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.
Don’t forget about Zipang.
Excuse my slow-wittedness, but how do two nuclear tests resolve Liancourt? I realise it’s tangential to your post, but if Japan has nukes (one test) and South Korea has them (the second test), doesn’t that just mean you have a “now with nuclear weapons!” territorial dispute?
Or are you advocating that the two sides take advantage of Liancourt’s prime location as a potential nuclear test site and, well, ‘resolve’ the issue as you say (again, apologies if I’m killing the joke here)
Totally off the topic (sorry, Joshua!), but Alcibiades: I’d be interested in hearing how you selected “Alcibiades” as your moniker, given that I find him one of the most fascinating individuals in ancient history and have indeed used the moniker myself in the past.
Gene,
I think Joshua is trying to suggest that South Korea would be more responsible with its rhetoric and curb some of its histrionic belligerence toward Japan, if the latter possesses nuclear weapons.
If this is what he is indeed suggesting, then I find it perfectly plausible, as South Korea’s anti-Japanese rhetoric exhibits a classic bully mentality, and the best way to shut bullies up is to wave a large club in their direction.
Check out this old post by Abiola (which was actually inspired by Joshua’s earlier post):
http://foreigndispatches.typepad.com/dispatches/2007/02/explaining_kore.html
The short answer is: I took a class on Greek and Persian history. He seemed like an interesting fellow: constantly switching sides, hoarding money, and possibly cavorting with a Spartan general’s wife.
Plus, he had one of the few names I could reliably spell. It was either him or Pericles.
Won Joon Choe: But if Japan goes nuclear, surely South Korea would too. I don’t see that strategic imbalance lasting long, especially in the face of the South Korean hatred you cite.
Mr. Rayburn,
Again, this is pure speculation on my part, but the logic could be that two armed men would be less likely to engage in rhetorical pyrotechnics than two unarmed men.
Alcibiades,
Of course, Alcibiades was a “morally interesting” case. He was the consummate individualist in a communitarian cosmos, as well as an infamous sybarite.
Yet he is much more than that. To begin with, he may have been one of the most talented statesmen of antiquity. Thucydides even implies that Athens would have succeeded in its daring–perhaps wild–Sicilian enterprise if Alcibiades were not recalled as a result of the farce regarding the hermae. There are also some who think he was the intellectual equal of Plato and Xenophon–Socrates’ other famous students.
But my unending fascination with him has primarily to do with his archetypal position within the tradition of philosophy as an experiment gone wrong of sorts. That is, to be succinct, he represents what can go wrong when the best natures are seduced away from philosophy or contemplation by the siren song of politics or worldly success.
Won Joon Choe: I agree with that. I’d just disagree with characterizing a tempering of rhetoric as “resolving” the conflict (as Joshua puts it); the fundamental issue would still remain.
A little late to the debate here, but….I thought a sizable portion of South Koreans already considered the North’s nukes their own? that that was a prime reason why the society in the South did not register much of an opinion about the North currently having and testing nukes….???….