HUA HIN, Thailand - With Japan being urged
to go nuclear to counter possible threats from
North Korea, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi
threw fuel on the fire on Tuesday by paying his
official respects at the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo,
a symbol to many of the country's past militarism.
Koizumi, who became the first Japanese
premier in 21 years to visit the shrine on the
anniversary of the country's surrender in World
War II, has visited Yasukuni in his official
capacity as prime minister on five previous
occasions, but never on the sensitive anniversary.
The anniversary visit had been widely
anticipated, even if it was
deplored by China, South
Korea and many Japanese as well. Only last month,
China, South Korea and Japan found themselves,
more or less, on the same side in criticizing
North Korea's missile tests.
Prominent
leaders said then Japan should consider possessing
the capability to carry out preemptive attacks.
That notion is a departure from Japan's post-war
policy of not possessing offensive weapons, but
has led some to speculate that Japan might
consider arming herself with nuclear weapons.
Sometimes it seems as if elements in the
George W Bush administration are egging Japan on.
US Ambassador to Japan Thomas Schieffer has
raised the possibility of an independently
nuclear-armed Japan.
"If you had a nuclear
North Korea, it seems to me that that increases
the pressure on both South Korea and Japan going
nuclear themselves," he said.
On the TV
interview program Meet the Press, Vice
President Dick Cheney said, "The idea of a
nuclear-armed North Korea with ballistic missiles
to deliver them will, I think, probably set off an
[nuclear] arms race in that part of the world."
North Korea claims to be a nuclear weapons
state, though it has not proved this assertion
beyond doubt by actually testing one. As it
demonstrated earlier this year, it has
medium-range missiles capable of striking both
South Korea and Japan (though not the continental
US - not yet anyway).
This talk partly
reflects the frustration many in the Bush
administration feel over its inability to push
China to push North Korea to disarm. One way to
motivate Beijing is to scare her with the prospect
of a nuclear-armed Japan.
The Republican
Party policy committee paper anticipating a North
Korean test put it this way: "Essentially, the
United States must demand that the PRC [People's
Republic of China] make a choice: either help out
or face the possibility of other nuclear
neighbors."
The implication was that
Washington would tolerate or even encourage a
Japan armed with nuclear weapons.
Maybe,
but if they are counting on China quaking over the
prospect of a nuclear Japan, they are going to be
disillusioned. China's leaders are not going to
fall for that bluff. They know that in the final
analysis Japan will never acquire nuclear
armaments because to do so makes Japan less safe.
Japan is famous for its nuclear allergy,
as the only country ever attacked with nuclear
weapons. It is also famous for its "three no's"
policy: not to make, posses or allow nuclear
weapons on its soil. These attitudes remain a
strong brake on Japan going nuclear. But there is
a more compelling reason why it's against Japan's
interests.
Japan will never go nuclear
because it can never maintain a credible nuclear
deterrent against China. There can never be, as
there was during the Cold War, a strategy of
mutual assured destruction. The only assured
destruction in any nuclear exchange with China
would be that of Japan.
It would only take
about five thermonuclear bombs, three on Tokyo and
two in the Kansai region (Kobe, Osaka and Kyoto),
to end Japan. But five nuclear bombs or even a few
more, devastating as they may be, would not spell
the end for China. Japan, in short, cannot survive
a first strike and retaliate. China can.
Major-General Zhu Chenghu, dean of the
Defense Affairs Institute for China's National
Defense University of the People's Liberation
Army, caused something of a controversy last year
when he said China could aim nuclear weapons at
American cities if US forces intervened in an
assault on Taiwan. Not so extensively reported was
his comment, "We Chinese will prepare ourselves
for the destruction of all the cities east of Xian"
(in central China).
That was as blunt a
reminder that China has something that Japan does
not have - depth. China has a lot more to lose
than it did in Mao Zedong's time, when the
communist leaders built bomb shelters and
deliberately moved factories to the interior to
help protect them from nuclear attack. But China
can still absorb a lot of punishment -
historically it has absorbed a lot of punishment.
Japanese Self-Defense Forces staff reached a
similar conclusion in a study commissioned in 1981
on the feasibility of Japan acquiring nuclear
arms. The report was then aimed at the threat from
the Soviet Union and concluded that in a nuclear
exchange, Japan would suffer about 25 million
fatalities, compared with about 1 million in
Russia's Far East.
Deterrence worked in
the long nuclear face off between the US and the
old Soviet Union because both countries are
continental powers. It was possible to imagine one
or the other absorbing a first strike and
surviving to retaliate. Such is not the case with
Japan (or Taiwan and South Korea).
Japan
is much better off continuing to rely on the US
and to strengthen its alliance with the US so that
it can depend on the United States' nuclear weapons for
protection. Among other things, the US provides
the strategic depth that Japan simply does not
have.
Of course, people in Japan and
elsewhere will continue to talk about Japan going
nuclear. Ichiro Ozawa, leader of the Japan
Democratic Party, once commented, "We have plenty
of plutonium in our nuclear power plants, so it is
possible for us to produce 3,000-4,000 nuclear
warheads, making Japan an unbeatable power."
Japan's conservatives can bluster all they
want. In the final analysis they will still come
to the same conclusion. By adding up the
advantages and disadvantages of an independent
nuclear-arms program, they will inevitably decide
that these weapons are a loser for Japan. The
country is far safer under the US nuclear
umbrella.
Todd Crowell is a
correspondent for Asia Times Online based in
Thailand.
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