Koizumi to Propose a Leap in U.N. Status for Japan

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi will use what is being billed here as a landmark speech to tell the U.N. General Assembly that Japan wants to shuck its baggage as a loser of World War II and become a permanent member of the Security Council.

Koizumi has aligned Japan with regional powers Germany, Brazil and India in a promotional campaign aimed at full-time council membership. Such a reorganization would dilute the dominance of the current permanent members: the United States, China, Russia, Britain and France.

All five have nuclear weapons and represent the alliance that won World War II. But Japan and its allies argue that the Security Council must bring in new members to reflect the post-Cold War world. The Japanese government also argues that it contributes nearly 20% of the United Nations’ budget, more than any country except the U.S. and far more than the other permanent members combined. Koizumi is expected to argue that Japan should have a say in the United Nations’ inner councils commensurate with the size of its checks.

“Japan’s role in the United Nations has changed greatly from 60 years ago,” the prime minister told reporters as he left Japan this week on a swing through Brazil and Mexico before arriving in New York for a visit that will include his U.N. speech Tuesday. “There should be a role suited to Japan in the present age. Japan should be able to raise its voice.”

Koizumi is increasingly trying to make Japan’s views heard with or without a permanent Security Council seat. Less inclined than most of his predecessors to be burdened by a hangover of war guilt, he has steadily pursued what Japanese nationalists call a return to “normal statehood.”

The aim is to pull Japan out of its enforced modesty that followed the period of imperial swagger in the first part of the 20th century. Japan’s pursuit of Asian dominance brought crushing defeat in 1945, leaving it with an imposed constitution renouncing the right to go to war and a foreign policy deferring security matters to the U.S.

Although the alliance with the U.S. remains a cornerstone of Japanese foreign policy, Koizumi’s 3 1/2 years in office have been marked by efforts to chip away at constraints on Japan’s role in international affairs.

He has sent Japanese soldiers into the hostile environment of postwar Iraq on behalf of the U.S.-led coalition. He has reached out to North Korea in a display of solo diplomacy, pledging to normalize relations with the authoritarian state.

The Bush administration has encouraged this diplomatic energy and made it clear that it would like to see Japan amend its constitution to lift the awkward legal obstacle to joining international coalitions on security missions.

The administration points out that permanent members of the Security Council have an obligation to use force against threats to the global order and that Japan must be capable of following suit if it wants a full-time seat.

Koizumi has sent mixed signals on whether he will seek to alter Article 9, the peace clause in Japan’s American-written Constitution. The clause retains some hold on the popular imagination, and amending it could spark a bitter fight.

But many officials in Koizumi’s conservative government and its allies are eager to drop the restriction against the use of force, and leaders of Japan’s military industries have begun mustering arguments that the nation must prepare to deal with new threats -- including, they hint darkly, a rising China.

In Tokyo on Friday, a committee of industrial leaders Koizumi appointed to advise him on defense-policy revisions said they would recommend strengthening Japan’s armed forces beyond the current principle of maintaining minimum self-defense levels.

Critics counter that the panel’s recommendations are self-serving, because it represents industrial companies that would benefit financially from a military buildup. But they warn that Koizumi may nevertheless use the hawkish recommendations and talk of new threats to unshackle the Japanese military.

“There is a fixed notion in the prime minister’s entourage that a proper state must have the option to use force,” said Masaru Tamamoto, a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York. “They are using the U.S. alliance in Iraq and the U.N. Security Council appeal to remilitarize and renationalize Japanese foreign policy. And they are willfully blind to how this unsettles other countries in the region.”

Tamamoto is among those who argue that fostering good relations with Beijing should be Tokyo’s primary foreign policy goal because China has displaced the U.S. as Japan’s primary trading partner. China also stands in the way of Koizumi’s goal of a Security Council seat. As a permanent member, Beijing has veto power over reforms.