Much like with the previous two defense ministers, the Japanese media has not let the selection of Professor Morimoto go without comment, albeit for quite different reasons this time around.
One narrative was that of the selection potentially leading to improved relations between the Noda administration and the Obama administration. The US Department of Defense commented (日) to the effect that Morimoto has been a strong supporter of the US-Japan alliance for decades despite considerable political changes, and that they (日) would look forward to working with him in deepening the US-Japan alliance in the context of new security issues in the Asia-Pacific region. They did decline to comment on Morimoto’s unique status as a non-elected defense minister, which has aroused some concern in Japan, saying it was an internal issue. While Japan is a Westminster style parliamentary democracy, one of the many ways it is actually closer to the American system in that cabinet ministers can be selected from outside the Diet – as long as they are not current members of the military (Article 66).
The Yomiuri reported (日) on such concerns with the Morimoto selection. One explicit concern was simply that as a non-elected official the ability for him to “take responsibility” for any action while in office is insufficient compared to those who can lose their “political lives.” There seems to be a division between those who think expertise in the crucial issue of defense is more important than the capacity to win elections, and those like former JDA Chief Ishiba and former minister of defense Ichikawa who believe that the inability to “take responsibility” politically in such a role is a threat to “civilian control” of the military.
Noda pointed out a crucial point himself – that at the end of the day it is the PM who is the effective “commander-in-chief” and thus as long as Morimoto falls in line with the cabinet’s final decision there is no real issue. Nevertheless Jiji points out (日) that while mostly true there are a few cases where the minister of defense has some discretion – for example over whether to shoot down a ballistic missile threat using Japan’s BMD system, or some aspects of MSDF maritime deployments. A non-uniformed SDF official was quoted as wondering whether as a non-elected member he would have the requisite concern for potentially putting JSDF lives at risk.
Comment: These concerns while not completely invalid, seem rather superficial. On the one hand other non-elected ministers of cabinet have in the past been selected for various positions, with only the prime minister being required to be an elected member of parliament. And since the PM (in theory) has the final word on almost all issues, including defense issues, the concern about a non-elected minister being sufficiently ‘responsible’ for the limited amount of discretion he has is somewhat overwrought. Likewise with the concern for the lives of SDF officers. Is there really any reason why an elected official would be more concerned than a non-elected official over making decisions that could cost lives? In fact, knowing what we know about politicians and their ‘sociopathic’ tendencies there could be good reasons for thinking the opposite. Either way it is worthwhile evaluating the person themselves – being elected was certainly no barrier to former defense ministers Ichikawa and Tanaka performing inadequately, which at a more critical time could well have had much more serious implications. Morimoto on the other hand is a seasoned professional and most critically a former SDF officer himself and has strong links with the establishment, and is unlikely to take any decision or give advice lightly.
He also appears to have sufficient respect for political processes. When asked about whether he would attempt to change the current interpretation of Japan not possessing the constitutional capacity to exercise the right to collective self-defense, he said (日) he would assiduously follow the Noda Cabinet’s decisions and that he had no intention of changing the current arrangements. The reason for this question being asked is because Morimoto is known for his support of Japan exercising this right. However what is not explained in the linked article is that Professor Morimoto is one of the many people who take constitutional processes seriously and believes that the process of ‘changing’ the constitution by “reinterpretation” is dangerous from the point of view of democratic and procedural clarity. See Craig Martin for a good summary of why this is a problem. There are many that believe the only legitimate way for Japan to adopt “collective self-defense” is either through constitutional revision, or by having the Japanese Supreme Court rule on it,* rather than through politicians knocking the CLB around until they got their preferred outcome, such as what happened with Koizumi and what Ozawa Ichiro wanted to do. I, myself am in the former camp.
Either which way this is new territory and it will be very interesting to see how this “experiment” will work out. It will also be interesting to see if the selection has any impact upon the evolving relationship and the power balance between the MOFA and the MOD – Morimoto has effectively worked for both and he may well add something to the political process around foreign policy making.
