Japan

This article seeks to demonstrate that Japan throughout time has made gradual adjustmentsthroughout time to increase its military capacities, in order to regain autonomy in relation toits defence. With this process of “adjustment”, without constitutional reforms, Japan presentlypossesses military capabilities that are similar to those of the primary global powers in termsof budget, technologically advanced military resources, manpower, and it masters the entirecycle for the production of a nuclear weapon. In an unstable regional scenario, entwinedwith the rise of threat to Japan’s strategic and economic security and with the increase of thepossibility of being abandoned by the United States, what is preventing Japan in claimingits defence autonomy and taking collective security actions? The first part of this reflectionintroduces some concepts that indicate the contradictions, paradoxes, and fundaments thatunderpin the construction of the Japanese security identity. The second part concentrates onthe analysis of the tendency of revision or of reinterpretation of the Japanese Constitutionwith regards to possessing Armed Forces as a foreign policy instrument.