by Hiromichi Umebayashi

The thinking that Japan must rely on nuclear arms has deep roots in the nation's defense and diplomatic establishments. There is, however, a countervailing force - the endeavor to abolish nuclear weapons by a nation that has firsthand experience of nuclear devastation.

Opportunities are now available for humankind to proceed in the direction of a better world without nuclear weapons. This is because signs of change are now seen in the United States, the world's strongest nuclear power, whose influence reaches around the globe.

The first evidence of change turned up at an October 2006 symposium at the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. The event marked the twentieth anniversary of the October 1986 Reykjavik summit, where Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, then the leaders of the United States and the Soviet Union, respectively, met near the end of the Cold War and reached agreement on the goal of a world free of nuclear weapons. The symposium reconfirmed the importance of this goal in the current international political context, and the participants agreed to take action by appealing for the goal's realization. One result was the statement that appeared in the January 4, 2007, issue of the Wall Street Journal titled "A World Free of Nuclear Weapons" by four bipartisan and widely known former members of the U.S. government: the former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger and George Shultz, former secretary of defense William Perry, and former Democratic senator Sam Nunn. Their view gained broad support among U.S. politicians, and it had a strong impact on the 2008 presidential election.

The popularity of this cause has by no means been confined to the United States. Support for it transcends party lines and has spread among former top public officials in such major countries as Russia, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, Germany, and Australia. As this current moved around the world, U.S. president Barack Obama endorsed it in his April 2009 speech in Prague, and the UN Security Council pledged to back efforts "to create the conditions for a world without nuclear weapons" in Resolution 1887 of September 2009. The resolution was adopted at a Security Council summit presided over by Obama, where the four former high-ranking U.S. officials were watching over the proceedings, presenting a sight symbolic of the tide of the times.

It is highly significant that the UN Security Council, which has potential binding power, has set its sights on the elimination of nuclear weapons. While there is still only a low level of agreement on concrete measures for achieving this goal, there can be no doubt that herein is an opportunity that deserves to be seized.

Marking Time in Japan

Unfortunately, in the three years between the Hoover symposium and the Security Council summit, almost no new political activity got under way in Japan in response to the rising global tide of nuclear arms reduction. By contrast, in Germany, in a January 2009 statement, former chancellor Helmut Schmidt (Social Democrat), former president Richard von Weizsäcker (Christian Democrat), and other former high officials publicized their endorsement of the position taken by Shultz, Perry, Kissinger, and Nunn and, based on their country's historical and current conditions, they came out in favor of a treaty among nuclear weapon states prohibiting nuclear first use and also called for the withdrawal of U.S. nuclear weapons from German territory. Similar moves to take advantage of the new situation and exert influence on the central political sphere were not to be seen among former high officials in Japan. The absence of action is emblematic of the reality that must be addressed if Japan is to play a role in the abolition of nuclear arms.

Twenty days after Obama's Prague speech, then Japanese foreign minister Hirofumi Nakasone delivered an address titled "Conditions towards Zero: 11 Benchmarks for Global Nuclear Disarmament." This, though, was basically just a restatement of the Japanese government's existing position, and it was extremely lacking in fresh content and new perspectives. Nakasone spoke of the factors producing uneasiness in Japan's vicinity, mentioning China and North Korea, and stressed the importance of nuclear deterrence under the Japan-U.S. security arrangements. But he did not declare that Japan, as a country that has suffered from nuclear attacks, is firmly convinced of the urgent need to abolish nuclear weapons. In effect, his speech merely reinforced the impression that on this question, our nation is sticking to a passive stance.

This can also be seen in the action by parliament. Some two months after the Prague speech, both houses of the National Diet (parliament) adopted resolutions calling for stronger measures to eliminate nuclear weapons. The content of the resolutions, however, gives no sense of an intention to add momentum to the tide of global disarmament.

Deeply Rooted Reliance on Nuclear Arms

Extensive exposure by the media revealed that the Japanese diplomatic corps, in its dealings with the United States around that time, was acting to counter accelerated progress toward nuclear disarmament.

