For more than 75 years, Japan has had, at the centre of its constitution, a very particular promise.
The country renounces war as a sovereign right. Forever. This means the country is forbidden from maintaining an army, navy or air force - and from using force as a means of settling international disputes.
This so-called “peace constitution” was an instrumental part of Japan rising from the ashes of World War II, and the destruction that it both suffered, and meted out.
But now, Japan is dramatically beefing up its military.
Today, International and political editor Peter Hartcher on why Japan is arguably breaching its own constitution. And what it might mean for the global order.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, this is the morning edition. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. It's Thursday, April 11th. For more than 75 years, Japan has had at the center of its constitution a very particular promise. The country renounces war as a sovereign right forever. This means the country is forbidden from maintaining an army, navy or air force, and from using force as a means of settling international disputes. This so-called peace constitution was an instrumental part of Japan rising from the ashes of World War II and the destruction that it both suffered and meted out. But now Japan is dramatically beefing up its military. Today, international and political editor Peter Harshaw on why Japan is arguably breaching its own constitution and what it might mean for the global order. Okay. So, Peter, before we launch into the latest developments in Japan, I have to ask you about Penny Wong's dramatic statement on Tuesday evening that Australia could recognize a Palestinian state.
Because the simple truth is that a secure and prosperous future for both Israelis and Palestinians will only come with a two state solution.
So you were at the event in Canberra when she made these statements. I'd love to know what the mood of the room was like. And even more importantly, do you think that this might indicate what Australia might do when the United Nations votes to decide whether or not to grant Palestine full membership of the organisation? Because this would obviously be a significant step towards statehood.
I think Penny Wong speech has contained less than meets the eye, meaning that she was deliberately vague and ambiguous about the terms and timing of any such decision to recognise a Palestinian state. Australia's long standing position under both Labour and Liberal has been in favour of a two state solution, and that hasn't that hasn't changed before last night, it hasn't changed last night and it hasn't changed since. The critical question is under what terms and timing? Does Australia recognise any Palestinian state? And that's what she didn't specify. So the speech was vague enough that you could you could read into it that she was suggesting an immediate recognition of Palestinian statehood. But the day after, under pressure and with meeting instant scrutiny and criticism, both from the Jewish communities in Australia but also from the coalition, she has changed the wording and is now strongly implying that Australia would only recognise Palestinian statehood if the hostages are released. If there's a cease fire, if the Palestinian Authority is reformed so suddenly once there's a bit more clarity about the conditions and timing, it's not so controversial. I think it was either an attempt to get some attention and posture to, for Penny Wong to strike a posture in a pro-Palestinian stance, to appeal to a domestic audience, because the Israeli government, of course, is not listening and doesn't care what the Australian foreign minister says on this subject at the moment. Or it was just a sloppily written speech. But given that it was a long and carefully crafted speech, I suggest that it was more like posturing than carelessness.
Okay, so now we will turn to Japan, which of course is what your latest column was about now. It came as something of a shock, I think to many that there's this new proposal that Japan might join Aukus in some sort of capacity. This is, of course, the trilateral security partnership between Australia and the United Kingdom and the United States, which is eventually going to give us nuclear powered submarines such as the plan. But this comes after a period in which Japan has been beefing up its military more generally. So can you tell me about that broad development? What is happening there?
Well, the big picture here is that, as you know, Japan has a constitution written in 1947, in which it quote, forever, forever renounces war as a sovereign. Right. So that's a pretty big thing. And the ruling Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, which has been in power nearly continuously since and still in power today, has never really been on board with that. Those words were written by the occupying US forces. The Liberal Democratic Party has always wanted to revise the Constitution. And that particular article, article nine, that stipulates that. But they've never quite had the parliamentary majorities in both houses and the public opinion lined up to do it. So they've been trying to carefully interpret their way around it for decades now. What's happened is that now these last couple of years, with the objective circumstances of Japanese security changing and Japan feeling very threatened, and at the moment. They've accelerated that navigation around their constitutional constraint, and they're really accelerating the move to full rearmament.
And they've really upped the amount of spending that they're willing to contribute to their defense budget. Is that right?
Two years ago, the prime Minister Kishida, announced that Japan would effectively double its defense spending or security related spending. Technically is the definition over five years at the moment, Japan really, its defense spending is way below what its economic stature would suggest. Japan is the world's fourth biggest economy. It's a very big economy, even after 30 years of relative stagnation. But it's only the world's ninth biggest defense spender. What this change would do would be to double the ratio of defense spending from 1% of GDP to two, and put its economic might and its defense spending in sync and make it one of the biggest in the world. Okay.
