Japan’s Abe wins two thirds and will be able to Amend Constitution

by

Shinzo Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party-led (LDP) coalition won a combined 312 seats, keeping its two-thirds “super majority” in the 465-member lower house. Shinzo Abe will almost certainly secure a third three-year term as LDP leader September, 2018 and go on to become Japan’s longest-serving premier. It also means his “Abenomics” growth strategy centered on the hyper-easy monetary policy will likely continue.

The U.S.-drafted constitution’s Article 9, if taken literally, bans the maintenance of armed forces. But Japanese governments have interpreted it to allow a military exclusively for self-defense. Abe has proposed modifying the Japanese constitution to codify that Japan can have a military for self-defense.

Amendments must be approved by two-thirds of each chamber of parliament and then by a majority in a public referendum. Abe will now control the needed two-thirds majority.

27 thoughts on “Japan’s Abe wins two thirds and will be able to Amend Constitution”

  1. While all the speculation seems directed at the possibility of Japanese building nuclear weapons, what will be more useful to Japan is to build ballistic missile defenses, and that will require decades of work. Sure, they are buying SM-3 missiles from the US, and by 2022 those could be the SM-3-2B missiles that Obama wanted to refuse to develop, if we start moving that ASAP. Beyond those developments, however, the thing I would like to see Japan do in regularizing its military’s status is to build out a defense industry that focuses primarily on missile defense. Nuclear-armed ballistic missiles have more potential to kill Japanese citizens than any other weapon in the world today. So defense against such weapons are what Japan should focus on.

    How should they do so? By the same methods that the US *should*have* developed over the last 50 years, with a layered defense that begins with point-defense and builds out through mid-course defenses to orbiting boost-phase defenses. None of these layers of BMD need to be nuclear. All of them can be useful in multiple ways to each of Japan’s military branches. Japan does not need to copy what others have done in the past, for their defenses can complement what the rest of industrial society builds in other militaries. A crucial point will be whether a portion of Japan’s regularizing its military includes removing the ban on selling Japanese weapons to other governments. This will remove from the US Senate the ability to veto whether our allies can have defenses that pacifist elements in the Senate want to pretend won’t be introduced if we don’t develop them.

    • The US could supply Japan with a ground-based midcourse defense system, like the one it operates in Alaska, in short order–and it should.

      The thing that prevents the North Koreans from having a credible ICBM threat is that they don’t have a tested reentry vehicle yet. You can’t test a reentry system unless you’re flying a full-energy, depressed trajectory to your simulated target, and that requires overflying Japan.

      With GMD, the Japanese would have every right to shoot down Nork missile tests overflying their territory–and they should do exactly that. Denying the Norks confidence in their own deterrence is essential.

      • I eagerly await President Trump’s announcement establishing a “North Korea Ballistic Missile No-Fly Zone”, backed up by a multinational, defense-in-depth ring of PAC-3, THAAD & Naval/Shore based Aegis ABM systems in AK, Japan, S Korea, HI, Guam, Taiwan, Philippines & Australia.
        Present a phased approach – System Requirements in 3 months, sales approved in 6 months, IOC in a year.
        It might help both China & Russia focus a little better.

        • Unfortunately, none of the systems you mention are certainly capable of intercepting the N. Korean missiles flown over Japan. The max range for the SM-3 used today in Aegis, is listed as only 700km, while the minimum height of these ballistic missiles as they overfly Hokaido is 780km. To make an uncertain attempt at interception, and not make the intercept would damage the alliance. As usual this year, we are finding that the slow-march the Obama administration forced on BMD system development, is affecting our capacity long after Obama takes up residence outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

          The range of the SM-3-2A missile is 1250km, but it is still in testing. The SM-3-2B will not begin development at least until a new defense budget is passed. This is the cost of progressives placating tyrants.

          • @Tom Billings, USA is 10,000 miles on the other side of the Pacific Ocean and Japanese consider themselves honorary White despite an unnormal one. Both of them are aliens to Asia. In history no aliens ever have the well-being of locals in heart; they are the invaders and troublemakers; the only way they can benefit from a faraway place is to create chaos, insert wedges, sow discords and incite animosities between the locals. The current tensions in the Asia are the result of aliens from far away land creating chaos, inserting wedges, sowing discords and inciting animosities between the nations in Asia.

