Framed by the convergence of postwar international and domestic politics over the last 70 years, Japan's pacifist constitution appears to have secured peace and prosperity for the country. Japanese pacifists suppose this good luck will never run out, as demonstrated by their most recent mass demonstration in front of the Diet. Demonstrators protested against security policies proposed by the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe that they believe are unconstitutional. But emerging network-centric military technology is rapidly invalidating their long-held assumptions.
Japan's 1947 constitution was imposed under U.S.-led military occupation, with the intent to put a defeated Japan on indefinite probation as a vanquished but dangerous challenger of the international status quo. The constitution deprived the country of the right to belligerency, as well as the right to possessing normal armed forces as a policy instrument for power projection. For its security and existence, Japan is bound to rely on "the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world," the overwhelming majority of which then consisted of the Allied Powers.
In response to the breakout of the Korean War in 1950 in the context of the Cold War, however, the United States pushed occupied Japan to organize a small-scale constabulary National Security Force, which later developed into the Japan Self-Defense Forces. Japan took advantage of light armaments and its low fiscal burden to reconstruct its war-torn economy and later to become a global economic power, while the United States to this day continues to play the role of Japan's sole security guarantor.
With U.S. global military involvement and its fiscal burden significantly growing, the Japan Self-Defense Forces have deepened their bilateral alliance relations to supplement and, in limited manners, to complement U.S. military power. Thanks to the alliance, Japan has been able to spend less than 1 percent of its gross domestic product on defense for more than three decades. It has, of course, also been forced to endure an asymmetrical relationship, most visibly by hosting large U.S. military bases on its soil.
Yet as its economy grew, Japan's defense budget became sufficiently large in absolute terms, enabling the country to finance the transformation of the Self-Defense Forces into a compact yet technologically and operationally sophisticated armed force -- one that performs best when cooperating closely with U.S. forces.
For more than two decades, Japan has adroitly evaded its constitutional constraints by maximizing the Self-Defense Forces' logistical and rear area support for U.S. forces. Such support is an essential part of military operations, but it is not integral to combat missions. As such it does not infringe on constitutional redlines. In particular, it has to be noted that sharing real-time digital situational awareness data is considered permissible -- doing so is different from providing digital fire-control data that is immediately linked to combat.
As the regional balance of military power shifts, however, the Self-Defense Forces now cannot help but seek to offset China's quantitative superiority by using the qualitative advantage Tokyo gets through close cooperation with U.S. forces. Japan cannot easily increase defense spending as its society greys, inviting a trade-off between welfare and defense expenditures.
Japan's fiscal constraints thus push Tokyo to network the military computer and communications systems of its Self-Defense Forces with those of U.S. forces, with a focus on high-tech platforms and on vehicles that are to be deployed in a wide operational theater.
This is because, when blue platforms and vehicles are located far apart beyond line-of-sight (an unobstructed path between sending and receiving antennas), individual stand-alone sensors installed on them are unable to capture the rapidly changing locations of their enemy counterparts in real time -- a radar wave is straight, and the globe's surface curved. This emerging network-centricity will inevitably bring about real-time fusion of high-precision situational awareness data to be directly employed for fire control, such as the U.S. Navy's Cooperative Engagement Capability.
There is no longer a neat line separating the data gathered for situational awareness and that used for fire control. That in turn blurs the distinction between the rights to individual and collective self-defense. All of it challenges the long-held precept that restraint from exercising the latter safeguards Japan's national defense.
Technical details aside, the strategic reality is this: The militaries of the United States, Japan, and all of their allies will benefit greatly from sharing tactical data, given growing fiscal constraints developing unilateral war-fighting capabilities. In airspace, and in and under the waters, Japan's increasing technological integration with U.S. forces is changing realities, and the pacifist era is heading for obsolescence.
Thus the day is coming when the use of armed force will have to be judged case-by-case through effective civilian control of the military. Naturally, this demands Japan's political leaders be equipped with knowledge, experience, ability, and capacity in national security affairs, and the Japanese electorate will need to be informed enough on the matter to elect leaders of caliber.
Right now, the situation is a challenge for Japanese democracy: After decades of pacifist inertia, the country lacks statesmen well-versed in national security, and the public is poorly educated in the field. Ironically, the pacifists' preoccupation with the total ban on collective self-defense reveals their strong distrust in contemporary Japanese democracy in general, and in the effectiveness of its civilian control in particular -- their intent is to rely rather on the lingering legacy of the U.S.-led occupation. It is high time to face the tough choices that can direct Japan toward full-fledged democracy.