North Korean tests scare Japan

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US is key to countering Pyongyang's potential nuclear threat to Japan.

Published: July 5, 2009 10:35 ET
Updated: July 6, 2009 05:32 ET

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The idea that the world’s only officially pacifist nation will develop a first-strike capability is pure hawkish fantasy, said the defense minister, Yasukazu Hamada.

“We have … made clear that we do not use force in order to resolve conflict situations and so whatever steps we take will be only for defense,” he said.

But other defense experts in his Liberal Democratic Party’s Policy Research Council disagree, proposing recently that Japan acquire the capability to strike enemy bases when threatened with imminent attack.

While Japan’s neighbors fret over this potentially momentous change in its defense stature, the influential Yomiuri newspaper has weighed in with support for the hawks.

A healthy Japan-U.S. security partnership, it said, must allow the former “to effectively exercise its right of collective self-defense, which is currently banned by the government’s interpretation of the constitution.”

On the face of it, Japan has every reason to explore measures beyond those hammered out in New York last month.

While its long-range capability remains technologically flawed, North Korea is believed to possess around 200 medium-range Rodong missiles capable of striking Japan. The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, has done nothing to quell fears that Japan will be high on Pyongyang’s list of potential targets when, and if, his weapons experts succeed in miniaturizing nuclear warheads.

Yet despite the high stakes, Japan finds itself in the familiar role of bit-part player.

In an unprecedented move, the U.S. gave its ally no advance warning of North Korea's May 25 nuclear test. And while its nemesis across the Japan Sea seeks assurances for its survival well beyond the anticipated handover of power from the ailing Kim to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, those guarantees, if they ever materialize, will come from Washington, not Tokyo.

"If there is any point at which [North Korea] would be serious about stopping nuclear development, it will be when the U.S. fully recognizes it as a significant and meaningful nuclear power with a deterrent capability," said Hiroyasu Akutsu, a North Korean specialist at the National Institute for Defence Studies in Tokyo.

“Until then, North Korea will not stop developing nuclear weapons … in other words, until the U.S. and North Korea enter nuclear disarmament talks as equal nuclear powers.

“I think it’s unrealistic, but that’s their aim.”

All of Japan will be hoping that he is right about the first part.

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Comments:

1 Comments.

Posted by cliffyworld on July 5, 2009 12:17 ET

The President needs to step up to the plate and reaffirm a strong, long-term US military commitment to its many allies in the region and not reply with weak rhetoric to a narcissistic dictator. For more, please read the artilce titled "Obama Manifesto" posted at http://www.cliffyworld.com

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