Panh Rithy
149.8K posts
@RPanh
Keep the beauty for only one second, then pass it on. Die with your heart full and your hands empty. T. Williams
JUST IN: Japan’s prime minister flew to Washington with 250 cherry trees for America’s 250th birthday. Trump asked for warships. Sanae Takaichi arrived March 18th on the government plane that Japanese media call Air Force One. The original agenda was a celebration: first-tranche investments in AI data centres and energy, rare earth cooperation, Indo-Pacific security, and trees. Cherry trees for the Tidal Basin. A gift between allies who have not fought each other in 81 years. The Hormuz crisis rewrote the agenda before the plane landed. Trump has publicly called on Japan, along with every other allied nation, to send warships for escort operations in the strait. Takaichi told parliament the summit would be “extremely difficult.” She confirmed Japan has “no plans to send warships right now” but is reviewing “what we can and cannot do” under existing law. That phrase, what we can and cannot do, is the entire visit compressed into eight words. What Japan cannot do is written in Article 9 of its constitution. Enacted May 3 1947. Drafted under American occupation. It renounces war as a sovereign right and prohibits the maintenance of armed forces with war potential. The Self-Defense Forces exist under a legal interpretation that permits strictly defensive capability. The 2015 reinterpretation under Abe allows limited collective self-defense, but only when an attack on an ally poses a “clear danger” to Japanese citizens’ survival. Each deployment requires case-by-case cabinet and Diet authorization. The constitution America wrote is the reason America’s closest Asian ally cannot send warships to a strait that carries roughly 90 percent of Japan’s oil imports. Takaichi is not refusing because she wants to. She is a constitutional revisionist who has openly called for amending Article 9. She arrived in Washington carrying a 79-year-old legal constraint written in English by American lawyers during the occupation and translated into Japanese as the supreme law of a nation that now imports virtually all of its energy through the waterway her host wants her to defend. The options under existing law are narrow. Minesweeping after a ceasefire. Research and intelligence missions. Logistical support. Refuelling. None of these are warships escorting tankers through a live fire zone governed by Mosaic Doctrine provincial commands. Japan joins the list. Germany said it is not their war. France denied airspace. Spain refused bases. The UK said it will not be drawn in. Australia, South Korea, and NATO declined. Argentina pledged ships. The coalition of the willing is being assembled from Buenos Aires and Riyadh while Tokyo, Berlin, Paris, and London explain why they cannot participate in the defence of a waterway that heats their homes and feeds their factories. Japan imports $120 billion in crude annually. Approximately 90 percent transits Hormuz. The LNG that powers Kansai Electric and Tokyo Gas loads at terminals that the IRGC published satellite targeting images of yesterday. The fertiliser that Japanese farmers apply to rice paddies in Niigata traces back to Gulf ammonia plants now under threat. Japan’s entire supply chain passes through the 21 miles that its constitution prevents it from defending. Takaichi brought cherry trees. Trump wanted destroyers. Article 9 delivered neither. And the strait that determines whether 126 million Japanese citizens have power, fuel, and food does not read constitutions any more than it reads sealed packets. open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans…
