An idea buds in the U.S. that Japan should go nuclear

Amid mounting exchanges of harsh words between U.S. President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, there is a rising opinion within certain quarters in the United States that Japan and South Korea should be armed with nuclear weapons.

Pat Buchanan, a conservative commentator, may gain support from some populace when he asks why the U.S. has to defend Japan and South Korea, whose economies are 100 times and 40 times, respectively, larger than the North's. Echoing what Trump said during the campaign last year, Buchanan points out that while North Korea's defense spending accounts for 25 percent of its gross domestic product, the comparable figures are 2.6 percent for South Korea and less than 1 percent for Japan. Under these circumstances, how long will Japan be able to rely on the U.S. nuclear umbrella and maintain its long-standing policy of neither possessing or building nuclear weapons or permitting their introduction into the country?

Triggering the idea of nuclearizing Japan and South Korea were comments made by Susan Rice, former national security adviser under President Barack Obama, and James Clapper, ex-director of national intelligence. Writing for the op-ed page of The New York Times on Aug. 10, Rice said Trump's mention of "fire and fury" against Pyongyang was in total disregard of 23,000 U.S. military personnel and 200,000 family members living in Seoul among the 26 million population of the South Korean capital, which lies within the North's shooting range. Calling a pre-emptive strike against the North — said to be among Trump's options — a reckless idea, Rice proposed that the U.S. should recognize the North as a nuclear power while controling its behavior so that it would never use the weapons. Three days later, Clapper said in a CNN interview that denuclearizing the North is not the only solution. Both Rice and Clapper have thus favored de facto recognition of the North's possession of nuclear arms, which in turn would lower the hurdles for negotiating with the North — thereby playing right into Kim's hands.