Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is in fact a "No War" article. It went into effect on May 3, 1947, shortly after World War II and reads:

Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.

In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

The enactment of a special clause in the Japanese Constitution renouncing war as an option after World War II was not an accident. The United Nations Organization that was formed in 1945, benefiting from the failed experiment of the League of Nations, began its Charter with the words "We, the peoples of the United Nations, determined to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to man-kind. . . ." The Charter went on to enshrine the principle of the nonuse of force in international relations in Article 2.4, which states: "All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations." Thus, what was made general for all states was made specific in respect of Japan because of Japan's status as one of the defeated states in World War II and the opportunity in 1947 of drafting a new Constitution.

Other states, such as Costa Rica and Iceland, while upholding the UN Charter, have demonstrated their renunciation of war by not maintaining national armies at all. In any event, the UN is not a pacifist organization, and Article 51 of the Charter provides for "the inherent right of individual or collective self-defense if an armed attack occurs against a Member of the United Nations, until the Security Council has taken measures necessary to maintain international peace and security." This implies that member states may maintain armies commensurate with their security needs for self-defense, and thus Japan maintains a self-defense force. Further on in the Charter, under chapter 7, provision exists for the Security Council to determine the existence of a threat or breach of the peace or act of aggression and to take action to restore peace and security. This action could ultimately entail, as Article 42 states, "such action by air, sea, or land forces as may be necessary." This is the use of collective force authorized by the Security Council in the defense of international peace and security, and member states are expected to make available their armed forces for this purpose. One example of this is the use of force to evict Iraq from Kuwait in 1991. In addition, of course, there are numerous examples of UN peacekeeping missions in which the armed forces of member states participate.

These restrictions on war and the unilateral use of force have not, of course, prevented wars from breaking out in the post-World War II period. However, the recent trend has been to have more intrastate wars than interstate wars, and for nonstate actors to be among the belligerents. The application of international law to nonstate actors is not easy, since these groups are, ipso facto, acting outside the framework of law and order. International terrorism is a phenomenon that has acquired a new dimension, and the danger of terrorist groups' acquiring weapons of mass destruction is real. We have already had the use of chemical weapons by one such group in Japan. In addition to specific injunctions against war, the international community has tried to evolve ways and means of either banning or regulating the tools of war as a disincentive to countries for going to war. This is in pursuance of the UN's objective of achieving "general and complete disarmament under effective international control." Of the weapons of mass destruction, biological weapons were banned in 1972 and chemical weapons were banned in 1993. Nuclear weapons, although still not banned, have had their proliferation prevented by the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1968, the most widely subscribed-to disarmament treaty. In addition, numerous nuclear-weapon-free zones have been created, mainly in the southern hemisphere. A number of bilateral treaties between the United States and the Russian Federation have also reduced the number of nuclear weapons in the world. Japan, as the only country that has suffered the use of nuclear weapons, has legally renounced the possession of all weapons of mass destruction (WMD) by treaty.

These steps are encouraging, and what must be done is to consolidate these gains and ensure that they are irreversible. Japan has moved resolutions in the UN on nuclear disarmament and has played a leading role in numerous disarmament initiatives, such as the control of the proliferation of small arms and light weapons. In this context, Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution is a bulwark and a beacon. Japan is an example, along with Germany, of countries that can achieve powerful positions in the international community without acquiring nuclear weapons and having powerful armies. This alone qualifies Japan to secure a permanent seat on the Security Council, apart from Japan's record as an aid donor.

We must now reflect on the current dangers to international peace and security and examine what steps have to be taken for our common security. Early in 2007, the Chicago-based Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists moved the hands of its famous Doomsday Clock forward two minutes, placing them now at five minutes to midnight. The rationale was that, in addition to the threat of nuclear danger, the world faces another catastrophic threat from climatic change. The forces of globalization and the relentless pursuit of industrialization have led to a vast demand for energy. With environmental concerns already being cited to justify an increasing reliance on nuclear power as an energy source, we must resolve the justifiable concerns that wider use of nuclear energy may lead to a proliferation of nuclear weapons. Thus, the atomic scientists see the two greatest threats to human security as inextricably intertwined.

We live in a world of escalating military budgets, despite the absence of antagonisms dividing major states. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), global military expenditure is at US$1,204 billion (US$1.2 trillion) per annum, with the United States accounting for 46 percent of the total. Japan has 4 percent of the world share of military expenditure, spending US$43.7 billion or US$341 per capita. Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan is among the world's twenty-five largest arms-producing companies, selling US$2,190 million worth of arms. In a world where more than one billion human beings live below the poverty line of one dollar a day, weapons spending amounts to US$184 per year for every man, woman, and child on the planet. US$135 billion per year would suffice to achieve the Millennium Development Goals by the target date of 2015. This is not only unacceptable; it is also unsustainable. Again according to SIPRI, there has been an almost 50 percent increase in the volume of major conventional arms transfers over the last four years, reversing the downward trend since 1977. The United States and Russia were the largest suppliers in the 2002-2006 period, and China and India were the largest arms importers.

Among the world's eight (not counting North Korea) known nuclear-armed states--five of them parties to the NPT--an estimated twenty-six thousand nuclear weapons remain, of which twelve thousand are actively deployed. Nuclear weapons are designed to cause terror and destruction on a vastly greater scale than any conventional weapon, killing thousands in a single attack and leaving behind environmental and genetic effects that can persist indefinitely. The risk of the use of these nuclear weapons--by states or terrorists, by accident or design--has actually increased in recent years. This threat, combined with the certainty of climatic change, presents an ominous challenge to humanity.

