[jriemer]

A potentially nuclear Japan would be a deterrant against agression and intimidation in the region. Right now, NK can easily vaporize any Japanese city / industrial center. By introducing the possibility of a nuclear Japan, NK would have to keep in their calculus the cost of retaliaion. This "equation" doesn't even factor in the American nuclear weapons in the region.

This is the same mutally assured destruction that has kept the Cold war cool all these years.

[The Pheonix]

The U.S., China, Japan and South Korea do not want war in East Asia at this moment in time, as this would wreck the economies of every one of them, and indeed even the economy of the whole World

One way or the other they will have to rein in the "pscho and sicko" North Korean Regime, without resorting to war