Maintaining Article 9:
Placing Some Limits on National Sovereignty
by Agostino Giovagnoli
There is a long history behind Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. It begins with the inworkability of the European system of international relations based upon the principle of power and on the balance of power between sovereign states. This system, ratified by the Peace of Westphalen in 1648, conferred upon every sovereign state the right to wage war against other states; this gave rise to a kind of "international anarchy," tempered by the equilibrium generated by opposing forces. However, toward the end of the nineteenth century, following the Anglo-Boer War (1899-1902), a new kind of problem started to arise within the British Empire, an empire that reached all continents, ranging from Canada to New Zealand and passing through Africa and Asia. A kind of problem different from that present at the time in Europe, concerning the balance between national sovereign states, arose: the question now was, how could such different peoples, cultures, and nations live together within the same imperial frame? Representatives of the British liberal culture started to devise a new model of international relations, capable of unifying free exchange, liberal institutions, and relationships among peoples so distant and different from one another. The aim of leading the system of international relations toward a stable peace thus originated between the nineteenth and the twentieth centuries, in a context that has been defined as preglobalization, on a multinational, multicultural, and multireligious horizon.
Behind this debate, during the First World War, the dramatic experience that could result from international anarchy started to set in, even in the world that had given rise to the Westphalen system and was governed by equilibrium between forces, namely Europe. World War I was also the first total war that cost millions of victims, involved civilians and soldiers, caused the ruin of both victors and vanquished, and devastated the whole of Europe. This event showed the way in which developments of the industrialized society transformed war into something very different from the past, something not easily controlled by the stronger powers. In this context, the ideals of peace present in the Anglo-Saxon culture inspired the introduction of important amendments within the system of international relations, such as the creation of the League of Nations just after World War I. Between World War I and World War II, the ideal of peace spread, especially in Europe, but war started again because of German Nazism and Italian Fascism. In Asia, Japan waged war against China and other countries. In the meantime the United States, which had previously supported the accomplishments of the League of Nations, was experiencing a period of strong isolationism. However, the ideal of peace was not completely forgotten.
After the great tragedy of the Second World War, around the whole world a strong desire for peace emerged, which led to the resumption of some of the previously discussed issues and hopes. During these years, numerous constitutions of several different countries were written, such as those of Japan and Italy, affirming the refusal of war as an instrument to solve international disputes. According to Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution, Japan forever renounces its right to wage war, sincerely aspiring to international peace based upon justice and order, acknowledging that peace cannot be reached through war as the expression of national sovereignty, and stating that peace is impossible if individual nations affirm their absolute right to use force. After the Second World War, also due to the strong pressure by the United States, Japan renounced using "the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes," and according to its Constitution, Italy agreed "to limitations of sovereignty" where "necessary to maintain a legal system of peace and justice between nations" as established by international organizations. This was done in the hope of removing the danger that had emerged during the twentieth century, the possibility of devastating wars for the whole world, as had occurred during the First and the Second World Wars. The principle of Westphalen--the balance of powers as the basis for international order--however, was not then completely discarded. Later, during the Cold War, two superpowers appeared, namely, the United States and the Soviet Union, but the principle of balance based upon strength was applied rather effectively, thus preventing the outbreak of World War III.
Today, however, the situation is different, and unfortunately we are once again speaking of a World War III. Today there are many different kinds of states: superpowers (like the United States), regional powers (like China, Japan, and India), associations of states (like the European Union), rogue states (like North Korea), and nations without state (like Somalia). This results in a range of very different possibilities for the application of the right to wage war, theoretically recognized to be equal for all states. In practice, however, many states, even important ones such as Japan and Italy, have no real interest in starting a war unless it is in order to protect themselves, and threats of war are coming from less developed countries such as Iran and North Korea. While there are many painful local outbreaks of conflict in Africa, the United States plays its own role as a superpower by intervening militarily in places such as Iraq; great regional powers such as Russia make themselves heard on issues concerning international balance; and other states, such as China, threaten war on specific issues such as Taiwan. Last but not least, there have recently been wars waged by individuals, not states, such as terrorism. In all of this, the feeling is of global disorder within the international system: the principle of balance based upon strength, modeled on the basis of the European situation of the seventeenth century, is becoming ever more inadequate for an increasingly globalized world.
