I'm afraid my sensibilities as a political scientist have been offended. I know I should probably lighten up, but I was really hoping this was a joke...Why do I think a lot of important stuff is going to be left out? If they tried to fit it all in, and base it around some kind of story, the manga would be thousands, and thousands of pages long, really boring, and take years to complete. By that time the next white paper would be out.
Still, I would like a copy to show what happens when you try and dumb down government. Just because you put pictures to something doesn't mean people will read it or find it interesting.
Here is what I think will happen-
SDF field office, Hokkaido .
Major Ikeda to secretary - "Can you get me the SB1-HA7 budget projection reports by 3 pm? I need to compile data for the budget meeting next Friday.
Secretary - That is in the files for the new defensive plan surrounding the Ikeumi Islands from offensive IS230 attacks? The one with the future projections about troop restructuring and the results of field tests for the new radar dishes?
Takeshi - That's the one.
Secretary - Will do sir.
---Major Ikeda returns to his office to wait for the reports. He puts his feet up on the desk and has a flashback to last year when the old Destructor K32 tanks were replaced with new IFF devices. "Yep, that was the right move. That Tanaka bastard was against it, but my skillful presentation with the brass upstairs helped pave the way for the news codes, and a updating of older hardware to counter new amphibious threats along the coasts. Now my daugther Rika-chan can play in a nation safe from hostile landings and illegal immigrants. Hurray Japan, vote LDP"
The requested reports arrive and we watch as Takeshi sets about making a powerpoint presentation for the next 14 hours on a computer bought with funds to make support duties more efficent and less time consuming.
I can think of a million better uses for government money and time than making a comic book out of a document only specialists are going to read anyway.
I think it's a good idea :haihai:
A good way to make politics more popular.
Something like that would be much more urgent in the US where people care a great deal less about politics, and promptly had to pay the hefty fine for it by getting that <censored> Dubya as president - I wouldn't wish this my worst enemy
I'm a defence analyst by training, having done extensive work in this field of government policy, and I'll be 100% honest, Defence White papers although released into the public sphere, have no real use except for people in academia, and people involved in the defence decisionmaking process. Mostly they state future committments requirements that the armed forces should be able to fulfill including what sorts of environments could they be deployed in as well as what sorts of missions should they be required to carry out. I've read every single Canadian defence white paper since 1937 Pope memorandum, most of the british White papers including the 2002 Strategic Defence Review, and what passes for the US white papers (the National Security strategy). and honestly people would have no use reading them. I can see why a government like japan would want to send it out to the public, however DWPs are not any sort of arbiters of what a government is going to do.
For example the last Canadian White paper on Defence published in 1994 is called Challenge and commitment, and forsaw a reduction of capabilities because there was going to be a peace dividend after the cold war and Canadian Forces were expected to remain at home for quite some time. What did Prime Minister Chretien do for the next 7 years? He was the most active prime minister in deploying canadian troops since the Second World War. It promped a professor to write a damming book with the leading headline the "fundamentals of Defence Policy are not sound" HE argued that the dilapitated state of the Canadian forces in 2004 was due to the assupmtions made in 1994 that there would be less need for the canadian forces and that their funding should be slashed, when in truth they were callled upon for more missions.
So really defence white papers should not be counted on as some unbreakable rule for people to hold and respect. Furthermore , they are so vaguely written often that you could justify anything with them. Of the 1994 Canadian white paper, its still being pointed to by members of the Department of National Defence as the guide for the armed forces, when it is horribly out of date.
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I know I should probably lighten up, but I was really hoping this was a joke...Why do I think a lot of important stuff is going to be left out? If they tried to fit it all in, and base it around some kind of story, the manga would be thousands, and thousands of pages long, really boring, and take years to complete. By that time the next white paper would be out.
