Winton Dong

    dht620@sina.com

    IN the name of maintaining national security and safeguarding global peace, Japan’s controversial new security laws came into effect on March 29, 2016, marking an overhaul to the more than seven decades of the country’s exclusively defensive posture and casting a shadow over the hard-won international political order after World War II.

    Within the framework of the new laws, Japanese forces are now given the green light to defend the United States or other friendly nations under armed attack, but the conditions under which it can also be exercised state that it can be used if Japan’s survival is under threat.

    Many Japanese scholars, lawyers, opposition parties and the public doubted the motives of the new legislation and criticized Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s intention to shake off restrictions over the use of force overseas and the exercise of the right to collective self-defense.

    Over 90 percent of Japanese constitution experts believe that the new security laws openly violate Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution. “Its first item says that Japan will not start a war. The second item says that Japan will not maintain military forces or a fighting army, and it will not resort to force as a means of settling international disputes,” said Osamu Watanabe, an honorary professor at Hitotsubashi University.

    Such a view prevails among legal professionals. Unable to stop the bill in the parliament controlled by Abe’s coalition, more than 100 Japanese lawyers have set up a lawsuit association and will sue in local courts on the new security laws this month.

    Opposition parties in Japan also voiced their protest. “The five parties will cooperate so we can force the ruling parties into a minority,” said Katsuya Okada, president of Japan’s largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), after holding talks with four other opposition parties, namely the Japanese Communist Party, the Japan Innovation Party, the Social Democratic Party and the People’s Life Party.

    Shinzo Abe claims that the new laws are intended to maintain national security and peace. However, security and peace would be the most impossible thing such laws would bring to Japan and the world, since it is well known that one of the important reasons why Japan became such a prosperous nation after World War II is its firm adherence to the pacifist Constitution and focus on economic development.

    As a close ally of the United States, Japan, with the new security laws in place, will inevitably play a more important role in Uncle Sam’s “pivot to Asia” strategy and pave the way for itself to further meddle in regional affairs.

    With the implementation of the new legislation, Abe will not only jeopardize the postwar order and geopolitical balance, but also make Japan more vulnerable to attack. Japan will face a much higher risk of being caught up in wars and its civilians will also be exposed to more dangers or be targeted in war zones all over the world.

    Looking back, the current chapter directed by the Japanese prime minister had a German version in the 1930s, when the Weimar Constitution was tread on and Nazi Germany invaded Europe thereafter. At that time, Imperial Japan, as one of the three Axis countries, occupied the Korean Peninsula, part of China and prepared for its further aggressive onslaught of the Asia Pacific Region. Today, Japan is again marching on the road of militarization. Under this circumstance, other nations, especially its Asian neighbors, should be more vigilant.

    History has already proved that such militarization and aggression will lead Japan nowhere. While meeting with reporters from both China and Japan on April 3, 2016 in Tokyo, Yukio Hatoyama, a former Japanese prime minister, also criticized Abe for his hostile and hawkish policies to take Sino-Japanese ties from bad to worse. “Japan should carry major responsibility for its lousy relations with China at present. In order to change such an embarrassing situation, Japan must have the courage to acknowledge its aggressive history and face up the music,” he said.

    (The author is the editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Daily with a Ph.D. from the News and Communication School at Wuhan University.)