By Suvendrini Kakuchi
TOKYO, May 20 2005 (IPS)

While it might be full steam ahead for Japan in its bid for a permanent seat in the U.N. Security Council, analysts wonder whether the country, despite being the largest financier of the United Nations, is ready for this prestigious position.

Early this week, Japan supported India, Brazil and Germany, India in a draft resolution that would expand the U.N. Security Council from 15 to 25 members and give the four countries permanent seats along with two African nations.

On Tuesday, Tokyo urged about 120 of its ambassadors to persuade their host nations to support Japan’s bid for permanent U.N. Security Council membership.

”In the 60 years since the end of World War II, Japan has played a role as a peaceful nation. With confidence and pride, I want you to persuade key government officials of each country of the merits of Japan’s bid,” Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura reportedly told the ambassadors.

”Some countries have expressed support for Japan,” Machimura said. ”But some others are opposing it. And the position of a vast majority of countries remains unknown.”

As the world’s second-largest economy and second biggest donor to the U.N., Japan believes it deserves a place among the existing permanent members or P5 – the United States, Russia, China, Britain and France.

”Becoming a permanent member in the U.N. Security Council is a long-held dream of the government. But there are many obstacles that must be overcome before Japan can join the prestigious club that basically leads the world,” Koichi Ishiyama, a writer and international business expert at Toin Yokohama University, told IPS in an interview.

Ishiyama pointed out that the Security Council’s role is to maintain global peace and security, but Japan, since the end of World War II, has had a constitution prohibiting the use of force to settle disputes.

Also he said the country’s post-war international diplomacy so far has been low profile.

”Compared to the United States or other influential western countries, Japan has not nurtured a public that takes a keen interest in international problems,” said Ishiyama.

”The country is also closed to foreigners who rarely enter mainstream society, making Japan more insular than a world leader, another reason to wait longer to become a permanent member in the Security Council,” he explained.

Ishiyama echoes an overall sentiment harboured by many leading intellectuals in Japan.

They said the increased flurry of activity by the Foreign Ministry to push ahead with reforming the U.N. Security Council to allow four new members that includes Germany, Brazil and India with Japan, is based more on narrow national ambition rather than a means of contributing to international security by creating a global balance between nations.

”Japan’s bid for permanent membership is aimed at further cementing its pro-U.S. diplomacy, a policy that would pave the way for the nation to sit alongside the global powers in the world,” said Takashi Inoguchi, a professor who teaches politics at Chuo University. Inoguchi was previously head of the Tokyo-based United Nations University.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan told U.N. member states in March that he wants a decision on the Security Council expansion before September, when he has invited world leaders to a summit to consider restructuring the United Nations.

There is wide support for expanding the Security Council, whose composition reflects the post- World War II era when the United Nations was created, to represent the world in the 21st century.

Foreign Minister Machimura has outlined the expansion of the Security Council, as currently ”the most important issue for the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi”.

Nonetheless, some point out that Japan’s entry into the U.N. Security Council could actually be a boost to the United States.

Assistant Professor Ichiro Kawabe, an expert on the United Nations at Aichi University, told IPS that Japan’s heavy dependency on the U.S. would boost the influence of the world superpower in the U.N. Security Council and its policy of using military means for peace.

”This is a relationship that will have important global repercussions for the 21st century,” he said.

According to Kawabe, there is a serious perception gap between the Japanese public and the government over the status of permanent U.N. Security Council membership as a step to gain world respect.

”What Japan really wants is to enter the global limelight by following the policies of the United States, a situation that has raised the stakes against collective defense and justice as symbolised by the war against Iraq,” said Kawabe.

But whether Japan can get the required two-thirds support from the 191 U.N. member states for its Security Council bid – and avoid a veto by one of the five permanent members – remains to be seen.

For one, there’s already rumbling on China’s side.

Beijing has made it known that the draft resolution circulated by Brazil, Germany, India and Japan will undermine the process of upgrading the United Nations and exacerbate differences.

China has opposed Japan’s bid for a permanent seat because of what it sees as its failure to own up to its wartime aggression.

Tens of millions of Chinese were killed or wounded during Japan’s occupation of China from 1931-45.

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