The 2nd Meeting of the JFIR Policy Council on "Japan's Response to Global Terrorism" was held on July 23, 2010, under the chairmanship of President ITO Kenichi of JFIR and 18 members of the Policy Council attended.
1. Introductory remark by Chairman ITO Kenichi
At the outset, President ITO Kenichi, Chairman of the Policy Council, made an introductory remark to the effect that, with the intention of having a discussion to find a direction with drafting the policy recommendations, it is expected of the guest reporter, Dr. TANAKA Koichiro, Director of JIME Center, the Institute of Energy Economics, to identify the core of the issue of the policy recommendations.
2. Keynote Report by Dr. TANAKA Koichiro
Following that, a keynote report was made by Dr. TANAKA, the gist of which is as follows.
The "Concept Paper" of the policy recommendations gave me the impression that, while its thematic focus lies in global terrorism at large, it trivializes the discussions as it mainly focuses, especially in the latter part, on such regional issues as Afghanistan and Pakistan. While it is true that the main cause of September 11th terrorist attacks had its roots in Afghanistan, the question of whether or not Afghanistan still represents the root cause of global terrorism needs to be carefully deliberated. Also lack of reference to Iraq gave me the impression that it misses the essential key to discussing global terrorism. For, the Iraqi War ideally epitomized the case of terrorism of the 21st century in that it debacled legitimacy of military operations and served as a moral "tail wind" for the cause of terrorists. As for the overall structure of the "Concept Paper," while it begins with important discussions of Japan's response to global terrorism, which are followed by discussions on the difficulty in defining terrorism per se, in order to lay emphasis on the former discussions, the structure needs to be reconsidered.
In response to the above report, members of the Policy Council present joined in an active exchange of views on the topic.
3. Overview of the discussions at the Policy Council
Based upon the discussions made among the members of the Policy Council present, Chairman ITO stated that the traffic of the discussions should be so controlled as to address the question of whether Japan, as still the 3rd largest world economic power though overtaken by China, could afford indifference to formation of the international order, and that Japan should launch her counter-terrorist policy based on her firm convictions on the issue of global terrorism, instead of being passively urged by the request of the United States. Then, Chairman ITO proposed that the theme of the policy recommendations be changed from "Global Terrorism and Japan" to "Japan's Response to Global Terrorism." (Note from the secretariat: this proposal was approved at the Policy Recommendations Drafting Committee held immediately after the Policy Council.) Then, Prof. YAMAUCHI Masayuki, Drafter of the Policy Recommendations, stated that he would proceed to preparing a draft of policy recommendations, based on the discussions made and with focus on overlapping issues between foreign policies and public policies. And Prof. MIYASAKA Naofumi, Assistant Drafter of the Policy Recommendations, stated that he would clarify the points of discussions of counter-terrorist measures within and without Japan, focusing on such questions as how to evaluate what have already been done and what are the important things to be done which have not yet been done.