Defending Japan (the missile shield)

National Post ^ | November 13 2002

[knighthawk]

Do you remember when Ottawa and Europe were warning of the parade of horribles that would follow if the United States scuttled the obsolete 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty? At the time, back in pre-9/11 days, missile opponents pointed to various heavyweights -- Russia, China, Japan -- that were anxious about the U.S. plan. The belief was that an ambitious anti-missile scheme would jump-start a new arms race, and thus destabilize the planet.

But when the Americans did withdraw from the ABM, nothing happened. Russian President Vladimir Putin, who'd been looking for a way to trim his military budget, was more than happy to accept his American counterpart's offer to cut the number of nuclear warheads. China had more reason to fear -- because its tiny fleet of 1950s- and 1960s-vintage missiles might be completely neutralized by even a modest anti-missile program. But Beijing was not a signatory to the ABM in the first place. And Sino-U.S. relations have actually become stronger in the past year as the two nations collaborate in the fight against terrorists.

Japan is now coming around too. "We should exert efforts to get the program to leave the research phase as soon as possible," Shigeru Ishiba, head of Japan's Defence Agency, told a parliamentary committee this week. The president of the National Defence Academy, Masashi Nishihara, feels Tokyo must "move forward to develop missile defence, and to eventually deploy it."

Only a few years ago, Japanese officials were warning that missile defence could "destabilize" the Asia-Pacific theatre. But things have changed. In recent weeks, North Korea has admitted it is pursuing nuclear weapons. The nation also possesses a fleet of missiles capable of hitting every major Japanese city.

Japanese officials once laboured under the misapprehension that North Korea, an impoverished backwater ruled by a Stalinist tyrant, could be appeased through bribery and diplomacy. The recent disclosures, therefore, came as quite a jolt. A poll in a Japanese newspaper found last week that 95% of respondents are now "concerned" about Pyongyang's nuclear program.

The emerging threat from North Korea goes a long way to show why missile defence is a good idea. Tyrants are unpredictable, and Tokyo is correct to fear the possibility that a dictatorship in decline might respond to a crisis by lashing out with a final, suicidal spasm. Like the United States, Japan does not want to face such a threat undefended. Unlike governments in Europe and Canada, the Japanese realize it is not "instability" in relations among civilized nations that is the greatest threat to world peace, but the schemes of unpredictable rogue states.

[knighthawk]

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