And I'd love to ask you and find out a bit more about just how much of a dramatic shift this is for Japan to essentially be building up its military arsenal, because you've referred there to the peacetime constitution that Japan committed to in 1947. This was, you know, it was rebuilding itself from the ashes of World War two. So how big of a deal is this?
Well, it's huge. And the reason it's huge is that it's simply because if you look at what's happening around Japan, there are three different threats. The biggest and most urgent that the Japanese feel is China. But there's also North Korea, which is regularly firing ballistic missiles into Japanese territorial waters and occasionally even over the Japanese archipelago, over Japan's islands. And then there's Russia, which occasionally makes mischief, and lately has been conducting naval patrols with China, uh, in the seas around Japan. But the most urgent, most present and most daily pressure on Japanese sovereignty is one that we don't really see or report on very much in Australia at all. But it's very present for the Japanese. And that is this, on average, twice a day, the Japanese Air Force has to scramble fighter jets into the sky to intercept incoming Chinese warplanes. Where the Chinese are heading towards Japanese airspace, and the Japanese have to take to the skies toward them off, and the pace and intensity of those Chinese sorties into Japanese airspace has been increasing in, you know, gradually over the years. But that's pretty intense twice a day and on average, almost once a day. At the moment, Chinese ships are approaching and trying to enter territorial waters around the Senkaku Islands, which Japan administers and controls, but which the Chinese claim under the name of the Diaoyu Islands. And the Japanese likewise are sailing their navy and Coast guard to try to intercept and block the Chinese ships. So this is a daily contest over sovereignty and intrusions into Japan's airspace. And as Japan's former ambassador to Australia, Shingo Yamagami, said to me a couple of days ago, he said if those daily incursions into our airspace and our waters don't give us a sense of crisis, what will? So they are really feeling the pressure from those three sources of threat and the Japanese public. So public opinion, even just a few years ago, was still against the idea of a major increase in defense spending and a major rearmament of the country. That's changed. Now, most Japanese people, because of this threat that they are feeling, are in favor of what the government has started to do, which is to double security related spending over five years. And remember, the Japanese in World War two were not only a massive force, but a fearsome force. And Japan's history and national character, the whole Bushido warrior spirit and all of that martial energy, it's quite fearsome. And if they fully commit, it could completely change the nature of that country and contribute a pretty ferocious new member of our alliance. So what you see now is Japan incrementally but deliberately turning its energies and its efforts from this thorough and permanent renunciation of war into now willingly accepting the need to return to outwardly and specifically adopt the right to wage war as a sovereign right and to arm accordingly.
Which is so fascinating to me. And I understand what you're saying. You're saying that there's actually real threats that Japan faces on a daily basis, which you say is not reported on. So perhaps we're not so familiar with that. But it is so interesting to me, this, this rearmament, because you took me down a rabbit hole. Your recent column did. So I looked up article nine of the Japanese Constitution, which I can say I definitely had not done before, and and noted that, you know, military forces with war potential will not be maintained and it forbid Japan from maintaining an army, navy or air force. So I'm just wondering, is this rearmament? Is it actually a breach of the country's own constitution?
Well, if you're on a literal reading, yes it does. It is in breach. And they've confronted this problem before when they first set up their defense forces again after World War Two, they deliberately named them the Self-Defense forces. The formal name for the Japanese Army, Navy, Navy and Air Force are Self-Defense forces right? Their forces were called. The phrase in Japanese translates as defense only defense, that is, defensive forces which couldn't possibly project power outside Japan's borders strictly defensive. And since 1958, one of the expressions of that was we won't spend more than 1% of GDP on our defense budget. And that was the ceiling that was broken two years ago with this dramatic announcement to double security related spending.
We'll be right back. And I did want to touch on history for a bit because Japan, of course, before taking on this very famous peacetime constitution, it was, of course, for a long time a militaristic imperialist nation with a tradition of invading some of its neighbors in Asia. Very aggressive. So would this decision of theirs to beef up their military caused concern, I guess within the region or even beyond it? I mean, does this change the geopolitical arena in some fundamental way?
Yes. Well, there has been continuous expressions of concern out of Beijing accusing Japan of destabilizing regional order and regional peace. And there has been under previous presidents of South Korea, there's been grizzly about Japan's military as well, although that changed dramatically a few months ago when the current president of South Korea met with Prime Minister Kishida. They shook hands and they've struck a new strategic compact where they no longer grizzle about each other. And they embrace their strategic intent, which is they have a shared fear of China. So South Korea is now on board. But China, of course, continues to complain that Japan is destabilizing the region. And not just.
That. I believe China has actually criticized this potential involvement that Japan might have, with Aukus saying it could spark a regional arms race.
