Japan Spirals Into Insecurity
by Robyn Lim
Far EastEconomic Review
September 2006

Ms. Lim is a professor of international relations at Nanzan University in  Nagoya. From 1988-94 she was an analyst for Australia's Office of National Assessments. 

NORTH KOREA'S NUCLEAR and missile brinkmanship risks destabilizing  North Asia. This is not only because of the threat posed by Pyongyang's possession of missiles and weapons of mass destruction–although that alone represents a huge concern. More worrying is the prospect that certain circumstances might lead Tokyo to develop its own nuclear weapons in response.

Increasingly in Japan there is talk of a possible pre-emptive strike against North Korea,  especially since the July 5 multiple missile launches by the Kim Jong Il regime. Fueling this is a growing fear that the  U.S. "nuclear umbrella," combined with the prospect of missile defense, might not be enough to assuage Japan 's growing strategic anxieties. If Japan were to acquire nuclear weapons to ward off the North Korea threat, it would at the same time also be acquiring the ability to deter China. Thus the region could be on the brink of dangerous nuclear confrontations over which the United States would have little influence.

The July 5 missile launches showed that the threat to Japan has increased substantially since 1993, when North Korea first tested a Nodong medium range missile capable of reaching most parts of Japan. While the July 5 launch of the long-range Taepodong II failed, six Nodong and short-range Scud missiles did not. In fact, these missiles were subsequently assessed as more accurate and thus more dangerous to Japan than previously believed. North Korea apparently has more than two hundred Nodong missiles hidden in caves on mobile launchers. Unlike the long-range missiles, these could be launched with little warning.

Although Japan is faced with a substantially increased North Korean missile and nuclear threat, Japanese leaders know that the U.S. cannot credibly threaten Pyongyang, despite America's immense air and naval power in the Western Pacific. In 2003, the U.S. was able to invade Iraq more or less on the basis of its own resources, but that is not an option available in relation to North Korea. Unlike Iraq, North Korea could retaliate.

Moreover, Washington cannot afford to ignore China's vital interests on the Korean peninsula. In 1950, America discounted China's strategic imperative to maintain a buffer state south of the Yalu River. That miscalculation led to China's intervention in the Korean War resulting in an ugly ground conflict that ended in stalemate and the loss of 65,000 American lives. The Chinese military still maintains close relations with its counterpart in North Korea. Indeed, there are said to be underground tunnels that allow weapons and other materials to be transported between allies without being detected by U.S. satellite surveillance. In some circumstances, China might still be willing to go to war to preserve the regime in North Korea. With American ground forces overstretched as a consequence of a botched occupation of  Iraq, the U.S. cannot afford to discount this possibility. 

To make matters worse, Washington has a very wobbly ally in Seoul. South Koreans are especially afraid of the North's forward-deployed artillery and rockets, which could lay down half a million rounds an hour on  Seoul. Although South Korea 's economy is now at least 20 times that of the North, the South has been unable to translate that economic supremacy into political leverage. South Koreans also fear the economic costs of reunification, and thus most of them prefer to appease the North.

That has certainly been the case under the administration of President Roh Myoo Hyun, elected in late 2001. Mr. Roh's term in office ends in January 2008, and his political fortunes are now at such a low point that it seems likely the conservatives will return to power. Even so, perhaps the rot in the alliance now runs too deep. And as long as the South Korean government's support remains shaky, the U.S. will have no credible means of threatening the government in the North.

The fact that America lacks a credible military option became even more obvious after senior members of the former Clinton administration publicly advocated a preemptive attack on North Korea's Musudan-ri launch facility. In an op-ed in The Washington Post on June 22, former Secretary of Defense William Perry and Former Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter said that the U.S. could attack Musudan-ri with submarine-launched cruise missiles loaded with conventional warheads.

Messrs. Perry and Carter were remark­ably sanguine about the risks of war. South Koreans, they said, should understand that U.S. territory was now also being threatened, and so America must respond. If North Korea invaded the South, they said, the result would be the certain end of Kim Jong Il's regime "within a few bloody weeks of war." They also claimed that Japan would quietly support a U.S. preemptive strike on Musadan-ri.

The Bush administration was quick to disavow the Carter-Perry preemptive strike talk. Instead, the U.S. president has preferred to emphasize multilateral diplomacy in the form of the Six Party Talks convened by China. Indeed, China holds most of the keys in relation to the peninsula, and is now the de facto ally of both Koreas.

Yet while relations between Beijing and Pyongyang are friendly on the whole,  North Korea is blackmailing even the Chinese. Like the U.S.,  China is not looking for another war on the Korean peninsula. Indeed, China publicly said it did not want North Korea to test its Taepodong II missile, and wanted North Korea to return to the Six Party Talks. Thus North Korea's launches were as much a slap in the face to China as to all the other interested parties. In the wake of the July missile launches, President Hu Jintao reportedly sent a stiffly worded letter to Kim Jong Il.

