The Cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved on July 1 a reinterpretation of the Japanese Constitution, extending the scope of the right to self-defense to include the defense of an ally under attack. Past governments have maintained that Japan possessed the right to collective self-defense under international law, more specifically under Article 51 of the Charter of the United Nations, but that Article 9 of its pacific Constitution prevented the country from exercising this right because doing so would go beyond the minimum necessary for national defense...