India’s Defence Secretary RK Singh was in Tokyo earlier this week, following up on some of the outcomes linked to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s visit to Delhi last week.
Discussions focused not only on bilateral matters. China’s recent test of the 10,000-km JL-3 missile from a submarine may have also figured, given that India’s land borders and Japan’s maritime frontiers are already under pressure from Chinese transgressions.
China’s missile test has reopened an old debate in Japan: should it go nuclear? The critics say nuclear submarines are expensive, take many years to build and require a highly trained crew. Maintenance is another issue, then there’s the need for a regular supply of nuclear fuel.
It is also argued that Japan is better served by its 22 conventionally-powered diesel-electric submarines fitted with conventional missiles.
Nevertheless, the Japan Innovation Party (JIP), which is in the ruling coalition, has demanded that the country build a fleet of at least eight nuclear submarines with all the bells and whistles.
Senior JIP MP Seiji Maehara warned that “China is expanding its naval reach increasingly into the Second Island Chain in the Pacific, and operations there are likely to become mainstream.”
The Second Island Chain sits more than 2,400-km east of the First Island Chain and includes besides two Japanese islands, also the US territories of Guam, the Marianas and Micronesia. Given the growth in Chinese naval and air capabilities, the US is hardening its bases here to ensure strategic dominance and freedom of navigation.
Add to that the North Korea with its Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un’s tendency to issue threats targeting US, Japan and others, and firing missiles over Japan. Pyongyang has been advancing its nuclear weapons programme with Russian and/or Chinese help.
In that sense, Japan’s plate is full. But a key question for the planners in Tokyo is how would the US react to Japan going nuclear? Since last year, the comment by an adviser to the prime minister that Japan should go nuclear, has spread.
Dr Satoru Nagao, a non-resident scholar at the Hudson Institute, told StratNewsGlobal on the phone from Tokyo that “Japan only needs some months to have a nuclear bomb. Japan already has a long range rocket for space and is developing many other types of long range missiles. It means Japan can possess a nuclear weapon within a short period.”
But it’s never that simple. As Dr Nagao noted, “Japan’s concern is its relationship with the US. By going nuclear Japan is telling the US ‘We do not trust your nuclear weapon’. The US will see Japan as the potential enemy. Therefore, Japan’s nuclear strategy remains under ‘option open’.”
“We can possess (a nuclear weapon) but we will not possess,” Dr Nagao said adding a significant caveat that “We will possess only when the US abandons Japan.”
Keeping all this in mind, the late prime minister Shinzo Abe had proposed “nuclear sharing” with the US, meaning the US brings its nuclear weapons to Japan and share’s them.”
The other idea behind this was if US nuclear weapons were on Japanese soil, any potential adversary would have to think twice before striking at Japan. Doing so may see the US retaliate with devastating consequences.
But Abe’s successor rejected the “nuclear sharing” idea citing constitutional constraints and non-nuclear principles. Nevertheless, it did set Japan on the path of conventional rearmament and developing offensive long range strike capabilities.
