Proliferation Press News-Round Up: Japan to go Nuclear?

Will Japan go nuclear? Today most news-wires say no. But what does this mean? And how is Japan responding to the North Korean tests?

Foreign Policy places Japan at the top of their The List: The Next Nuclear States. Why? Japan’s long-lasting technological ability to produce a nuclear arsenal combined with its new found fear of a nuclear North Korea.

But isn't the Japanese public extremely pacifist and anti-nuclear?

Martin Flecker of the New York Times investigates the effect of North Korea’s nuclear test on Japanese public opinion:

If the North did explode a nuclear device, analysts said the effects on Japanese public opinion may take time to appear. That’s what happened after the North’s 1998 test firing a multistage Taepodong 2 missile over Japan. While Japan’s initial reaction was muted, public opinion ended up moving dramatically in favor of building a stronger defense.

In the following years, that allowed Japan to begin adding weapons that just a few years before would have been unthinkable. Among these were Japan’s first spy satellite, a troop transport ship now under construction that experts say could serve as a small aircraft carrier and aerial tankers that would allow Japanese fighter planes to reach North Korea and other countries.

Kyoko Altman’s Washington Post blog, Japan’s Exploding Nationalism, seems to agree with Flecker-- downplaying the recent rhetorical cooling of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (who earlier had stated support for a more militarized and nuclear Japan). Painting Japanese PM Shinzo Abe's recent gestures of reconciliation with China and South Korea as superficial, Altman concludes her post:

When the Korean Central News Agency issued the statement saying the nuclear test "greatly encouraged" those who "have wished to have a powerful self-reliant defense capability" it could also have been speaking for Japan. One crucial difference: If the world's second largest economy resolves to build a nuclear weapon, there will be no need to question whether it will work.

But the Los Angeles Times offers a more nuanced assessment of Japan’s nuclear posture. Rather than looking Japanese security in a nuclear vacuum, Bruce Wallace fleshes out the conservative agenda of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But he also points to the strong anti-nuclear sentiment of Japan:

But the new prime minister has tried to crush any suspicion that he favors taking Japan nuclear. Abe wants to avoid creating a hothouse atmosphere that could imperil his ambitious conservative agenda of domestic reforms. The core of his program, from rewriting the pacifist constitution to restoring patriotism and traditional Japanese values in education, is a radical challenge to the postwar order that is the legacy of the U.S. occupation.

To pave the way, Abe has moved within his first month in office to assuage criticism that he is a hawk whose policies will lead to a renewed militarism. He made trips to Beijing and Seoul that, on the surface at least, have improved Tokyo's relations with those capitals. Keeping the Chinese relationship on track is particularly crucial to Abe, and press reports here this week said the prime minister had assured visiting Chinese officials that Japan has no intention of developing a nuclear arsenal.

The North Korean bomb offers those three countries a window to come together against a new threat, even if they disagree on how to discourage Kim Jong Il from further belligerence. Keeping the focus on North Korea's capabilities also provides Japan with political cover to continue modernizing its military.

Tom Plate, in his New Nation editorial, demands we not overreact to North Korea's recent nuclear tests:

The shaking could be due to the mass collapse of thousands upon thousands of North Koreans from starvation, or even from the raucous rattling of malfunctioning test rockets that come crashing to the ground shortly after take-off. Some day perhaps, an odd and ominous sound may be triggered by the surprise thud of a thunderous Chinese coup against Pyongyang.

Don't laugh. This most unlikable regime's widely publicised boast of having conducted a small explosion cannot paper over the fact that North Korea is a pouting paper tiger. To keep things in perspective, the alleged nuclear test was minute in size so small, in fact, that a conventional explosion could have had the same seismic impact.

Hoax or not, fear often spreads disproportionately to reality.

Conclusion: Abe's Smart Diplomacy and Japan's Non-Nuclear Stance

So what does this all mean? Will Japan prusue nuclear weapons in the near future?

Chisaki Watanabe’s Associated Press piece makes it clear that Japan will not join the nuclear club tomorrw. It is also clear that any argument for an evitable Japanese nuclear arsenal is non-sense. Such a perspective oversimplifies Japan's security situation, and reflects the poor neo-realist logic that led Kenneth Waltz to predict a German nuclear arsenal in the post-Cold War Era. (For those of you who don't track proliferation, we’ve been waiting for over 10 years for that prognostication to be borne out).

Barring some exogenous shock, I don't foresee any change in Japan's nuclear posture anytime soon. North Korea is not a grave threat to Japanese security; Japan's nuclear taboo is still strong; the American-Japanese relationship is solid; and, probably most significantly, Prime Minister Abe can't afford to get trapped in a nuclear quagmire before achieving other important political aims.

Given Japan's already considerable and emerging military capabilities, keeping the nuclear partially openned (as Abe has done by pledging 1) not to go nuclear but 2) to have an national discussion on the subject) serves Japanese diplomatic ends better than actually obtaining nuclear weapons.

So what does this mean for proliferation-trackers? Keep your focus on the Middle East, not Asia.