Asia Centre

As Mr. Abe had only been in office for a year, and had resigned suddenly, this was not a normal situation. What is more, with the law on the renewed deployment of the Self-Defence Forces in the Indian Ocean due to expire on November 1st, the party adopted a more rapid procedure, allowing representatives of the regional electors, who had been elected during a primary round, to vote at the same time as the parliamentary representatives. Out of the total of 528 votes, 3 were given to each representative of locally elected members (these votes are not necessarily given to a single person: each region decides on the modalities of its primary round) and 1 to each parliamentary member (304 representatives and 83 councillors). This procedure had six precedents (the most notable being the appointment of Mr. Obuchi after Mr. Hashimoto's resignation in 1998).

All the factions in the LDP, except for Mr. Asô's supporters, gave their majority vote to Mr. Fukuda, who was duly elected by 254 parliamentary votes (against 132 for Mr. Asô) and 76 regional votes (against 65 for Mr. Asô). Following this, Mr. Fukuda was nominated by the Lower Chamber and Mr. Ozawa by the Upper Chamber. The joint committee with equal membership which met in accordance with article 86 of the Diet regulations was unable to reconcile the two chambers, so the Lower Chamber's vote carried the day.

Mr. Fukuda, who is the son of the former Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo, took over because he is a moderate figure on the Japanese political scene. Having served as General Cabinet Secretary under the Koizumi government, he left office in May 2004 at the time of a previous pensions scandal - it had transpired that a large number of members of parliament had not declared that they enjoyed extra sources of income when they were elected. Mr. Fukuda had failed to declare a small amount.

He is in favour of building a new war memorial which can be visited by government leaders without stirring up controversy. Mr. Abe who, like him (and like Mr. Koizumi before him), belongs to the Machimura faction, had been the preferred candidate in September 2006. At the age of 71, Mr. Fukuda seemed to have given up the scramble for high office for ever, but the opposition victory in the July elections for the Senate worked to his advantage.

The ceremony to swear in the new government took place on September 26th. Machimura Nobutaka, the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, became the General Cabinet Secretary; Ishiba Shigeru returned to Defence; Kômura Masahiko remained with Foreign Affairs and Ôta Hiroko stayed with Economic and Financial Policy. Mr. Fukuda appointed Mr. Tanigaki to the post of chairman of the LDP Policy Research Council. He is a like-minded moderate leader of a small faction and a former official in the Ministry of Finance.

Resolution 1746, passed in 2007, assures the Karzai government of the support of the international community, and it is not directly connected to the war on terrorism. The support of the United Nations, operating through ISAF, is based on different premises from the war on terrorism. This is being conducted by an international coalition led by the United States, in accordance with resolution 1368. These two activities do not have the same status within the purview of the UN. In this respect, Mr. Ozawa was quite correct to say that "the anti-terrorist activity with the US at its centre is not directly covered by a Security Council resolution".

The State Department has refused to commit all the American forces to the ISAF, thus keeping the latter in the capital, and delaying its deployment throughout the rest of the country. It only moved into the south as late as Autumn 2006, five years after it first arrived. This has given the Taliban and the warlords time to reorganise themselves.

The ISAF and the anti-terrorist forces do not only have a different status, but they also employ different strategies. Under chapter 7 of the UN charter, the ISAF soldiers are allowed to open fire, but their goal is the restoration of the peace process, so their military tactics are purely defensive. The war on terrorism, however, is aimed at eradicating the Taliban and Bin Laden, so their approach is offensive. The ISAF aims at bringing together the enemies of peace - the regional warlords, radical Islamic forces, former Mujahideen opposed to the peace, arms and drug trafficking gangs, the Taliban, and Al Quaeda supporters. The war against terrorism is only aimed at the latter two groups.

Mr. Ozawa's declaration raises the question of Japan's defence policy. Because of the restrictions laid down by the Constitution, the right to collective defence could not be invoked as the legal grounds for the deployment of the Self-Defence Forces, so it was replaced by UN resolutions and the duty to "implement the goals of the United Nations Charter". This concealed Japan's contribution to the American coalition while also blurring her co-operation with the UN's activities.