Moreover, this international context is very different from that of the post-World War II era, when the United States urged Italy and Japan toward peace, demanding that these countries write articles to avoid war in the future into their constitutions. It was thought that new international organizations, especially the United Nations, could mediate international conflicts and find solutions without war. Today, however, we feel the limitations of the "amendments" applied to the principle of the balance of powers introduced first by the League of Nations and then by the United Nations. This gives rise to an ever-growing feeling of uncertainty and fear.
Today in Italy and in Japan there are some people who think that in the face of these new dangers, it is necessary to change the articles of their constitutions that refuse the absolute right to war of their nation and deny them the use of weapons as a normal way for solving problems, and who do not accept the idea that there should be limitations on their national sovereignty on behalf of international organizations. In this way, they believe that they might counteract the fear of the people. However, changing these articles, abandoning these three principles, and contradicting their main implications would in no way help to reach greater international stability and order, nor would it effectively reduce fear. We must not turn back but rather proceed forward.
It must be acknowledged, obviously, that limitations of national sovereignties have not always provided real results and that international organizations have not in the past always operated in a satisfactory way. After World War II, in a time of great difficulty, European states found the way to peace, thanks to a progressive giving up of the right of war and other privileges of national sovereignty, as suggested by the ideals present sixty years ago nourished by the tragedy of World War II. In other places, however, the same path was not taken, and in some sense this was natural, because of the great historical, political, and cultural differences present in the world. In fact, European states were able to reach better agreements thanks to a strong community of cultural, religious, and social roots. Such community is unknown in many other places. However, paradoxically, changing Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution or Article 11 of the Italian Constitution would go in the direction of a return to the old European "balance of power" system that originated from the Peace of Westphalen. This would be completely inadequate for today's world. In other words, changing these articles would be a great anachronism because now the international scene is completely different from that of seventeenth-century Europe.
International balance can rely upon the balance of power if the subjects of this balance be few and homogeneous, can control one another, and are within a well-defined and circumscribed context. But when, as in the present world, the quantity of subjects is so vast, their quality so different, their forces so uneven, it becomes no longer possible to limit conflicts within a regional horizon. Everything has become global, and international anarchy risks giving rise to a chaos that will sooner or later influence everybody. The issue is to abandon, once and for all, this anarchy, not through the assertion of abstract principles or the dilatation of international bureaucracies, but by placing some limits upon national sovereignty and developing international organizations in a context of not only legal but also social, cultural, and religious ties, able to support mutual solidarity even among citizens of different countries.
Between the late twentieth and the early twenty-first centuries, some problems that were already present between the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries became greater: there are in fact affinities between the world of preglobalization and the present world, which is experiencing ever-growing globalization. Near the states--whose features are nowadays very different--the role played by nations, cultures, and religions seems today more relevant, or at least it appears to be acquiring importance. States decide their own strategies, considering the role of nations, cultures, and religions in the present world. Facing today's problems, on the other hand, we frequently observe a limitation of states and politics, from Europe to Asia, from America to Africa, and this very limit imposes today upon religious men and women the burden of playing a role that perhaps, previously, they would not have considered: they have to commit themselves actively and directly for peace.
This is what Pope John Paul II achieved by inviting representatives of all the great world religions to pray for peace in Assisi in 1986, one next to the other, in the same place and on the same day. His example has been followed by Japanese religious people, who have met on Mount Hiei since 1987 to pray for peace. This is what the Community of Saint Egidio has done by, each year, inviting representatives of the great world religions to the International Meetings of Prayer for Peace, in memory of John Paul II's initiative and to keep the "spirit of Assisi" alive. Real commitments for peace were born by these initiatives, such as the intermediation of the Community of Saint Egidio, which led, in 1992, to peace in Mozambique after fifteen years of civil war. Now it is up to the members of Rissho Kosei-kai and other Japanese religious people to engage themselves to maintain Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.