            For over seventy years the US has dominated Asia, ravaging the continent with two major wars in Korea and Indo-China with millions of casualties, and multiple counter-insurgency interventions in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines, Timor, Myanmar, Pakistan and Afghanistan. The strategic goal has been to expand its military and political power, exploit the economies and resources, and enslave Asians.

            The aliens have enough harm to the Asians, they are not wanted, not invited and not loved in Asia, go home aliens.

            • The Japanese are aliens in Asia and should go home.

              I was about to complain that the new comment system doesn’t let me block the crazies, but right now you guys are pretty amusing.

            • “@Tom Billings, USA is 10,000 miles on the other side of the Pacific Ocean and Japanese consider themselves honorary White despite an unnormal one. Both of them are aliens to Asia.”

              Drivel!

              In a world of 45 minute package delivery anywhere in the world, 10,000 miles travel is just enough time to get through lunch, if you don’t dawdle over it. As to Japanese not being asian, again drivel. Genetic studies have shown Japanese are mostly a strong mix of the Yueh coastal asian peoples and Korean mixtures as well.

              “The current tensions in the Asia are the result of aliens from far away land creating chaos, inserting wedges, sowing discords and inciting animosities between the nations in Asia.”

              More drivel!

              The current tensions are the result of the long history of Asia’s agrarian cultural past, in which China dominated Asia by imperial might. China has not given up its agrarian definitions of how the world should run, with “The Middle Kingdom” at the top of a rigid agrarian hierarchy, in spite of seeing how industrial freedoms of action can let wealth grow through the worldwide networks of industrial society. So far your words are nothing more than another version of Japan’s ashigaru military creed, that an “East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere should run Asia, …of course, in their version, under the beneficient rule of the ashigaru military of Japan at the time. In your version, it’s China who should do the ruling. No sale! Asia is not separate from elsewhere. It is part of worldwide industrial networks that keep 6 of the 7 billion human beings on this planet clothed, fed, and housed.

              There is no reason for the US to desert our allies in Asia. If we allow agrarian hierarchy to crush industrial networks there, just to please China’s hierarchs, then we will find that huge portions of the world will be impoverished, because a network is harmed outside the places a hierarch squashes, as well as under his direct boot heel.

  2. Hahahaha…..I called this one. Yes I did. For almost 18 months now.

    What exactly did I call correctly? Japan’s rise as a military power to counter China. Oh what? You think that the Japanese are doing this because they feel threatened by the Filipinos?

    “You don’t know what you’re talking about, Ape! It’s USA vs China! Don’t get off the script!”

    Yes I sure did. The script is toilet paper. Got a great laugh watching all you refusing to acknowledge this reality so much you don’t realize that you’re eating said TP, too.

    There’s war coming to the WestPac. If it happens circa 2020 or later, then it will be Japan and whatever alliance it can inherit from the old US one. In fact, the Chinese will be terrified if the US gets involved more than in a support role.

    Oh, and before that…Japan will become a nuclearized regional power, too. This new amendment will make that constitutionally possible.

    Next Big China ain’t gonna happen, kiddies. Next Big China is FUCKED. F-U-C-K-E-D! Just as I have been telling you all this time. Get used to it.

    Oh and Brian…please fix this shitty WordPress system. I have a WP login I use to comment on all other word press sites…but yours doesn’t seem set up to accept it.

    • Usually when you describe a country as “rising”, it’s not refering to potentially having enough votes to be allowed to have a military.
      But hey you got start somewhere right? lol

      All they have to do after that, is to surpass China’s missile technology, aircraft technology, radar technology, naval technology, space technology and nuclear technology, and built more ships, aircraft, submarines, satellites and missiles
      In other words increase their GDP by >400% overnight then maintain higher than China’s growth rate for at least a decade.
      Pretty simple.

      You know Americans are really not that different from North Koreans…

      • “All they have to do after that, is to surpass China’s…”

        They’ve done it before, and they could do it again – I wouldn’t bet against that. Automation is Japan’s specialty – just start running when the giant robots show up.

      • They’ve got a bit of a jump in the aircraft department. They’ve had a stealth fighter program for close to a decade now.

    • The only thing that terrifies me more than Japan going nuclear is the disaster that you and people like you have the right to vote
      You should be banned from voting
      It is a shame that people like you can vote

      • You are correct. Nobody should be allowed to vote.
        Attacking people and stealing their money is wrong.
        Majority support does not make it right.

