Japan, Heisei Militarization and the Bush Doctrine

"Japan, Heisei Militarization and the Bush Doctrine"

By Richard Tanter, Nautilus, former Kyoto Seika
University.

Japan is proceeding towards full security normalization,
moving closer to throwing off all the externally and
self-imposed restraints which for half a century
produced a disjuncture between its economic status as
the world's second largest national economy and its
restricted status in providing global security.

In the existing world system, normalization of this kind
necessarily means militarization, and that is precisely
what Japan has undertaken, a process that can be titled
"Heisei militarization. The Bush Doctrine has
accelerated but did not cause this process.

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