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JAPAN took further steps towards militarisation yesterday, sending peacekeepers to South Sudan with a mandate to use force.
The 350 troops will replace a previous contingent of Japanese peacekeepers who served in the UN mission in South Sudan but were not authorised for armed intervention.
The new troops will tackle engineering and construction tasks in the capital Juba.
Japan’s post-WWII constitution forbids the deployment of combat troops overseas, reserving the armed forces for national self-defence.
But new legislation pushed through by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government last year reinterprets that rule to allow troops to fight overseas in defence of Japan’s allies.
Critics say that will allow Japan to ride to war on Uncle Sam’s coat-tails.
US president-elect Donald Trump has vowed to make Asian allies pay for hosting US troops on their soil — including some 50,000 in Japan.
He has also suggested he would support any Japanese bid to develop nuclear weapons.
Japan pays about £1.6 billion a year, about half of the nonpersonnel costs of stationing the US troops, while South Korea pays about £690 million a year for about 28,000 US troops based there.
But former defence minister Shigeru Ishiba seized on that yesterday to argue for boosting military capabilities in a reconfigured alliance.
Mr Ishiba, in the running to become Japan’s next prime minister, said Tokyo contributes more financially for the basing of US troops than any other US ally, but less militarily.
“In the future, this structure should change,” he said, raising the spectre of “threats” from China and North Korea — both in Washington’s sights — as Mr Abe did last year to justify the new law.
Mr Ishiba said he met retired US general Michael Flynn, whom Mr Trump has selected as national security adviser, in Tokyo in October, and discussed the bilateral alliance and other issues over dinner.
“He has a very accurate understanding of the importance of the Japan-US alliance,” Mr Ishiba said.
“However, it doesn’t mean the Japan-US alliance should stay the way it is right now.”
