Shinzo Abe's Military Coup

Posing in a fighter

 The Abe regime's reinterpretation of the constitution, to put it bluntly, Japan has suffered a military coup. Abe has boasted that what he did was comparable to the Meiji revolution. Even The Asahi Newspaper editorialized that black is now officially white. 

A constitution that clearly and forever renounced war and preparations for war is now said to mean that the Japanese military can join Washington in its wars for oil and natural gas in the Middle East or in the South China Sea under the guise of protecting Japan's essential energy supplies. Japanese military operations need not be limited to collaborations - termed collective security - with the US.  Japanese military operations can also now be launched with nations with which Japan is deemed to close relations, for example the Philippines, Vietnam or India - independent of the United States. 

A Cabinet decision also can clear the way for first-strike Japanese attacks against China or North Korea has been opened. Further, we now read that Abe plans to seek the right to dispatch Japanese military forces anywhere in the world without consulting the Diet. 

Japan appears no longer to be a constitutional democracy. The "reinterpretation" reflects total disregard not only for the Constitution, but for democracy itself.  The Constitution was functionally amended by fiat, rather than by the democratic process required by Article 96 - and it is being imposed despite the opposition of the majority of Japanese people.  There was no bill created in the House of Representatives and voted on by the whole Diet.  There was then no mandate to the Japanese citizenry by way of ballot.  Instead the Abe regime simply by demand changed the Constitution.  Abe is leading a coup.

One day after the Constitution was trashed

 In addition to its further opening the way for Japanese militarism, this autocratic reinterpretation means that in the future the constitutional commitments to human rights could be equally vulnerable. We need to take the mainstream Japanese press seriously when it writes that Abe is "imitating" the early Showa Era, when the military intelligence protection act left "the public feeling unable to speak freely."  

Abe's disrespect for the law is not limited to the Constitution. He is apparently also acting illegally as he presses construction of the massive new US Marine Air Base at Henoko.

Despite Abe's nationalist credentials, the reinterpretation needs also to be understood in the context of Japan's client state role.  In the last Armitage-Nye report, issued as Abe returned to power, we saw the US stepping up the pressure for Japan's leaders to revise the Constitution. Why?  Because as it works to compensate for the relative decline of the United States, Washington is demanding more of its allies. 

All of this helps to explain why, immediately after the reinterpretation, it was announced that a Maritime Self Defense officer was being dispatched to serve at the Pentagon with the US Chief of Naval Operations to "enhanc[e] the operational integration of the US Navy and the MSDF [Japan's Maritime Self Defense Force].

Dr. Joseph Gerson