At the end of the Second World War, imperial Japan surrendered to the Allies and, within two years, the Allied occupying forces led by Douglas MacArthur imposed a new constitution on the country. Article 9 stripped Japan of right to an offensive military force, with “the Japanese people forever renouncing war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes”. That tenet has remained a foundational principle of Japanese foreign engagement to this day.
It sends a pointed signal, then, when Japan established its first international military base since the fall of imperial Japan in Djibouti, a small country in the horn of Africa that sits astride the shipping chokepoint of the Straits of Bab el-Mandeb.
