BY LIFTING THE "BAN ON COLLECTIVE SELF-DEFENSE" and nullifying the long-standing "exclusively defense-oriented policy", Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet has effectively gutted the war-renouncing Article 9 of Japan's postwar Constitution.

This is a huge political victory for the adventurous Abe and his right-leaning Liberal Democratic Party.

Without the hassle of amending the Constitution, which requires majority approval in a public referendum following Diet endorsement by two-thirds or more of the lawmakers in each chamber, they have bypassed and reinterpreted it.