At the beginning of the 1990s, the Most Ven. Etai Yamada, then chief priest of the Tendai Buddhist denomination, told me that religions had to play a more significant role on the international level. At the time, I did not understand his words, for it did not seem possible to me to create international links among religions the way they were being created among economies or communications of the numerous countries in the world. However, the Most Ven. Yamada, who personally experienced World War II, was right, and his words are of great interest today. It is not a matter of building, as somebody suggested, a "UN of religions," which would also be rather hard to accomplish.
Instead, the issue is to identify, rediscover, and give more value to those spiritual affinities linking different religious worlds, passing through many cultural, economic, or political aspects and creating interreligious links able to transform disagreements into energy for peace. This is the case of extraordinarily important experiences, such as monasticism, which unite all religions notwithstanding theological differences or dogmatic conflicts. It is already present; it has been built over the centuries, a great "network of the spirit" going from Hinduism to Buddhism, to Judaism to Christianity, involving Islam and all other religions. Such a network is undoubtedly a great cultural heritage of humanity that, however, risks becoming helpless and unproductive or, even worse, becoming something that can be exploited by a will of conflict. Therefore, it is up to the men and women of religion to interpret, propose, and, especially, live such heritage according to the peculiarities of their different religious traditions, developing that heritage in the spirit of peace, encounter, and dialogue, and in particular, living together in a harmony of differences.
This is the proposal that Professor Andrea Riccardi, founder of the Community of Saint Egidio, recently made on the occasion of the twenty-first International Meeting of Peoples and Religions, which took place in Naples, October 21-23, 2007. In that same meeting, Pope Benedict XVI, speaking to the representatives of the Christian churches and the great world religions, recalled the spirit of Assisi. In Naples, Professor Riccardi observed that for today's peoples, nations, and cultures, fear is not only a feeling but something that "becomes politics" and "culture." In fact, "the incapability of a great plan that makes a country or the world a better place goes together with a culture of contempt toward the other, simply because he belongs to a different religion, ethnic group--because he is different. The culture of contempt is as ancient as human history, but in this time of globalization it is being revived in an appalling way." We perceive that we are "many in a world evermore crowded and for this reason we want to protect ourselves from and be separate from others."
The virus of contempt has dreadful effects, such as the extermination in Europe of six million Jews during World War II; it destroys fruitful bridges among believers of different faiths; it nourishes terrorism in the name of religion. Facing this situation, we could think that the efforts of men and women of faith have been in vain. But the religious leaders who came to Naples did not yield to pessimism; in fact, they came to the conclusion that "all religions remind us in a different way that Spirit gives life and that without Spirit a world is built in which mankind chokes." Professor Riccardi pointed out that "the world of the Spirit is not a pre-modern reality, brushed away from progress. Instead, it is a permanent structure of human existence." He acknowledged that certainly "religions have fought against one another," but he also reminded us that "deep spiritual currents have run through them, causing them to fraternize." How can we forget monasticism, which, in different religious worlds, from Asia to the West, has inspired human lives and brought together histories of spirits? "There is a secret history of intimate communication among believers, among saints." In a spiritual meaning "no man is an island," . . . and no world, no religion, is really an island, not even Japan, we might add. Professor Riccardi concluded: "Spiritual people can and must speak of the problems of the world . . . with politicians, men of culture, [and] lay people. . . . We need a new boldness to speak of peace in the name of the spirit and of man! It is a new undertaking which must blossom at the crossways of history, in the places of prayer. It must blossom in the culture and practice of living together, in the art of dialogue, in the sincerity of friendship. Much has been done, but now is the time to do more. We need a convincing initiative of peace."
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