JAPAN ECHO - UN REFORM: JAPAN SPEAKS UP Vol. 32, Special Issue, 2005

JAPAN ECHO - UN REFORM: JAPAN SPEAKS UP Vol. 32, Special Issue, 2005
UN REFORM: JAPAN SPEAKS UP
Vol. 32, Special Issue, 2005

THE DOMESTIC DEBATE

In this section we present five articles on United Nations reform, reform of the UN Security Council, and Japan’s bid to gain a permanent UNSC seat, featuring Inoguchi Takashi of Chûô University, Watanabe Hirotaka of Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (a member of the Japan Echo editorial board), Watanabe Akio, president of the Research Institute for Peace and Security, House of Councillors member Masuzoe Yôichi, and Inoguchi Kuniko of Sophia University, the former permanent representative and ambassador of Japan to the Conference on Disarmament.

The United Nations has long held a special significance for Japanese people. Japan joined the UN in 1956, and the Japanese government expressed its commitment to UN-centered diplomacy in its 1957 Diplomatic Bluebook. This has been a major plank of Japanese foreign policy ever since. The explanation for this enthusiasm is that, as a body dedicated to maintaining global peace, the UN has been viewed favorably within the context of Japan’s postwar climate of pacifism. This is one of the reasons why people who have played important roles at the UN, such as former UN High Commissioner for Refugees Ogata Sadako (now president of the Japan International Cooperation Agency) and former UN Under Secretary General Akashi Yasushi (now chairman of the Japan Center for Conflict Prevention), are accorded such great respect here. And it also goes a long way to explaining why there has been barely a murmur of controversy over the country’s status as the second-largest contributor to the UN budget behind the United States, even though Japan—along with Germany and Italy—is still classed as an "enemy state" in certain clauses of the UN Charter. (Japan is paying 19.47% of total UN contributions in 2005 compared to France’s 6.03%, China’s 2.05%, and Russia’s 1.10%.)

There is therefore overwhelming support within Japan for UN and Security Council reform and for Japan’s bid to become a permanent UNSC member. Reflecting this situation, all of the articles featured in this section are supportive of UN and UNSC reform and of Japan’s bid. In this introductory comment I would like to shed light on the nature of the debate that has taken place over these issues during the past year in Japan, dividing the points of contention into three main areas.

The first focus of debate concerns why the United Nations and the Security Council should be reformed at this particular juncture. One argument in some quarters is that Japan has no interest in such fundamental issues as how UN and UNSC reform and its gaining a permanent UNSC seat would contribute to strengthening the UN’s peace-building capabilities and little idea of what it hopes to achieve through these reforms; rather, it simply wants to gain a permanent seat on the Security Council to boost its global standing. This is a misreading of the situation. There has, in fact, been a great deal of debate in Japan over why reform is needed now and what Japan should do if it becomes a permanent member of the Security Council.

Many supporters of UN and UNSC reform base their view on the following argument: When it was founded in 1945, the UN was given the primary task of finding ways to prevent military conflict among states. In line with this, the UN Charter stipulates that all UN member states are to refrain from the use of force (Article 2) and confers on the Security Council the power to determine the existence of an act of aggression and to take action to maintain or restore international peace and security in cases where the principle of non-use of force is violated (Articles 39–42). Taking their cue from the fact that World War II had been a war among major nations, those who designed the Security Council system based it around the idea of major countries maintaining global peace by consensus. So it was that the main military powers at the end of World War II—Britain, China, France, Russia (the Soviet Union), and the United States—were made veto-wielding permanent members of the Security Council and were given responsibility for dealing with issues of global war and peace on the basis of unanimous consent.

As is often noted, the UN’s failure in both the Cold War and post–Cold War eras to fulfill its hoped-for role of maintaining global peace has largely been due to the flaws inherent in the design of the UN system. That is why over 50 proposals for fundamental reform have been put forward from both inside and outside the organization since it was founded. For space reasons, I will not reexamine the details of those proposals here.* Suffice it to say that two reasons in particular are widely cited to explain why UN and UNSC reform is warranted now. One is that in today’s world the main threat to global peace comes not from conventional wars among nations but from new security challenges like failed states, the spread of terrorism, and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The other reason is that the split in the Security Council over the start of the Iraq war showed that even though the Cold War era of East-West deadlock is over, the Security Council remains vulnerable to paralyzing ruptures among its members. Reform of the UN and the Security Council is regarded by its advocates as an antidote to these problems.

The second focus of the debate in Japan is the connection between UN reform and Japan’s bid for a permanent UNSC seat, on the one hand, and the revision of the Constitution of Japan, on the other. The Japanese government has adopted the stance that the issue of constitutional revision is separate from that of the country’s bid for a permanent seat on the Security Council. But this does not represent a consensus view. As Masuzoe Yôichi points out in the interview featured in this section, the revision of the UN Charter, including the "enemy state" clauses, the reform of the Security Council and Japan’s accession as a permanent member, and the revision of the Constitution are regarded by many as a single set of reforms. In explaining this position, Masuzoe speculates as to what might happen if Japan became a permanent member of the UNSC without revising its Constitution: "If the Security Council decides to lead a military intervention in a particular conflict, for example, are we simply going to say, ‘Sorry, we can’t take part because [in our Constitution] we have [the war-renouncing] Article 9’? This would inevitably lead to questions about why Japan became a permanent member in the first place."

