Henry Sokolski, Wall Street Journal: Japan and South Korea May Soon Go Nuclear
The longtime status quo is crumbling and plutonium stockpiles are rising.
On Friday North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un praised his country’s recent hydrogen bomb test and satellite launch as “unprecedented” achievements that will “bring the final victory of the revolution.” Such rhetoric is nothing new, but North Korea’s nuclear-weapons program and a growing sense that security arrangements with the U.S. aren’t sufficient has eroded the Japanese taboo against nuclear weapons. On April 1, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cabinet announced that Japan’s constitution did not ban his country from having or using nuclear arms.
Meanwhile, South Korea’s ruling-party leaders have urged President Park Geun-hye to stockpile “peaceful” plutonium as a military hedge against its neighbors. A Feb. 19 article in Seoul’s leading conservative daily, the Chosun Ilbo, went so far as to detail how South Korea could use its existing civilian nuclear facilities to build a bomb in 18 months.
Japan and South Korea are party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and Tokyo’s antinuclear-weapons stance dates to 1945 and the nuclear devastation the U.S. wreaked on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But that won’t necessarily stop either country from joining the nuclear club—or at least positioning themselves to do so quickly—if they feel the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” is folding.
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WNU Editor: Unless the U.S. gives up and leaves Asia .... I do not see either South Korea or Japan producing nuclear weapons. Positioning themselves to be able to develop and produce nuclear weapons ... yes .... actually making and producing them .... no. The political and public will in both countries is not there .... at least for now.
1 comment:
TY Obozo!
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