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IPFS News Link • Japan

Let Japan and South Korea Go Nuclear

• Lew Rockwell - Eric Margolis

Washington's elite and neocon war party threw up their hands in horror at Trump's heretical question. The media, heavily influenced by neocons who hate Trump's call for even-handed US policy in the Mideast, scorned his nuclear proposal or simply ignored it.

Too bad that Trump's proposal was drowned in a sea of media noise. His idea has merit. This writer, long specialized in North Asian security affairs, has been advocating for a decade that Japan and South Korea develop their own nuclear weapons and anti-missile systems.  

Two of Asia's most important powers cannot afford to remain strategically naked, vulnerable and totally reliant on US strategic protection. Would the US risk a nuclear war, even a limited one, to protect Pusan, South Korea or Kobe, Japan?

Trump framed this question in dollars, as befits a businessman. Why should the US pay to defend these two wealthy nations? The answer:  because Japan and South Korea are the keystones of America's Asian imperium. They offer highly important military bases and key strategic geography that allows the US to politically, militarily and economically dominate North Asia.  Expenses therefrom are costs of empire.

Trade plays an even bigger role in the American imperium than military power. By giving Japanese and South Korean industries access in the 1950's to the vast US market, Washington made them economic as well as military dependents.  Today, China is half way into the same imperial trade system.

Now, the rapid development of nuclear-armed medium and long-range missiles in China and North Korea – both bitter historic enemies of Japan – is forcing Tokyo and Seoul to confront this vital issue. 

Last week, numerous intelligence sources affirmed that North Korea had indeed miniaturized a nuclear warhead that could be carried atop one of its improved Rodong intermediate, 2,000km -range missiles. This would allow North Korea to hit targets all over South Korea, most of Japan, Okinawa and perhaps the giant US base at Guam.

The North could also menace the far more important target, Japan. Even shorter range N. Korean missiles can hit Japan, which has only very limited anti-missile defense. Israel, by comparison, has a far more capable multi-level anti-missile system.  In spite of much talk about new strategic defenses, Japan is almost naked unto its enemies.  


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