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The Japan Card
[snip]
[T]he administration has chosen a strategy of economic and diplomatic isolation. The idea is to squeeze the North Korean regime to the point where it can no longer function.
That could be done. China supplies nearly all of North Korea's energy and 40 percent of its foodstuffs. South Korea has significant investments in North Korea. International organizations provide a huge amount of food aid. Moreover, North Korea has only a few major harbors. They could be blockaded. If China and South Korea were to cut off North Korea, it could not survive.
The problem with this scenario is that South Korea and China do not want to play ball. They fear the chaos that might ensue. The American containment strategy was already falling apart on Day One, when both the South Korean president and the president-elect criticized it.
The Chinese have been even more recalcitrant. They show no inclination to deny North Korea what it needs to survive. Even more ominously, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports that the Chinese have just shipped 20 tons of highly specialized chemicals used in extracting plutonium from spent reactor fuel.
What to do when your hand is so poor? Play the trump. We do have one, but we dare not speak its name: a nuclear Japan. Japan cannot long tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea. Having once lobbed a missile over Japan, North Korea could easily hit any city in Japan with a nuclear-tipped weapon. Japan does not want to live under that threat.
We should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join us in squeezing North Korea and thus stopping its march to go nuclear, we will endorse any Japanese attempt to create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares.
[T]he administration has chosen a strategy of economic and diplomatic isolation. The idea is to squeeze the North Korean regime to the point where it can no longer function.
That could be done. China supplies nearly all of North Korea's energy and 40 percent of its foodstuffs. South Korea has significant investments in North Korea. International organizations provide a huge amount of food aid. Moreover, North Korea has only a few major harbors. They could be blockaded. If China and South Korea were to cut off North Korea, it could not survive.
The problem with this scenario is that South Korea and China do not want to play ball. They fear the chaos that might ensue. The American containment strategy was already falling apart on Day One, when both the South Korean president and the president-elect criticized it.
The Chinese have been even more recalcitrant. They show no inclination to deny North Korea what it needs to survive. Even more ominously, Bill Gertz of the Washington Times reports that the Chinese have just shipped 20 tons of highly specialized chemicals used in extracting plutonium from spent reactor fuel.
What to do when your hand is so poor? Play the trump. We do have one, but we dare not speak its name: a nuclear Japan. Japan cannot long tolerate a nuclear-armed North Korea. Having once lobbed a missile over Japan, North Korea could easily hit any city in Japan with a nuclear-tipped weapon. Japan does not want to live under that threat.
We should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join us in squeezing North Korea and thus stopping its march to go nuclear, we will endorse any Japanese attempt to create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares.
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