Yes, it has two key points here, Samantha. The first is that nobody is proposing that Japan join Aukus first pillar, which is about acquiring submarines, nuclear powered submarines. Nobody is proposing that the Japanese aren't asking and the Aukus partners aren't offering. It's purely about pillar two, which is the technology sharing joint development of cutting edge technologies in eight specified priority fields.
Well, we think there is opportunity for us to be cooperating with Japan in relation to technology sharing around pillar two in the future, which is.
Supposed to produce some breakthrough defense technologies in the next few years. I think.
The point here is Japan is a high tech country with high tech industry and high tech defense industry, and we already do cooperation with Japan in relation to.
Our research into new weapons is something, of course, that every country does. And China has been doing. So it's it's pretty difficult to accuse Japan of an arms race or destabilizing the region based on that. The second point is that is the sheer hypocrisy of the Chinese accusation. The Chinese have are still in the process of the greatest peacetime buildup since World War II, seen from any country. They're producing 2 to 3 new submarines a year. They have a dozen nuclear powered submarines in the water already. They have the world's biggest navy. They have submarines in the water now cruising the Pacific that are capable of carrying and firing nuclear armed ballistic missiles. Japan has no nuclear capability, has a decent sized, reasonably capable navy, but nothing comparable to what China or the US have. The Japanese. It's simply chalk and cheese. The Chinese military is now a colossus, and the Japanese military is still, you know, putting on its uniform really, and cleaning its gun.
Right. And you mentioned before, from the Japanese side of things, why the country might want to join this second pillar of aukus their feeling in crisis, essentially, that they are vulnerable from threats in a way that they hadn't been in in recent years. But are there any other reasons why Japan would be keen, I guess, to join this endeavor?
Well, Japan hopes to benefit from the pooled technological knowhow of the other three countries the US, UK and Australia, that it could help it accelerate its own weapons development and technology and to share in the benefits that would emerge from that. So, you know, that's a concrete, uh, potentially concrete gain for Japan. There's been persistent talk that other countries also might want to join Aukus apart from Japan, with with its limited participation in pillar two, Canada and Korea and New Zealand are also countries that have been whose names have been floated. The head of the Canadian Armed Forces has said Canada would like to join pillar two, like the Japanese are now lining up to do. The New Zealanders have likewise said they they might be interested as well.
So Aukus, which has been really contentious at times here in Australia, is now the hottest ticket in town. Well, it looks like.
All the kids on the block want to join the gang.
And I wanted to ask you, from the point of view of the United States and the United Kingdom and Australia, why would they want to bring Japan into any aukus projects, given that the so-called Five Eyes governments don't actually trust Japan to protect its intelligence secrets? Well, the.
Two parts are. First, Japan has a broad and. Deep technological research and development base, and a very large industrial, manufacturing and production base that they can bring to bear. That's one, as we all know, it's one of the world's leading technology producers, so it can make a very large contribution, presumably to these projects. The other reason the US is keen and the US is the one is Duchesse, the Japanese. And lined this up is that the Americans are trying to put together networks of their own allies in the region to cooperate with each other, not just with the US. So the US used to be all about umbilical cords between it and it's, you know, its junior allies. This is no longer the case. As Kurt Campbell, one of the key American officials on all of this stuff, told me a few. He's told me several times over the years, we can't do this alone anymore. We need all our allies to cooperate. Not just with us, but with each other. So they've created a number of different networks and groups. I mean, the quad is an example. Aukus. They agreed to Aukus. It's another example. And bringing Japan in to Aukus would further increase, I guess, the complexity of the networks and increase the group of countries working on what are really are deterrence planned or hoped for deterrence against Chinese expansionism? That's really what's going on there. And that's why the Americans are keen to bring as many of their allies together.
And we know that Kishida is meeting with Joe Biden today as we record on Wednesday. Do we have any idea what they'll be discussing or whether anything major will come out of that?
Prime Minister Kishida and President Biden, we're told, are going to announce an intensification of their alliance. I'm told that Australia also will be involved and included in some of some parts of their announcement, but apparently it's going to be a major upgrade, and it will include much more patrolling and exercising together and a range of other cooperation that we don't yet know about. But we'll have to wait and see.
Thank you so much, Peter. Always for your time. Pleasure. Today's episode of The Morning Edition was produced by Julia Cassell, with technical assistance by Debbie Harrington and David McMillan. Our executive producer is Ruby Schwartz. The Morning Edition is a production of The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald. If you enjoy the show and want more of our journalism, subscribe to our newspapers today. It's the best way to support what we do. Search the age or SM commu forward slash. Subscribe and sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter to receive a comprehensive summary of the day's most important news, analysis and insights in your inbox every day. Links are in the show. Notes. I'm Samantha Salinger Morris. This is the morning edition. Thanks for listening.