Globalization and the revolution in information technology have made our challenges more complex but also offer tools to assess and mitigate the problems we have created. Along with our scientific advances, our advances in governance--embodied in international institutions such as the United Nations and international law--provide mechanisms to coordinate the collective action that is needed to rid the world of weapons of mass destruction and take corrective action on climatic change.

It is for these reasons that in my final year as UN under-secretary-general, I proposed that there should be an international commission on WMD. The then secretary-general, Kofi Annan, was not ready to have such a commission function under the aegis of the UN. Sweden, through its courageous foreign minister at the time, the late Anna Lindh, accepted the challenge and set up the commission with Dr. Hans Blix as chairman. Fourteen of us, drawn from different countries--including China, India, Russia, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States--began our work early in 2004, meeting in different capitals and exchanging ideas with scholars, researchers, and diplomats from a wide range of countries over a period of more than two years. In June 2006, we presented our final report to the secretary-general of the UN, and this has now been issued as a document of the UN. Dr. Blix has also spoken to the First Committee of the UN, in October 2006, apart from addressing numerous audiences and media conferences in different parts of the world.

Our commission felt that the time for action on weapons of mass destruction has come, especially with regard to nuclear weapons. We see them as inhumane weapons of terror because they are in fact intended to intimidate those who do not possess these weapons. As the Canberra Commission, on which I also served, said in 1996: "Nuclear weapons are held by a handful of states which insist that these weapons provide unique security benefits and yet reserve uniquely to themselves the right to own them. This situation is highly discriminatory and thus unstable; it cannot be sustained. The possession of nuclear weapons by any state is a constant stimulus to other states to acquire them." The WMD Commission reiterates this, adding: "So long as any such weapons remain in any state's arsenal, there is a high risk that they will one day be used, by design or accident. Any such use would be catastrophic." Nuclear weapons must be devalued as the ultimate currency of power. That can only be achieved by their elimination.

A total of sixty recommendations have been made in the WMD Commission Report, including:

? The need to agree on general principles of action with disarmament and nonproliferation being pursued through multilateral institutions in a rule-based international order, where the UN Security Council is the ultimate authority; the revival of disarmament negotiations; the pursuit of policies that do not make states feel the need to acquire WMD

? The need to reduce the danger of existing arsenals by making deep reductions and securing them from theft, especially by terrorist groups; the need to take weapons off their alert status; the prohibition of the production of fissionable material; having no-first-use pledges by those who have nuclear weapons

? The prevention of proliferation through the entry into force of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); implementing the commitments of the nuclear-weapon states under the NPT; continuing negotiations with North Korea and Iran to ensure their nonnuclear weapon status while assuring them of their security and their right to the peaceful uses of nuclear energy; making international arrangements for the supply of enriched uranium fuel and the disposal of spent fuel

? Working purposefully for a ban on nuclear weapons within a reasonable time frame; encouraging nuclear-weapon-free zones, especially in the Middle East; achieving the universalization of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and Biological Weapons Convention (BWC); and preventing an arms race in outer space

On January 4, 2007, the Wall Street Journal published a remarkable op-ed piece written by George Shultz, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn--all former holders of high office in the United States, all highly influential today. They called for "reversing reliance on nuclear weapons globally" and viewed the doctrine of nuclear deterrence as obsolete, increasingly hazardous, and decreasingly effective. Recalling past efforts to rid the world of nuclear weapons, they called for a rekindling of the Reagan-Gorbachev vision and the achievement of a nuclear-weapon-free world as a "joint enterprise." Identifying a series of agreed-upon and urgent steps, the eminent authors included many of the measures featured in the Thirteen Steps of the 2000 NPT Review Conference and the sixty recommendations of the WMD Commission. This article was followed a few days later by an article in the same journal by former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev endorsing the four Americans' views and also calling for a dialogue between the nuclear-weapon states and nonnuclear weapon states within the framework of the NPT on the elimination of nuclear weapons. The British foreign secretary also spoke along the same lines in Washington, DC, in the summer of 2007, and this was reiterated by the U.K. representative at the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva.

A breakthrough in reconstructing the fractured consensus on disarmament--and especially nuclear disarmament--must come through the political leadership of key countries. Public opinion--especially in democracies--can force policy changes through the electoral process, and civil-society organizations must work relentlessly to achieve this. Within a matter of twenty months, four of the five nuclear-weapon states in the NPT either will have changed or will be due to change their longstanding political leadership. This provides a unique opportunity for a change of policy on nuclear weapons and on climatic change. First, there has already been a presidential election in France leading to the election of President Nicolas Sarkozy. In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Gordon Brown is the new leader. In 2008, both the Russian Federation and the United States will have elections for a new president. In China, the Communist Party will have a key congress at the end of 2008; and India, a non-NPT nuclear-weapon-capable state, will have elections in 2009. Japan has a new prime minister. This virtually simultaneous change in the political leadership of key countries will provide an opportunity in the post-Cold War world to make fundamental changes that can pull the world back from the brink of crisis. Civil society and global public opinion can assert pressure to ensure that the new political leaders act to create a new world order.

The time is therefore opportune for the implementation of Recommendation 59 of the WMD Commission, which urges the convening of a world summit on the disarmament, nonproliferation, and terrorist use of weapons of mass destruction. The date for such a summit could be after 2009, providing for thorough preparation and for the new leaders to formulate their policies. It would be a historic opportunity to demonstrate a recognition of the common danger to global society and of the need to make the right decisions at the right time. Japan is uniquely positioned to take the initiative in this.