China wants North Korea to embark on the path that Deng Xiaoping set China on in 1978 to accept the victory of capitalism over socialism, while retaining Leninist party control.  China could then hope to harness South Korean technology to help transform the North Korean economy, while seeking to ensure that any reunification take place on terms set in Beijing. For its part, the U.S. could live with that outcome since it would mean that China would remain strong enough to prevent agreeable behavior by a reunified Korea. It would be in China's interests to keep the peninsula nonnuclear, lest it trigger a nuclear response from Japan. 

North Korea  fears the consequences of opening up and is bent not only on maintaining the regime but ensuring the succession to Kim Jong Il. Thus China has unable to impose its will, and so North Korea is blackmailing Beijing. It is doing so by holding both economic and critical interests hostage. China, which recognized South Korea in 1992, now has large equities in the South Korean as a consequence of its own huge policy change under Deng. Thus a threat Seoul is also a threat to economic Chinese interests,  at a time when China needs constant rapid economic growth to deal with rising problems of social instability.

North Korea also blackmails China because of China's fears of "something worse" on its vital Manchurian frontier. However frustrated China is with North Korea, from China's perspective, all likely alternatives to Kim Jong Il are worse, including regime collapse that could send millions of desperate refugees flooding into  Northeast China.

North Korea serves China's interests simply by continuing to exist, so China is willing to supply North Korea with fuel and food and to use its veto in the United Nations Security Council to prevent tough sanctions being imposed on  North Korea. And in some circumstances, as noted,  China might still be willing to risk war in order to preserve its troublesome ally in North Korea.

Tokyo: On the Defensive 

IT IS NOT surprising that the talk of the preemptive strike against North Korea in the U.S. following the July missile launches found its echo in Japan. Both the head of Japan's Defense Agency (JDA), Fukushiro Nukaga, and Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe said that Japan had the right to make preemptive strikes against North Korean missiles once it had developed the capability to do so. Currently, Japan lacks the capability to attack anyone. But that would start to change if Japan were to procure land attack versions of anti-ship missiles that could be launched in the air.  Japan has also expressed interest in the recent past in purchasing Tomahawk land attack cruise missiles from the United States.

But Japan's talk of pre-emptive strike evoked a predictably fierce response from South Korea and raised eyebrows elsewhere. So Japanese leaders stopped talking publicly about preemptive options and instead asked the U.S. to help fill the gaps created by Japan's perception of an enhanced threat from North Korea's missiles.

Indeed, Japan–after dragging its feet for years on missile defense–has been galvanized into action by North Korea's latest provocation, as well as increasing indications that Pyongyang might conduct an underground nuclear test, The JDA has now made missile defense a priority and plans to request a record budget allocation of around $1.9 billion in the fiscal 2007 budget to pay for it. Moreover, for the first time since 1945, Japan has asked the U.S. to beef up its military presence in Japan by sending additional Aegis warships equipped with the SM-3 interceptor mis­sile. (Japan won't have any of its own Aegis warships fitted with SM-3s for another 18 months,) Japan has also asked the U.S. to accelerate the deployment of Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAc-3) missile batter­ies. In addition, the U.S. is reportedly considering the deployment of an addi­tional mobile X-band radar to Japan, to supplement the X-band radar recently in­stalled in northern Honshu. This will give better surveillance of North Korean missile launches.

Yet some important issues remain unre­solved between Washington and Tokyo on what is referred to as the "architecture" of missile defense. This will be a critical issue for defining the future of the alliance, since nuclear weapons bring out the bedrock interests of states. Whose finger will be on the trigger, and what will be the rules of engagement? This problem goes beyond issues of interoperability, on which Japan has been delaying action for years.

One of the key impediments is related to the "collective self-defense" issue, Throughout the Cold War, Japan inter­preted its "peace" constitution to mean that although Japan had the right to collective self-defense (the right of all members of the United Nations), it chose not to exercise that right. This was done in response to a variety of domestic-policy imperatives, not least because it suited most interests in Japan to avoid entanglement in America's wars. Thus, even today, a U.S. aircraft carrier battle group in the Japan Sea, operating in defense of Japan, still cannot communicate in real time with Japanese air defenses. That is very different from standard NATO practice.

One reason that some in Japan are not enthusiastic about promoting seamless interoperability is the power of vested interests–among them Japanese defense contractors–who are pushing the idea of "independent" missile defense. But they have been reluctant to define what they mean by this.

In a visit to Washington in June 2001, then-JDA director Gen Nakatani, told U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld that missile defense would "be operated by  Japan independently." It is noteworthy that in the wake of the 1998 Taepodong I launch,  Japan opted to build its own reconnaissance satellites. That strongly suggested an unwillingness to rely completely on the  U.S. early warning system. 

Mr, Nakatani's remarks were ambiguous. Narrowly interpreted, they could mean "command and control" issues from the perspective of what rules of engagement would apply to Japan's defense force. But Mr. Nakatani's comments could also mean that Japan intended to remain as separate as possible.

This strongly suggests a preference for a missile-defense structure in Japan that would be unacceptable to the U.S. Congress, where there is mounting concern about the huge costs of missile defense at a time when the U.S. defense budget is under great pressure. Moreover, many in Congress regard Japan as a free rider whose contribution to the Iraq war was less than impressive.

