What it Means That Japanese Forces Can Now Fight Overseas

In a decisive move, in July 2014, Japan decided to lift the ban on its armed forces fighting overseas, marking not only the first change to its 70-year-old pacifist constitution but also demonstrating to what extent Asian dynamics in the past decade have been changing. From now, Japanese forces will be able to fight overseas alongside its allies were they to come under attack.

In the past, the Japanese Self Defense Forces (SDF) created at the end of the U.S. occupation of Japan were restricted to deal with internal threats and national disasters, while any external threats were to be handled by the U.S. While, the SDF did participate in international peacekeeping operations such as Kosovo and, more recently, in Iraq, the Constitution prohibited them from fighting abroad in any offensive/defensive operations.

This is the change.

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