*All Options Are on the Table* Scraps - Japan Edition

More data points calling into question the assertion that Japan might seek nuclear weapons if the United States tweaks its force posture…

On November 13, the United States and Japan released a joint statement on the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons. According to the statement:  

The Government of the United States continues to seek early conclusion of a START follow-on treaty through negotiations with the Russian Federation. The Government of Japan welcomes the progress made in the negotiations and expresses its expectation for early agreement. The Government of the United States and the Government of Japan call upon states that hold nuclear weapons to respect the principles of transparency, verifiability and irreversibility in the process of nuclear disarmament. The Government of the United States is committed to reducing the role of nuclear weapons in its national security strategy, and the Government of the United States and the Government of Japan urge other states that hold nuclear weapons to do the same.

On November 23, Masakatsu Ota of Kyodo News revealed that before the Democratic Party of Japan won a landslide election victory in August 2009, the Liberal Democratic Party-led Japanese government lobbied the Strategic Posture Commission to maintain the capability to deploy the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile/Nuclear (TLAM/N). It’s unlikely that the new government will be so gung-ho about the TLAM/N, especially since, as Jeffrey notes, it could accidentally crash into Japan or South Korea if it were ever fired at North Korea. And don’t forget that, much to former Secretary Schlesinger’s chagrin, the U.S. Navy appears to care less about the TLAM-N.

A Kyodo News survey of the Democratic Party of Japan’s Lower House members conducted in October found that 87.2 percent of the respondents would support a U.S. “no first use” declaratory policy. Only 4.7 percent of the respondents thought that the Japanese constitution’s three nonnuclear principles should be reviewed. The survey drew responses from 211 of the Democratic Party of Japan’s 308 Lower House Members.