Brad Glosserman » Japan Peers Into the Abyss

By Brad Glosserman

It is an item of faith for many Japanese – and many Japan watchers – that their country will never build or acquire nuclear weapons. Japan’s nonnuclear status, a product of both the searing experience of August 1945 and a calculation of the strategic value of nuclear weapons, has been a pillar of the nation’s postwar political identity. Recent developments could force Japan to reconsider the nuclear option, however. The U.S must step up, engage Japanese decision-makers in a serious discussion of their security concerns and work to allay them. Failure to do so could push Tokyo over the nuclear brink.

Japan’s status as the only atom-bombed nation made highly charged any discussion of nuclear weapons. An education system dominated by the left used the nation’s history to reinforce pacifism and to subtly critique a conservative foreign policy that relied on the U.S. for national security. The result was a virtual “taboo” that headed off any discussion of nuclear weapons and the creation of a third rail of national politics: Japanese politicians who even suggested that it might make sense for Japan to have a nuclear weapons capability were immediately ostracized or punished.

In fact, however, there was a rational and calculated examination of the nuclear option in Japan. In keeping with the sensitivity of the issue, studies were conducted at arms-length – usually academics reporting to government bodies – so that they would not be official assessments. These all concluded that the nuclear option made no sense for Japan: the country had no strategic depth and was therefore vulnerable to a second strike; it would undermine Japan’s diplomatic standing as it would repudiate a pillar of the country’s postwar diplomacy; acquisition of nuclear weapons would create regional instability and increase suspicions about Japan; and it would damage, if not rupture, the alliance with the U.S., contributing to Japan’s political isolation in the region. In short, a very real cost-benefit analysis also contributed to Japan’s nonnuclear status.

That calculus may be changing. Recent changes in the regional security environment are pushing Japanese security planners to re-examine the nuclear option. This process is just beginning – it appears to be the start of a debate about having a nuclear debate – but there is no mistaking the unease about developments and their implications for Japan’s national security.

One source of concern is the U.S.-India civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. Japanese worry about this deal because it appears to reward bad behavior (India has never ratified the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty), it could set a precedent that would encourage other countries to proliferate, and it appears to downplay the significance of the NPT, making it just another item in the U.S. diplomatic toolkit, to be discarded when geopolitics dictates, rather than the cornerstone of the global nonproliferation regime.

Security planners in Tokyo worry that Pyongyang is closely watching those negotiations and using them as a benchmark for its own multilateral talks. (Delhi insists its experience is unique and any deal will not set a precedent.) Shifts in U.S. policy – its readiness to talk directly to the North Koreans, to roll back financial sanctions and to move forward with normalization even though Japanese concerns about the fate of its abductees have not been met – harden Japanese fears that the U.S. will make similar compromises when it comes to denuclearizing the Korean Peninsula and Washington may settle for a “gray” nuclear capability in the North, neither confirmed nor denied. While reluctant to say so out loud, Japanese are especially worried that a reunified Korea – even headed by the South – would retain that nuclear capability. If a democratic India can be trusted with nuclear weapons, why not a democratic unified Korea? Japanese are well aware of the animosity that colors its relationship with South Korea and wonder: What would the U.S. do in the event of a conflict between its two Northeast Asian allies?