Will Japan Go Nuclear?

Posted October 22, 2008

Now that the Bush administration has removed North Korea from the State Department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism, the regime in Pyongyang has resumed dismantling the nuclear reactor at Yongbyon. But there is no reason to celebrate. To the contrary, this could be a large step towards Japan’s concluding that it needs nuclear weapons for its security.

The public face of Japan’s anger is that Bush allowed North Korea to backtrack on commitments to investigate the fate of Japanese abducted by North Korea two decades ago. But Japan also feels betrayed on issues vital to its nuclear security.

Japan is furious because the Bush administration, in its dying days, has done exactly what it accused the Clintonites of doing—rewarding North Korea for bad behavior. Why? Because the North Koreans are masters of brinkmanship, blackmail and extortion. They have exploited Bush’s need for a foreign policy “legacy."

The North Koreans held a gun to President Bush’s head by threatening to test another nuclear weapon. They have also been making preparations for another round of missile tests, knowing that U.S. surveillance satellites were watching. Nice work for a small country with a near-collapsed economy. Even more so because the health of the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il is doubtful, and the succession is not secure.

We have seen this movie before. North Korea has just “sold” its nuclear reactor at Yongbyon for the third time since 1994, and for an even higher price. In return for the usual promises that North Korea will dismantle Yongbyon, the United States will provide even more fuel aid than under the 1994 and 2007 agreements.

With North Korea now removed from the State department’s list of states that sponsor terrorism, it will be eligible for direct U.S. aid, as well as international loans and other benefits. The United States also expects Japan to help pay for this new agreement.

But Japan is balking. Indeed, it has reason to fear that the North Koreans, once they have pocketed these concessions, will present other demands. These might include a “nonaggression pact” with America and a “peace treaty” that will include the removal of remaining U.S. forces from South Korea.

And what of America’s previous insistence that North Korean “denuclearization” be complete, verifiable and irreversible? Gone, but covered by a fig leaf. North Korea will not be required to own up to its uranium-enrichment program, hidden underground. Nor will it be required to give up the six to a dozen nuclear weapons that it has already built. And North Korea won’t be held to account for its proliferation of fissile material to places such as Syria and Iran.

Indeed, since the early 1990s, North Korea has cooperated with Iran both in missile development and clandestine nuclear programs. Last year, Israeli aircraft destroyed a replica of the Yongbyon nuclear reactor in Syria, built with North Korean and Iranian help. But the Bush administration, in the interests of securing a “breakthrough” with North Korea, has been very quiet about Syria.

As if all this were not bad enough, Japan has reason to fear that collaboration with Iran has helped North Korea with warhead design. North Korea is now believed to be capable of mounting nuclear warheads on its Nodong missiles that target nearly all of Japan. Japan also has reason to worry that the United States has not been honest with Japan on this matter.

Indeed, three years ago, Admiral Jacoby, then director of the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, said that he believed North Korea could weaponize a missile. Of course, Admiral Jacoby did not volunteer this assessment. Rather, he said it during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee under questioning by Senator Hilary Clinton. The reaction of the Bush administration, typically, was to discredit Admiral Jacoby. But no doubt the Japanese did not forget, and have recently been comparing notes with Israel about North Korea’s proliferation activities with Iran and Syria.

Americans might think that Japan has no reason to think that the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” might leak. After all, during the Cold War, Japan was targeted by many more (and more accurate) Soviet missiles than is the case now. But at that time, Japan had no reason to worry. That was because the “glue” that held the U.S.-Japan alliance together was fixed enmity between the U.S. and the USSR. The Japanese knew that without access to bases in Japan, America could not target the vulnerable Soviet Far East, and thus credibly threaten Moscow that war in the West would also mean war in the East. Thus Japan had enormous leverage on its alliance.

But Japan has not been able to count unreservedly on America since 1971, when Nixon forged his de facto alliance with China without informing Japan in advance. And now with the Cold War over, some of the “glue” in the U.S.-Japan alliance has dissolved.

Moreover, Japan’s worries about its nuclear security are not confined to North Korea. China also targets Japan with nuclear weapons. Indeed, Japan is starting to build military capabilities against China, but without needing to say so—the palpable North Korean threat is ample public justification. The U.S. and China may not be friends, but they are not enemies either. So will the U.S. extended deterrence “work” in a strategic environment very different from that of the Cold War?

Japan has always kept its nuclear options open, as indeed it must when it lives in such a dangerous region. Trust is always in short supply when it comes to nuclear weapons. The United States hopes that Japan will remain content to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and missile defense. But will it, when President Bush has just betrayed Japan on a vital issue of nuclear security? So will George W. Bush’s legacy in East Asia turn out to be a nuclear Japan?

Robyn Lim is adjunct professor in the Department of Political Science and International Affairs, University of Queensland.