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Nuclear “deterrence” makes Japan a target

Japan would be safer without extended deterrence

The Mainichi Daily News, by Dr Tilman Ruff (Mainichi Japan) October 10, 2009 The role Japan can play in achieving that critical goal cannot be overestimated. As the only country whose people have been directly targeted by nuclear attack and suffer the deadly consequences to this day, the Japanese people stand as foremost witnesses to the obscenity that is the very nature of nuclear weapons.Yet in its legitimate pursuit of security in a dangerous world, Japan has — unwisely, in our view — come to rely on U.S. nuclear weapons under a doctrine known as extended nuclear deterrence. This is euphemistically called the “nuclear umbrella” to give a misguided sense of protection. The effect of extended deterrence, however, is really quite different. It again turns Japan into a nuclear target, and tragically retards and complicates global disarmament initiatives that would increase Japanese and everyone else’s security enormously……………………

the previous Japanese government’s desire to cling to extended deterrence, even to the point of introducing nuclear weapons into the region; to oppose deep reductions in the massive U.S. (and therefore Russian) nuclear arsenals; and to oppose reducing the circumstances in which nuclear weapons might be used through a U.S. no-first use declaration. Make no mistake — this .. is being aggressively exploited by U.S. hardliners intent upon maintaining and even modernizing the U.S. arsenal………

If such policies, under pressure from Japan, were to find their way into the U.S. Nuclear Posture Review in preparation right now, the prospects for abolition of the worst weapons of terror would be substantially set back………..

Nuclear deterrence, at its core, is a pledge to inflict catastrophic retaliation — including the mass extermination of civilian populations and radioactive devastation on a scale which knows no borders — on any state that uses these weapons first. We now know that use of even a tiny fraction of current nuclear arsenals would produce a global climatic catastrophe which would make any such use not only murderous but suicidal. A country that relies upon a proxy nuclear arsenal for its security is making a Faustian bargain. For nothing more than an unenforceable promise that its “protector state” will retaliate upon countless millions of innocent people on its behalf, a country such as Japan (or South Korea, or Australia, or the non-nuclear members of NATO) makes itself a target for nuclear weapons, turns its own fate over to someone else, and forfeits its moral stature as a non-nuclear-weapon state……………..

extended nuclear deterrence — and nuclear deterrence in any form — must be rejected in favor of a sustainable, non-nuclear framework for Japanese and regional security.

Japan would be safer without extended deterrence – The Mainichi Daily News

October 10, 2009 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | 1, Japan, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear weapons