ABSTRACT
Although the response of the international community to the Second Gulf War of February 1991 can in no way be considered as an example of a reaction to a PKO, any study of Japan’s evolving peacekeeping policy and the role and influence of UN internationalism as a norm in the development of this policy must begin by necessity with an analysis of the Second Gulf War. As was demonstrated in Chapter 3, pressure on Japan to contribute to UN peacekeeping operations was hardly a new phenomenon. Before the Second Gulf War this pressure had resulted only in Japan’s financial contributions to the UN budget and the limited despatch of civilian personnel due to the constraints of the deeply embedded domestic norm of antimilitarism. However, it was in the aftermath of the Second Gulf War that Japan began a process of political, social and legal soul-searching, while traditional norms came into conflict with newer norms, in an attempt to make a ‘visible contribution’ to the international community’s efforts in the Persian Gulf. For this reason, the Second Gulf War is to be the first case study in this investigation of Japan’s international peacekeeping contribution and the interplay of norms.
