「嘘つきアベ」
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（米国外交専門誌Foreign Policy最新号より）


Dishonest Abe

Why we should be worried about the Japanese prime minister's move to amend the constitution.

BY BRUCE ACKERMAN , TOKUJIN MATSUDAIRA JUNE 24, 2014

As Iraq disintegrates before the U.S. administration's eyes, it is ignoring news from Japan that is no less ominous. Without attracting much international attention, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is attempting a constitutional coup: trying to repeal basic tenets of the constitution without obtaining the support of the Japanese people in a special referendum.

In the aftermath of World War II, Article Nine of Japan's new constitution "forever renounce[d] war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes." Abe believes that the rise of China and the unpredictability of North Korea require military responses that the constitution renounced. It is up to him to convince the Japanese people that he's right -- but not by short-circuiting a referendum to achieve a radical change through unconstitutional means. If his coup is successful, it will establish a precedent that will permit the further destruction of the country's liberal democratic legacy.

Thus far, U.S. President Barack Obama has allowed Abe to embark on his mission without protest. But continued passivity will undercut the moral foundations of U.S. Asia policy for generations to come.

Over the past two years, Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has won sweeping electoral victories on the basis of economic policies that have begun to lift Japan out of the doldrums -- raising business confidence to the highest levels since the global recession. But the constitution doesn't allow the prime minister to use the popularity he has gained from economic success to revolutionize fundamental values -- in this case, Japan's commitment to pacifism. Instead, the constitution requires a two-thirds majority in both houses before any amendment can be submitted to the voters. Only if a majority then approves at a referendum can the initiative become law. Yet Abe lacks the necessary parliamentary majorities -- the LDP, along with coalition partner New Komeito, controls a two-thirds majority in the lower house, but only 55 percent of the seats in the upper house. What is more, the electorate has turned decisively against his amendment campaign -- a June poll from the respected Kyodo News reports that 55 percent of the public oppose Abe's initiative, up from 48 percent in May.
Soon after Abe regained power in Dec. 2012, he launched a campaign to weaken the amendment procedure, so that only a simple majority in both houses would be required before going to the voters. But his strategy backfired: It estranged, rather than mobilized, popular support.

Abe then switched tactics, and began pursuing the same objective by more devious means. In the Japanese system, the Cabinet Legislation Bureau is the government office in charge of constitutional and statutory interpretation. It had long viewed Article Nine as banning even those military actions authorized as legitimate self-defense under the United Nations Charter. Since August, Abe has been pressuring lawyers at the bureau to revise this position. In May, he finally succeeded. The agency is now reinterpreting Article Nine to authorize a wide range of preemptive military actions in the name of collective self-defense. And now, without seeking a legislative mandate in support of this basic change, he is pressuring his Cabinet to accept it.

Abe's current proposal, presented in June, would authorize military force if "the country's existence, the lives of the people, their freedoms, and the right to seek happiness are feared to be profoundly threatened because of an armed attack on Japan or other countries." The last three words are significant, as they authorize Japan to use force in defense of the United States or other close allies. Such preemptive attacks -- including the authority to use the military to break embargos on oil or food so long as the "right to seek happiness" is endangered -- go far beyond the principles of self-defense authorized by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter, and erase Article Nine's emphatic renunciation of "the threat or use of force."