The Cabinet's approval last Friday of a basic Self-Defense Forces deployment plan, designed to provide noncombat support for U.S. military operations in Afghanistan, opened the way for the first "wartime" mobilization of SDF troops overseas. The government emphasizes that the plan is within the framework of the war-renouncing Constitution. Still, there remains public anxiety over future SDF activities.
The plan, based on special antiterrorism legislation, is to be approved by the Diet after, not before, the fact of deployment. That appears unavoidable to some degree because of the extraordinary circumstances in which the legislation was enacted following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States. More worrisome, however, is the ambiguity of the plan itself, which gives few details about SDF support for U.S. forces.
One question that remains is whether Aegis destroyers, equipped with advanced intelligence-gathering and air-defense systems, will be dispatched. The lack of specific reference to Aegis has drawn criticism from opposition legislators for two reasons: (1) Preparations for the imminent dispatch of these vessels were already under way while the government was working on the plan; (2) opposition legislators have consistently argued that sending these vessels to distant places such as the Indian Ocean would violate the Constitution.