Russia’s invasion of Ukraine launched on February 24, 2022 was a reckless act that destroyed the post-war international order. That world order had been underpinned by a system of international cooperation led by the United Nations (UN) comprising the Second World War’s victors, combined with a nuclear non-proliferation regime created by the five permanent member nations of the UN Security Council (the permanent five, or P5). The nuclear non-proliferation regime is an international arrangement that entrusts the “adult supervision” of nuclear arms to five nations with nuclear capability (the US, Russia, the UK, France, and China), and does not allow any other nations to possess nuclear arms. However, Russia, which was supposed to be one of the “adults” to strictly supervise the use of nuclear arms, has not only failed to supervise, but has actually engaged in nuclear intimidation against Ukraine, a nation without nuclear capability. This is very different from North Korea, one of the poorest countries in the world, showing off its nuclear weapons; what President Putin has done is to invade another country, trample on the UN Charter, and use nuclear intimidation to fundamentally undermine the nuclear non-proliferation regime.
Turning to post-war Japan, our country espoused the principles of pacifism and international cooperation enshrined in its Constitution, resuming its place within the international community in 1952. The principle of pacifism was stipulated in both the preamble and Article 9 of the Constitution, and provided the basis for post-war Japan’s self-restraining security strategy, including our exclusively defense-oriented policy and the Three Non-Nuclear Principles. Meanwhile, the principle of international cooperation was reflected in the diplomatic stance fully supporting the UN-led international order, primarily from an economic perspective. I refer to this combination of approaches as our “post-war diplomatic and security regime.” However, the foundations upon which Japan built its post-war regime has collapsed due to Russia’s recent atrocities. That is to say, the dramatic developments marking this new era of war in Ukraine have produced a situation in which the very raison d’être of the Japanese Constitution is being called into question.
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