Japan should enhance partnership with NATO

It is vital for Japan to bolster its partnership with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization from the viewpoint of strengthening the international community's security system against terrorism.

NATO leaders approved the Comprehensive Political Guidance at a summit meeting in Riga on Wednesday. The policy document recognizes the principal threats to the military alliance in the coming 10 to 15 years include terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and calls on NATO forces to reinforce and improve their capabilities to deal with these threats.

The document also stipulates that the 26 NATO member nations should improve relations with nonmember states _ widely assumed to be Japan, Australia and New Zealand.

Proponents of NATO often boast that the grouping is the most successful military alliance in history. Backed by impressive military might, the alliance played a major role in ending the Cold War and triggering the disintegration of the former Soviet Union.

Since the curtain came down on the Cold War, NATO has expanded its scope of operations to countries beyond its territory, such as Afghanistan, to respond to regional conflicts and terrorist threats.

This transformation has been inspired and instigated by sweeping changes in the global security environment. NATO operations in Afghanistan are of crucial significance: If the mission to maintain security in Afghanistan fails, global trust in NATO _ a pillar of the international security framework _ will be shaken. This might eventually affect Japan's security.

NATO leaders were quite justified in devoting much of their talks at the summit meeting in the Latvian capital to the situation in Afghanistan. The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force is encountering dogged resistance from Taliban insurgents in Afghanistan, the alliance's major theater of battle at present. Security in the war-torn nation is barely improving and reconstruction plans are making little progress.

ISAF has deployed 32,800 troops around Afghanistan. However, these troops are bound by operating restrictions, known as caveats, that contributing nations have placed on their forces. These caveats set restrictions on the number of troops, the equipment they can carry, and the areas where they can be deployed _ and hamstring the force's ability to flexibly dispatch troops to other parts of the country. NATO leaders agreed at the summit meeting to relax these restrictions, but it is too soon to tell how much the current situation will be improved.

The document suggests NATO should enhance its partnership with Japan, Australia and other countries because the alliance, which also has sent forces to Kosovo and Iraq, apparently wants them to help share its growing responsibilities.

However, Japan's cooperation with NATO will have certain limitations because although the nation has the right to collective self-defense, it cannot exercise that right, according to the government's interpretation of the war-renouncing Constitution. However, in a sense, Maritime Self-Defense Force vessels refueling U.S. naval vessels in the Indian Ocean are already indirectly helping ISAF contingents operating in Afghanistan.

Japan is living in the shadow of North Korea's nuclear weapons and long-range missiles. Cooperation with NATO to prevent international terrorist activities and proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is essential for maintaining the security of the international community, including Japan.

That is why Japan should strengthen its partnership with NATO.