Japan’s newly installed prime minister, Shigeru Ishiba, wants his country to have the world’s most destructive weapons. Ishiba shared his views with the Hudson Institute in September, before his election as president of the governing Liberal Democratic Party. He called for the formation of “an Asian version of NATO, which must ensure deterrence against the nuclear alliance of China, Russia, and North Korea.” He also proposed “America’s sharing of nuclear weapons or the introduction of nuclear weapons into the region.” Ishiba’s words signaled a reversal of decades-old Tokyo policy, and some believe Ishiba even wants Japan to build such weapons of its own.
Since becoming prime minister on October 1, he has softened his tone—reflecting the reality that few in Japan, the only nation ever attacked with nuclear weapons, want such fearsome devices in their arsenal.
Certainly, the Norwegian Nobel Committee hopes Japan does not acquire them. On the 11th of this month, it announced the award of the Peace Prize to Nihon Hidankyo, a Japanese grassroots organization of survivors of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki atomic bombings. The group, the committee stated, was dedicated to achieving “a world free of nuclear weapons.”
The committee praised Nihon Hidankyo “for demonstrating through witness testimony that nuclear weapons must never be used again.”
If it wants to ensure that they are never again detonated, the Nobel Committee should have awarded their prize not to Nihon Hidankyo but to Shigeru Ishiba. As much as everyone would like the world to dismantle all nuclear weapons, the reality is that at this moment, disarmament is not the path to peace.
Not far from Japan, two nuclear states are fast increasing the size of stockpiles. In a November 2022 report, the Pentagon forecast that China would quadruple its nukes from about 400 to 1,500 by 2035. James Howe, the noted nuclear analyst at Strategic Concepts and Analysis, predicts China will have between 3,390 to 3,740 weapons by 2035. Richard Fisher of the International Assessment and Strategy Center looks at the rapid increase in delivery platforms, such as missiles and subs, and thinks the regime will have even more of them. His 2035 estimate is 7,000. Whatever the number, everyone agrees that the Chinese regime is on a tear. As Admiral Charles Richard, then commander of U.S. Strategic Command, said in 2021, “We are witnessing a strategic breakout by China.”
And then there is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. According to the official Korean Central News Agency, Kim Jong Un said in early September that his state is implementing a plan to increase the number of nuclear weapons “exponentially.” That’s undoubtedly exaggeration, but there is little doubt that Kim’s arsenal is increasing at a fast clip.
As China and North Korea continue their build-ups, another Japanese neighbor, Russia, has been constantly threatening to use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield in Ukraine. In its classified Nuclear Employment Guidance issued in March, the Biden administration ordered the Pentagon to prepare for coordinated nuclear confrontations with China, Russia, and North Korea. The document represented a stunning reversal of Biden’s views.
Yet South Koreans were not assured of America’s treaty commitment to defend them. In a September 2 confirmation hearing for his defense minister, Kim Yong-hyun said he would be “open” to the South developing nuclear weapons. “That is included among all possible options,” Kim announced.
South Koreans certainly agree with their new defense minister. A Gallup Korea poll released in February shows that 73 percent of the population favored the possession of nukes.
But the Japanese public is not nearly as supportive of the views of their new prime minister. “Ishiba is an outlier in the Japanese political world and has been saying ‘edgy,’ almost ‘provocative,’ things for many years,” Grant Newsham, author of When China Attacks: A Warning to America, told me this month. “Japan building its own nukes would cause an epic firestorm in the country.”
“There will be tremendous international political opposition, not just from China and North Korea, but also from elements in those various countries Ishiba would seek to join Japan in an Asian NATO,” Lance Gatling of Tokyo-based Nexial Research wrote to me, referring to the new leader’s comments about nuclear weapons.
No wonder Ishiba praised the Nobel award just moments after it was announced. “It is extremely meaningful that the prize will be awarded to an organization that has worked for the abolition of nuclear weapons for many years,” he said. Ishiba later stressed the need for nuclear deterrence.
Ultimately, Ishiba may get his way on nuclear weapons, especially as distrust among Japanese officials of American resolve grows. “Team Biden hasn’t done anything to convince Japan that it will be there,” Newsham says.
With its large stores of plutonium and uranium and its technical know-how, Japan could build a bomb in a matter of months, perhaps less than a year.
The need for deterrence is clear. “The geopolitical crisis surrounding our country has risen to the point where war could break out at any moment,” Ishiba told the Hudson Institute.
“The democracies need more nuclear weapons,” Peter Huessy of the National Institute for Deterrence Studies told me in the wake of the Nobel announcement. “The only way to stop an aggressor from using nuclear weapons is to possess nuclear weapons and be willing to use them. That’s what deterrence is all about.”
Gordon G. Chang is the author of Plan Red: China’s Project to Destroy America and The Coming Collapse of China. Follow him on X @GordonGChang.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
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