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Japan plans for a postwar
Iraq
By Axel Berkofsky
While
the United States and Britain are busy bombing Iraq,
Japan's policymakers have begun looking for the cash to
help pay the bill for the war and are discussing the
deployment of Japanese troops to a postwar Iraq.
Whereas strongly supporting the US war against
Iraq without United Nations backing did not seem to be a
big deal for Japan, deploying Japanese soldiers and
peacekeepers to a post-Saddam Iraq without UN
authorization could turn out to be more difficult.
"Since the attack on Iraq was launched without a
Security Council resolution, there is no international
law providing the legal grounds for multinational forces
stationed in Iraq, to which Japanese military would
offer assistance," pointed out a senior official from
Japan's Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Liberal
Democratic Party (LDP) secretary general Taku Yamazaki
agrees, saying that deploying Japanese military to Iraq
is "out of question" as long as there is no UN
resolution putting the United Nations (and not the
United States) in charge of rebuilding the country.
That, however, is not what the prime minister
wanted to hear from his fellow Liberal Democrats. "There
might be a phase that doesn't require a resolution. We
can always discuss the issue whether the resolution is
required, once we agree to work with the UN," Junichiro
Koizumi suggested, indicating a belief that legal
details could be dealt with later. Koizumi must have
been referring to whenever Washington felt like dealing
with the UN again, since the Bush administration is
still reluctant to let the UN take over in Iraq when the
fighting is over.
But whether Iraq is run by the
Pentagon or the UN, Japanese support, including the
deployment of troops, is expected as far as the US is
concerned. Howard Baker, US ambassador to Japan, met the
prime minister and other senior LDP officials over
breakfast this week urging them to be prepared to send
troops to postwar Iraq before too long.
And the
ambassador had even more homework for Japan, asking
Tokyo to draft and submit a UN Security Council
resolution dealing with a postwar Iraq. A Japanese
resolution, Baker hoped, would face less opposition than
a US one in countries such as France and Germany.
If Baker gets his way and Koizumi gets a
recently drafted bill authorizing the deployment of
troops to Iraq through parliament, the Japanese military
could be engaged in providing rear-guard support for
whatever multinational forces end up stationed in Iraq.
When deployed, Japan's armed forces would transport food
and medicine, repair roads and bridges and conduct
relief measures for refugees under the proposed law.
Getting the bill through the Japanese parliament any
time soon, however, is very unlikely.
The prime
minister, aware that Iraq may already be the US-style
democracy President George W Bush has in mind before the
law makes it through both chambers of the parliament,
thinks that Japan's peacekeeping law could do in the
meantime. Applying the country's peacekeeping law,
however, appears problematic too, given the law's
numerous restrictions which practically keep Japanese
peacekeepers out of all countries less secure than
Sweden or Switzerland.
Among other significant
legal obstacles, the current version of Japan's
peacekeeping law, enacted in 1992, requires a stable
ceasefire between the parties in conflict and their
consent for the deployment of Japanese military. The law
also prohibits Japanese blue helmets from being anywhere
close to where bullets could still be flying. As far as
Iraq is concerned, this might keep Japanese troops out
of the country altogether. Koizumi, however, has not
caved in and apparently wants badly to be part of the
post-Saddam Iraq action.
"No new Japanese law is
needed to help reconstruct Iraq as long as Japan's
contribution is non-military in nature," he said this
week, promising that Japanese humanitarian assistance in
Iraq and neighboring countries could start very soon.
Apart from providing official development
assistance (ODA) to help reconstruct Iraq, the
government is planning to dispatch minesweepers to the
Persian Gulf when the fighting is over. Back in 1991
after the first Gulf War, Japan had already dispatched a
number of minesweepers to the Persian Gulf when the US
complained that Japan's role in the war was mainly
limited to signing checks in far-away Tokyo.
Paying the bill for a US war, however, will also
be on Japan's agenda this time. Tokyo is reportedly
ready to provide billions of yen for the reconstruction
of postwar Iraq, and government sources estimate that
Japan could pay as much as 20 percent of the total costs
of rebuilding the country.
According to the
Japanese media, the government is planning to use its
ODA to come up with the additional cash to help rebuild
what US missiles are currently destroying. While the
inveterate optimist Koizumi thinks that his country's
ODA budget can easily cover the costs, more cautious
(read: more realistic) government officials have
indicated that introducing a "temporary tax" covering
the bill for the US war could be on the agenda very
soon.
Out of the US$75 billion Bush has
requested from Congress for the war against Iraq, only
$3 billion is assigned to humanitarian aid and the
reconstruction of Iraq, and Japanese government
officials are beginning to fear that Japan will sooner
or later be asked to come up with the missing billions.
Back on the home front, meanwhile, Koizumi still
faces a tough time explaining to the public why Japan
supported the war when hardly anybody else did. While he
insists that the war without UN blessing "falls in line
with the UN Charter", the political opposition in Japan
claims that Japan became part of a preemptive military
operation without any legal basis whatsoever.
The prime minister is indeed in a tough spot,
said the liberal Asahi Shimbun, which claimed that his
decision to support the war has not only isolated Japan
internationally but could make Koizumi a very "lonely
leader" soon. "If the war becomes prolonged and support
rates and stock prices drop any further, a no-confidence
motion could be brought at the end of the current Diet
session," the paper quoted a senior LDP official as
saying.
A quick victory for the United States,
on the other hand, would force Japan to come up with
lots of cash to help rebuild Iraq very soon, forcing
higher oil taxes on the Japanese, the paper said.
The conservative and pro-war Yomiuri Shimbun, on
the other hand, thinks that things are going quite
smoothly for Koizumi, identifying a broad support for
the war among Japanese in its most recent opinion poll.
The poll shows that 76 percent of the public find the
government's support for the war against Iraq
"unavoidable" and "reasonable". This seems remarkable
indeed, since the opinion polls conducted by the
country's other major newspapers usually conclude that
more than 80 percent of the Japanese are still strongly
opposed to the war.
The public's main concerns,
however, lie much closer to home. The prime minister
hasn't implemented much (read: nothing) as far as
economic reforms are concerned, complain an increasing
number of Japanese. What's worse, say some, is that
while his efforts to get economic reforms finally under
way have faltered, tensions on the Korean Peninsula have
increased.
Washington in the meantime stands up
for Koizumi, maintaining that support for the war
against Iraq was the "right thing" to do for Japan. The
prime minister for his part wants to count on the US
military if North Korea decides to run amok in the near
future, and US support to fight off a skeptical public
might indeed be welcome.
After all, that's what
friends are for.
(©2003 Asia Times Online Co,
Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact content@atimes.com
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