News from Japan, Egypt and India

Tuesday's World Events   —   Posted on September 2, 2014

JAPAN – Japan approves larger military role

BEIJING – In a major security shift, Japan’s Cabinet approved a change [in July] that allows the country’s long-restricted military to come to the aid of an ally under attack, even when Japan or its forces are not directly threatened.

The move, expected for several weeks, drew swift opposition from China, which is engaged in a maritime dispute with Tokyo and said Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is building up Japan’s military capabilities counter to its pacifist constitution, drawn up after World War II.

Abe’s Cabinet approved a reinterpretation of the constitution’s Article 9, which permits military force only to resolve conflicts in cases of self-defense. The new policy will allow “collective self-defense.” That would allow Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to defend allies under attack.

Abe said at a news conference [on July 1] that Japan remains a peace-loving, defense-oriented nation, that will not launch a war against other countries and will not join wars waged by other countries. But in view of the changing security environment, Japan must revise its defense posture to protect Japanese lives, he said.

“Japan will not resort to the use of force if the objective of the action is nothing more than the defense of a foreign country,” Abe said. “If we are fully prepared, an attempt to wage war against Japan will be thwarted. This is called deterrence.” [deterrence as used here is the maintenance of military power for the purpose of discouraging attack]

Abe offered an example of how Japan’s revised rules of engagement could work. If U.S. vessels rescuing Japanese nationals from a conflict zone were attacked, Japan’s military could provide protection to those vessels, he said.

Japanese military personnel do not engage in combat overseas, although small numbers have participated in United Nations peacekeeping operations.

The change is welcome news to the United States, which maintains troops in Japan.

Abe’s reassurances carried little weight in China, which suffered greatly from a Japanese invasion and occupation in the 1930s and 1940s. The two nations have strained relations over a territorial dispute over a group of uninhabited islands in the East China Sea.

“We oppose Japan’s fabrication of the so-called China threat so as to serve its domestic political purposes,” Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei said Tuesday. “People cannot but question whether Japan will change the peaceful development path it has long stuck to since the end of World War II,” he said, according to Xinhua, the state news agency.

In South Korea, which was colonized by Japan from 1910 to 1945, Foreign Ministry spokesman Noh Kwang Il said, “The South Korean government views it as a significant revision to the defense and security policy under the postwar peace constitution and is paying a sharp attention to it.”

EGYPT – Egypt’s president announces plans for new Suez Canal

INDIA – New Delhi’s residents and officials living in fear of marauding monkeys considered holy by Hindus

(The news briefs above are from USA Today on July 1 and London’s Daily Telegraph on Aug. 5 and Aug. 8.)

Background

JAPAN

• Japan's postwar constitution, adopted under Allied supervision, included a "Peace Clause" (Article 9), which renounced war and banned Japan from maintaining any armed forces.
• This was intended to prevent the country from ever becoming an aggressive military power again.
• However, within a decade, America was pressuring Japan to rebuild its army as a bulwark against communism in Asia after the Chinese Civil War and the Korean War, and Japan established Self-Defense Forces.
• Traditionally, Japan's military spending has been restricted to about 1% of its gross national product, though this is by popular practice, not law, and has fluctuated up and down from this figure.
• Prime Ministers Junichiro Koizumi and Shinzo Abe, and other politicians have tried to repeal or amend the clause. Although the intention of the American occupation was to demilitarize the Japanese [after WWII], due to the subsequent perceived threat of communism in Asia, and at American urging, the Japanese military was slowly restored to considerable strength. Japan now has the sixth largest military budget in the world (from wikipedia)

The Associated Press reported on July 1:

• The move will allow the Japanese military to defend other nations under what is known as "collective self-defense."
• Previous governments have said that Japan's war-renouncing constitution limits the use of force to the defense of Japan.
• The constitution was drafted by American occupation forces after World War II in part to prevent a repeat of Japan's invasion and brutal occupation of wide swaths of Asia.
• Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is pushing hard for the change. He cites a deteriorating security environment, including China's rise and North Korean missile and nuclear threats.

