During just one week (July 11-17, 2015), the parliaments of four countries around the world took difficult and controversial fateful decisions with wide-ranging repercussions not only for their own people, but also for the neighboring countries, if not for the whole world for decades to come.
However, what is important is that those controversial decisions have been taken democratically, after heated discussions and demonstrations, stretching from Japan in the east to the United States in the west, with Iran and Greece in the middle.
1 – Japan regains its military power:
After Japan was defeated in World War II at the hands of the United States and its allies, its Instrument of Surrender prohibited it from rebuilding its army and deploying it outside its borders.
Although this was humiliating to the Japanese, three generations have since emerged within a political system that reveres the values of peaceful coexistence and scientific and technological achievement, spending only a small percentage of Japan's national income on security affairs.
The Japanese have left the responsibility of defending their country to the United States. This arrangement made them concentrate on building their economy, until it became the fourth largest in the world.
Japan’s economic prosperity also boosted the economies of neighboring countries to unprecedented levels of growth, to the extent that those countries were later called the “Asian Tigers.”
Soon, the bloc including Japan, Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia became the third-largest economic bloc in the world after North America (NAFTA) and the European Union (EU).
However, as usual, a growing economic power needs a parallel military force to protect it. The fact that the United States started to believe it should alleviate the burden of defending East Asia, and that the Chinese economy, which has become the third largest in the world in the beginning of the twenty-first century, and which is expected to become the second by 2025 and the first by 2050, should be faced, helped Japan in this regard.
But re-militarizing Japan after seventy years faced strong opposition from the young generation. Despite protests, the Japanese parliament agreed by a slight majority to re-build the country’s military power and use it abroad if necessary.
This means that the Arab world and the Middle East should expect to see Japanese naval warships in the Indian Ocean, the Gulf of Hormuz and the Red Sea in the coming few years.
2 – Tehran and Washington reconcile:
After nearly 40 years of tense relations between Iran and the United States following Iran's Islamic revolution, the hostage crisis and the European-American attempts to contain Iran's nuclear ambitions, which Israel, Saudi Arabia, Oman, The United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Qatar found threatening to their security, the two countries have reached an agreement, allowing the United States and its Western allies to inspect Iran’s nuclear reactors in order to make sure nuclear weapons cannot be produced. This was done in return for lifting the economic sanctions imposed on Iran during the past ten years, which have impeded Iran's economic growth and isolated it culturally and diplomatically from the international community.
The Iranian people celebrated the agreement, and so did US President Barack Obama, despite opposition from the Republicans and the Zionist lobby, as he is eying the huge Iranian market (80 million citizens), that promises trade with the United States.
Actually, Obama had a lot more to celebrate, for he has succeeded in restoring relations with Cuba and in supporting Ukraine's independence in the face of Russian aggression. In order to appease the fears of the Zionist lobby, he promised Israel more sophisticated weapons, which he is expected to grant the GCC countries as well.
3 – The Greeks take the bitter medicine:
The third dramatic evolution that took place in that same week was the tug of war game that the young Greek Prime Alexis Tsipras played with the European creditors. He offered the Greek people an opportunity to approve or reject the severe austerity conditions imposed by the creditors, urging them to reject them. Eventually, two thirds of the voters rejected the conditions.
This meant Greece would have to declare bankruptcy for failing to pay its debts (more than fifty billion euros) and exit the eurozone. The irony lies in the fact, that the Prime Minister urged the people and the parliament a few days later to accept some of the conditions, for which he would pay a heavy political price sooner or later.
However, in all the three examples, democracy came out victorious.
Edited translation from Al-Masry Al-Youm