* However unlikely the Supreme Court would be to rule in favour of supporters of Japan exercising collective self-defense, although some like Sato Seizaburo would like to give it a crack it would seem.
Update: Seems that Michael Cucek also had a few useful things to say on the Morimoto appointment here.
Update 2: Consult Peter Ennis’ post on DM Morimoto for an insider’s view.
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Corey Wallace joined Japan Security Watch in 2011. He writes on Japan security-related topics, focusing on issues and stories that may not find their way into the English language media. He also hosts the blog Sigma1 where he writes on Japanese domestic politics and broader issues in international relations.
Prior to taking up a PhD Corey was a participant on the JET program (2004-2007) and on returning to New Zealand he worked at the Ministry of Research, Science and Technology from 2007-2010 as a policy adviser. Corey lectures two courses at the University of Auckland. One is on the international relations of the Asia-Pacific, which contains a significant focus on East Asia security issues. The other is a course on China's international relations.
His primary academic interests before his current Japan focus were science and technology politics/policy, issues of ethnic identity, and Chinese modern history and politics. He carries over his interest in issues of identity and history into his PhD where he is looking at generationally situated concepts of national identity and their impact on foreign policy ideas in Japan.
Corey Wallace has 46 post(s) on Japan Security Watch
11 comments
arkhangelsk says:
Jun 6, 2012
Tell Broadback to stuff his crocodile tears. What does he care about the life of “mere” uniforms. He’s just worried with someone relatively competent in charge, he and his suit comrades can’t have free reign to bully the uniforms.
While the Defense Minister has extremely constrained operational authority, he is the administrative chief and will have substantial authority to make various organizational changes. He can change various procedures to control the uniforms more personally, thus weakening the power of the bureaucrats. He might even feed them to the Finance Ministry shark in the next budget cut instead of the more usual strategy of feeding them Junior Uniforms.
And b/c Morimoto is not a politician, plus is Noda’s personal appointment, it is harder to resort to their usual tactics of crying to another politician and using that politician to pressure Morimoto. That’s probably what Broadback is really worried about.
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Corey Wallace says:
Jun 6, 2012
Missed this one – yeah I found it a pretty odd comment both in substance and in terms of his position in the bureaucratic scheme of things. Your interpretation is a plausible one. It seems silly that anyone would take on such a role without giving it their full thought of what situations they might be put in…which is precisely why the previous two were such disgraces.
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Bryce says:
Jun 6, 2012
Marvelous, Kiwi.
“However what is not explained in the linked article is that Professor Morimoto is one of the many people who take constitutional processes seriously and believes that the process of ‘changing’ the constitution by “reinterpretation” is dangerous from the point of view of democratic and procedural clarity.”
Indeed, as far as I can tell, few of the alliance boosters in the United States realise that some of their favourite sons in the DPJ (as well some pretty important figures in the LDP) also cleave close to this position. By the way, don’t you think it was really more Abe, not Koizumi, who wanted to “reinterpret” the constitution to allow for collective self-defense. It was he that set up the panel that recommended it, after all. Koizumi’s tactic seemed to me to be more to ignore Article 9 altogether, even when the ASDF’s adventures in Iraq were declared unconstitutional in court. In fact, I think he mentioned the Article 9 restrictions in his first presser as PM and then just dismissed them by saying they weren’t practical in view of alliance commitments.
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arkhangelsk says:
Jun 6, 2012
Re: The Iraq Judgment
http://www.courts.go.jp/hanrei/pdf/20080428144041.pdf
or from the leftists’ site
http://www.haheisashidome.jp/hanketsu_kouso/p1_12.pdf
http://www.haheisashidome.jp/hanketsu_kouso/p13_26.pdf
(for some reason the pagination is slightly different)
Having read that judgment, I’ll say the government won a good bit out of it too despite the claims of our leftists. The court made an independent assessment of the Iraq security situation (they are pretty leftist with some of the interpretations too, such as calling napalm a internationally banned weapon – there are some restrictions but it is not banned, stupid stupid leftist court) and what the SDF was really doing there.
