OSAKA –

The government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is playing with fire in declaring that Japan may give non-lethal assistance to foreign military forces as part of its revised program of official development aid. The controversial announcement has dominated the headlines in discussions of the new charter. But the whole document deserves closer public scrutiny: lots of questions should be asked, and then the document should be sent back for major revisions in the light of the answers to the critical questions.

The fear must be that the new policy on official development assistance is a small building block in Abe's plan to make Japan a "normal" nation — whatever that means — without the bother of having to ask the Japanese people first.

Significantly, Abe has abandoned the term "Official Development Assistance" and instead uses the novel expression "Development Cooperation Charter." The document indeed owes its conception to Abe's National Security Strategy of December 2013, which called for the strategic use of Japan's official development assistance.

A year later, last month, the new aid policy was revealed, without substantial public participation helping the discussion. According to one expert, "the new aid charter emphasizes pursuing active pacifism to realize a peaceful and secure international society that serves Japan's national interests." Well, there's the rub: aid is supposed to serve the interests of developing countries receiving the aid, and not principally those of the giver.

The controversial section that says that Japan can use aid funds for foreign military forces, though only for non-military purposes, suffers — as does much of the document — from being vague and undefined, and leaving interpretation to the government and bureaucrats.

One has to ask: what is Abe thinking of in suggesting that official aid can go to foreign militaries? Which military exactly and who will make the decision, and who will actually give a slice of aid to a foreign military? In a well-ordered democracy, aid goes from government to government. A democracy like India would be outraged if Japan tried to give aid to its military, bypassing the civilian power. Or is Abe proposing that the Japanese military be given a slice of the country's aid budget to distribute, military to military — potentially even more dangerous?

Which foreign military does Abe have in mind, especially if the military in democracies is off limits? Is he thinking of the brave generals of Myanmar or Thailand, who are leading the push for a prosperous democratic life for their peoples? Or perhaps, he wants to help Egypt or some war-torn African republic, or how about giving aid for civics classes to the Chinese military or teaching them how to build better airports on small reefs in the Chinese seas?

It is easy to create a feel-good factor by imagining Japanese aid going for things like disaster relief and being channeled through the brave soldiers of the earthquake- or flood-ravaged country. But why the fixation with foreign militaries? In the case of disaster or emergency, the Japanese relief aid would go to the hard-hit government, and if it chooses to use its military as the best vehicle to carry the aid, that should be the foreign government's decision.

As critics have been quick to point out, and as any politician or schoolchild knows, money is fungible. Aid may be given for non-lethal purposes, but such assistance frees up defense funds that can then be used for purchase of weapons or for cracking down on dissidents.

The underlying worry is why the new aid document singles out foreign militaries as potential recipients of Japanese aid: is it sloppy thinking — since aid normally goes government to government — or is it dangerous thinking — the wish to get Japan involved with foreign militaries? Japan's previous aid charter, issued in 2003, stated that aid for military purposes or which aggravates international conflicts should be avoided. What is wrong with that as a guideline?

The background to this, of course, is that Japan's aid budget has fallen for 16 years in succession. Foreign aid in the fiscal 2015 budget is ¥542.2 billion or less than half the ¥1.17 trillion of 1997. That was the year that cuts started, with then Vice Minister of Finance for International Affairs Haruhiko Kuroda justifying the cuts, saying that all areas of spending had to bear the burden.

Japan's development assistance has continued to bear an undue share of the burden, and the country fell to the bottom of the world league of major aid donors, giving precisely 0.17 percent of its gross domestic product. In 2013 Japan's aid jumped by a massive 37 percent to $11.8 billion in dollar terms. This was largely achieved not by an increase in aid, but by a cancelation of debts owed by Myanmar. As a result Japan's aid as a percentage of GDP jumped to 0.23 percent, although this is still a long way below the U.N. target of 0.7 percent.

Aid is a controversial subject. My former World Bank colleagues Angus Deaton and Bill Easterly have written scathing volumes about how aid too often serves to lubricate corruption in poor countries, line the pockets of rich commercial companies in the supposed donor countries rather than going to help the really poor people in developing countries.

Nevertheless, Japan should be more sympathetic to the value of aid properly administered. It was helped to its feet again after the war, including World Bank loans to start the bullet train. The experience of Japan and European countries after the war, and selected other developing countries, is that aid, when carefully considered and cleanly administered, can play an important catalytic role in promoting enthusiasm and investment to lift people out of poverty.

That is also why Abe's new so-called Development Assistance Charter is disappointing. It could have — should have — discussed a whole range of relevant issues, including whether and how and when Japan should aspire to meet the United Nation's 0.7 percent target; whether Japan should have a separate aid ministry with professional aid officials — as Britain has and has met the 0.7 percent goal; to what extent should Japan harmonize its development programs with the World Bank, other U.N. agencies and other aid-givers; how to draw up a road map for lifting the world's poorest people out of poverty.

Abe's new development charter does not seem to put the interests of poor people or developing countries at the front of its discussion. It calls for aid to be used in pursuit of Japan's "national interests," for greater cooperation with Japanese companies and for aggressively providing assistance to countries that have moved beyond the "developing nation" stage (translation: those that might provide a good market for Japan).

There is nothing wrong with considering Japan's national interests, especially in the context of the buzzwords of global human security, sustainable economic growth, and peace and security. But the focus should be on the developing countries and how to create a better world for the seven billion people on this fragile planet.

The charter was drawn up without proper public discussion and leaves implementation to the discretion of the government and bureaucrats, another potentially dangerous tendency in Abe. It's time to reconsider.

Kevin Rafferty was managing editor at the World Bank and has lived and worked in more than 30 countries on five continents.