FUTURE NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION SCENARIOS IN NORTHEAST ASIA

Abstract

Northeast Asia is a nuclear tinderbox that could easily be set off, given rising regional tensions, widespread nuclear power capabilities, and the absence of strong regional security institutions. Given this context, states need to identify and seek to prevent “trigger events”—circumstances that could stimulate proliferation cascades. While it is important to continue the current emphasis on strengthening supply-side constraints (such as the Proliferation Security Initiative), new efforts to address the demand side are sorely needed. These efforts should include shoring up currently weakened global nonproliferation norms, facilitating direct talks among states on issues of military concern, and renewing efforts to address underlying sources of regional conflict (historical problems, territorial disputes, and the still unresolved Korean War). While difficult, these new approaches offer the best chance of keeping two and a half nuclear states in Northeast Asia from becoming six.

Keywords:

• Nuclear weapons
• Russia
• China
• Taiwan
• Japan
• North Korea
• South Korea
• Proliferation Security Initiative
• Vertical proliferation
• Horizontal proliferation

Notes

1. The author thanks Josh Levinger for research assistance in the preparation of this study.

2. Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr, “Where They Were,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 55 (Nov.r/Dec. 1999), pp. 26–35, <www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=nd99norris_024>; Robert S. Norris, William M. Arkin, and William Burr, “How Much Did Japan Know?” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 56 (Jan./Feb. 2000), pp. 11–13, 78–79, < www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=jf00norris>.

3. “Horizontal” proliferation refers to the development of nuclear weapons by states that do not currently possess them. “Vertical” proliferation refers to an increase in the number of nuclear weapons deployed by a state already possessing a nuclear arsenal.

4. For example, see John J. Mearsheimer, “Why We Will Soon Miss the Cold War,” in Andrei G. Bochkarev and Don L. Mansfield, eds., The United States and the USSR in a Changing World (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992).

5. As Thomas L. Wilborn's 1991 study of East Asian defense intellectuals concluded: “Regional powers, they believe, will be less inhibited than formerly by the alliances of the cold war, and more likely to attempt to pursue specific national interests, using their relatively sophisticated militaries when they believe that such use will be beneficial.” See Wilborn's monograph, “How Northeast Asians View Their Security,” Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College, Aug. 8, 1991, p. 64.

6. For example, see Chalmers Johnson's provocative essay, “History Restarted: Japanese-American Relations at the End of the Century,” unpublished paper prepared for the Fulbright Symposium on Managing International Economic Relations in the Pacific in the 1990s, Australian National University, Canberra, Australia, Dec. 16–17, 1991.

7. Alexei Bogaturov, “Soviet Economic and Military-Political Interests in Eastern Asia,” in Eric H. Arnett, ed., Science and International Security: Responding to a Changing World (Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1990), p. 224.

8. Robert A. Scalapino, “The United States and Asia: Future Prospects,” Foreign Affairs 70 (Winter 1991/92), pp. 20–21.

9. Robert A. Scalapino, “The United States and Asia: Future Prospects,” Foreign Affairs 70 (Winter 1991/92), pp. 20–21.

10. Daniel Okimoto, “The Asian Perimeter, Moving Front and Center,” in Facing the Future: American Strategy in the 1990s (Landham, MD: Aspen Strategy Group and the University Press of America, 1991), p. 143.

11. See Francis Fukuyama, “The End of History?” The National Interest, No. 15 (Summer 1989), pp. 3–18.

12. David A. Lake, “Powerful Pacifists: Democratic States and War,” American Political Science Review 86 (March 1992), pp. 24–37.

13. Ashton B. Carter and William J. Perry, “If Necessary, Strike and Destroy: North Korea Cannot Be Allowed to Test This Missile,” Washington Post, June 22, 2006, p. A29.

14. On these issues, see Norimitsu Onishi, “Japan's Likely Next Premier in Hawkish Stand,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 2006, p. A6.

15. Mongolia is not included here because it lacks a nuclear infrastructure and is a self-declared (and UN-recognized) single-state nuclear-weapon-free zone.

16. Jungmin Kang, Peter Hayes, Li Bin, Tatsujiro Suzuki, and Richard Tanter, “South Korea's Nuclear Surprise,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 61 (Jan./Feb. 2005), pp. 40–49.

17. Jeffrey Lewis, “The Ambiguous Arsenal,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 61(May/June 2005), pp. 52–59, <www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=mj05lewis>. Analysts Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen use the same figure, but speculate that there may be 70 weapons in storage. Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2006,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 62 (May/June 2006), pp. 60–63, </www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=mj06norris>.

18. Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945–2006,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 62 (July/Aug. 2006), pp. 64–66, </www.thebulletin.org/article_nn.php?art_ofn=ja06norris>.

19. Lewis, “The Ambiguous Arsenal.”

20. North Korea also has a 200-MWe reactor in the early phases of construction, but recent trips by Western experts to the region indicate that work has not proceeded at the site for well over a decade. See Siegfried S. Hecker, “Visit to the Yongyong Scientific Research Center in North Korea,” Testimony to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Jan. 21, 2004, available on the U.S. Senate Web Site at: </www.senate.gov/∼foreign/testimony/2004/HeckerTestimony040121.pdf#search=%22sig%20hecker%20north%20korea%20testimony%22>.

21. “South Korean Opinion Polls: Majority Favors Nuclear Weapons; 1980s Generation Questions U.S. Ties,” WMD Insights (Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006), <www.wmdinsights.com/PDF/WMDInsights_Issue1.pdf>.

22. “South Korean Opinion Polls: Majority Favors Nuclear Weapons; 1980s Generation Questions U.S. Ties,” WMD Insights (Dec. 2005/Jan. 2006), <www.wmdinsights.com/PDF/WMDInsights_Issue1.pdf>.

23. See, for example, Meg Bortin, “Survey Shows a Revival of Isolationism in U.S.,” New York Times, Nov. 17, 2005, <www.nytimes.com/2005/11/17/national/17cnd-survey.html?ex=1158120000&en=d9c3507842d3cfac&ei=5070>.

24. Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, “The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy,” Foreign Affairs 85 (March/April 2006).