Posted on 11/28/2002 7:24:17 AM PST by vannrox
Todd Miller
Thursday, November 28, 2002 at 17:00 JST
WASHINGTON — Under growing threats from neighboring countries, including nuclear weapons-seeking North Korea and a rising China, the possibility of Japan building a nuclear arsenal is gaining more attention among U.S. experts.
U.S. experts on Asian security discussed the potential of Japan and other Asian countries acquiring nuclear weapons at a panel session of a conference hosted by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace earlier this month on nuclear nonproliferation issues.
The panel titled, "New Nuclear Powers in Asia," was tasked with examining the Asian proliferation environment, particularly of key U.S. allies in the region.
It included Kurt M Campbell, former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Asia and the Pacific, and Leonard S Spector, former deputy secretary of energy for arms control and nonproliferation.
Campbell, currently senior vice president at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said there was no reason for immediate alarm over nuclear issues in Asia but that more discussion should take a higher priority in the U.S. government.
He outlined "10 potential triggers" that might lead countries to reevaluate their nonnuclear status.
Near the top of the list and of particular concern for Japan were "rogue states" such as North Korea.
"If North Korea was successful in developing nuclear weapons, the word has always been that perhaps South Korea, Japan and other countries would follow," Campbell said.
Another on the list was "regime pessimism," where a country that once had a dynamic future now faces economic stagnation and the possible rise of nearby countries and turns to nuclear weapons.
"Obviously the country in Asia that all of us are concerned about...would be Japan," Campbell said. "Japan clearly has experienced what economic commentators often refer to as the 'lost decade of the 1990s' in which their economic performance was lower than any industrialized democracy."
"Japan could reconsider issues associated with nuclear weapons because of one of several factors, one of which being a persistent and growing pessimism with the strategic leadership, both in the Diet and also in their security and foreign policy establishments," he said.
Campbell said the "most worrisome" relationship in Asia is between Japan and China. Japan is "extraordinarily anxious about China's rise," he said.
The panelists agreed that the near-term problem in Northeast Asia is the relationship between Japan and China, as opposed to between the United States and China.
Benjamin L Self, a senior associate at the Henry L. Stimson Center, said he was "not concerned" about Japan, considering nuclear weapons, and felt "particularly sanguine" compared with Campbell's analysis.
He also offered that a nuclear Japan might not be so outrageous for the U.S.
"I am wondering as we think about a nuclear Japan, are we afraid of this?" Self asked, adding, "I think we just sort of have a blanket assumption that it would be a bad thing." v
"It's important to investigate because the Japanese decision about whether to go nuclear or not depends in some sense on what the rest of the world thinks," Self said.
Spector, currently deputy director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, said the debate about a nuclear Japan is nothing new and that it has been seen as recently as 1976 when Japan considered joining the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT).
"We are witnessing something, I would say, of a replay of the nuclear debate in Japan as the country decides whether to embrace missile defense," Spector said.
Spector explained the "most serious challenges" might come in South Korea and Taiwan, where the threats are more immediate and the commitments to nonproliferation are "perhaps less ingrained than in Japan."
Self underscored that a lot countries are suspicious of Japan gaining a nuclear arsenal and point to it being close already by having plutonium recycling plants and the seldom talked about 700 tons of plutonium stockpiles — part of its nuclear energy policy.
He said, however, that there is a strategy behind such a credible potential. By displaying constraint and not proliferating, the stockpile acts as a deterrent for countries like North Korea, he said. In this way Japan also shows constraint by supporting the NPT.
The panelists also discussed the idea of the nuclear taboo declining in Asia.
Campbell played down the decline and its effect on Japan.
"It would be a serious mistake to underestimate the very powerful pacifist and antinuclear sentiment that I think still animates much of the national policy," he said.
Japan is the only nation to be attacked by nuclear weapons and has, since the late 1960s, maintained principles of "not producing, not possessing, and not allowing nuclear weapons into the country."
Self said, however, the general lessening of the nuclear taboo has led Japan to consider the issue of whether or not there is a rationale for having nuclear weapons.
"And so far there has been a chorus of silence in terms of somebody stepping up and saying 'yes, there are good reasons,' when in fact, nobody thinks that," Self said.
"It makes no strategic sense for Japan to acquire nuclear weapons because Japan is much better off in its current strategic relationship of dependence on the U.S. nuclear umbrella," Self said.
That sentiment was echoed by a Japanese government official when asked at another Carnegie panel discussion on the chances of Japan developing nuclear weapons.
Takehiro Funakoshi, first secretary at the Japanese Embassy in Washington, said there are two reasons why Japan has no interest in arming itself with nuclear weapons.
"Japan is quite totally, economically interdependent with the international community," Funakoshi said. "So if we receive economic sanctions, that very weight will fall into a very difficult situation."
"The second reason is that now if you look at the security environment in Asia compared with other regions, the security infrastructure in Asia is working," Funakoshi said. "So the security infrastructure in Asia is kind of maintained by the division of labor between the U.S. and other allies." (Kyodo News)
Note to Tojo: Payback's a bitch.
Not.
"Japan is quite totally, economically interdependent with the international community," Funakoshi said. "So if we receive economic sanctions, that very weight will fall into a very difficult situation."
"Difficult" to Japanese means something very different than the English dictionary definition. It's basically synonymous with impossible.
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