Nuclear crisis raises proliferation spectre

Lurking in the shadows of a crisis over North Korea's nuclear ambitions is a potentially even more destabilising scenario in which other Northeast Asian nations shed their inhibitions, sparking an escalating atomic arms race.

"The real risk today is that concerted international diplomacy and the architecture aimed at slowing, halting or reversing nuclear proliferation might unravel," wrote Kurt Campbell of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in a recent article.

A few hawkish US defence experts are even suggesting what was once unthinkable: that Washington urge Japan - the only nation to suffer an atomic bomb attack - as well as South Korea to consider the nuclear option themselves to deter Pyongyang.

Other analysts, though, say that while the risk of proliferation in Asia cannot be dismissed, the probability seems slight given Japan's persistent atomic allergy, South Korea's commitment to dialogue with Pyongyang and the likelihood the United States would block any nuclear pretensions by Taiwan.

"It's not conceivable under the current circumstances," said Robert Karniol of Jane's Defence Weekly. "There's a reason why it (obtaining nuclear weapons) is useful for North Korea, but there's no reason why it's useful for anyone else."

Tensions on the Korean peninsula rose after Washington said in October that North Korea had admitted pursuing a nuclear arms programme in violation of a 1994 pact, and ratchetted up again after Pyongyang's threat to restart a nuclear plant that could make weapons-grade plutonium.

In a key policy shift, the United States said that it was willing to talk to North Korea before the communist state ended its nuclear programme. But Washington stuck to its refusal to offer Pyongyang new incentives for keeping old promises.

The United States has been reluctant to be seen rewarding North Korea for breaking its word. Other options for handling the crisis, however, are also problematic.

Arguing that military strikes could trigger a general war on the Korean peninsula while economic sanctions against an already-isolated Pyongyang would not work, Ted Galen Carpenter of the conservative Cato Institute urged another approach.

Washington "should inform North Korea that, unless it abandons its nuclear programme, the US will encourage South Korea and Japan to make their own decisions about also going nuclear," he wrote in a report published earlier this week.

That view, while held by a distinct minority in the US, could well resonate with those conservative Japanese politicians who - worried about a Chinese military threat - would like to scrap Tokyo's nuclear arms ban, formally in place since 1971.

But huge obstacles, including a deep public aversion to nuclear weapons, stand in the way of Tokyo taking such a step.

"From a purely strategic point of view, it does make sense for Japan to have nuclear weapons vis-a-vis China in the long term," said Akio Watanabe, head of the Research Institute For Peace and Security, a conservative Tokyo think tank.

"If someone has such a long-term strategy, the immediate North Korean problem would give a good excuse to prepare for that, but I don't think they will say so openly now," he added. "It is very, very unpopular for Japanese domestic politics."

To be sure, Japanese attitudes appear to have shifted since a junior cabinet minister was sacked in 1999 for suggesting parliament debate dropping its ban on nuclear arms.

Last summer, two key ministers in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's cabinet sparked a domestic and diplomatic furore with remarks implying Japan might someday scrap the self-imposed ban.

This time, both kept their jobs. One, Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, is being touted as a possible future prime minister.

But many analysts said the change implied not an emerging consensus in favour of a nuclear option, but a greater maturity in Japan's security debate, long stunted by its wartime legacy.

"If you look at all the opinion polls over the last several months, they are overwhelmingly pacifist and anti-nuclear," said University of Tokyo political scientist Takashi Inoguchi.

"I don't think Japan will go ahead with nuclear weapons even if some US politicians suggest it. The mainstream think they had better not, because it would create a more dangerous situation."

Adopting the nuclear option would also require redefining the pillar of Tokyo's postwar diplomacy, the US-Japan security alliance, under which Japan hosts about half of America's military presence in Asia in return for protection under the US nuclear umbrella.

Taiwan, which Beijing regards as a renegade province to be reunited with mainland China by force if necessary, considered the nuclear option decades ago but was restrained by the United States.

It would almost certainly face similar US pressure should it embark on that path now, Jane's Defence Weekly's Karniol said.

"America would do the same, if not more forcefully, today," he said, adding, "There is no practical reason for Taiwan to go down the nuclear path."

South Korea, also forced by Washington to halt nuclear arms development in the mid-1970s, could inherit that capability if an impoverished North collapsed and the peninsula was reunited. (Reuters)

But currently, Seoul is more intent on finding ways to persuade the North to scrap its atomic arms programme than creating its own as a deterrent.

"That stance could change, but at present the possibility is not very great," said Ahn Byung-joon, a South Korean professor at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo.

"The urgent issue is to halt North Korea's nuclear development, and for South Korea to develop its own would not help solve that problem," Ahn added.

That said, the refusal by established nuclear powers including the United States, China and Russia to lay down their atomic arms provides a logical basis for non-nuclear states in Asia and elsewhere to argue - as have India and Pakistan - that they also have the right to take the plunge, Karniol said.

"There can be no meaningful constraint on proliferation so long as the established nuclear powers maintain their superiority," he said.