Japan does want protection against North Korean and Chinese missiles. Thus many Japanese do see the need to join a U.S.-led global system. They also understand that building an "independent" system, complete with infrared satellites, sensors and advanced radars, would be horrendously expensive at a time when Japan's finances are still in poor shape. Moreover, another big negative to develop­ing its own missile-defense system independently would be that Japan's neighbors would think that Japan was now slipping its leash, preferring no longer to remain a U.S. strategic dependent. This would come at time when tension with its Asian neighbors runs high thanks to Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's annual visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine.

Those in Japan who favor an independently developed missile-defense program continue to worry about becoming embroiled in a U.S.-led global alliance that might restrict Japan's freedom of action, not least in relation to China.  U. S. and Japanese interests, while congruent with respect to China, are far from identical:  U.S. strategic interests are global, while Japan's are much more regionally concentrated.

Thus while North Korea's latest provocations resulted in significant progress in U.S.-Japan cooperation on missile defense, Japan has yet to decide whether to invest in many key aspects of what will be required to make it all work, including a ded­icated national command center. Mr. Abe, who is highly likely to succeed Mr. Koizumi as prime minister in late September, has long indicated that he wants to drop Japan's self-imposed ban on collective self-defense. That step, long overdue, would be a vital first step towards creating a seamlessly interoperable system with the U.S.

But it's not just North Korea's provoca­tive behavior that has helped propel Mr. Abe into the top job in Japan. China has also helped out by poking Japan in the eye ever since the Cold War ended. Indeed, Japan's 2006 Defense White Paper, approved by the cabinet on Aug. 1, had much to say about China's growing military capabilities.

While estimates vary, most informed observers believe that the real rate of China's military spending is at least four times the official estimates. That would mean that in 2006, China will spend some $165 billion–roughly one third of U.S. military spending, and by far the second highest in the world. So China is spending roughly 8% to 9% of GNP on the military, compared to roughly 1% for Japan, and 3.8% for the U. S.

And while Beijing's attention is focused mostly on Taiwan, China's growing capabilities suggest wider ambition–especially China's blue-water ambitions– that no government in Tokyo could afford to ignore. Japan is also watching China's growing missile capabilities, including its long-range ballistic missiles targeting the U.S. and the intermediate range ballistic missiles that can reach Japan.  Beijing is also showing interest in the development of supersonic and highly accurate cruise missiles and buying relevant technology from Russia and Ukraine.

Asia's Nuclear Reaction

JAPAN MIGHT INITIALLY hope that if it ac­quires offensive capabilities, these could remain nonnuclear. Indeed, there are strong domestic antinuclear constituencies, including New Komeito, the coalition partner of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Japan has also been a “model citizen^" as far as the Non-Proliferation Treaty regime has been concerned. There is no sign that the LDP is preparing the public to accept the idea that Japan needs nuclear weapons for its security. It is therefore an exaggeration to say that Japan has a "recessed" nuclear capability.

Yet Japan has kept its options open, as indeed it must when it lives in a potentially dangerous region. During the Cold War, the ruling conservatives fobbed off pressure to incorporate nonnuclear principles into the constitution, which is difficult to alter. But if  Japan begins to lose confidence that the U.S. would indeed be willing to "risk New York to save Tokyo," it will be attracted to the idea of acquiring its own offensive capabilities. It seems unlikely that these would remain nonnuclear, because the alternative to "extended deterrence" is not conventional deterrence, as the arms con­trol fraternity like to think. On the contrary, it is nuclear proliferation.

North Korean and Chinese missiles threaten to lead to nuclear proliferation in North Asia . The countries of  North Asia are all strong states, and the power balance is brittle. So the risk of war arises not because any of the parties want it. Rather, the risk of war arises for the usual reasons, as a consequence of miscalculation when clashes of strategic interests already exist. Would further nuclear proliferation in North Asia make war more or less likely? We simply don't know.

During the Cold War the existence of nuclear weapons acted as the greatest constraint on the likelihood of war. Similarly, in the aftermath of the 1998 nuclear tests be both India and Pakistan, the subcontinent seems to have become less dangerous, even though the issue at the heart of the struggle–Kashmir–remains unresolved. Both sides seem to agree that a fourth war is now unlikely. Yet the history of nuclear deterrence since 1945 does not mean that nuclear weapons reduce the risks of a power struggle in all hands, in whatever circumstances. Indeed, it's hard to be sanguine about proliferation in the Middle East, where anarchy is growing.

In relation to North Asia, it is impos­sible to know what might happen if Japan came to think that it needed nuclear weapons to deter China and North Korea. If Japan developed nuclear weapons, would other U.S. allies, such as Australia, for ex­ample, believe they needed nuclear weapons because they do not trust a Japan that has been unable to resolve the issues from World War II on terms acceptable to its neighbors? And if  Australia now began to feel it needed nuclear weapons, would Indonesia then also want them?

There is no way of knowing the answers to these questions, but we may be on the cusp of finding out. North Korea maintains the initiative and is reportedly making preparations for an underground nuclear test. Its dangerous nuclear and missile brinkmanship could have far-reaching consequences-the precise nature of which is as yet impossible to predict.