Abstract
Here we will present two research questions: first, why did Japan suddenly discontinue a quarter-century history of troop contribution to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKOs) in 2017; second, is there any possibility of resuming large-scale military deployment. Hypothetically, we will argue that Japan’s retreat from South Sudan in 2017 should be regarded not as the revival of old anti-militarism but as a recent tendency of reluctance among the Global North countries, concerning the personnel deployment to the UNPKOs. Since the start in 1992, Japan had deployed only the limited personnel contribution under the strict constitutional ban. To overcome this situation, Japan had tried to trace the global trends of “robustness” and “integration”: the former encourages more proactive use of arms for peacekeepers to remove obstacles for the UNPKOs, while the latter promotes peacebuilding-like military roles along with the cooperation with civilians. In the late 2010s, however, Japan could no longer accommodate the recent international trends, mainly due to the increasing insecurity in the UNPKOs today. Likewise, the other Global North countries had also become hesitant for the personnel contribution to the UNPKOs. We will argue that Japan’s retreat falls in the common trend among the Global North countries.
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1 The Gaps Behind the Discontinuity in Japan’s Peacekeeping Policy
This book explores Japan’s peacekeeping policy, with particular focus on its military contribution to United Nations Peacekeeping Operations (UNPKOs). It examines the evolution of Japan’s peacekeeping contributions from the early postwar period until the early 2020s. It was nearly three decades ago that the Act on Cooperation with United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and Other Operations or the Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) Act was enacted. The law enabled the Government of Japan (GoJ) to contribute personnel from the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), Japan’s national armed forces, to the UNPKOs . The SDF consists of three forces: the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), which is equivalent to an army; the Maritime Self-Defense Force (MSDF), equivalent to a navy; and the Air Self-Defense Force (ASDF), which is an air force. In this book, frequent reference will be made to the Japan Engineering Groups (JEG)—that is, the military engineering corps in the GSDF .
Although Japan has advocated United Nations (UN)-centrism as one of the three pillars of its postwar diplomacy (MoFA, 1958; Kuriyama, 2016, pp. 21–23),Footnote 1 it was initially very reluctant to deploy its personnel, especially SDF members, to a UNPKO (Shoji, 2015; Kato, 2020; Fujishige, 2017). Despite obtaining UN membership in 1956, Japan had never contributed troops to any UNPKOs until 1992, when the PKO Act was established. The new legislation allowed the GoJ to make its first personnel contribution, including the SDF contingent, to the United Nations Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC) from 1992 to 1993. Japan has since deployed troops to various places within the UN framework, including Mozambique, the Golan Heights (Syria), East Timor (Timor-Leste ), Haiti, and South Sudan (Cabinet Office, n.d.-a). However, since the withdrawal of some 300 engineering troops from the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) in May 2017, Japan has not contributed any new SDF contingents to a UNPKO in recent years, aside from a small number of staff officers remaining in South Sudan (Cabinet Office, 2015, n.d.-a). Why has Japan discontinued its quarter-century history (1992–2017) of military contribution to UNPKOs around the globe? Is there any possibility that it will be resumed?
To respond to these questions, we will pay special heed to understanding Japan’s motivation to catch up with the trends of “integration” and “robustness” in the UNPKOs . At the outset, Japanese peacekeepers embarked on the new enterprise as cautious novices, heavily preoccupied with satisfying national legal caveats. Through firsthand field experience, however, they gradually realized that there were gaps between their domestic legal requirements and the on-the-ground reality of UNPKOs . Following its involvement with the UNTAC , Japan’s peacekeeping policy was primarily concerned with reducing these gaps, with the objective of catching up to the “global” standard of behaviors in UNPKOs . Underneath Japanese policy lies a basic assumption that more personnel (military) contribution is necessarily more desirable (The IPC Panel, 2002). Bearing this in mind, Japan keenly sought to catch up with the early 1990s international trend to expand the latitude for “more active” military contribution.