Watanabe Akio has considered this issue from the perspective of making Japan a "normal" country. He develops this concept as follows: In today’s world there are two generally accepted international norms governing the use of military force. One is that the use of force is recognized as the last resort in self-defense. Under this norm, the use of force in self-defense is subject to four criteria: immediacy (of the threat), proportionality (of the response), necessity (of force), and illegality (of the other party’s action). If these criteria are not met, the use of force is not permitted. The second international norm is that when the international community imposes collective or communal sanctions on an entity that it judges to be violating its rules, each country must contribute to these sanctions commensurately with its own ability. The means that each country uses do not necessarily have to involve military force, but the use of force cannot be ruled out in principle. A "normal" country, according to Watanabe, is one that accepts and follows these two norms. The renunciation of war and of military force in the current Constitution of Japan, adopted in 1947, was intended to match the spirit of the 1945 UN Charter. But the Japanese government has interpreted the Constitution’s ban on the maintenance of "war potential" to mean that Japan cannot take part in international peacekeeping activities. Watanabe urges that this highly restrictive interpretation should be replaced with a more activist approach; Japan needs to turn itself into a "normal" country by making this change.

Even though it may be possible to amend the Constitution, this is not going to happen quickly. So, naturally enough, many commentators have been arguing that there are things that Japan can and should do as a permanent UNSC member regardless of whether the Constitution is revised. These are in the area of what we Japanese have commonly called "international contributions." In 1992 Japan enacted the International Peace Cooperation Law and dispatched members of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to Cambodia in 1992 to participate in the UN effort there. This was the first time the government broke its self-imposed taboo on sending the SDF overseas for any purpose. In 1994 the government set up the Advisory Group on Defense Issues as a panel reporting to the prime minister, and this group set forth the idea of "cooperative security," recommending active participation in UN and regional-level peacekeeping and peacemaking activities as the direction for Japan’s security policy. In line with this recommendation, the revised National Defense Program Outline that was adopted in 1995 extended the mission of the SDF to include contributing to efforts for international peace. More recently, in the wake of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the issue of "the new warfare" has emerged, leading to discussion within Japan on how this country should respond in the areas of nation building and the construction of peace in the face of this development.

Japan’s security policy has thus come to place increasing weight on contributions to international security, and a number of commentators and others have been offering ideas about this country’s potential role as a permanent UNSC member from this perspective. Inoguchi Kuniko is one example; her position goes like this: In today’s world, where failed states, the spread of terrorism, and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction pose a new set of threats to international security, rigorous implementation of arms control and nonproliferation is the way to control terrorism and prevent the recurrence of major conflicts. As a permanent member of the Security Council, Japan should stress this point and seek to have it reflected in the council’s resolutions and recommendations. Inoguchi also notes the importance of contributions to peace building and capacity building in areas like monitoring to assure strict compliance with WMD-related agreements, the development and supply of inspection technologies, prevention of the spread of illegal small arms, and the elimination of money-laundering networks. These observations make good sense. But the extent of Japan’s actual ability to contribute in these areas is another question.

The third focus of debate concerns the actual prospects for UN and Security Council reform and a permanent UNSC seat for Japan, along with observations about the shortcomings of the diplomacy pursued by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in this regard. The United States supports Japan’s addition as a permanent member of the council. But it is not clear how seriously committed the US government is to the cause of UN reform and Security Council enlargement; it has in fact come out against the call by Secretary General Kofi Annan for a decision on enlarging the UNSC to be made by this September. This is the basis for criticisms that Tokyo has relied too heavily on Washington in connection with its bid for a permanent seat.

Another issue in this context is the opposition of China and South Korea. This, however, is not the fault of the Foreign Ministry alone. Ever since Koizumi Jun’ichirô became prime minister in April 2001, his administration has tried to handle the issues relating to UN reform as a separate matter from Japan’s relations with its neighbors. But the limits of this approach have recently become evident. The prime minister, unlike his predecessors, has repeatedly visited Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead (including those convicted as war criminals by the Allies after World War II) and is viewed by many Chinese and Koreans as a symbol of Japan’s past militarism. This has been a major irritant in the relationships with China and South Korea. Relations with Seoul took a sharp turn for the worse this year with the reemergence of the dispute over ownership of Takeshima, a set of islets that the Koreans call Dokdo and claim as their own territory, following a vote by the Shimane prefectural assembly to designate February 22 as "Takeshima Day." This provoked an outburst of anti-Japanese sentiment in South Korea, and in April President Roh Moo-hyun came out with an explicit declaration of opposition to Japan’s UNSC bid. Also in April, amid anti-Japanese demonstrations in China, that country’s Premier Wen Jiabao made a similar statement of opposition. I hope that I will be able to offer my views on the state of Japan’s relations with China and South Korea in another issue of Japan Echo in the near future; here I would just like to note that the current mistrust between Japan and China is particularly deep and requires urgent attention.

If Koizumi had set clear priorities for Japan’s foreign policy and had focused coherently on the UNSC bid and ties with Beijing and Seoul as truly important and interrelated agenda items, he would have acted differently. He would not have kept visiting Yasukuni, and he would have moved politically to block Shimane Prefecture’s "Takeshima Day" proclamation. Instead, he thought he could keep the UN campaign and issues with the neighbors in separate diplomatic boxes. This misjudgment is one of the reasons why the prospects for Japan’s bid are now so bleak. (Shiraishi Takashi, Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

*For such an analysis, see Fujita Hisakazu’s excellent essay "Kokuren kaikaku no rekishiteki tenkai to igi" (The Historical Development and Significance of UN Reform), Kokusai Mondai, September 2004.