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Military
Tokyo's Weapons Export Ban Breaking Down
Sunday, July 25, 2010
SM3
Tokyo -- This weekend brings strong confirmation that diplomatic and business interests are slowly winning out against the long-term Japanese ban on weapons exports.
The ban has remained largely intact since 1967.
Reports have emerged that Tokyo has given the nod to the idea of exporting a new type of ship-based missile interceptor to countries other than the United States.
The Standard Missile-3 Block 2A missile is being jointly developed by the United States and Japan - and US Defense Secretary Robert Gates demanded approval to eventually export this missile abroad.
Tokyo's weapons export ban is based on the principles of the nation's pacifist constitution and expresses, as the Foreign Ministry has put it, "Japan's position as a peace-loving nation."
The goal of the ban is "to avoid any possible aggravation of international conflicts."
Then-Prime Minister Eisaku Sato announced the initial ban in the Diet in April 1967, and it was further strengthened in February 1976.
Since the 1980s, however, the export ban has gradually weakened under political pressures from the Pentagon as well as from Japan's own business lobbies.
In 1983, exports of arms technology to the United States were excluded from the ban.
Other "dual use" items have also been exported through the creative use of classification systems.
Moreover, Keidanren - the leading business lobby - has been making a concerted push in recent months for the ban to be eased, arguing that the weapons export ban is "putting the country in the state of technological isolation" at a time in which it faces threats from North Korea and China.
Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa showed sympathy with this view in January when he told a meeting of the Japan Association of Defense Industry that "the time may have come to review our fundamental thinking [on the weapons export ban]."
The whole issue shows similarity to Tokyo's recent decision to begin civilian nuclear energy negotiations with non-NPT nation India. The same coalition of US diplomatic demands and Japanese big business pressures is overcoming the long-held, principled positions of the past.
With Japan unable to find vibrant new sources for economic growth, it is now trying its hand at the exports of nuclear technologies and, perhaps soon enough, weapons systems.
As it does so, it becomes increasingly difficult to see how the spirit of the Japanese constitution still governs the nation.
PanOrient News
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