In May 2009 a bipartisan commission established by the U.S. Congress to examine strategic issues released a report titled "America's Strategic Posture." The document contains an overall assessment of the role that nuclear weapons play for the United States and presented recommendations. The document is sure to have an impact on the nuclear posture review currently being assembled by the Obama administration. As the commission conducted its assessment, it asked the allies of the United States for their views. Reportedly, officials in the administration of former prime minister Taro Aso responded and handed over a three-page memo presenting the Japanese government's request that nuclear weapons be retained. Tokyo, we are told, hoped the United States would develop earth-penetrating nuclear weapons for destroying underground bunkers and facilities, and it asked for consultation before the U.S. submarine-launched nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles are retired.

Requests like these surely provided excellent ammunition to the American conservative camp, which is resisting the constructive arms reduction policy of President Obama. The refrain of the old guard constantly portrays the U.S. nuclear umbrella as a key element holding allies back from developing nuclear arms of their own, emphasizing that the umbrella in this sense makes a contribution to nuclear nonproliferation. In effect, the Japanese government has strengthened the grounds for this position.

In June 2008 Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd proposed the establishment of the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament (ICNND), and Japan agreed to serve as the commission's cochair. Actually this was an initiative taken separately from the aforementioned global current aimed at a world free of nuclear weapons. Fortunately, though, fresh possibilities in the work of the commission emerged in September 2009 when a truly new government moved into power in Japan. It seems that the Japanese change of government had a positive impact, at least to some extent, on the final-stage drafting of the ICNND report. Also some positive elements of the report are expected to be utilized by the new government, whose nuclear disarmament policy is deemed to be more progressive.

Envisioning a Nuclear Weapon-Free Northeast Asia

The thinking that Japan must rely on nuclear arms has deep roots in the nation's defense and diplomatic establishments and among the specialists who back them up. Even today it holds sway in policymaking circles spread too widely to be ignored. There is, however, also a countervailing force. This is the endeavor to abolish nuclear weapons by a nation that has firsthand experience of nuclear devastation, and it is being propelled firmly forward by Japanese civil society.

In recent years, this force has gained increased impetus for spreading its message internationally. It is being promoted by the movement of the atomic bomb survivors, known as hibakusha, by widely spread campaigns against nuclear bombs, and by drives launched by local governments, with Hiroshima and Nagasaki leading the way. The wellspring of this vitality is the consciousness of the unparalleled inhumanity of nuclear weapons born from the experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as sympathy with the principle behind the rallying cry of the survivors: "No more hibakusha!" The meaning of this principle is that Nagasaki must be the last place to suffer nuclear destruction, that henceforth these weapons must not be used against anyone, and that, toward this end, all nuclear weapons must be eliminated.

The political stagnation produced in Japan by a long succession of conservative governments condoned and even widened the gap between this thinking in civil society and the thinking of the policymaking brains. In this light, the current situation of dependence on nuclear weapons on the level of Japanese policy needs to be understood as arising from a different historical background than that of other American allies, such as the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The sense of dependence came to take hold in Japan only with popular will alienated in a historical context where even rudimentary democracy had not begun to function.

Today, thanks to Japan's change of government, a variety of institutional reforms are being attempted, and new possibilities have opened up for civil society's demand that nuclear weapons be abolished. The power of these possibilities has, moreover, been strengthened by the arrival on the global stage of favorable conditions for realizing a world free of nuclear weapons, as I mentioned at the outset. In these circumstances, there is more need than ever before for Japan to have a concrete vision to replace its dependence on nuclear arms. This must be a vision transcending the conventional thinking of government officials and policy specialists, who operate on the assumption that Japan must either rely on a nuclear umbrella or acquire its own nuclear capability.

One such compelling vision is the establishment of a nuclear weapon-free zone (NWFZ) in Northeast Asia. The NWFZ is already an internationally recognized mechanism for achieving regional security by banning nuclear weapons through a legally binding international agreement. It also represents a step toward regional peace relying not on military force but on legal provisions and consultations. A number of specific schemes for creating such a zone have been proposed, including our proposal at the Peace Depot for a Three plus Three Nations Arrangement.^*

By holding this vision aloft and adopting the stance of a true nuclear weapon-free state, Japan could recover its moral ground as the world's only victim of nuclear bombing. This would enable our country to move to the starting point for the first time to play a major role in the quest of a world free of nuclear weapons.