While Japan was chasing these trends in recent decades, the quality and purposes of UNPKOs changed dramatically and quickly. A Japanese international law scholar noted, “There has emerged a diremption between the assumed model of participation in the UNPKO under the Japanese statutes and a new vision for peacekeeping, which has been sought by the UN after the Cold War” (Sakai, 2016, p. 21). This transformation made it very difficult for the GoJ to continue to follow the trend of UNPKOs , which have been increasingly deployed in dangerous places and more frequently accompanied by the use of force. Presumably, this trend led to the termination of Japan’s troop contribution to South Sudan in 2017, although the GoJ has never confirmed its true motivation (Cabinet Secretariat et al., 2017). It also seems very unlikely that the GoJ will restart such contributions, at least in the foreseeable future. To dissect the question of what has brought Japanese peacekeeping to an impasse, we will carefully examine how Japan’s efforts to follow the international tides of “integration” and “robustness” have shaped its peacekeeping policy over the last few decades and why Japan’s challenges have reached their limit. Finally, we will briefly consider the change of course in Japan’s peacekeeping policy after the 2017 suspension of troop contributions.
2 The Contemporary “Integration” and “Robustness” Trends in UNPKOs
2.1 Classic Peacekeeping
Before we discuss Japan’s peacekeeping policy, let us provide an overview of the recent evolution of “integration” and “robustness” as dominant trends within UNPKOs. Traditionally, classic UNPKOs originated in the Cold War era and were mostly carried out by unarmed or light-armed military personnel playing only limited roles, such as monitoring cease-fires between states. Although the UN Charter includes no mention of UNPKOs, the United Nations Secretary-General (UNSG) Dag Hammarskjöld, who held office from 1953 to 1961, once defined classic peacekeeping as an operation of “UN Charter Chapter Six and Half”—that is, a measure that falls between a pacific settlement under Chapter VI and military sanctions under Chapter VII (Bring, 2011). In 1958, Hammarskjöld also identified the three principles of classic peacekeeping (UNSG, 1958), which would later be conceptualized as the classic version of three principles: consent from all concerned parties, neutrality, and the use of force only for self-defense purposes.
2.2 The Rise of “Integration” in the UNPKOs
After the end of the Cold War, the increase of civil wars radically transformed the nature of UNPKOs, giving rise to two distinctive features: “integration” and “robustness.” On the one hand, the UNPKOs became increasingly involved in the reconstruction of conflict-affected countries under the statebuilding mandate , authorized by a United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR). Rebuilding collapsed statehoods considerably expanded the range of UNPKOs’ duties, which soon covered not only traditional cease-fire monitoring (peacekeeping) but also diverse civilian-oriented tasks, such as election observation, support for refugee repatriation, and institution support for local governments (peacebuilding). By encompassing various issue fields, the comprehensive UN missions now cover both peacekeeping, primarily conducted by uniformed personnel (military and police), and peacebuilding, mainly carried out by civilians. This book refers to the trend of uniting peacekeeping and peacebuilding as “integration,” in which civil-military cooperation has been developed.
The origin of “integration” can be dated back to the multidimensional (or multifunctional) peace operations in the early 1990s (Inoue, 2018, pp. 25–26; Doyle et al., 1997). As typically seen in the case of UNTAC , multidimensional missions included various activities, ranging from the military’s truce monitoring and the UN police’s provision of advice to the local police , to civilian activities such as election supervision. Around the same time, UNSG Boutros Boutros-Ghali advocated the concept of “post-conflict peacebuilding” in his controversial policy paper on peacekeeping reform, widely known as An Agenda for Peace (UNSG, 1992). The multidimensional UNPKOs in the 1990s, however, soon revealed flaws, such as a narrow concentration on elections, inflexibility in scheduling, and weak coordination mechanisms. To overcome these shortcomings, the concept of “integration” appeared in the 2000 Brahimi Report (UNSG, 2000), the highly influential peacekeeping reform recommendations written by UNSG Kofi Annan’s advisory group chaired by the Algerian former Minister of Foreign Affairs Lakhdar Brahimi.
The prototype for an integrated mission was embodied in the United Nations Transitional Administration in East Timor (UNTAET ) from 1999 to 2002. In line with the idea of “integration,” UNTAET was assigned comprehensive mandates, encompassing a wide range of civilian-led peacebuilding activities (e.g., police and judicial reforms, institution building, election monitoring, and infrastructure development), as well as traditional peacekeeping duties conducted by both the military and the police. In particular, it was emphasized that peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts should be integrated into a unified scope of operations. Following this logic, the prefix “post-conflict” was removed from Boutros-Ghali’s term “post-conflict peacebuilding.” It is now simply called “peacebuilding” to indicate the need to embark on it in parallel with peacekeeping. In 2005, the United Nations Peacebuilding Commission was established to improve the practice of peacebuilding (UNDPO, n.d.-c), further promoting the trend of “integration.”