    • WarrenTheApe, It’s my understanding that it’s the deep rooted built-in characteristics of Japanese imperialism to play being pitifully submissive and bide their time for the chance of “revenge”. That’s why I am all for the US to keep a tight leash on Japan these days and be on the constant lookout of such behind the back stabs.

      Japanese pulled a fast one against the American at Pearl Harbor, and Japanese hates Americans in the guts because of the nuking in WWII, force occupation, Plaza accord, Japanese semi-god worship of their emperor stuff, etc. God knows what Japanese, seemingly all submissive under the gun for now, would do to the US behind its back, availing it the chance.
      As such, the US would be the big fool of international league class if to “move all your forces in Japan and South Korea to Australia”. And no nation will want the US to pull out of Japan given its remorseless stance necessitated by the Japanese imperial “emperor” superstition mentality imposed to the island nation.

      • “… It’s my understanding that it’s the deep rooted built-in characteristics of Japanese imperialism to play being pitifully submissive and bide their time for the chance of “revenge”. ”

        Then your understanding is clouded by the racist ideas of “racial character” that were promoted inside Japan itself, during the time that its ashigaru military was rising in domination over its politics between 1922 and 1945. The idea of dominating others in an imperial mode comes from agrarian cultural attitudes that place expansion over land as the basis of all wealth. Cultural change lags the change from an agrarian environment to an industrial environment by anywhere from 2 to 5 generations. Japan, which was making a change from majority rural farmers to majority urban industry in those years, found itself dominated by a military that came mostly from rural farming areas. While they looked backwards to samurai codes, their internal training was that of the ashigaru regiments of the Gempi Wars. So was their behavior.

        Japan, in 2017, has long since passed the transition from an agrarian culture to an industrial culture. *That* change is what will determine its behavior, *not* any “built-in” characteristics, for like us and all other nations, they are humans, a species of large obstreperously violent primates.

        Drop the racism, and get a clue about human behaviors in an industrial culture.

        • @Tom Billings, Japanese has been explaining away their war crimes, crimes against humanity and peace just like you since WWII. You should know without a nationwide commitment Japan could not have done what they did prior to 1945; the soldiers, bureaucrats, businessmen, Yakuza, and civilian occupiers who actually committed war crimes and crimes against humanity were all came from the ordinary Japanese men, women and youth. Mind you Japanese even say Nanking Massacre is a CCP fabrication.

          Japanese is an unrepentant war criminal, they continuously deny about their inhuman atrocities, wrongful acts and invasion during the world wars. The Japanese PM Abe and many political figures there publicly regularly deny what the country had done in WWII. More importantly, his cabinet received overwhelming support from Japanese. This nation and many of its people were not only evil but has lost their conscience to enable them to be a normal person. Such nation and people are a real danger to other countries.

          Racism is a White invention, the worst kind of development of human intelligence, it makes human beings pit against each other blindly like bigot creatures. Racism is the ultimate expression of greed, selfishness, closed mindedness, hypocrisy and it is an eternal drag on the progress of civilization.

          Thanks to the racism invented by the White, now human being can treat each other with contempt, enslave others on the moral high ground, slaughter others as subhuman species, and we never can live together in harmony on this tiny little blue dot in the vast empty universe.

          Labelling others racist liberally is not going to make fake news explaining away war crimes more legs to stand the examination of truth.

          • Joe, you ignore the fact that all of the World War 2 war criminals are dead, of old age, if nothing else. The rest of the world was horrified while it was going on, in Shanghai, in Nanking, and thousands of other villages and towns in China. You utterly miss the point that the rest of the world has moved on. It is long past time to stop hiding your resentment at your own leaders, by screaming about leaders out of Japan’s past, …who are long dead. Your words are nothing more than distraction, for yourself, if no one else. Distraction for the lack of freedom the Hierarchs of the Politburo still insist should be China’s bitter burden. We’re not interested in your distractions, “Joe”.

    • One potential outcome of NK’s saber rattling is that Japan decides it needs a nuclear deterrence of its own which it could likely have inside of 18 months if not sooner.

      • I wonder if there could be a technology sharing agreement between Japan and Taiwan; for “peaceful purposes”, of course…

      • Japan returned a loaner of several hundred kilograms of weapons grade plutonium a year or so ago. They know how to work with the material. There is an inventory of about 50 metric tons of reactor grade Pu divided among different process pathways. Who can say with assurance whether high grade material is also present or not.

Comments are closed.