Inherited from the American occupation following the defeat of the Empire of Japan during the Second World War, the Japanese constitution prohibits the country from having a military force, as well as weapons likely to strike other countries.
If the reasons which led General McArthur to design such a constitution had a certain legitimacy at the end of the war (apart from the urgency of the need and the lack of experience of American diplomats in the matter), they quickly lost their validity. weight with the start of the Cold War.
Particularly in the face of the intensification of tensions between the Western camp of which Japan, like Federal Germany, was a part, and the communist bloc, led by the Soviet Union, and quickly joined by the People's China of Mao Tze Dong.
It was then accepted that Japan could have an armed self-defense force, without however authorizing the country to equip itself with a projection force, and with weapons that could be qualified as offensive, such as ballistic missiles, -planes or long-range bombers.
Throughout the Cold War, this framework seemed sufficient, especially since the United States maintained a powerful military force on Japanese soil, a military force which had offensive weapons that Japan could not possess, among other things. , aircraft carriers.
But the global geostrategic situation, and in particular that of the Pacific theater, has evolved profoundly since the end of the Cold War, and Tokyo is today forced into increasingly acrobatic convolutions to bring evolution and modernization into line. of its self-defense forces, and its constitution, the initial framework of which now appears to be a straitjacket more dangerous than restrictive to guarantee the security of the Japanese archipelago and its inhabitants.
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