ÿþ<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>James Auer, "Japan's Chance to Reverse Pearl Harbor"</TITLE> <META NAME="BUILD" CONTENT="September 13 2001"> <META NAME="AUTHOR" CONTENT="James Auer"> <META NAME="SCRIPT" CONTENT="HP Editors"> <META NAME="VERSION" CONTENT="1.O"> </HEAD> <BODY BGCOLOR=#FFFFFF TEXT=#000000 LINK=#0000FF> <A NAME="TOP"></A> <BR> <CENTER> <H3>Special Article</H3> <HR> <P> <H2>Japan's Chance to Reverse Pearl Harbor</H2> <P> <B>James Auer</B> </CENTER> <P> Although I teach at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, I happened to be in Washington, D.C. on September 11. I was having breakfast at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel, on the Virginia side of the Key Bridge across the Potomac River from Washington. The Key Bridge Marriott Hotel is approximately five minutes by taxi in a northerly direction from the Pentagon. I was just getting ready to leave the Hotel to go to visit a friend in the East Asia Bureau of the State Department before going to the airport for a return flight to Tennessee. Suddenly I told Robin Sakoda, who once headed the Japan Policy office of the Department of Defense in the late 1990s as I had done in the 1980s with whom I was having breakfast, that the television seemed to be saying something about a crisis in New York. We left our table and walked to the lobby where two televisions were showing pictures of a smoking World Trade Center. We stood watching silently in shock when it was announced that there was a report of a crash at the heliport of the Pentagon and a car bombing outside of the State Department. I looked out the window of the hotel. It was a bright sunny day and everything looked normal. Although the Pentagon report turned out to be true and the State Department report turned out to be false, we heard no sound from outside nor felt any tremor despite being relatively close to the Pentagon. Thus, when the television reports said that neither report was yet confirmed, I was more skeptical about an attack on the Pentagon.<P> Twenty-four hours later as I write this article, the situation is clearer; however much is still unknown. What is clear to me now is as follows: <P> 1) The United States, and in my opinion, the industrialized world, is now at war.<P> 2) It is the United States which has been attacked, but the war is not exclusively America's.<P> 3) Other nations, including Japan, will have todecide whether they will choose to fight alongside the United States politically, diplomatically, economically and militarily. Those who do so will be appreciated by the American public; those who don't will be regarded as "fair weather" friends.<P> Secretary of State Colin Powell in his statement to the press in the afternoon of September 12 Washington time announced that he had just spoken with the Secretary General of NATO and that the NATO allies were considering invoking Article V of the NATO treaty which stipulates that an attack on one country is an attack upon all member nations. Secretary Powell strongly welcomed such initiative on the part of America's NATO allies. He also mentioned measures by and conversations with other major countries' leaders but he did not mention Japan.<P> Of course, because Japan's Constitution, the US - Japan Security Treaty's Article V only concerns an attack on either party "in the territories under the administration of Japan." Article VI allows for Japanese assistance to US forces in surrounding areas but even this article has traditionally been sensitive because of Japan's position that it cannot exercise collective self-defense.<P> Given what happened in New York and Washington yesterday, Japan is now presented with the likely scenario that the US will ask the assistance of all of its major allies in dealing with an attack greater than Pearl Harbor or any other in American history. Of course "Japan can say no", but if it does so Japan risks 1) its close relationship with the United States 2) naively believing that Japan can isolate itself from terrorist attacks by not responding. This was the approach of the Clinton Administration which was way too lax in maintaining the high levels of security at the White House and throughout the U.S. Government which had been maintained by all previous U.S. administrations in modern history. The Clinton Administration also responded far too hastily and yet with too little force when terrorist attacks took place against the U.S. both domestically and internationally.<P> I am reminded of Japan's decision to send minesweepers to the Persian Gulf in April 1991. Japan did not have to act yet chose to do so. Its actions were minimal and too late, but established the precedent that Japan can find legal justification to support the U.S.-Japan alliance when it chooses to do so.<P> If Prime Minister Koizumi uses this occasion to clarify that Japan can exercise the right of collective self-defense and notifies President Bush that Japan stands ready to cooperate in whatever way Japan can to maintain peace and stability in light of the despicable attacks on September 11 against Japan's formal ally, the United States, the President and the American people would be deeply grateful and impressed with Japan's action as a true ally symbolizing a new beginning to the second 50 years of the U.S.-Japan alliance in which Japan is willing to be a true equal partner.<P> <HR> <P> <A HREF="#TOP">To the Top</A> <P> <A HREF="/okazaki-eng.html">To Home</A> (English) <P> <A HREF="/main.html">To Home</A> (Japanese) <BR> </BODY> </HTML>