北朝鮮核開発問題

核武装の是非についての議論が盛り上がっていますが、その前に日本のやるべき事があるのではないかと思います。
●それは、「憲法改正」です。
この議論を抜きにして、核武装を云々しても空回りするだけです。貼付の「日本の静かな革命」を読んで、日本の”a dirty little secret”について再認識しましょう。

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Japan's Quiet Revolution 　　 By Christopher Griffin
Posted: Thursday, October 26, 2006

ARTICLES
The Daily Standard
Publication Date: October 26, 2006

There is nothing like an atomic explosion to bring clarity to international relations, and the North Korean nuclear test was no exception. Since Pyongyang demonstrated its nuclear capability, the United States and Japan have finally begun to consider the steps that will be necessary to contain North Korean nuclear proliferation and apply pressure to undermine the Kim regime. But these efforts are plagued by a dirty little secret: Tokyo is currently prohibited from coming to the defense of U.S. naval forces or trying and intercept a missile headed toward U.S. territory.

According to a 1981 ruling of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau (CLB), a group of scholars who advise the prime minister on the constitutionality of laws and policy in a Supreme Court-like fashion, for Japan to assist U.S. forces would be an act of "collective self-defense." The CLB argues that while Tokyo possesses the inherent right to collective self-defense as a sovereign state, Article 9 of the postwar "Peace Constitution" prohibits the country from exercising it.

The consequences of this interpretation have always bordered on the absurd. At the time of the ruling, it meant that Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) would have to watch idly by while the U.S. Navy fought a Soviet invasion, so long as the Russians were smart enough to engage only American ships. Today, the prohibition means that if North Korea were to launch a missile over Japanese territory toward Guam, it is not clear that Tokyo could intercept the warhead. If the missile were targeted at the American homeland, and thus on a flight path that avoided Japan's airspace, almost any response would be unconstitutional. If the SDF did respond, it would be doing in violation of the constitution, thus making a mockery of Japan's status as an advanced, liberal democracy.

North Korea's consecutive missile and nuclear weapons tests have transformed these theoretical constraints into unacceptable liabilities in American efforts to defend against one of the world's most dangerous regimes. Fortunately, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe appears poised to lead Japan past the prohibition on collective self-defense as part of an effort to conduct joint inspections of suspected North Korean shipments of narcotics and proliferated materials.

Speaking before Japan's Diet last week, Minister of State for Defense Fumio Kyuma announced that he could not clearly distinguish between the notions of "individual self-defense" and "collective self-defense" when Japan is conducting operations with the United States. Kyuma used a common sense analogy -- asking if two friends walking together would not fight together if one was attacked by criminal -- to launch a quiet revolution in Japan's security policy.