[A-List] Japan: angling for promotion

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Japan's battle for a Security Council seat
By Phar Kim Beng
Asia Times: January 17 2003

HONG KONG - Despite the economic malaise besetting Japan, it remains
unrelenting in the pursuit of one goal: to be a permanent, and therefore
veto-wielding, member of the United Nations Security Council.

The aim is not to be taken lightly. Since 1956, Japan has been a full member
of the United Nations. It has also served on the Security Council on seven
separate occasions, the most recent term being 1991-93. Over the past six
years, the efforts to be a permanent member have been intensified. The first
official bid was made in March 1994 by Yoshio Hatano, then the Japanese
ambassador to the UN.

In tandem with this objective, Japan's top diplomats have been routinely
sent to its UN missions in New York to strengthen the government's effort.
These included Ambassador Hisashi Owada, father to Crown Princess Masako
Owada. Currently the initiative is spearheaded by Ambassador Yukio Satoh,
long known in the region as a strategic thinker.

Although Asian countries, including China and South Korea, have not, in
principle, mounted any formal opposition to the Japanese petition, doubts
have been raised in certain circles in the United States. That they come
from the US is ironic, as Japan is after all its most "important ally" in
the Pacific. Yet US opposition clearly exists.

In 1994, under the leadership of senator William Roth, the US Senate passed
two resolutions affirming that the US government should not support Japan's
attempt to gain a permanent seat. The Senate's objection was based on
uncertainty over Japan's overall commitment to engage fully in UN
peacekeeping and peacemaking operations.

Oblivious to the resolutions, however, Japan has not held back from its
goal. In September 2000, Japan's intention to become a permanent member was
again reiterated by foreign minister Yohei Kono.

The US Senate's doubt of Japan's qualifications to be a permanent Security
Council member is due in part to Japan's peacekeeping laws. Under the
International Peace Cooperation Law, which took effect in the Diet in August
1992, five conditions must be met before Japan can send its Self Defense
Force (SDF) abroad to serve under the UN.

As outlined by Mayumi Itoh, a scholar on Japan's UN bid, the five principles
are:
1. The parties in the armed conflict must have already agreed to a
ceasefire.
2. The parties in the armed conflict and host countries must have given
consent to the operation and to Japan's participation in it.
3. The operation must ensure strict impartiality.
4. The Japanese contingent must withdraw should any of the above
requirements cease to be satisfied.
5. The use of weapons is limited to the minimum necessary to protect lives.

The above principles, while clearly advantageous to Japan, are deemed
perilous to other members of the UN peacekeeping operations. The fourth
principle clearly allows Japan to pull its forces out should conflict recur.

More important, the laws are based on a sanitized notion of a ground
conflict. For one, it is premised on the belief that if and when a ceasefire
comes undone, the SDF would have the time and opportunity to phase itself
out of the conflict. Yet post-Cold War peacekeeping missions have pointed to
the contrary. In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the multinational United Nations
Protection Force (UNPROFOR) could not withdraw without first seeking the
armed backing of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The withdrawal
operation was so fraught with dangers that NATO had to create another
peacekeeping force to protect the withdrawing UN battalions. Thus, when a
ceasefire does collapse, it is well-nigh impossible to pull the troops out
without endangering one's personnel or that of other participating members.

That Japan has such laws in its constitution does not augur well for its bid
to become a permanent member of the Security Council.

Thus far, the efforts of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs have been primarily
focused on the privilege attached to a permanent seat. Ostensibly, the seat
would strengthen Japan's profile and presence in the post-Cold War order. It
would also change the stereotype of Japan as a political pygmy while its
economy is in the doldrums.

What Japan has failed to address, however, is the critical issue of whether
in its present shape it would be able to exercise an enlarged international
role.

During Operation Desert Storm in 1991, for example, Japan contributed US$13
billion to the UN alliance. Yet it was not involved in the military
operation in any form. Only after the end of the conflict did Japan resort
to the token gesture of sending its mine-sweeping fleets.

In the event it becomes a permanent member, Japan would no longer enjoy such
a luxury. If anything, it would be obliged not just to contribute cash, but
forces as well. That Japan, at the height of the violence in East Timor, did
not send any SDF members there further underscores its ambiguous approach to
peacekeeping.

Even now, the hypothetical issue of how Japan should react to international
contingency has not been properly raised nor debated openly.

Moreover, the Japanese media have been guilty of gross oversight. Some
pundits have argued that the Security Council could be reformed into an
efficient entity that does not have to take on that many peacekeeping
missions. The Security Council should, it is argued, divide its
responsibilities among regional groupings such as the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), the Arab League and others. The argument
goes that these regional organizations are better at solving regional
problems.

Yet when conflicts do occur, it is the regional organizations that approach
the Security Council. Observe how Indonesia approached the UN, rather than
ASEAN, to station peacekeeping forces in East Timor, and not the other way
around. Indeed, with the exception of ASEAN and the European Union, the
world has not seen any effective regional organizations at all, let alone
one that can take on peacekeeping tasks.

To be sure, given Japan's role as the second-largest contributor to the
regular UN budget, currently at more than 16 percent, its quest for a
permanent seat is a serious and deserving one. But the many missions
undertaken by the Security Council are invariably laden with substantial
risks, both physical and political. Unless Japan changes its peacekeeping
laws, no one can be sure that it would not attempt a precipitous pullout
when UN forces are under fire.

For those who continue to deny Japan a role in the Security Council,
however, the goal should not focus on whether Japan has learned from its
actions in World War II; rather, whether Japan has understood that its
domestic peacekeeping laws are incompatible with the demands of contemporary
international relations.