From the mid-2000s onward, it became common to describe the newly established UNPKOs as “Integrated Missions,” as seen in the case of the United Nations Integrated Mission in Timor-Leste (UNMIT), established in 2006. These integrated missions attach high value to coordination, since “integration” inherently involves a multiplicity of actors. This trend was typified by the rising focus on the “One-UN ” approach since the mid-2000s to reduce silos among various agencies under the UN framework (United Nations, n.d.). Moreover, the conception of “integration” covers not only the UN agencies but also various external actors, such as humanitarian and development agencies, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and business and local civil societies. To promote smooth coordination, the Special Representative of the Secretary-General (SRSG), who is the head of each UNPKO on site, is now granted more authority (de Coning, 2010).
Parallel to the rise of “integration,” the concept of “robustness” has also emerged, encouraging peacekeepers to apply more determined, high-intensity use of force under Chapter VII of the UN Charter. With the increase in civil wars after the Cold War, a cease-fire agreement is easily jeopardized, and lingering violence often steals the lives of ordinary citizens. To address this issue, the aforementioned policy paper, An Agenda for Peace , proposed another new concept in 1992: “peace enforcement.” This meant that when there was outright aggression, peacekeepers were allowed to take the use of force beyond the self-defense purposes delineated under the UN Charter Chapter VII, even without consent from the concerned parties (UNSG, 1992, para. 44). The United Nations Operation in Somalia II (UNOSOM II) in the early 1990s was a representative case of such “peace enforcement.” However, it ultimately resulted in failure after UN peacekeepers were involved in hostilities against indigenous militias.
2.3 The Rise of “Robustness” in the UNPKOs
Following the fiasco in Somalia, the momentum for “robustness” temporarily slowed, as Boutros-Ghali’s follow-up policy paper to An Agenda for Peace dejectedly admitted the failure of his previous ambitious initiative (UNSG, 1995). In the mid-1990s, atrocities against humanity, such as the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 and massacre in Srebrenica in Bosnia and Herzegovina in 1995, reaffirmed the necessity for more definitive use of force, especially to protect civilians. From the late 1990s onward, armed enforcement measures authorized under Chapter VII of the UN Charter would often be “outsourced” to (a) voluntary state(s) for the purpose of civilian protection, which is typically referred to as “humanitarian intervention.” Meanwhile, the UN itself also gradually invented a milder form of enforcement action, namely the concept of “robust” peacekeeping, which typically goes hand-in-hand with the notion of “Protection of Civilians” (PoC). “Robust” peacekeeping is entitled to resolute use of force under the UN Charter’s Chapter VII, but it takes on more modest characteristics in comparison with peace enforcement.
In the 2000s, the rise of “robustness” inevitably remodeled the three classic principles of UNPKOs into a new form (Shinoda, 2018, pp. 49–50). In 2008, the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations (UNDPKO ), which is now called the UN Department of Peace Operations (UNDPO), and the UN Department of Field Support (UNDFS), which is currentlyFootnote 2 called the UN Department of Operational Support (UNDOS), published a joint policy paper widely known as The Capstone Doctrine to confirm these changes (UNDPKO & UNDFS, 2008). First, “robust” peacekeeping requires consent from major concerned parties. It falls between the requirements of classic peacekeeping, which demands consent from all concerned parties, and peace enforcement, which requires no consent. This implies the existence of those who do not accept the UN’s presence in a host nation, especially at the local level. The UNDPO notes, “Universality of consent becomes even less probable in volatile settings, characterized by the presence of armed groups not under the control of any of the parties, or by the presence of other spoilers” (UNDPO, n.d.-a), meaning that contemporary peacekeepers are often supposed to work under hostile and unstable conditions.
Second, the concept of “impartiality” was also introduced, implying that the UNPKO is no longer neutral in the sense that it keeps away from any warring parties equally. Rather, the UNDPO compares the roles of peacekeepers today to those of referees in sports because they “will penalize infractions, so a peacekeeping operation should not condone actions by the parties that violate the undertakings of the peace process or the international norms and principles that a United Nations peacekeeping operation upholds” (UNDPO, n.d.-a). In other words, “robust” peacekeeping would take a decisive attitude against those who violate the UN’s principles and rules, typically expressed in UNSCRs and peace agreements.