But the unconstitutionality was established not based on the situation vs the Court’s interpretation of Article 9. Rather, it was vs the government’s interpretation of Article 9. So basically the court indirectly re-affirmed the government’s right to executively interpret Article 9 (at least with the interpretations they’ve been making so far), which is more or less with what they had been saying for decades.
And here I’ll be a member of a true minority group and argue that the Court is not making such rulings purely because they are deferring to government, but because it is the best thing to do for Article 9. Unlike the average law, Article 9 has multiple interpretations (check the Japanese Wiki for a large number), is intended to have multiple interpretation (as suggested by its evolution from MacArthur’s note to the final) and arguably works because it has multiple interpretations (it is in essence a unilteral arms control commitment; compare it with the arms control treaties of history and we can see Art 9 is very successful). Yet the court can pick only one interpretation, which will inevitably destroy 90% of Article 9 and probably force its speedy demise soon thereafter.
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Corey Wallace says:
Jun 6, 2012
As always you leave an interesting comment
You make an interesting point in regards to the multiple interpretations aspect and I don’t necessarily disagree with this view if wse are talking about much of what has happened up until now. The court’s positions as per Sunakawa 1959 is that they will only intervene when there is an “unmistakable” breach of Article 9, thereby allowing for some flexibility, as you point out.
However you would be really hard pressed to find anyone at that time who thought Japan employing the right to collective self-defense was one of those allowable situations where flexibility would be desired. After all, no one trusted Japan at that time and the prospect that they might use it against US interests was certainly there.
And because the Court/CLB has interpreted it the way it has for the last 50 plus years, even if you could make an argument, such as Sato Seizaburo has, that the interpretation is wrong, then this should lead to much discussion about how it could be so wrong for so long – and would/should demand reform of Japan’s constitutional and political processes. Essentially allowing CSD by reinterpretation would destroy the CLB by undermining its legitimacy and credibility, something we know for sure that the CLB is very mindful off. This is why Abe’s proposal to “reinterpret” Article 9 by setting up a panel (subsequently and rightly ignored by Fukuda) to allow CSD is madness – or in any genuinely democratic country should be regarded as so. It is one thing for the CLB to “allow” legislation that may/may not be in line with its previous declarations (cf Iraq and Koizumi) but it is quite another to publicly usurp the CLB (and thus the SC’s authority as well) just because you don’t like what they might say!
This is ultimately why if Japan does embrace (full) CSD then I believe the most healthy course should be through constitutional revision. And I think it should be reasonably straightforward if they can restrain the right-wingers from putting in too much superfluous rubbish that would spook the public, or meaningless but dubious phrases like “international cooperation activities.” Depending on how things go from now on re the domestic political situation then it would not surprise me if it happened some time before 2015.
The one situation that may be an exception is if it was limited to using BMD to shoot down a missile headed for the US. While they would have to turn themselves in knots to not call this CSD, I can see some (perhaps dubious) ways it could be justified.
I still think it better to just be straight up with the public about this however and let them decide. Debates over CSD, unlike some other interpretations, have been too important a part of the debate over Article 9 for too long to ignore public sentiment. For the Japanese public it simply comes down to a simple consideration/challenge to pols: show us that you morons are capable of sorting out our domestic problems first, and then come back to us with proposals where we trust you with the power to play a larger role in sorting out our international problems – and not before.
