2024 Volume 33 Issue 1 Pages 9-23
Under the Development Cooperation Charter, first enacted in 2015 and revised in 2022, Japan's ODA is going through a substantial change that the author calls the “securitization of ODA ver.2”. This means that ODA is now tasked with serving Japan's national interest of national security defined in military terms. Indeed, ODA has already begun to be granted on the basis of a realist thinking of balance-of-power that seeks to deter China, together with ally and like-minded countries, from unilaterally changing the international status quo. This article raises a reasonable doubt that this new trend may not be in the interests of the recipient countries and may also not be an effective security policy for Japan. It also proposes that the Development Cooperation Charter should be changed from the current “strategic document of realism” to a “soft law of idealism” in order to mitigate the risk that security policies, which should be diverse, become excessively focused on deterrence by force, and ODA is subordinated to this policy.
