The Cabinet is expected to announce the decision Tuesday. It is one of the biggest changes in Japan’s security policy since World War II. Previously the constitution has been interpreted as allowing the use of arms only for Japan’s own self-defence, and critics say the change undermines the charter.
Abe says the revision is needed because of China’s military expansion and missile and nuclear threats from North Korea.
via Thousands rally against expected decision by Japan to allow greater military role.
Deja vu WWII build up? In September 18, 1931, a group of Japanese soldiers stationed in the northern Chinese province of Manchuria, masquerading as Chinese bandits, blew up a few feet of the Japanese-controlled South Manchurian Railway. The clumsily orchestrated incident was used as a pretext to launch an attack by the Kwantung Army (Japan’s field army in China), which aimed to occupy the whole of the province and bring its rich resources under Japanese control. This was the start of a decade of escalating violence that would culminate in the German assault on Poland and the start of World War II.
Within months of the Japanese seizure of Manchuria, the fragile international order of the 1920s was in tatters. The League of Nations did little to protect China from Japanese aggression, and in February 1933 Japan left the League altogether. Japanese statesmen and military leaders had grown frustrated by an international political and economic order that they thought gave them a second-rate status.
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