Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is poised to achieve his long-held goal of reinterpreting Article 9 of the Constitution to allow Japan to exercise its right to engage in collective self-defense under the U.N. Charter.
In February, Abe reconvened an advisory panel of security experts for the first time since his previous, short-lived stint as prime minister nearly six years ago. He also appointed Ambassador to France Ichiro Komatsu, a collective defense advocate, as new head of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, which has long upheld the ban on collective defense according to the government's current interpretation of Article 9, which renounces the use of force to settle international disputes.
Reinterpreting Article 9, which Abe eventually hopes to amend, would be a big change for a nation that has effectively had a defense-only posture since the war.
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