Amid some pacifist protests and while Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was still in Tokyo, the Japanese destroyer Kirishima left the maritime self-defence force's Yokosuka base in Tokyo for the Indian Ocean on Dec 16.

The 7,250-tonne warship, equipped with the state-of-the-art Aegis missile detection system, will provide logistical support for the possible US-led war on Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq.

According to a Dec 16 Reuters report, Kirishima , with a crew of about 250, is scheduled to arrive in the Indian Ocean in about three weeks to replace one of the three Japanese naval vessels currently deployed there.

On the same day, Japanese daily Asahi Shimbun identified that the vessel will replace the destroyer Hiei .

The paper also said Kirishima 's main responsibility will be to protect Japan's Maritime Self-Defense Force's other ships that are delivering fuel to ships and naval vessels of the United States and its allies.

Kirishima is reportedly equipped with a radar system whose area of coverage is five times larger than those on other destroyers, and houses a computer system whose database is linked to computers onboard US ships and capable of processing information eight times faster than those on other destroyers.

This combined capacities are said to enable Kirishima to track "a much larger number of targets simultaneously". Contextually, targets mean Iraqi missiles.

The conventional sea lanes for such an East-West voyage are East and South China seas and the Straits of Malacca which cover parts of the Malaysia-controlled territorial waters.

Japan's contributions

According to an official record of the US Defense Department dated May 22 this year, in 'Operation Enduring Freedom' in Afghanistan last year, Japan's contribution was as follows:

  • Provided fleet refuelling capacity, placing two refuelling/replenishment ships and three support/protection destroyers in the area of responsibility, and through mid-May, the force had conducted 75 at-sea replenishment of coalition ships and provided 34.1 million gallons of F-76 fuel to US and UK vessels.

  • As of mid-May, six of its aircraft had completed 51 missions consisting of 166 sorties with 773 tonnes of cargo and 123 passengers in support of re-supply and transport requirement within the Pacific Command (PACOM) area of responsibility
    • .

  • On May 17, the Japanese government approved a six-month extension of the Basic Plan authorising the self-defence forces to continue those efforts.

    • On Dec 10, Japan's counter-terrorism ambassador, Hiroshi Shigeta told The Age newspaper in Melbourne that Japan is "comfortable" with Australian Prime Minister John Howard's claim for the right to 'pre-emptive strikes' as the last resort to its self-defence against terrorism in Southeast Asia.

    After its defeat by the US-led allied forces in World War II in 1945, Japan adopted a peace constitution which limits defence expenditure and capacity, and forbids any overseas combat role of its self-defence forces. But since 1951, it has also entered into a relation of security alliance with the US.

    During the early phase of the Cold War characterised by the Korean War (1951-1953), the 1951 US-Japan Security Treaty provided the US-led Western alliance, the most weighty anchor in the Northeast Asian Security Complex which involves the amities and enmities of the US, USSR, China, Japan, and South and North Korea.

    Other surviving US security allies are South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines.

    However, Japanese troops were not involved in ground combats in either the Korean War, or the wars and armed conflicts in Indochina.

    Constitutional constraints

    In the 1991 UN-mandated and US-led 'Operation Desert Storm' against Iraq and for the liberation of Kuwait, Japan refused to send any troops to participate in any capacity, but contributed US$13 billion in support of the cause.

    It was then constrained by its own pacifist constitution and domestic opinions, as well as the fear of its neighbours like China, Taiwan, and North and South Korea who still harbour bitter memories of the Japanese occupation of their lands.

    In 1992, however, the Japanese Parliament (Diet) passed the United Nations Peace Keeping Operations (UNPKO) Law through which the self-defence force was authorised to perform limited non-combat duties overseas under the banner of the UN.

    The first application of the law was soon made in Cambodia under the multilateral mandate of the United Nations' Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). There were protests within Japan and among its neighbours, including Malaysia, but to no avail.

    Further measures were taken to strengthen the Japan-American Security Alliance (JASA). First, in April 1996, a US-Japan joint declaration on security was signed and second, in September 1997, the military institutions of Japan and the US issued a revived guideline for Japan-US defence cooperation.

    Selective criticism

    In effect, the new measures serve to enlarge the geographical scope of defence and security cooperation between the two countries, and to extend the areas of cooperation from peacekeeping under the UN banner to assisting US and other allied forces logistically.

    Like it or not, the role played by Japan's maritime self-defence force in the Indian Ocean in support of the offensive against the Taliban in Afghanistan last year was a case in point. And the logistical preparedness it now makes for the possible war on the regime of Saddam Hussein in Iraq merely further confirms the enhanced JASA.

    However, there was still no combat role for the Japanese self-defense force to play as in previous times for reasons stated above.

    It is also interesting to note that while Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad and his anti-Western supporters, ideologues, strategists and propagandists are decrying Australia and Singapore for allegedly moving closer to the US on security and defence cooperation, the same criticism has never been extended to Japan.

    The 'justice' and 'moral outrage' of Mahathir and his supporters are certainly and logically selective, and are based on double-standard expediency.

    JAMES WONG WING ON is chief analyst of Strategic Analysis Malaysia (SAM) which produces the subscriber-based political report, Analysis Malaysia . Wong is a former member of parliament (1990-1995) and a former columnist for the Sin Chew Jit Poh (now Sin Chew Daily ) Chinese newspaper. He read political science and economics at the Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. While in Sin Chew , he and a team of journalists won the top awards of Malaysian Press Institute (MPI) for 1998 and 1999.