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EGYPT

• The Suez Canal is an artificial sea-level waterway running north to south across the Isthmus of Suez in Egypt to connect the Mediterranean Sea and the Red Sea.
• The canal separates the African continent from Asia, and it provides the shortest maritime route between Europe and the lands lying around the Indian and western Pacific oceans.
• It is one of the world's most heavily used shipping lanes.
• The canal is extensively used by modern ships, as it is the fastest crossing from the Atlantic Ocean to the Indian Ocean. Tolls paid by the vessels represent an important source of income for the Egyptian government. (from the Egyptian government's Suez Canal website: suezcanal.gov.eg)

The Wall Street Journal reported:

• But while shipping industry executives have welcomed the idea of expanding the Suez Canal to help relieve bottlenecks, there are doubts over whether Egypt can finish the project on schedule, and over how it will obtain the funding.
• Egypt has for years planned to develop 47,000 square miles around the 101-mile Suez Canal into an international industrial and logistics hub.
• But the plan for the new parallel canal is also being seen as an attempt by Mr. Al Sisi to shore up support for his government amid continuing economic problems in Egypt.
• "[There are] questions about the merits of the overall project. The country is still in a very difficult situation, with population growth high, economic growth low, and where inflation remains high, in addition to a more politicized population," said Angus Blair, chief executive of Signet, a Cairo-based regional forecasting consultancy firm.
• Others have suggested Suez Canal may not need an upgrade.
• "I don't understand the logic of this Suez Canal expansion," said Robin Mills, head of consulting at Manaar Energy in Dubai. "On the oil side, the canal's importance is likely to wane as European Union oil imports from the Middle East fall. As for liquefied natural gas, the existing canal can already take the largest LNG carrier." (from wsj.com)

and from the Telegraph article above:

• The cost of the project takes account of the need to build tunnels under it to link the Sinai to the rest of Egypt. Part of the thinking of both [plans] is not only to improve the country's industrial infrastructure but to bring more development to the Sinai, which is plagued by terrorism.
• A year ago, a militant group managed to get close enough to the canal, despite heavy security, to hole a passing Chinese container vessel with two missiles from a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, though no-one was hurt and no serious damage done.
• "We all know the sensitive situation of Sinai, and this is something that should be of concern to all of us as Egyptians," Mr. Sisi said. (from the Telegraph article above)

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INDIA

• For decades, New Delhi's streets were patrolled by wallahs with their trained langurs. But the practice ended last year after a court ruled keeping them in captivity was cruel.
• "Monkey man" Mahendra Goswami and his colleagues, who are in high demand particularly in Delhi's plush VIP quarters, can also use slingshots and sticks to ward off the animals.
• Recently locals erected a plastic langur with a tape machine inside that played recorded sounds of the animals in a bid to scare them away.
• "It took a group of monkeys three days to realize it was a dummy and then they raided it like a wolf pack and took away all its pieces," Goswami said. (from Agence France-Presse)

from the Telegraph article above:

• Elsewhere in Delhi monkeys are once again infesting India's flagship hospital, after having learnt to operate the newly installed automatic doors.
• Doctors at the All India Institute of Medical Sciences said the horde of monkeys, who had colonised the premises since the 1960s, had recently worked out how to open the motion-censor operated doors installed across the hospital campus.
• These included the neurosurgery department and nearby patient recovery rooms, where the monkeys have been spotted snatching food, terrorising medical staff and playing with sensitive equipment.
• Operating alone or in pairs, they have also created bedlam outside one of the operation theatres, and when chased away by the hospital security staff hid in the false ceiling only to re-emerge when the coast was clear.
• Past efforts to rid the hospital of the macaques, descendents of those who escaped from the Institute's research laboratories several decades ago, remain handicapped by Hindu religious sentiment.
• Relatives and friends accompanying patients to hospital regularly feed the monkeys hoping "god" will hasten their recovery.