http://japan-forward.com/japanese-nuclear-weapons-would-make-japan-less-safe-not-more/
Donald Trump, president-elect of the United States, has said Japan should get nuclear weapons — a sentiment echoed in certain Japanese circles as well. However, both Trump and pro-nuclear advocates in Japan are wrong, because a Japanese nuclear arsenal would actually be counter to Japan’s national interests.
This is not the first time that the idea of a Japanese nuclear capability has been floated: In the late 1960s, after the first Chinese nuclear test, the Japanese government under Eisaku Sato sanctioned multiple feasibility studies on how much time and money Japan would need to develop nuclear weapons. However, these studies unanimously argued against making the political decision to build the bomb, citing the tremendous losses Japan would incur in the forms of insecurity, economic costs, and damage to its diplomatic relations in the international community.
To be clear, if Japan were to acquire the atomic bomb today, it would face the same costs and risks that it would have encountered half a century ago. There are three reasons why:
First, if Japan developed nuclear weapons, it would violate international law. As a signatory to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Japan has committed to remaining non-nuclear and has eschewed the acquisition of offensive arms per Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution. Although recent expansive reinterpretations of the Constitution have given Japan the right to exercise collective self-defense, they still require that any such uses of force be implemented as a last resort and to the minimum extent possible. A Japanese nuclear weapons arsenal would not be, inherently and conclusively, defensive, nor would it advance a “collective self-defense” reinterpretation of the Constitution.
Moreover, while Japan could very well exercise its right to withdraw from the NPT under Article X of that treaty, it is bound by other legal mechanisms, including the Additional Protocol, the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, and a variety of bilateral nuclear energy agreements, under which Japan has committed itself by law to remain a non-nuclear weapons state. Thus, Japan has firmly nested itself in the non-proliferation regime through a complex web of agreements and treaties, and extracting itself from that web would prove legally dubious and politically difficult.
Second, after developing the bomb Japan would find itself in a regional security environment that is actually less stable. History has shown that, during the Cold War, as Japan moved closer to a nuclear weapons capability, decisionmakers in South Korea felt pressured to do the same. What was true then is still true now. And if both Japan and South Korea were to acquire nuclear weapons, this new status quo would make the geopolitical situation in East Asia more unpredictable because of North Korea. Both Tokyo and Seoul have a mutual interest in preventing North Korea from fully operationalizing its nuclear program, but a Japanese move to build the bomb would lead to a South Korean effort to do the same, which in turn would only further provoke Kim Jong-un, thus ultimately eroding Japan’s national security. It should therefore remain a shared goal amongst the countries of East Asia to keep Pyongyang in check by not going nuclear, and the best way to do so is for Japan to refrain from building atomic weapons.
Finally, a Japanese atomic bomb would reflect a very sobering erosion of the Japanese cultural norm against nuclear weapons. As the only country in history to have experienced the horrors of a nuclear attack, Japan has an established and well-known nuclear “allergy” — something the United States has been very much attuned to since the start of the Cold War. In fact, the extension of the U.S. nuclear umbrella over the Japanese country and people since 1951 has helped validate and solidify the Japanese aversion to nuclear weapons, by providing for its security and allowing Japan to invest its resources in economic development. To wit, it is precisely because of the U.S. security guarantee to Japan that, by the late 1960s, Japan had the second-largest economy in the free world.
While some in Japan are now advocating for a break with the past, it is worth taking a moment to fully appreciate the watershed event a Japanese atomic bomb would represent. The nuclear allergy is deeply ingrained into Japanese culture, and other countries that have also sworn off nuclear weapons hold up the Japanese model as an exemplar. If Japan were to break this taboo, it would usher in the beginning of the end of the global norm against nuclear weapons possession, which has been in place since the signing of the NPT in 1968.
Even at the height of the Cold War, when the United States faced a formidable Soviet Union and resurgent China, when its resources were stretched thin due to its involvement in the Korea and Vietnam theaters, and when many people doubted the wisdom of a U.S.-Japanese alliance, Washington did not abandon its strongest ally in East Asia, and the likelihood that the incoming Trump administration will abandon Japan today still remains small. Indeed, it will be much harder for President Trump to reorient the U.S.-Japan relationship than he thinks: as his administration prepares to take office this Friday, he and his staff are already facing the full brunt of the bureaucratic inertia that is the U.S. government.
Therefore, Japanese leaders and the Japanese people should not worry too much about losing the protection of the U.S. nuclear umbrella soon. But even in the event that this were to happen, Japan should maintain its position of global leadership as a champion of non-proliferation and the peaceful uses of nuclear energy. Historical precedent, Japan’s reputation, and indeed the future of global security depend on it.
Rizwan Ladha is a PhD candidate in international security at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, and a research fellow with the Project on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School
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