Evolution of security identity of domestic antimilitarism and\roles of political parties: case studies of Japan and Germany

Abstract

Both Japan and Germany have presented security identities of domestic antimilitarism throughout their postwar political histories. Remnants of war memories made peoples of both nations strongly antipathetic to waging a war as a way of pursuing national security. They institutionalized such means as constitutions, laws, and civilian control of military means. Among several tenets of security identities, the most basic and core tenet was no use of force in foreign war. Up until the Cold War period, the bans remained intact. However, as changes in the security environment appeared along with the end of the Cold War, Japan and Germany relied on the circumstances to consider modifying their long-standing antimilitarist approaches to security policies. This thesis examines how Japan's and Germany's political parties contributed to developing new security identities of domestic antimilitarism under the changing security environment and foreign expectations. The main focus of this thesis is finding out the answers to how the political parties' role as representatives of the public, policy makers based on their inherent security policy stances, and competitors over the preferred policies exerted influence on the evolution of the Japan's and Germany's security identity of domestic antimilitarism. Both nations faced international criticism in the Gulf War due mainly to their failures to properly meet the new expectations of the international community. In consideration of lessons learned from the Gulf War, the Afghanistan war (Japan), and the Bosnian war (Germany) were the landmark tests for both nations of their abilities to rewrite security identities of no use of force in foreign war. In the end, the expected findings of the thesis are that the political parties' identical positions in view of national security and interactions on the political stages played critical roles in preventing profound changes in the previous security identities of domestic antimilitarism.