16 Jul 2015

On the day Japan's new security bills passed

This passing of the bills was certainly within my expectation as the majorities of Lower and Upper Houses are taken by the ruling coalition (LDP and New Komei Party); and moreover, this won't alter the fact Japan keeps 'obeying' the US since the WWII from a perspective of foreign affairs (so this is not to scrap the 'regime-after-WWII' but rather to enhance it, which is opposite to what the Prime Minister appealed for his first administration, by the way). However, I put my thoughts here to reflect my judgement later.

First of all, the opposition parties (e.g. especially DPJ, SDP, and CP etc) should seriously understand why they had lost the latest elections, and then propose improved (at least from their perspectives) bills, once they could get back to the administration if allowed by the nation. Of course, their 'improved' bills should carefully take into account existing constraints by the Constitution and geopolitically possible contingencies for Japan.

This is how we develop our own democracy, not by just keeping opposing to everything and never propose a countermeasure.

On the other hand, I am not so sure if it was a right decision that the current Administration has consumed very much of their political capital, which was raised through the General Election December 2014 and local elections in April 2015, into such controversial bills at this timing (even though this year is exact 70 years since the end of WWII, the number is still just a number). Also, it has to be seriously evaluated why they gave up proposing changes in the Constitution and especially its Article 9, which should be addressed if they believe this is fundamentally and structurally important to Japan going forward.

International politics is not an easy game. It consists of continuous games with multiple players who have quite different interests, for which each (at least large) player has to hold realistic options while appealing their ideal vision of the world; consequently it should end up balancing the powers among nations. A hegemony by superpower might stabilise the world in a short period of time, but our knowledge of history tells that any superpower won't last forever.

Of course it should be sincerely noted that conducting a war against any nation is an absolute failure of politics and foreign policy. We should avoid it no matter how much other resources are consumed, simply and crucially because lost lives of people can never be recovered by any means and it will take generations to heal the left traumas among living people and civilisations.

(Slight typos are corrected on 20 July, 2015)

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