- the raising of the consumption tax to 10% -- and survived. To be sure, the prime minister's poll ratings are down from his initial numbers -- NHK's most recent poll (J) finding support for his cabinet at 45%. Considering how many different sacred cows the PM and his people have gored during his first two months in office, 45% is a very respectable number.

The Noda administration's success will depend on how well it can continue to impress with the themes of humility and sacrifice. Noda has already received a thumbs up review from a very hard-to-please senior figure as regards his low-key demeanor. His response to the provocative Obuchi Yuko speech in the Diet was admirable for its restraint. As for sacrifice, Noda, unlike his predecessor, seems to derive only benefits from calling attention to the needs of those displaced by the triple disaster of 3/11 (he also seems more than willing to wield the suffering caused by 3/11 to batter his opponents senseless). "Sacrifices have to made," has been his motto since his second speech at the DPJ congress that elected him party leader, and not even sacrifice-be-damned stalwarts like Kamei Shizuka, Hatoyama Yukio and Haraguchi Kazuhiro have been able to say much in response.

I would be pushing the envelope to call Noda "better even than Koizumi" -- the other prime minister who was able to call for painful national sacrifice with the populace backing him up -- but from what I have seen these first two months, Noda is certainly "the best since Koizumi."

Image credit: Tokyo Shimbun

Men of Defense on the Defensive

In response to Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi's sending a letter of reprimand to Colonel Nakazawa Takeshi for his having made a disparaging reference to the Prime Minister in a speech at the opening ceremony for a joint U.S. Force Japan-Japan Self Defense Forces drill last week, the Liberal Democratic Party's defense tribesmen are denouncing the disciplinary action. Ishiba Shigeru, the defense otaku and head of the LDP policy research council, complained, "What the colonel said was actually self-evident...When you say, 'It's outrageous!' it is troubling that you are not saying what it is that is so outrageous." Nakatani Gen, a former SDF officer, chimed in with a suitably duplicitous, "If you punish someone in front of the troops simply for indicating the importance of the Japan-U.S. alliance, you will damage morale."

Nakatani-san, Colonel Nakazawa probably did not receive his stiffly worded letter because he was expressing a high opinion of the Japan-U.S. security relationship.

Anyway, Mssrs. Ishiba and Nakatani have through their protests almost certainly locked up the frustrated former SDF officer vote.

A voting bloc both of them already had in their pockets anyway.

Then again, when the LDP is growing more feeble and fissiparous by the day, it is perhaps best to make sure one has nailed down even the most loyal of loyal constituencies.

A Right And Proper Military

Over at Twisting Flowers, Ethan Chua has a meditation upon the uproar over Colonel Nakazawa Takeshi's seeming mockery of Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio last Wednesday in a speech at the opening ceremony for a joint U.S. Forces Japan / Self Defense Forces exercise. Colonel Nakazawa supposedly said that the Japan-U.S. alliance...

"...cannot be maintained by diplomacy or political rhetoric. Least of all can it be maintained by the words ‘trust me.'"

The colonel has received a written reprimand for these remarks, which are clearly in reference to the assurance to "Trust me" that the Prime Minister reportedly gave to President Barack Obama last year on finding a replacement site for the Futenma Marine Corps Air Station on Okinawa.

A written reprimand, no matter how strictly worded or damaging to Nakazawa's record, seems hardly sufficient. By disparaging one of the phrases that has become indelibly associated with the Prime Minister, Nakazawa clearly indicated his ultimate loyalty is not with the civilian leadership of his country. Instead, it seems he posited some higher power as giving him he right to mock, however indirectly, the PM. Whether that entity is the Alliance, the U.S. military or the defense of Japan is irrelevant - that Nakazawa should have thought that his service put him in the position of criticizing the Prime Minister is unbelievable. That he should have done so seemingly in the presence of U.S. military officers at a public ceremony is unforgivable.

