Article

2006-07-09 China-Japan-Koreas

This time, Crazy Kim has upset the wrong country:

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Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-07-09 00:00|| || Front Page|| [4 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 China's reluctance to restrain N. Korea has always puzzled me. Sure they enjoy keeping S. Korea, Japan, and, especially, the U.S. off balance. And they can claim, even if somewhat implausibly, that they're doing their best to calm the situation.

But they have to know that at some point Japan will have no choice but to become a nuclear power itself, and China's cynical game will come to an unsatisfying end. If Taiwan and S. Korea do so as well, China's failed gamesmanship presents them with a strategic nightmare: surrounded by nuclear-armed regional powers (I include India here) friendly to the U.S. Unless they believe they can play the Putin card, I fail to see how the reward justifies the risk.

The Chinese aren't stupid. Are they miscalculating or have they already lost control over the Norks?

Posted by Kirk 2006-07-09 05:14|| 2006-07-09 05:14|| Front Page Top

#2 Kirk, I think you are giving the Chinese too much foresight. They assume the International Community(TM) will prevent Japan and possibly SKor and Taiwan going nuclear. If Japan decides it needs to go nuclear, the USA won't stand in the way and the UN will be it's usual impotent self.

Posted by phil_b">phil_b 2006-07-09 05:52|| http://autonomousoperation.blogspot.com/]">[http://autonomousoperation.blogspot.com/] 2006-07-09 05:52|| Front Page Top

#3 Japan of all nations deserves the right to self defense. But only that, self defense. Most people forget or just don't know how xenophobic and classist the Japanese people and society are.

I am hoping they don't feel the need to have their own nuclear deterent, ever.

Posted by Sock Puppet of Doom 2006-07-09 07:37|| 2006-07-09 07:37|| Front Page Top

#4 The Chinese need rogue proxy states to keep other powers off balance.

Their proliferation of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to Pakistan and North Korea (who then proliferated them to each other and to other countries) serves their purpose.

They have miscalculated. The transfer of nukes to Pakistan was supposed to contain India and then to lead to a "South Asia Nuclear Free Zone" - mutual disarmament by both India and Pakistan.

Even though both the US and Russia desired it at the time, India said no to this. The Agni-3 test launched today brings Beijing and Shanghai under the gun.

The transfer of missiles to North Korea may also backfire, leading to Japanese rearmament.

Posted by john 2006-07-09 07:50|| 2006-07-09 07:50|| Front Page Top

#5 I'd not be too disturbed by a nuclear Japan. A balance is needed to the Norks and better Japan than South Korea. Also, when the Koreas re-unite, only a matter of time, it will become even more necessary for Japan to be a balance. Japanese population is not growing and I can't see the Japanese wanting to resurrect the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere when they've already got a satisfactory substitute. The one thing I would worry about is a rebirth of bushido.

There is an alternative, but I don't want to take the thread OT.

Posted by Nimble Spemble 2006-07-09 08:01|| 2006-07-09 08:01|| Front Page Top

#6 Recalling that smaller Japan was able to field an Army that occupied basically the most prosperous portion of the mainland, doing anything to get these guys excited again has been a big bloody mistake. The Americans may have no stomach for a confrontation on the mainland, but the Japanese are another subject all together, and gathering an ever more effective regional Star Wars system to offset the Chinese nuke threat.

Posted by Gleresh Whomort8073 2006-07-09 08:45|| 2006-07-09 08:45|| Front Page Top

#7 Didn't I read somewhere that Japan, if it wanted to, could become a nuclear power in about 6 months? And I would think that they have the industral base and nuclear power plants and experience to produce a number of weapons very quickly. Far outstripping North Korea (and perhaps gaining on China herself).

Posted by CrazyFool 2006-07-09 10:14|| 2006-07-09 10:14|| Front Page Top

#8 Post-war Japan has a strong pacifist streak. But I suspect it's rather shallow. Pushing the Japanese too far would be a serious mistake.

The Japanese self-defense force is limited by law to a small fraction of their GDP. However, given the size of the Japanese economy - they still spend $45 billion a year on their military. And their equipment is very modern.

Posted by DMFD 2006-07-09 10:40|| 2006-07-09 10:40|| Front Page Top

#9 ...Supposedly - and IIRC this is in one of Jim Dunnigan's books - the Japanese may actually have several bombs, but they are disassembled and the parts basically scattered across the country. They DO have a stockpile of satellite boosters - which also double quite nicely as MRBMs.

Mike

Posted by Mike Kozlowski 2006-07-09 10:47|| 2006-07-09 10:47|| Front Page Top

#10 When Japan signed the NPT, it did so with the transfer of some very sensitive tech from the US and France.

What Japan demanded and got was "breakout capability". They have breeder reactors, and commercial scale Plutonium separation and Uranium enrichment plants.

Their plutonium stocks are huge. They have 43 tons of separted plutonium and another 110 tons unseparated in spent fuel.

By comparison, China may have 4 tons of plutonium .

With their scientific and technical base, Japan could design and build sophisticated thermonuclear weapons in a matter of months, if not weeks, after a decision to do so.
Their rocketry is also advanced, so the ICBMs would quickly follow.

Their Pu stockpile could make them the third largest nuclear power in a matter of years with thousand of warheads.

China could never hope to match them...

Posted by john 2006-07-09 11:04|| 2006-07-09 11:04|| Front Page Top

#11 Kim's outlived his usefulness.

Posted by Frank G">Frank G 2006-07-09 11:07|| 2006-07-09 11:07|| Front Page Top

#12 Very interesting, John (#10). Not to be snarky -- I'm genuinely just curious -- what's your source for that info? Pretty sweet.

