When Japan's Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said on Friday before a visit to Europe that his country "cannot avoid" a debate on it acquiring nuclear weapons, he wasn't pondering the moral weight of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. He was flying a "trial balloon"; watching to see the international community's response.
A routine Chinese submarine missile test in the Pacific targeting no party has sent some in Tokyo into a perceivable tizzy. The Japanese government officially expressed "serious concern", rushing into an urgent defense posture review. But the claim that the launch was a "threat" is a classic case of projection — the man who cries wolf is really just trying to get more for himself.
Koizumi pointed to the "security environment" in Europe and European nations upgrading their nuclear capabilities as his justification for breaking Japan's nearly 60-year-old, "self-imposed", "Three Non-Nuclear Principles" of not producing, not possessing and not permitting nuclear weapons on its territory.
It is another line of attack on Japan's postwar prohibitions on nuclear weapons. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has already suggested that not allowing US nuclear weapons into Japan is "unrealistic" if the country is to get US protection.
