Just one thing to add to Jeffrey’s excellent post about Japan’s nuclear weapons potential…
According to a 1999 DIA primer on future threats (which can be found here), Germany and Japan “could develop a nuclear warhead within a year should the political decision be made to pursue such capability.”
[Cross-posted from TotalWonkerr]
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The real “nuclear” threat facing Japan, and to a slightly lesser extent ROK, China, Taipei, etc. is the demographic time bomb of plunging birth rates and aging populations.
Even if every one of these countries acquired (or expanded) their nuclear weapons capabilities, they are still faced with the problem that demographically, the most productive years of the bulk of the population is either past (in the case of Japan), or peaking (in the case of China).
While all of these nations are still giants that can mobilize a formidable military sheerly by the force of numbers, the days when they can afford serious attrition in a prolonged conflict are over.
A nuclear weapons capability only serves to deter, but do not stop bullying of these states by others who can field large conventional armies that are technically superior and do not cross the nuclear threshold.
— Smith · Jan 2, 09:50 PM ·
I recently read an article on Japan and nuclear capability that is 180 out from this information.
According to my sources, Japan has a robust ballistic missile capability in their M-5 rocket (an improved MX missile). Additionally, according to Chinese assessments (yes the source is bad) Japan maintains the capability to put together a warhead in one week.
Don’t quite know which to believe.
— jason97m · Jan 3, 12:35 AM ·
“I recently read an article on Japan and nuclear capability that is 180 out from this information.
According to my sources, Japan has a robust ballistic missile capability in their M-5 rocket (an improved MX missile). Additionally, according to Chinese assessments (yes the source is bad) Japan maintains the capability to put together a warhead in one week.
Don’t quite know which to believe.”
I, for one, have a much firmer opinion on the matter.
— Paul · Jan 3, 10:56 AM ·
Paul, I have to agree with you on this…what scares me is the source that my information comes from and how off it probably is.
Cheers
— jason97m · Jan 3, 01:36 PM ·
And who wants to bet that DIA didn’t get that estimate by having an analyst read six or seven open-source pubs and double the number, both because it was more conservative, and because a strikingly different figure might get policymakers to infer that it’s based on some super-secret squirrely source, and so let it pass without comment or question?
— Nanonymous · Jan 3, 02:36 PM ·
Smith –
Sorry to puncture your thesis, but demographic change has little to do with the compilation of this study. The Japanese government is not searching for a means of compensating for a shrinking pool of potential cannon fodder recruits.
The issue of interest to Japanese policy makers was whether or not Japan could quickly develop a nuclear deterrent on the cheap and without attracting too much attention.
The study found such a concept was a fantasy.
— MTC · Jan 4, 02:05 AM ·