The land of the rising sun rises again?

In a move that saw Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's nationalist government facing the stiffest resistance from pacifists and opposition parliamentarians alike, the Japanese Diet (Parliament) last week voted into law a bill that will allow Japan to deploy its military in combat roles beyond its territorial boundaries for the first time in seven decades. 

The latest move is indeed a milestone in Prime Minister's Abe's push to loosen the limits of the pacifist constitution on the military. It is seen as a major departure for Japan and all that it had stood for on defence and security issues until now. The new law will grant Japanese governments the power to send its military into overseas conflict theatres to defend allies, even if Japan itself is not under a direct attack.

The passage of the bill was anything but smooth for the Prime Minister. The process had to endure long and tortuous debates among opposing politicians that at times descended into unsavory physical scuffles inside the Diet itself. Outside, the protests were more vociferous. Unable to muster enough support to amend the pacifist Constitution, Prime Minister Abe opted to "re-interpret' the meaning and the definition of "self defence." 

The whole exercise has not been without its share of controversy. Opposition lawmakers have vowed to do everything in their power to fight the changes. Legal scholars have argued that the legislation violates Japan's pacifist constitution and several groups said they were preparing legal challenges.

Prime Minister Abe, on the other hand, has defended the law as being "necessary in order to protect people's lives and peaceful way of life." He also described it as "designed to prevent wars." 

As expected, Japan's neighbour China, with whom relations have been uneasy for a while now, reacted sharply. Beijing called the move a threat to peace and stability. China's Defence Ministry has said the reforms had "aroused grave concern among its own citizens, Asian neighbouring countries and the international society." China's official Xinhua news agency said the new security bills "not only broke Japan's promise to the world after World War II, but also betrayed its own people."

Japan's ally South Korea's reaction has also been carefully crafted. It called on Japan to remember the need for transparency in implementing its new defence policy "while maintaining the spirit of the pacifist constitution." It, therefore, stopped short of an unqualified endorsement of the new law.  

Abe's argument that the laws are necessary to protect against threats from what he views as an increasingly "belligerent China and an unstable North Korea" was persuasive enough for Washington to express instant support. Australia too has endorsed the move. Asia's other big power, India, will not be unhappy with it but may not say so publicly. The ASEAN countries are not likely to feel any danger to them from the development. Many of them may tend to see this as a step to strike a military power balance in this part of Asia. Moscow, though, is unlikely to look at it kindly. The sharply divergent positions taken by Washington and Beijing may be cause for concern and Tokyo will need to play its cards with tact in the changed circumstances. Countries like Bangladesh will hope that Japan's felt need to invest more in its military to fit its new role will not see any change in the country's long standing status as a dependable and a major development partner. 

It is the reaction inside Japan that is of greater significance than how the rest of the world looks at this tectonic shift in Japan's post-war defence posture. The expected reaction of a populace when their government opts for a stronger military role is usually one of acquiescence. Even a defeated and a painfully partitioned German nation following the Second World War, became frontline players in mutually hostile military alliances in Europe during the Cold War period. However, the resistance to the legislation inside Japan is a departure from this norm, maybe a welcome one. It perhaps reflects the apprehensions of the post-war generation, who are not willing to see a repetition of the horrors of militaristic Japan of the past. They are also sending a clear message that Japan should not get drawn into wars and military conflicts, many of them controversial, in distant lands. 

There is also the bigger picture. The "peace dividends" promised following the end of the Cold War has failed to materialise. The maddening arms race has grown in intensity and volume with many more nations joining in. Nuclear proliferation has spread deep into Asia. The Palestinian people, who are the longest running victims of injustice and apartheid, now look to groups like Hamas and Hezbollah for redress. The oil rich Middle East is in turmoil as extremist ideologies like Al Qaeda and the IS threaten more and more societies. Non-conventional security threat perceptions like those from global terrorism have added new dimensions to the conventional ones. Ukraine is turning out to be a miniature version of the Cold War. Regime change efforts through outside military forays have caused instability and insecurity in countries like Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, leading to large scale refugee flows that threaten to turn a seemingly cohesive post Cold War Europe on its head. Competing goals of creating strategic and geo-political spheres of influence in various parts of the globe can potentially aggravate underlying tensions and threaten stability.

It is in this larger backdrop that the more pacifist Japanese would like to see limits remain on how far his country gets drawn into seeking military solutions where alternatives have not been exhausted. They also fear that the pacifist role model stature that Japan has enjoyed for seven decades, one that has brought it rich economic dividends and global political status, could be jeopardised by enhanced militarisation. For Prime Minister Shinzo Abe this is the bigger challenge. He will need to muster all his political skill and experience to convince sceptics at home and in the outside world that the new law will not alter Japan's standing as a responsible and a non-aggressive global player. He will also need to demonstrate that the spirit of pacifism that has come to define Japan's security and defence policies so far will not fundamentally be compromised.

The author is a former Foreign Secretary of Bangladesh and Bangladesh High Commissioner and Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Germany, Vietnam and the United States.