Countries in the Asia Pacific region should be vigilant against Japan’s push for a larger role in regional security, said Huang Jing, director of the Institute on Asia and Globalization, National University of Singapore.

Speaking in a recent interview with Xinhua, Huang questioned the ideas put forward by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for Japan to have more “proactive contribution to peace,” which is a translation of a phrase in Japanese that can also be rendered as ” proactive pursuit of peace.”

Abe talked about the need to defend international laws and alleged that Japan wants to revise the pacifist constitution that was put in place after the World War II and remove the lid on the right to collective self-defense. He also talked about how Japan should play a larger role in regional security by sending its military personnel and defense equipment out of Japan.

… Scholars said that the idea of common security might eventually be the only way out even though it takes time to promote the idea. Li Mingjiang, associate professor at the Nanyang Technological University, said that it would not be easy in the recent future as the new approach may weaken the current framework that are based on bilateral structures.