Japanese politicians moving towards nuclear weapons

In April the LDP published proposals for a constitutional amendment, which would eviscerate Article 9, the key to Japan’s peace Constitution. Article 9 famously renounces war and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes…..

Japan playing nuclear roulette, By KEVIN RAFFERTY The Japan Times, 15 Aug 12, HONG KONG — J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the prominent fathers of the atomic bomb, had read the Bhagavad Gita, and when he saw the first test of the weapon, he quoted the terrifying line from the Hindu scripture: “Now I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.” It is hard to imagine the horror of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima 67 years ago. It seared the sky and instantaneously wiped much of the city and tens of thousands of people, and left a trail of misery that continues today, but which should not be forgotten.

Sadly, leading Japanese politicians today seem to have forgotten the lessons of the war and its savage end. Powerful politicians are hard at work trying to scrap Article 9 of the Constitution — which renounces war — and some of them want to go all-out to build a
Japanese nuclear weapon.

What are they thinking about? It beggars belief that a country that
has suffered so much, first from being the only victim of nuclear war,
and then from bungling over the use of nuclear energy, should be
contemplating building nuclear weapons.

It is almost a game of Chinese roulette. Japan does not know how to
cope with the rise and rise of an increasingly assertive and muscular
China. It is also obviously concerned about nuclear-armed North Korea
that is wont to making bellicose threats in spite of its small size
and its impoverished economy. But Chinese roulette is more suicidal
than the Russian version: If Japan built nuclear weapons for
first-strike capability against an overbearing China, it would be
committing national suicide; second-strike, or retaliatory, capacity
might be too late if China had done its job properly. Using nuclear
weapons against North Korea, whatever the provocation, seems
unthinkable.

That is without considering the suicidal economic costs. France and
the United Kingdom have discovered that keeping up with the latest
nuclear weapons technology is prohibitively expensive. For already
heavily indebted Japan, it could be the final straw to economic ruin.

Any decision to build nuclear weapons would be a red rag to China, far
more serious than the Tokyo government or Japan buying the Senkaku
Islands. Even so, hawkish Japanese politicians claim that flaunting
the bomb option will give Japan greater diplomatic clout.
The nuclear option is very much part of shadow politics, going on
outside the public arena, but linked to the obvious reluctance of the
government and bureaucrats to give up nuclear energy. Japan has years
of expertise in production of nuclear energy, but, even so, it is
questionable, especially in the light of the lessons of the Fukushima
disaster, whether any part of a country sitting on so many earthquake
fault lines is safe to host a nuclear plant.

However, the ability to produce nuclear power gives obvious material
and technological advances toward weapons production. Former Defense
Minister Shigeru Ishiba, from the opposition Liberal Democratic Party,
said, “Having nuclear plants shows to other nations that Japan can
make nuclear weapons.”

“Fukushima Project,” a book by anti-nuclear experts, claims that, “A
group is starting to take a stand to assert the significance of
nuclear plants as military technology, a view that had been submerged
below the surface until now.” In June, without fanfare, Japan’s Diet
changed the 1955 Atomic Energy Basic Law to add “national security” as
a reason for using nuclear technology along with people’s health and
wealth.
The debate on Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution has also been going on
largely behind closed doors……
In April the LDP published proposals for a constitutional amendment, which would eviscerate Article 9, the key to Japan’s peace Constitution. Article 9 famously renounces war and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes…..
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120815a2.html