Third, peacekeepers tasked with the new mandate of “robust” peacekeeping are often allowed to “use all necessary means” under Chapter VII of the UN Charter . The “robust” peacekeepers are frequently allowed to use force themselves in order to “deter forceful attempts to disrupt the political process, protect civilians under imminent threat of physical attack, and/or assist the national authorities in maintaining law and order” (UNDPO, n.d.-b). Nevertheless, the use of force in “robust” peacekeeping is limited only to the tactical level for the purposes of self-defense and defense of the mandate.
Theoretically, “robust” peacekeeping is clearly differentiated from peace enforcement, which tasks the use of force at strategic level on the condition that is authorized by the United Nations Security Council (UNSC). Being situated between classic peacekeeping and peace enforcement, the nature of “robust” peacekeeping is sometimes depicted as being between “forceful” and “non-forceful” measures (Kiriyama, 2019, p. 149). In actuality, however, it is highly dubious whether such a strict distinction can be made, especially between “robust” peacekeeping and peace enforcement. Since the armed peacekeepers would need to respond to the changing degree of violence on site, it would be extremely difficult for them, when facing imminent danger, to judge whether their conduct falls within the scope of “robust” peacekeeping or exceeds it.
Thus, in recent years, UNPKOs abandoned the stance of noninterference and began to virtually impose peacekeepers’ involvement in armed conflicts in order to implement the UNPKO goals or, more specifically, for the purpose of PoC . In 1999, the United Nations Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMIL), which was tasked with a limited PoC mandate under Chapter VII of the UN Charter , served as a test case for “robust” peacekeeping (UNSC, 1999). The UNAMIL mandate was followed by the 2000 Brahimi Report , which confirmed the global shift toward “robustness” in peacekeeping. From the 2000s onward, most newly established UNPKOs have been found in Africa, such as in Liberia, Côte d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), South Sudan, and Mali (UNDPO, n.d.-e). These operations have been characterized by “robustness,” increasing the frequency of the use of force, especially for the purpose of defense of the mandate, and exposing peacekeepers to higher risk. As a result, in the twenty-first century, UNPKOs have seen an acute rise in fatalities, not only among civilians but also among uniformed personnel (Henke, 2018), as the Cruz Report warned in 2017 (dos Santos Cruz et al., 2017).
Inevitably, skepticism emerged concerning the excessive emphasis on “robust” peacekeeping even in the professional and academic circles that were close to the UN , most famously represented by the High-Level Independent Panel on Peace Operations (HIPPO), which was commissioned by UNSG Ban Ki-moon and chaired by José Manuel Ramos-Horta, the former president and prime minister of East Timor. The outcome of their examination was published in 2015 as the HIPPO Report , which highlighted the limits of a military approach and instead emphasized the supremacy of politics in conflict resolution (UNSG et al., 2015). Nevertheless, the HIPPO Report also reaffirmed the necessity of forceful measures for the purpose of PoC , reflecting the bitter truth of the recent UNPKOs.
One could say that “integration” and “robustness” are two sides of the same coin. Both schemes have evolved to address the problematique of conflict-affected countries. From a practical perspective, however, they have developed distinct approaches. On the one hand, “integration” is a more civilian-oriented approach that has boosted civil-military collaboration, combining peacekeeping and peacebuilding efforts. On the other hand, “robustness” has encouraged bold, intensive use of force to protect civilians and the peacekeepers themselves under Chapter VII of the UN Charter , albeit only for purposes of self-defense and the defense of the mandate.
3 Japan’s Setbacks in Pursuit of “Integration” and “Robustness”
From the 1990s onward, as seen earlier, the nature of UNPKOs had gradually transformed into a complex aggregation of “integration” and “robustness” (Uesugi, 2018, pp. 5–6; Fujishige, 2018, pp. 230–232). This inevitably widened the gap between the international direction of UNPKOs and the domestic legal framework for Japan’s peacekeeping policy, which was under strict legal and political constraints. The discrepancy motivated Japan to chase the trends of “integration” and “robustness.” Under the firm constitutional ban on the use of force, Japan was unable to fully conform to the international trend for “robustness.” However, it slowly and cautiously relaxed the requirement for the use of weapons, as seen in the three amendments to the PKO Act in 1998, 2001, and 2015 (Cabinet Office, n.d.-b). These revisions relatively expanded the permitted range for “the use of weapons” by SDF peacekeepers (the PKO Act makes a clear distinction between “use of force” and “use of weapons”—for more details, see Chap. 2).
