The Historical Background to Japan’s Peacekeeping Policy from the Early Postwar Era to the Establishment of the PKO Act 1945–1992

In this chapter, we will review the evolution of Japan’s peacekeeping policy from the immediate aftermath of Japan’s defeat in 1945 to the enactment of the Peacekeeping Operations (PKO) Act in 1992. In the first section, we will look at the historical background during the postwar period (in this book, the term “postwar” denotes the period in Japan from its defeat in World War II in 1945 to the end of the Cold War in around 1990), including the rise of anti-militarism, the hidden rearmament, the establishment of the de facto ban on overseas military dispatch, the rejection of the UN’s request for the Self-Defense Forces’ (SDF’s) deployment to a United Nations Peacekeeping Operation (UNPKO) and the aborted plan to dispatch a minesweeper to the Persian Gulf. This section will also examine the Government of Japan’s legal standpoint about the possibility of SDF deployment to a UNPKO. In the second section, we will clarify how the Gulf Crisis/War in 1990–1991 made Japan abandon the taboo against overseas military dispatch. Then, we will review the course of the challenging lawmaking process of the PKO Act, which was finally passed in June 1992. Lastly, we will see the restrictions inserted into the PKO Act, such as the so-called Five Principles.

مراجعة كتاب قطر والأزمة الخليجية

صدر عن دار نشر جامعة قطر في الدوحة الترجمة العربية لكتاب «قطر والأزمة الخليجية» Qatar and the Gulf Crisis لمؤلفه كريستيان كوتس أولريخسن (Kristian Coates Ulrichsen)، العضو بمركز الشرق الأوسط في معهد بيكر للسياسة العامة بجامعة رايس، والعضو المشارك في برنامج الشرق الأوسط وشمال أفريقيا التابع للمعهد الملكي للشؤون الدولية. والترجمة من تحرير الريم العذبة، وتقديم محجوب الزويري، مدير مركز دراسات الخليج، كلية الآداب، جامعة قطر. صدر الكتاب في نسخته الإنجليزية سنة 2020 عن دار نشر هرست (Hurst & co. Publishers Ltd)، وصدرت هذه الترجمة العربية منه في السنة نفسها. يقع الكتاب في 387 صفحة، ويلقي الضوء على أزمة الخليج وردود فعل صناع القرار القطريين، وينقسم الكتاب إلى تقديم وقائمة اختصارات ومقدمة، وثلاثة أقسام كبرى تتضمن تسعة فصول. يتناول القسم الأول في ثلاثة فصول السوابق التاريخية والسياق الحالي للأزمات بين الدول الخليجية، كما يتناول أزمة سحب السفراء في 2014 ثم الحصار. أما القسم الثاني فيتناول في خمسة فصول، السياسة والمجتمع، والاقتصاد والتجارة، والطاقة والبنية التحتية، والشؤون الخارجية والإقليمية، والدفاع والأمن. أما القسم الثالث فهو عبارة عن الفصل التاسع الذي يمثل استشرافًا لعام 2022.

Demystifying Qatar’s Pro-Revolution Monarchy: Old Rivalries, New Geopolitical Motives

Unlike other Arab monarchies, Qatar has embraced a supportive position toward the Arab revolutions since the moment they broke out in late 2010. In fact, Qatar’s Al Jazeera network was an essential media mobilizer for the Arab masses and a major promoter of the revolutionary change process in the region, hosting pro-revolution Arab intellectuals, and broadcasting pro-reform messages. Qatar welcomed the Tunisian Revolution, financially backed the country in its transitional stage, and behaved the same with the subsequent Egyptian and Yemeni cases. What’s more, Qatar made efforts to encourage both Arab and international support for humanitarian interventions in Libya and Syria, and generously backed the revolutionary forces there both financially and militarily. Given the fact that Qatar’s political system is of the conservative-monarchic type, this paper aims to review the dynamics and geopolitical interests that drove Doha to embrace a pro-change policy in the region during the Arab Spring, with a view to better understanding what has become known as the ‘Qatari Oxymoron’ or ‘Qatari Exceptionalism,’ and the ensuing dynamics that led to the Gulf crisis of 2017 –the most difficult crisis among the GCC states since the organization’s establishment in 1981.

Transnational identity and the Gulf crisis: changing narratives of belonging in Qatar

What does the recent Gulf diplomatic crisis of June 2017 to January 2021 mean for the future of the region's signature transnationalism: the khalījī [Gulf] identity? This identity narrative encompasses the shared sociocultural backgrounds of the people of the region, but the unprecedented separations, caused by the regional crisis, may have shifted the discourse of belonging in the Gulf. To investigate the impact of the recent crisis on regional identity narratives, this article explores the new National Museum of Qatar's presentation of Qatar's political history from 1848 to 1868, as well as museum-goers' reactions to this presentation, through original fieldwork and ethnographic interviews with Qatari and expatriate residents. The analysis highlights the museum's purposeful portrayal of parallels between intra-Gulf conflicts of the past and the recent crisis, a presentational choice that stands in sharp contrast to previous regional norms of tactful diplomacy. Further, museum-goers recognized the linguistic and symbolic parallels, provoking both engagement with and rejection of the concept of khalījī identity. In summary, this analysis suggests that the crisis has shifted the norms of discourse in the region in ways that may make social reconciliation difficult, even as political bonds resume. As the region moves forward from crisis, policy-makers should reduce the tension between national and transnational identity narratives by creating space for the renewal of khalījī ties.