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Bryce says:
Jun 6, 2012
I think there is a little confusion here. That case didn’t actually refer to CSD at all, which, in international legal terms, pertains to the action of going to war against a common aggressor after or (just) before an attack. The government has clearly said that this is off the table and has done so since 1954. If there were a case involving CSD, I imagine that the government’s interpretation would be quite persuasive for the very reason that the Supreme Court, in a stunning act of judicial cowardice, essentially abdicated all its rights to interpret Article 9 in the Sunakawa case, so there are no rulings on CSD to go by. That said, quite apart from the issues of political legitimacy that Corey mentions, the consistency of the government’s interpretations is the other reason that the courts would take them seriously. So the notion that the government has the ability to interpret Article 9 how it wants under different circumstances is pretty weak. Indeed, what is the point in even having a constitution if the government can interpret it however it likes?
Anyway, the case at hand refers to questions about the use of force in the field, and whether certain types of support for foreign troops actively engaging in combat constitutes the use of force prohibited by the constitution. It is a little different from an argument centered on CSD, as the justification for the SDF’s presence in Iraq was legitimized by a weak, but existent, UN mandate. The parties are arguing over the facts, not over the law, as the constitution clearly states that the use of force to settle international disputes is off the table. It is a principle just not in dispute, so the court in this case hasn’t legitimized the government’s interpretation of anything.
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Corey Wallace says:
Jun 6, 2012
Dr Wakefield, you are of course right in regards to Abe’s proposal to outright railroad the process, but Koizumi was more subtle, at least in my reading. Behind the scenes he was putting a fair bit of pressure on the CLB to ok his Iraq legislation despite some initial reservations inside the bureau. Essentially while there was no explicit interpretation given to parliament by the CLB (AFAIK), by not raising doubts about the legislation then this led to an effective reinterpretation. As you probably know this is one of the weird things about the current constitutional situation – because the Supreme Court has effectively deferred to the CLB on these issues, then any cabinet legislation that goes through without the CLB raising questions effectively becomes “constitutional.” It seems the CLB had issues with the Iraq bill in particular but Koizumi managed to have his way to some degree. Of course there were other political factors that restrained Koizumi from going further IMO.
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Bryce says:
Jun 6, 2012
Corey, see above. The issues I think the CLB might have had–that Diet members, and as it turned out, the courts in limited doses did have–was whether Iraq constituted a conflict zone, entry into which would have contravened the ban on the use of force despite the UN mandate that the administration used as cover. In fact, Koizumi hardly made any arguments about Article 9, stressing Japan’s commitments to international society by selectively quoting the preamble.
And it is “Bryce.” We have shared Makgeolli after all.
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Corey Wallace says:
Jun 6, 2012
True enough re: the debate over entering a combat zone, although I think Koizumi’s success in terms of showing “political leadership” over the CLB probably emboldened Abe who wanted nothing to do with the messy politics
Don’t worry Bryce – although I was considering calling you Professor Wakefield
[One of the weird things with the influx of students from Asia and North America into UoA is that my students quite often address me as "Professor" which is weird for a number of reasons...the NZ students haven't changed - "Hey Corey" still seems to be an acceptable form of address in emails etc!]
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Tri-ring says:
Jun 7, 2012
Would everyone settle down if and when revision of article 9 is considered it will require a national referendum with a super majority agreeing to the proposal which I believe is impossible at this point.
The government cannot re-write the constitution even if they were elected official without a direct vote to reach a consensus from the populous which I believe is stipulated within the constitution.
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Corey Wallace says:
Jun 8, 2012
Your point is a little unclear, but a 2/3 majority is required in both houses of parliament which is not impossible – both the LDP and DPJ are pro-revision although with different visions, and most of the new parties are likely to be pro-revision. It really comes down to the mix of politicians in any given parliament – tough but not impossible.
As for the referendum, it requires only a majority vote 50% plus one to ratify any individual article. Abe’s referendum law specified that the public could vote on each changed article/paragraph, so a whole new constitution would not necessarily be required and agreed to.
I think it is a very important issue, both in terms of security policy, but more so for Japan’s democracy.
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