A series of amendments finally resulted in the addition of a partial security duty, commonly known as the “coming-to-aid” duty (kaketsuke-keigo), which was newly included in the amendment to the PKO Act in 2015 (see Chaps. 2, 3, 4, and 8).Footnote 3 Law was revised as part of the omnibus Legislation for Peace and Security (hereafter, Peace and Security Legislation), which included amendments to ten existing laws, as well as the enactment of a new law. Even though the addition of the “coming-to-aid” duty was a step forward, representing a qualitative change from the previous hesitation, Japanese peacekeepers are still considerably restricted and unable to exercise full-fledged “robustness.”
To meet the trend of “integration,” meanwhile, the GoJ had become keener to utilize the merit of its logistic support capability, especially with respect to the JEG . The GoJ dispatched the JEG as part of their first dispatch of troops to UNTAC , because the original PKO Act prohibited the SDF from assuming a security-related role. As the JEG’s high-quality work gradually gained a good reputation within the UN , the GoJ began to regard this engineering capability with pride, recognizing it as a valuable asset to compensate for its otherwise low-profile presence in security-related works (Fujishige, 2021). Meanwhile, in recent years, there has been increasing attention to the utility of engineering capacity in the UNPKOs , not only to support statebuilding but also to facilitate the UN’s activities: for example, to improve local transportation through road restoration and to prepare accommodation for the UN peacekeepers. Japan’s increasing self-confidence in its engineering capacity corresponds well with this international tendency (Boutellis & Smith, 2014; Williams, 2005).
Later, to maximize the advantage of its engineering capability, the “All Japan” approach, which is the Japanese way of civil-military cooperation, gradually evolved. More specifically, it combines the peacekeeping efforts by the SDF personnel with Japan’s Official Development Assistance (ODA) to provide direct aid to local populations. The GoJ was very eager to utilize the merit of the JEG , especially in combination with the “All Japan” approach (Uesugi et al., 2016), because it complemented Japan’s economic and technological strength and was recognized as a useful substitute for its limitation in “robustness.” For this reason, the GoJ focused more on “integration,” through which they could make use of their high-quality engineering capability, while also concurrently chasing the trend of “robustness” to a limited extent.
Despite Japan’s attempt to follow the trends of both “integration” and “robustness,” the reality of UNPKOs has changed much more rapidly and radically. First, the number of UN missions with a “statebuilding” mandate , which is most suitable for the “All Japan” approach, has been greatly reduced during the last decade or so. At this moment, among existing UNPKOs , only the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) is primarily focused on statebuilding. However, UNMIK only has limited functions, especially concentrating on police roles, because it is being operated in close partnership with the Kosovo Force (KFOR), which is run by the member states of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO ) (UNDPO, n.d.-d). Meanwhile, most of the recently established UNPKOs , especially in Africa, such as in Mali and the DRC , have been tasked with the PoC mandate . This changed focus from statebuilding to PoC in UNPKOs has made it extremely difficult for the GoJ to find a suitable destination to utilize their engineering capacity and employ the “All Japan” approach.
The GoJ attempted to overcome this thorny problem in the deployment to South Sudan by intermingling the measures for “integration” and “robustness” within the same scope of JEG duties. Since 2012, the JEG has joined UNMISS mainly to undertake civil engineering works under its statebuilding mandate , predominantly in combination with the “All Japan” approach. Given the outbreak of de facto civil war at the end of 2013, however, the UNSC switched UNMISS’s mandate from statebuilding to PoC . Meanwhile, in the second half of the 2000s, the GoJ sought to expand the allowed range of SDF peacekeepers’ use of weapons in the pursuit of “robustness” (see Chap. 3) by finally adding a limited security role, namely the “coming-to-aid” duty, to the amended PKO Act in 2015 (see Chap. 4). The GoJ then added the “coming-to-aid” duty as a part of the JEG’s duty in November 2016. Although “coming-to-aid” duty had been included in the PKO Act a year earlier, it was considered to be a highly demanding assignment that concurrently implied two very different roles for the JEG —that is, construction work in line with the “integration” mandate alongside a minimal security task as a partial adaptation to “robustness.”
