Banzai for Nuclear Japan!
Japan should consider possessing nuclear weapons as a deterrent to a neighboring threat, former Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa suggested Sunday.
In a speech in Obihiro, Hokkaido, in reference to North Korea’s rocket launch earlier this month that many believe was a ballistic missile test, the hawkish lawmaker said: “It is common sense worldwide that in pure military terms, nuclear counters nuclear.”
In Sunday’s speech, Nakagawa said he believes North Korea has many Rodong medium-range missiles that could reach almost any part of Japan and also has small nuclear warheads.
“North Korea has taken a step toward a system whereby it can shoot without prior notice,” he said. “We have to discuss countermeasures.”
He added that public discussions must be promoted on what has long been considered a national taboo: whether Japan should possess nuclear weapons. [Kyodo News via Japan Today; (ht)]
I loved what came next:
Nakagawa stepped down as finance minister in February over what appeared to be drunken behavior at an international news conference in Rome.
Those of you who dread this idea should take some comfort from the word “former,” and I’m not sure that the clownish drunken man is a likely spokesman for an orchestrated trial balloon from the Japanese government. Even the title of the article ridicules Nakagawa. I’m guessing that Nakagawa probably speaks for himself and plenty of unstated opinion that will mostly remain unstated for the time being. But with America increasingly perceived as an unreliable protector in Japan recently, I can understand why some in Japan are starting to think about going nuclear, and I have very good reason to suspect that South Korea has similar ideas.
Count me as cautiously enthusiastic about a nuclear Japan. Let’s list the pros and cons:
Pros:
1. Another Asian ally begins to shoulder more of the burden of its own defense. Let’s hope this results in a more equal alliance in which American taxpayers aren’t subsidizing the defense of the entire region.
2. Finally, North Korea’s shenanigans impose a strategic cost on China.
3. Japanese possession of nukes would hollow out explicit North Korean threats, or implicit Chinese threats, of a nuclear strike against Japan.
4. A less sanctimonious spin at the Hiroshima Peace Museum. Of course, it would be too much to expect that the museum would place the A-bombings into the context of the Rape of Nanking or Pearl Harbor.
5. We’re two tests away from a full and final resolution of the status of Tokdo.
Cons:
1. One more state with nuclear weapons; but in the grander scheme of things, the existence of a functionally uncontained North Korean arsenal gives relatively little cause for anyone to worry about Japan having one.
2. An arms race has broken out, but I’d argue that China and North Korea started the arms race a decade ago, even as South Korea was disarming. The fact that Japan is rearming restores some of the military balance. Yes, that’s going to be a lot of expenditure on weapons, but a relatively greater percentage of that spending will be by nations other than us. Indeed, Japan may invest more in missile defense and delivery systems that it will end up purchasing from the United States.
3. The sneaking suspicion that they haven’t quite gotten the whole Pearl Harbor thing out of their systems.
If the goal of appeasing North Korea was to limit nuclear proliferation, that certainly hasn’t been the effect.