The basic precondition for this ambiguous situation is the UN-centred nature of Japan's policies. Post-war Japanese strategy has had three prongs: the central role of the UN, co-operation with the United States, and attention to Asian affairs. But in reality, in the context of the Cold War, co-operation with the United States was the most vigorously pursued.

With regard to Afghanistan, Japan did not send a single person to participate in the ISAF set up by the Security Council, but it deployed some frigates in the Indian Ocean in accordance with the special law on the fight against terrorism, which had no connection with UN actions. Similarly in Iraq, Japan openly supported the war, and after the conflict it took part in the US policy on Iraq by sending the Self-Defence Forces to help in the reconstruction, on the basis of a special law.

Unlike Japan, Germany conducted a policy within the UN quite independent of the United States. When the Iraq war broke out, she happened to be a temporary member of the Security Council and called for a continuation of the inspections, together with France and Russia, and this led to heated exchanges with the United States. Following that, she opposed the principle of occupation by a single power and refused to send troops. In Afghanistan, by contrast, she committed over 3,000 soldiers, within both the ISAF framework and the fight against terrorism, believing that the situation there meant that the UN would not be sidelined (as in Iraq). In this way Germany has been engaged in a genuine multilateral diplomatic effort, whereas Japan has been hobbled by being joined at the hip with the United States. At a time when the future of Japan's international co-operation ought to have been concentrated within the United Nations, in July 2007 she had a mere 38 people in Afghanistan, including police and soldiers. In terms of international co-operation, her ranking is at number 80 - India is number 3, China 12, and Germany 18....

Mr. Ozawa's declaration raises three difficulties:

Firstly, let us allow that there is an effective rejection of participation in the war against terrorism (and that the Democratic opposition is at the head of a majority which opposes the policy in place since 2001 on the basis of the special law). There has never been a Japanese contribution to international efforts sufficient to offset the absence of military contingents. If Germany, for her part, was able to dissociate herself from the American interventions, that is because she had international recognition of her forces on the ground in support of peacekeeping operations (MPOs or multinational forces). Neither the international community nor the United States in particular are able to understand why Japan, which shows no enthusiasm for OMP participation (let alone for multinational forces), should not be involved in other kinds of international action, even to a small extent.

What is more, Mr. Ozawa talks of joining the ISAF, but that would make it necessary to change Japan's interpretation of the right of collective defence in order to authorise armed intervention overseas, but the legal provisions for this are far from being ready. Within the Minshutô itself no proposals have been drafted. In the present state of affairs, we cannot lay claim to any credibility in the eyes of other states.

Secondly, while the war on terrorism is admittedly not a UN activity, the Taliban and Al Quaeda do constitute a threat to international peace and stability, and as a member of the UN we cannot just say that it is an "American war" in order to distance ourselves from it. A distinction must be made between the war in Iraq, which in the end feeds the growth of terrorism, and the one being waged in Afghanistan. In 1999 the Security Council passed resolution 1267 in favour of sanctions against the Taliban which the Committee of Sanctions against Al Qaeda and the Taliban is trying to implement. Al Qaeda's activities are worldwide, and for Japan to refuse to take part in the war on terrorism amounts to an abdication of responsibility. In the United States itself, practically all the Democrats, including the best contenders in the US primaries, Obama and Clinton, are hoping for an American withdrawal from Iraq while still standing for a strengthening of the war on terrorism in Afghanistan.

Thirdly, Mr. Ozawa has said that the Minshutô wishes to "play a real role in the United Nations' activities, based on the agreement of the international community". But if the existence of a Security Council resolution were to be seen as a precondition for Japan's participation in such operations, there could be no objection to the Self-Defence Forces taking part in the activities of the Iraq army of occupation. After all, it would appear to be a multinational force authorised by a Security Council resolution. In fact, every stage leading up to the Iraq war was supported by Security Council resolutions. Apart from their legal aspect, these resolutions have a political side, and it is up to every State to decide for itself if they really reflect a consensus in the international community at any given moment.

The sudden switch in the makeup of the majority in the Upper Chamber may therefore have important consequences, not only for Japan's domestic agenda but also for her foreign and defence policies.