East Asian Proliferation Concerns

By Fester:

I want to riff on a piece by our partner, the Global Post, that reports on South Korean and Japanese nuclear weaponization efforts in response to the North Korean nuclear test that looks to be a highly probable failure.

Considered technologically capable of developing nuclear weapons quickly, Japan and South Korea have eschewed that path up to now and relied on the U.S. nuclear umbrella.

However, in the wake of Monday’s test, Yoshihisa Komori, a commentator sometimes called the “Rush Limbaugh of Japan,” echoed recent calls from elsewhere on the Japanese right that his countrymen at least debate exercising the nuclear option. Meanwhile the conservative Seoul daily Chosun Ilbo suggested that South Korea, despite previous commitments to the contrary, “now requires a deterrent.”

There are a few 'minor' problems with encouraging South Korean and Japanese nuclear break-outs. The Global Post identifies the biggest one:

Nuclear arms in the hands of South Korea and Japan, alarming China, could trigger a “massive” Northeast Asian arms race and at the same time tempt countries in other regions to step over the nuclear threshold, making a hash of international nonproliferation arrangements.

Encouraging allied break-outs makes China extraordinarily nervous for historical and future looking reasons. Chinese historical memory has stong negative remembrances of the Japanese invasion and occupation of both Manchuria and the rest of the country during the 30s and the Second World War. China was weak, fractured and incapable of producing sufficient modern weaponry to resist effectively then, and will not allow themselves to be placed into the same situation. This will lead to an expansion of the Chinese nuclear arsenal and continued improvements in their delivery systems above and beyond currently assumed trends. Furthermore, China is one of the few nations with any effective influence over North Korea. If Chinese interests are threatened, what is their incentive to use their influence for pro-Western ends? What is the quid when there is no quo?

Furthermore adding South Korea and or Japan to the declared nuclear powers does not add to the aggregate security of the Korean pennisula if one assumes that the US nuclear umbrella is credible. Given current North Korean incapabilities of either building a workable light nuclear weapon that can fit on a long range missile AND an inability to build a working long range missile, the trade-off of Los Angeles for Seoul is not a credible threat. Instead it destabilizes the regional dynamic beyond the immediate North Korea problem.

It also destroys any legitimacy to anti-proliferation efforts as the rule set will further be reinforced that proliferation is okay for US approved countries and that the NPT is merely a cudgel against opponents of the US and not an actual international norm.

Comments

[Peter G.]

I was very much afraid this might happen. In the comments to one of Steve's posts I said that only real action by the Security Council is likely to head off this new impetus to proliferation. What is currently right wing rhetoric in Japan and South Korea could easily become public policy if there is any doubt about the commitment of the US to the security of those countries.