Posted by ST 2006-07-09 12:57|| 2006-07-09 12:57|| Front Page Top

#13 It is all open source.

Check out the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists" for estimates of Pu stockpiles. It is quite revealing.

Posted by john 2006-07-09 13:38|| 2006-07-09 13:38|| Front Page Top

#14 The Rokkasho Plutonium separation plant opened a few months ago.
It will be able to separate 5 tons of plutonium per year.

From a 2002 Greenpeace report:

Tokyo, Japan - The statement made Saturday by senior Japanese politician Ichiro Ozawa that Japan could use its commercial plutonium stockpile for making nuclear weapons is further confirmation for Greenpeace of the threat posed by the country's massive plutonium program. The leader of the opposition party Jiyuto (Liberal Party) declared that for Japan, if the military threat posed by China continued to grow, "It would be so easy for us to produce nuclear warheads - we have plutonium at nuclear power plants in Japan, enough to make several thousand such warheads."

In fact, Japan has sufficient plutonium already for more than 7000 nuclear warheads. Currently, Japan has a stockpile of over 38,000 kilograms of plutonium

Posted by john 2006-07-09 13:48|| 2006-07-09 13:48|| Front Page Top

#15 The problem is if Japan has to build nuke weapons what happens if they start pointing them at us.

Posted by djohn66 2006-07-09 17:11|| 2006-07-09 17:11|| Front Page Top

#16 #10 is correct.

People just do not realize what a dangerous situation China is allowing to fester.

They either need to step in and make the Kimregime fall in a direction they desire it to fall, or figure out that when it collapses of its own accord, they will be faced with either a nuclear exchange and a new hot war in Korea in their own back yard (and the concomittant US/Japanese response) -- or else a united NUCLEAR-ARMED Korea that doenst like much anyone in the region.

Either of those results will force greater US presence, and worse for the Chinese, they will force greater Japanese militarism and activity in the region, and will create a nuclear armed Japan.

The ONLY way out of this is for China to force Kim to give up the Nukes and missles, and give him the "Gentle Exile" option to save face after doing so, and allowing a junta to take over and negotiate renification of an eventually *demilitarized* united Korea.

If the Chinese woudl wake up, they'd see this is their only way out.

All the other direction lead to a nuclear armed and miltiarily recharged Japan, and a very war-ready or at-war Korea on their doorstep.

And to be brutally honest, form my time there, I beleive the Japanese to still be capable of some of the worst racism possible - and that it would only take small pushes in the right places to return them to the bushido + racial-superiority mindset that had them nearly destroy the pacific rim countries in the 20th century.

A militarily re-vitalized Japan, nuclear armed, is not in the best interests of the US either. Not in the long run.

Somone needs to tell the Chinese they need to move now, before we all get hurt.

Posted by Oldspook 2006-07-09 17:21|| 2006-07-09 17:21|| Front Page Top

#17 #10 and #16 are dead-on. As long as the CPC/CCCC refuses to liberalize, the Commies, short of war, cannot realistically hope to par let alone surpass the US-Western democracies until approxi late towards the next century, and thats only assuming that something(s) happens which causes an irreversible decline in the US-West from the [minima = normal] "status quo". The choice for China is the same as for the Cold War USSR - IMPLOSION, vs. WAR, by any and all means. JAPAN = US-EUROS > want democratic profitable econ trade wid China, which they are not going to get unless Beijing liberalizes along Western models and allows more pervasive/intensive levels of private entrepeneurship. Commie micro-management isn't going to get China anywhere close to its desired ambitions or timelines of parity vv the USA, etal.- THE COMMIES KNOW THIS, ERGO COMMIE-MAOIST SUPPORT FOR RADICAL ISLAMIST AND OTHER REGIONAL-GLOBAL TERROR ORGS-NETWORKS. IOW, IFF THE WEST DOESN'T GIVE OR DO WHAT THE COMMIES WANT, THEIR RADICAL PROXIES WILL DESTABILIZE = KILL US, AND IFF THE PROXIES FAIL, ITS GLOBAL NUCLEAR WAR AFTER YEAR 2015-2020. Iff the Commies-Socies don't rule the world, no one will.

Posted by JosephMendiola 2006-07-09 23:15|| 2006-07-09 23:15|| Front Page Top

#18 17 comments and not one mention of the next trump card we play, and the one nation who has most recently engaged the PRC in armed conflict, and to a standstill, if not better. A nation which strategically needs us far more than we need them, a nation one easy step behind so many of its neighbors and so able to catch up even quicker than the growth of the PRC. The nation that, when added to Japan, Taiwan, SKor, and further out the Phillipines and Australia, essentially seals off the PRC from expansion into the Pacific - making the PRC another landlocked Eurasian power like Russia.

A nation known better as an adjective - quagmire.

Won't that complicate things?

Posted by Thrineth Omineter2945 2006-07-09 23:55|| 2006-07-09 23:55|| Front Page Top

00:20 Monsieur Moonbat
00:00 JosephMendiola
23:58 Sherry
23:55 Thrineth Omineter2945
23:52 JosephMendiola
23:50 JosephMendiola
23:44 Sherry
23:40 Frank G
23:40 Frank G
23:36 Frank G
23:30 JosephMendiola
23:24 anymouse
23:15 JosephMendiola
23:14 Anginens Threreng8133
23:13 Fordesque
23:10 Swamp Blondie
23:05 Quana
23:02 N.A.H.
23:01 Dave D.
22:58 Alaska Paul
22:48 Fordesque
22:46 Alaska Paul
22:43 Alaska Paul
22:42 Swamp Blondie