Don’t Bomb Iran

Japan Times article

Monday, June 5, 2006

Kissinger worried about a Japan armed with nukes

WASHINGTON (Kyodo) Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger was worried Japan would follow India’s example and develop nuclear weapons, according to a recently declassified U.S. government document.

“I think now Japan will also develop nuclear weapons,” Kissinger said in a meeting with Syrian President Hafez al-Asad at the Presidential Palace in Damascus on May 21, 1974.

The meeting took place three days after India set off an underground nuclear explosion, according to the declassified “memorandum of conversation.”

It had been widely rumored that the U.S. government was worried about Japan moving to develop nuclear weapons in line with its rapidly growing economy in and after the 1960s.

But the document underlines that Kissinger, who was also White House national security adviser and the dominant U.S. foreign policymaker in the 1970s, himself believed Japan would possess nuclear weapons.

Japan had yet to ratify the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and there were various other factors that could have led to suspicions it would pursue nuclear arms.

In 1975, President Gerald Ford visited Japan and committed the United States in writing to putting Japan under its “nuclear umbrella” during a meeting with Prime Minister Takeo Miki.

The recently released document suggests that Kissinger’s concerns were behind the U.S. decision to make the commitment, which remains intact to this day as the underlying reason Japan maintains a nonnuclear policy.

In a written response to a Kyodo News request for comment on the document, Kissinger said his remarks at that time were “only a reflection of . . . rather fundamental principle, and not of any information as to secret Japanese plans.”

Kissinger said they “reflected the conventional wisdom of the day — and of today as well.”

“That is, that the more countries with nuclear weapons, the greater the incentive for others to go nuclear and the higher the likelihood of further proliferation. Hence, even now the intense concern of the international community with Iran’s nuclear program,” he said.

The memo was recently obtained from the National Archive and publicized by the National Security Archive, a Washington-based think tank.

According to the document, Kissinger said Japan had the technological prowess to develop nuclear weapons, saying “they can go very fast if they want.”

“I think by 1980 we will see a massive expansion of Japanese military force,” he said. “Then they will overcome public feeling against nuclear weapons.

“I could be wrong — their history is very warlike,” he said.

Kissinger explained that Japan expanded its naval force when face with an oil embargo before World War II. When the Syrian president asked about his assessment of the Indian nuclear test, Kissinger said it would make Pakistan and China nervous. “I don’t believe it’s for peaceful purposes,” he said. “But it has no great military significance.”
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