This attempt ultimately resulted in failure when the GoJ suddenly withdrew the JEG in May 2017, only six months after the first assignment of the “coming-to-aid” duty . Why did the GoJ abandon its concurrent pursuit of the two duties assigned to the JEG in the UNMISS ? The GoJ has kept silent about the true intention behind its withdrawal. Presumably, however, the disclosure of previously hidden JEG daily reports, which had mentioned the de facto fighting in South Sudan, triggered the decision to withdraw. If fighting actually occurred on site, this could violate the stipulation of the PKO Act and eventually the constitutional ban on the use of force. However, the truth may be much more complicated. This issue will be investigated in depth in Chaps. 8 and 9.
4 The Widespread Hesitation in the Global North Toward Personnel Contribution
To explain the reason behind the sudden withdrawal from South Sudan, some might view the termination of the contribution of the SDF contingent simply as a retreat to Japan’s long-established reluctance in military affairs (Tatsumi, 2017). We would take a different view, however, arguing that the withdrawal should be understood in context and beyond mere reversion to anti-militarism. More importantly, the cessation of troop deployment needs to be considered in the context of the changing division of labor between the Global North and the Global South in recent years. Indeed, not only Japan but also most of the Global North, including traditional “UNPKO-friendly” countries such as Canada, have become increasingly hesitant to contribute their troops to UNPKOs , especially as large-scale contingents. In the meantime, the majority of UN peacekeepers today are sourced from the Global South, such as Ethiopia, Nepal, and Rwanda (UNDPO, n.d.-b). Japan’s suspension of its military contribution should be regarded as being in line with widespread hesitation among the Global North countries, rather than as a phenomenon peculiar only to Japan.
With the mounting danger in recent UNPKOs , countries in the Global North have shifted gear by reducing or terminating their troop contributions, and instead, are beginning to search for alternative measures. In the first half of the 1990s, for example, the United States (US) made large troop contributions, mostly to Somalia and Bosnia and Herzegovina. At the apex of its contribution in 1993, the US deployed more than 4000 personnel abroad (UNDPO, n.d.-b). In the mid-1990s, however, the US sharply reduced the size of its troop contributions to a dozen personnel at most. From 1999, it further shrank this scale to the deployment of only a handful of personnel. It has contributed no troops since May 2017 (UNDPKO, 2017), which happened to coincide with Japan’s withdrawal of the JEG from South Sudan. In the meantime, since 2005, the Americans have provided a huge amount of financial aid to train peacekeepers worldwide under the framework of the Global Peace Operations Initiative (GPOI) (US Department of State, n.d.). For example, the GPOI has sponsored the Khaan Quest, which provides training to peacekeepers from around the world. More than 30 countries participated in the most recent Khaan Quest, held in 2019 (US Embassy in Mongolia, 2019). Likewise, Canada has scaled down its military contribution considerably but has sought alternatives, for example, providing air transportation in support of the UNPKOs in Africa.
As seen above, reluctance to contribute personnel, especially large-scale troops, to UNPKOs has become a common feature in the Global North. The inverse relationship between the decrease in personnel commitments and the increase of danger in the recent UNPKOs will be further discussed in Chap. 9. We, therefore, regard the discontinuity of Japan’s troop deployment in this global context, rather than as a revival of its old anti-militarism. Likewise, Japan and the other states in the Global North share a common agenda in seeking alternative ways to compensate for the reduced personnel contribution to UNPKOs . We will touch upon this issue in Chap. 9 while summarizing Japan’s recent efforts since the withdrawal of the JEGs from South Sudan in 2017.
5 The Structure of the Book
In this book, we will focus mostly on Japan’s military contribution to UNPKOs , although we will extend our consideration to review the deployment of personnel in contexts other than the UNPKOs where necessary. The book consists of eight chapters. Following this introductory chapter, Chap. 2 will present an overview of the historical course of Japan’s peacekeeping from the early postwar era to 1992, when the PKO Act was established. In the first half, it will provide a brief account of the traditional hesitation toward overseas military deployment, while the second half will be dedicated to clarifying why and how the 1992 PKO Act was enacted against the de facto national ban on overseas military dispatch. Chapter 3 will examine the evolution of Japan’s peacekeeping policy from 1992 to 2012, immediately before the return of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for his second premiership. The chapter will review Japan’s experiences in the UNPKOs and in non-UN operations. It will then set out how Japan sought to catch up with both “robust” peacekeeping and “integration” by 2012. Chapter 4 will examine the more recent developments under the second Abe administration , with a particular focus on the period from 2012 to 2017.Footnote 4 We will pay special attention to Prime Minister Abe’s ambitious reforms in security policy, such as the 2015 Peace and Security Legislation, since this has changed the course of Japan’s peacekeeping.
