Future of
War and Peace at Stake in Streets of Japan
The
United States and its European allies have launched wars on the
Middle East that have created an enormous refugee crisis. The same
nations are threatening Russia. The question of maintaining peace
with Iran is on the tip of everyone's tongue. Even in Asia and the
Pacific, not to mention Africa, the biggest military buildup is by
the United States.
So why
does Japan, of all places, have streets full of antiwar
demonstrations for the first time since the U.S. war on Vietnam? I
don't mean the usual protests in Okinawa of U.S. bases. I mean
Japanese protests of the Japanese government. Why? Who did Japan
bomb? And why do I say the future of war and peace in the world is at
stake in Japan?
Let's back up a little.
Japan went through a period of relative peace and prosperity between
1614 and 1853. The U.S. military forced Japan open to trade and
trained Japan as a junior partner in imperialism, a story told well
in James
Bradley's The
Imperial Cruise [1].
The junior partner chose not to stay a junior partner, challenging
U.S. dominance in World War II.
At
the end of World War II, the war's losers in Japan and Germany were
put on trial for an act that had been perfectly legal until 1928, the
act of making war. In 1928, the global peace movement, led by the
U.S. movement for the Outlawry of War, created the Kellogg-Briand
Pact, a treaty that prohibits all war, a treaty to which most nations
of the world are party today. This is a story I tell in my book When
the World Outlawed War [2].
President Franklin Roosevelt used the Kellogg-Briand Pact to create
prosecutions of war.
Now,
the general success thus far and in the future of the Kellogg-Briand
Pact can be debated. It has prevented wars, it has stigmatized war,
it has made war a crime that can be prosecuted in court (at least
against losers), and World War III hasn't happened yet. But wars by
wealthy nations against poor ones roll right along. The pact itself
was of course never expected to abolish war on its own, a standard to
which nobody ever holds any other law.
The
Japanese success
of the Kellogg-Briand Pact is a different matter. At the end of World
War II, long-time Japanese diplomat and peace activist and new prime
minister Kijuro Shidehara asked General Douglas MacArthur to outlaw
war in a new Japanese constitution. The result was Article Nine of
the Japanese Constitution, the wording of which is nearly identical
to that of the Kellogg-Briand Pact.
Japan,
which had gone centuries without war, would go another 70 years. The
U.S. Outlawrists of the 1920s never imagined their work being imposed
on a conquered nation by a ruling general. But they might have
imagined it being taken up by the Japanese people. If Article Nine
was not clearly owned by the Japanese people themselves in 1947, it
was in 1950. In that year, the United States asked Japan to throw out
Article Nine and join a new war against North Korea. Japan refused.
When
the American War (in Vietnam) came along, the United States made the
same request of Japan to abandon Article Nine, and Japan again
refused. Japan did, however, allow the U.S. to use bases in Japan,
despite huge protest by the Japanese people.
Japan
refused to join in the First Gulf War, but provided token support,
refueling ships, for the war on Afghanistan (which the Japanese prime
minister openly said was a matter of conditioning the people of Japan
for future war-making). Japan repaired U.S. ships and planes in Japan
during the 2003 war on Iraq, although why a ship or plane that could
make it from Iraq to Japan and back needed repairs was never
explained.
Now,
at U.S. urging, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is attempting to
formally throw out Article Nine, or to "reinterpret" it to
mean its opposite. And the Japanese people, to their everlasting
credit, are in the streets defending their constitution and their
culture of peace.
Meanwhile,
the people of the United States, with some 50% of their popular movie
entertainment (by my unscientific estimate) based around a
good-and-evil drama of World War II, are not only not in the streets.
They're not even in touch with the world. They have no idea this is
going on. And if, 50 years from now, a heavily militarized Japan
attacks Hawaii, the people of the United States will continue to have
no idea how that happened.
There
are peace
activists around the world struggling to uphold the idea
[3]
that a modern nation can live without war. Japan is a leading
example, with certain obvious shortcomings, of how that can be done.
We cannot afford to lose Japan as a model of peace. We cannot afford
to hear from war mongers five years from now that war is proven
inevitable by the return of the Japanese to war. We cannot afford to
hear the United Nations, ten years from now, credit Japan with the
humanitarian service of protecting people by bombing them. We cannot
afford, twenty years from now, to hear that the Pentagon must be
built up to guard against the evil Japanese.
Now,
in fact, not later, but right now, would be a good moment in which to
wake up and value what Japan has achieved. Now would be an ideal
moment in which to remember that Japan's Article Nine was already and
remains the law of the land in our other nations through the text of
the Kellogg-Briand Pact. Let's start obeying the law.
*
Much credit to David Rothauser for his film Article
9 Comes to America, and for being my guest
next week on Talk
Nation Radio [4].
David
Swanson is an author, activist,
journalist, and radio host. He is director of WorldBeyondWar.org
[5]
and campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org
[6].
Swanson's books include War
Is A Lie [7].
He blogs at DavidSwanson.org
[8]
and WarIsACrime.org
[9].
He hosts Talk
Nation Radio [10].
He is a 2015
Nobel Peace Prize Nominee
[11].
Links:
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Imperial-Cruise-Secret-History/dp/B007MXCB6Y
[2] http://davidswanson.org/outlawry
[3] http://worldbeyondwar.org
[4] http://talknationradio.org
[5] http://WorldBeyondWar.org
[6] http://RootsAction.org
[7] http://warisalie.org/
[8] http://davidswanson.org/
[9] http://warisacrime.org/
[10] http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41
[11] http://davidswanson.org/node/4682
[1] http://www.amazon.com/The-Imperial-Cruise-Secret-History/dp/B007MXCB6Y
[2] http://davidswanson.org/outlawry
[3] http://worldbeyondwar.org
[4] http://talknationradio.org
[5] http://WorldBeyondWar.org
[6] http://RootsAction.org
[7] http://warisalie.org/
[8] http://davidswanson.org/
[9] http://warisacrime.org/
[10] http://davidswanson.org/taxonomy/term/41
[11] http://davidswanson.org/node/4682
- See more at:
https://portside.org/print/node/9623#sthash.qCHjRgq1.dpuf
Donations
can be sent to the Baltimore Nonviolence Center, 325 E. 25th St.,
Baltimore, MD 21218. Ph: 410-366-1637; Email: mobuszewski [at]
verizon.net. Go to http://baltimorenonviolencecenter.blogspot.com/
"The
master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has
always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and
nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and
everything to lose--especially their lives." Eugene Victor Debs