The following is from an article by Nobukatsu Kanehara, former Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary and visiting professor at Doshisha Graduate School of Law, which appeared in the current issue of the monthly magazine Seiron titled "The Diet Has an Obligation to Discuss Nuclear Weapons.
It is a must-read for Japanese citizens and people worldwide.
The emphasis in the text except for the headline is mine.
Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said that we should start a national discussion on sharing nuclear weapons between Japan and the United States.
Former Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, LDP General Affairs Chairman Tatsuo Fukuda, and Political Research Chairman Sanae Takaichi agreed.
I think this is a courageous statement.
Since the end of World War II, many politicians in Japan have consistently evaded the issue of nuclear weapons.
The consequences of nuclear war are hellish. With their eyes closed and their ears covered, they have all avoided the issue of atomic weapons.
In Hiroshima and Nagasaki, nearly 100,000 people were burned to death instantly, women and children alike, by a weapon that had no regard for them.
The vast heat dose causes the iron to drip and the surface of the pottery to boil. Humans also evaporate.
The radiation that pours down after a nuclear explosion torments many Hibakusha for the rest of their lives.
Moreover, modern nuclear weapons are incomparably more destructive than the atomic bombs of the past.
We must never repeat such a catastrophe.
The plaintive voices of "Hibakusha" have given great courage to the global movement to abolish nuclear weapons.
However, neither nuclear disarmament nor nuclear nonproliferation can be achieved.
Nevertheless, in Japan, methodologies and policy theories on guaranteeing the nation's security and its people in the nuclear age have been wholly lost.
Whether it is nuclear abolitionism, Article 9 of the Constitution, or any other ideal, it is an evil ideology if it lacks a methodology and loses human life.
How do we protect the people from today's greatest disaster, a nuclear explosion?
Isn't this methodology the first and foremost discussion of national security policy?
Members of the Diet, who the people entrust with national politics, have an obligation to discuss this issue.
However, the issue of nuclear deterrence has rarely been seriously debated in the Diet in the 75 years since the end of World War II.
Japan is the only major Western nation to have such a Diet.
During the Cold War, the government's LDP, which took a position in the West and sought to maintain the nuclear deterrence of the Japan-U.S. alliance, and left-wing forces, which took part in the East and sought to undermine the credibility of the U.S. atomic guarantee, engaged in a clash-style security theater farce in the Diet. As a result, there was no hope for a severe nuclear debate.
The left-wing forces launched a fierce verbal attack on the U.S. Navy's decision to bring nuclear weapons aboard its vessels. Still, the debate was strongly tinged with propaganda warfare, and the essence of the theory of nuclear deterrence was never discussed.
However, it has been 30 years since the end of the Cold War.
The strategic environment around Japan has changed dramatically.
North Korea has acquired nuclear weapons, Russia has invaded Ukraine and publicly announced the first use of atomic weapons, and China, which has become a superpower, has dramatically increased its nuclear capability.
China has made no secret of its ambitions for the Senkaku Islands and Taiwan and has begun to use force and attempt to change the original state of affairs unilaterally.
Japan, the largest outpost of U.S. power in the U.S.-Pacific alliance network, is now globally in the most dangerous nuclear valley.
Moreover, the nuclear deterrence system relies heavily on outer space, transforming cyberspace from additional combat space to direct combat space. As a result, the surveillance, command, and communications systems that support mutually assured destruction become vulnerable.
Furthermore, with the advent of hypersonic (more than five times the speed of sound) missiles, the time between detection and counterattack of a nuclear missile launch is significantly shortened.
Technological development is creating a new strategic environment in which the classic logic of nuclear deterrence cannot function.
Japan in Reiwa needs a strategic nuclear theory based on realism. Nuclear deterrence is not an abstract classroom lecture for students.
It is a strategic, policy, and military theory on which a nation's survival and its people depend.
It is an issue that the supreme leader of a nation should raise to the Diet and persuade the people.
How will Japan respond to the nuclear threats of China and North Korea in light of specific conflict scenarios, such as the Taiwan and Korean contingencies?
What should the nuclear deterrence of the Japan-U.S. alliance be?
Unless we discuss whether the current situation can genuinely protect the nation and people of Japan, it will be meaningless as a practical theory of nuclear deterrence.
It is an argument that should be put directly to the President of the United States, our ally, from the Prime Minister, the supreme commander of the Self-Defense Forces, who holds the jet-black command pole with the gold five-zero star inlaid on it.
It is not something that should be left to the "extended nuclear deterrence working-level talks" at the bureaucratic level.
The issue of nuclear weapons concerns the very survival of the Japanese nation and its people.
It is no longer acceptable to leave the right of life and death of the Japanese people entirely in the hands of the United States, as has been the case up to now.
Aggression in Ukraine and the Taiwan Issue
President Putin's invasion of Ukraine took the international community by surprise. It broke Japan's seventy-five-year slumber of peace.
The Japanese suddenly remembered Stalin's Soviet Union, which attacked the Japanese army on August 9, 1945, three days after the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.
No longer was there any trace of Russia. This responsible superpower had maintained a crooked, cold peace as a permanent member of the Security Council and a nuclear-confronted superpower with the United States after the war.
The brave resistance of Ukrainians of Cossack tradition surprised the world. But they are outnumbered.
Putin will launch a brutal attack to demoralize Ukraine.
Economic sanctions and international opinion are powerless in the short term in the face of firepower.
The war in Ukraine is no stranger to Japan; Russia is a neighbor.
Another neighbor, Chinese President Xi Jinping, advocates the annexation of Taiwan.
He also says that the Senkaku Islands are part of Taiwan.
The only way to annex Taiwan is to annex it by force.
In an emergency in Taiwan, Japan would almost automatically be involved.
Japan has the Japan-U.S. alliance and the protection of the United States.
However, the time when Japan can rest easy with such reassurances has long passed.
China's economy is now 75% the size of the U.S. economy. Its military spending is more than five times that of Japan. It is not an opponent that even the U.S. can kick out.
What would happen if China, now a superpower, decided to invade Taiwan?
Russia's invasion of Ukraine will teach us that.
The United States excels in information warfare and economic sanctions. This time, too, it has alerted Russia's readiness to invade Ukraine and aroused international public opinion. And it has also locked Russia out of SWIFT.
omission (of middle part)
