Japan and South Korea need nuclear weapons

The case for controlled, limited nuclear proliferation.

I am, to put it mildly, very unhappy about the need to write this post. I’ve been putting it off for a long time. And yet I’m going to write it, because it’s true, and someone needs to say it, and warning people about unpleasant geopolitical realities has kind of become one of my roles as a blogger over the past year. I wrote about how the U.S. isn’t psychologically or economically prepared for war with China, about the U.S.’ withered defense-industrial base, and about the vulnerability of world commerce to area-denial strategies. But today it’s time for me to write about the scariest of these topics — the need for controlled nuclear proliferation. Japan and South Korea, and possibly also Poland, need to create their own nuclear deterrents.

For my entire life, it’s been an article of faith among most of the people I know that nuclear proliferation is a bad thing. And that makes sense, because nuclear weapons are truly terrifying weapons. The U.S. and USSR had many close calls during the first Cold War; if even one of those had resulted in a nuclear exchange, much of human civilization would have been laid waste. The more pairs of countries are staring each other down with nukes, the greater the chance that one of those pairs will have a false alarm or accidental launch. That simple math should make us terrified of nuclear proliferation.

Furthermore, from 1990 through 2010, nuclear disarmament made the world a lot safer. U.S. and Soviet/Russian nuclear stockpiles dwindled from over 60,000 between them to fewer than 10,000:

Source: Federation of American Scientists via Wikipedia

And fewer than 4,000 of those are actually deployed; most are kept in reserves or have already been retired.

So why on Earth would we turn our back on a successful strategy of disarmament and actually recommend that more countries build their own nukes? Isn’t that pure stark raving world-destroying insanity?

Well, no, for several reasons. First, I’m not recommending that countries go back to keeping tens of thousands of nukes on hair-trigger alert like the U.S. and USSR did; instead I’m recommending that a couple of countries develop modest nuclear deterrents along the lines of France’s, the UK’s, or India’s. Second, countries outside of the U.S. alliance system have been engaging in nuclear proliferation for half a century now, so to simply do nothing in the face of that strategy will not stop nuclear proliferation from occurring; it will simply make it one-sided.

Third, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s threat to invade Taiwan signals a new expansionism on the part of the totalitarian great powers, which will be difficult to deter conventionally. Fourth, internal political divisions mean that Japan, South Korea, and Poland can’t rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella like they used to. Fifth, evidence from South Asia suggests that modest nuclear deterrents can act as a stabilizing force at the regional as well as the global level. And finally, breaking the one-sided taboo on nuclear proliferation will probably make it easier to set up an effective new global nonproliferation regime.

In other words, Japan and South Korea getting nukes is not a good thing, but it’s probably the least bad option available at this unhappy juncture.

Nuclear proliferation is already happening

The original five nuclear powers, as defined in the nonproliferation regime set up in the 1960s, were the U.S., the USSR, China, the UK, and France. These were also the countries with permanent seats on the UN Security Council, and they were the victors of World War 2. So the original list of approved nuclear powers made sense as an extension of the postwar global order.

Those states generally tried to keep nuclear weapons to themselves, but not always. It’s an open secret that China helped Pakistan build nuclear weapons:

In 1982, a Pakistani military C-130 left the western Chinese city of Urumqi with a highly unusual cargo: enough weapons-grade uranium for two atomic bombs, according to accounts written by the father of Pakistan's nuclear weapons program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, and provided to The Washington Post.

The uranium transfer in five stainless-steel boxes was part of a broad-ranging, secret nuclear deal approved years earlier by Mao Zedong and Prime Minister Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto that culminated in an exceptional, deliberate act of proliferation by a nuclear power, according to the accounts by Khan…

According to Khan, the uranium cargo came with a blueprint for a simple weapon that China had already tested, supplying a virtual do-it-yourself kit that significantly speeded Pakistan's bomb effort. The transfer also started a chain of proliferation: U.S. officials worry that Khan later shared related Chinese design information with Iran; in 2003, Libya confirmed obtaining it from Khan's clandestine network.

France, meanwhile, helped Israel build a nuclear reactor to produce material for nuclear bombs.

Pakistan, once it had nukes, had few reservations about proliferating them. It helped Iran, which doesn’t quite have nukes yet, but is close. And it did succeed in helping North Korea to go nuclear.

Meanwhile, although China isn’t exactly happy that North Korea has nukes, it has steadfastly refused American entreaties to take strong action to force North Korea to denuclearize. Chinese aid kept the North Korean economy and military afloat in the face of U.S. sanctions, allowing it to build up its nuclear arsenal and its missile capabilities. And China has never showed much interest in helping to curb Iran’s nuclear program, buying a large amount of Iranian oil and enabling the Iranian economy to stay afloat in the face of U.S. sanctions.

So nuclear proliferation is happening, and it’s mostly being done by China and its allies. Increasingly, this means that U.S. allies are facing nuclear-capable enemies without nukes of their own. India has nukes to balance Pakistan’s, and Israel has nukes to balance any future Iranian arsenal. But three key U.S. allies are in a very perilous situation right now: Japan, South Korea, and Poland.

The U.S. nuclear umbrella is no longer reliable