The next four chapters will be dedicated to examining the major cases of Japan’s military contribution to the UNPKOs , namely Cambodia, East Timor, Haiti, and South Sudan. These examples have been selected in light of their relevance to Japan’s efforts to conform to the trends of “integration” and “robustness.” Chapter 5 will focus on its participation in UNTAC , which was Japan’s first military contribution since the early 1990s. Here we will see how the GoJ , as well as Japanese peacekeepers, began to recognize the gaps between their national legal system and the current shape of UNPKOs . Chapter 6 will address the case of East Timor from 2002 to 2004 to see how the “All Japan” approach emerged in the field alongside recognition of the need for more security-oriented tasks. Chapter 7 will mainly examine the military deployment to Haiti from 2010 to 2013. Here we will examine how the “All Japan” approach was promoted under conditions of complex crisis, impeded by both natural disaster and armed conflict. Chapter 8 will examine the case of UNMISS from 2012 to 2017 to see how the “All Japan” approach was further refined in the deployment to the young nation of South Sudan . It will outline how the second Abe administration tried to unite “integration” (construction work) and “robust peacekeeping” (the “coming-to-aid” duty) in the unified scope of JEG duties, albeit only to a limited extent. Finally, Chap. 8 will briefly examine recent developments after the withdrawal of the JEG from South Sudan, especially in comparison with the trends of the other states in the Global North. Chapter 9 will wrap up discussions by tracing the quarter-century evolution of Japan’s peacekeeping, with special attention to the concepts of “integration” and “robustness,” as well as to Japan’s search for a new direction after the withdrawal of the JEG from UNMISS in 2017. This book will conclude by drawing attention to possible future issues.
5.1 Summary of Chap. 1
This introductory chapter has begun by setting out the research questions: why has Japan’s troop contribution been discontinued since the withdrawal of the engineering unit from South Sudan in 2017? Is there any possibility that Japan will resume its contribution? We hypothesize that it is very unlikely that Japan will restart its troop contribution to the UNPKOs ; however, this should be regarded not as the revival of traditional anti-militarism but rather as being in line with the common hesitation among Global North countries toward such personnel contribution. To support this hypnotical argument, the chapter has introduced the concepts of “integration” and “robustness” in the recent trends of UNPKOs . The former denotes the increasing emphasis on civil-military cooperation, especially to support statebuilding, while the latter encourages a “robust” use of force by peacekeepers, particularly for the purpose of PoC mandates . Japan attempted to follow these international trends, but the changes occurred much more quickly in the UNPKOs . This made it very difficult for Japan to pursue these trends under various national caveats and resulted in the withdrawal of its troops in 2017.
Notes
- 1.
When referring to the materials in Japanese, the translated titles and cited texts in English were translated by the authors and not official translations unless otherwise specified.
- 2.
When referring to expressions to suggest the present time, such as “at this moment” and “currently,” in this book, we are referring to July 2021.
- 3.
As we will see in the subsequent chapters, the concept of “coming-to-aid” duty does not exist outside of Japan, since it is naturally included as part of the “self-defense” of UN peacekeepers. For this reason, the GoJ did not dare to have an official English translation for this notion and called it by its Japanese name (kaketsuke-keigo ), even when referring to it in English texts. The expression “coming-to-aid” duty, which this book adopts, is only an informal translation. There is also another translation—“rush-and-rescue” duty—but this connotation might go beyond the GoJ’s intention by referring to the word “rescue.” The GoJ does not necessarily mean that the execution of kaketsuke -keigo duty always achieves the outcome of rescue, and therefore, the more moderate phrase “coming-to-aid” duty might be more appropriate to convey the original meaning of kaketsuke-keigo duty.
- 4.
Following his return to power at the end of 2012, Abe assembled his second cabinet. Since then, he has reestablished his cabinet twice and reshuffled his ministers six times in total. When he resigned in September 2020, he was presiding over his fourth cabinet with the second reshuffling. However, this book refers the entire period from Abe’s return (December 2012) to his second resignation (September 2020) as the second Abe government (or administration), since his reign continued seamlessly during this period of time.
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Fujishige, H., Uesugi, Y., Honda, T. (2022). Introduction: The Pursuit of “Integration” and “Robustness” in Japan’s Peacekeeping Policy. In: Japan’s Peacekeeping at a Crossroads. Sustainable Development Goals Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-88509-0_1
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