It is a measure of the Democratic Party of Japan's dangerous intellectual disengagement from military matters that this matter is being allowed to be swept under the rug without a vigorous public debate. Though many are drawing parallels between Nakazawa's remarks and the Tamogami affair, Tamogami's firing was done in the glare of camera lights, over what was, in the grander scheme, a difference of opinion about history. Nakazawa's transgression is being quickly papered over, despite its begging the question as to whom Colonel Nakazawa felt he owed his ultimate loyalty.

Since the incident occured as a part of a joint SDF-USFJ exercise, the U.S. Ambassador and the Commander of USFJ would be full in their rights to go to Defense Minister Kitazawa Toshimi and explain to him that the U.S. takes insubordination very seriously -- and that a military with officers who do not see themselves as fundamentally loyal to their own government is of no use to the U.S. as an ally.

Later - It seems that the Defense Minister is suitably furious at Colonel Nakazawa's remarks.

Now the trick is to find out from whence this morning's English language version of The Asahi Shimbun could derive this gem of a paragraph:

Kitazawa said Nakazawa's remark represented "an extremely dangerous thought" that could lead to a coup.

A spanner in the works

Wow, did the judges in Nagoya throw the government for a loop yesterday, ruling that the dispatch of the Air Self Defense Forces to Iraq is unconstitutional.

Japan Court Rules Sending Troops to Iraq Illegal, Kyodo Says
Bloomberg

By Naoko Fujimura April 17 -- A Japanese court said the country's dispatch of troops to Iraq was unconstitutional, becoming the first court to rule the mission illegal, Kyodo news service said.

Airlifting activities by Japan's Air Self-Defense Force in connection with the U.S.-led war in Iraq violate Japan's constitution, which renounces war, Presiding Judge Kunio Aoyama at the Nagoya High Court in central Japan said, according to Kyodo.

Even though the court declined to suspend the mission or award damages, plaintiffs won't appeal the ruling, the report said. Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda told reporters the decision won't affect Self-Defense Force activities in Iraq, Kyodo said.

The court ruled that the air dispatch was not just unconstitutional, but illegal, the flights into Baghdad violating the provision of the Special Measures for Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance Law limiting the activities of the Self Defense Forces in Iraq to "areas outside of a zone of conflict".

The response of the government? Dismisssive. "Heck, it's non-binding. So no problem." According to the Tokyo Shimbun, one legislator even said, "The lead judge just wanted his name to go down in history." (He did have a little caveat, continuing, "Even so, it's a problematic ruling.")

[Just an aside--but is it not interesting that when a judge rules that what a street criminal did is illegal, the street criminal is universally condemned, particularly by the law-and-order types in the Diet, as having been a bad, bad person. However, when a judge rules that what the politicians have done is illegal...it is the judge who is wrong!

Perhaps politicians, when they were young, were taught to not respect the law by leftist teachers who would not sing the national anthem.]

The ruling represents a shot in the arm for a lot of causes that had fallen moribund.

The ruling will revive the Democratic Party's fight to withdraw the SDF from the Mideast, the next hurdles being the renewal of the Indian Ocean dispatch in January of next year (it was for only one more year, was it not?) and then in July, the renewal of the law permitting the ASDF flights in and out of Iraq.

The ruling will also revive the constitutional revision crowd, many of whom must have been stunned at the Yomiuri poll of a week ago showing that the number of respondents thinking the constitution in need of revision fell below the number of those thinking the constitution should be kept as it is. If the constitution does not permit the dispatch of the planes, and a dispatch of the planes is indeed vital to Japan's overall security--then efforts must be made to have the constitution amended, with popular disquiet an issue that needs be dealt with by-the-by.

Another group who can take heart in the ruling is a broad coalition of folks from all points in the political spectrum who share a common, humble wish: that the courts of the land force everyone, even the powerful and the influential, to obey the law as it is written. The Nagoya court looked at the words of the law and decided that they meant something--and in this land, that is no mean achievement.