Japan’s Strategic Trajectory and Collective Self-Defense: Essential Continuity or Radical Shift?

Abstract

The government of Abe Shinzō and various commentators tout Japan's moves during 2014-15 to breach the ban on collective self-defense as moderation and continuity in postwar security policy.This article unpacks the supposed limitations on exercise of the right and marks this as a watershed moment in Japan's development of a radical security trajectory as an alliance and international security partner.The changing international security environment and growing acceptance of the indivisibility of U.S.-Japan security interests, coupled with hollow domestic legal, political, and bureaucratic constraints, heighten the likelihood Japan will use force to assist the United States.Throughout 2014 and 2015, Prime Minister Abe Shinzō invested major policy energy to advance a "limited" (gentei-teki yōnin) form of collective self-defense (shūdan-teki jieiken), a right Japan had denied itself the exercise of since the mid-1950s.1 The Cabinet Decision of July 1, 2014, and the subsequent passage of extensive legislation in the National Diet in September 2015 now permit Japan for the first time in the postwar period and under "three new conditions" (san-

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