Introduction

Abstract

Under what conditions would the democracies in Northeast Asia seek to join the nuclear weapons club? Japan, South Korea and Taiwan are threshold nuclear powers by virtue of their robust civilian nuclear-energy programmes. All three once pursued nuclear weapons and all face nuclear-armed adversaries. Fitzpatrick's latest book analyses these past nuclear pursuits and current proliferation drivers. It considers how long it would take each to build a nuclear weapon if such a fateful decision were made but does not predict such a scenario. Unlike when each previously went down a nuclear path, democracy and a free press now prevail as barriers to building bombs in the basement. Reliance on US defence commitments is a better security alternative – as long as such guarantees remain credible. But extended deterrence is not a barrier to proliferation of sensitive nuclear technologies. Nuclear hedging by its Northeast Asian partners will challenge Washington's nuclear diplomacy.

The three Northeast Asian democracies that are the focus of this book are not suspected of nuclear proliferation. Japan, the Republic of Korea (ROK, or South Korea) and Taiwan (the Republic of China) have accepted all relevant global non-proliferation instruments and are in good standing with their obligations. They promote non-proliferation abroad, and their open, free societies would not sustain secret nuclear programmes at home. Yet each of the three makes for an interesting case study on potential proliferation. Ample grounds for analysis are provided by their advanced industries for nuclear and other dual-use technologies, their past pursuit of nuclear weapons and their desire to avert threats posed by nucleararmed adversaries.

Global attention to the danger of nuclear proliferation is generally focused on the states that lie outside the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) or that have violated key requirements of the treaty. North Korea, Iran, Pakistan, Syria and, until recently, Iraq, Libya and Myanmar have been the usual suspects. India and Israel are also among the outliers. One reason for concern is that nuclear proliferation often has a knock-on effect. Acquisition of the atomic bomb by the United States, which had pooled knowledge with the United Kingdom, spurred the Soviet Union to keep pace. The Soviets then shared A-bomb technology with China, which led India to seek a nuclear equaliser. With help from China, Pakistan matched India. Due to these and other cases, the domino theory became a staple of the nuclear-proliferation literature.

It has often been presumed that Iran's development of sensitive nuclear technology could spur Saudi Arabia and perhaps other neighbours to do the same. In assessing the prospects for nuclear dominoes in the Middle East, it is useful to observe the situation in Northeast Asia, a region that recently saw the emergence of a new nuclear-armed state. At the beginning of this century, many observers predicted that if North Korea acquired nuclear weapons, it would be a game changer that could very likely cause Japan, South Korea and probably Taiwan to also do so. By 2016, Northeast Asia could have six nuclear-armed states, warned one American scholar.¹ Yet North Korea's nuclear test in 2006 and those that followed did not cause any of its neighbours to follow suit. Nor did China's 1964 test spark nuclearisation elsewhere (although not for lack of trying, in Taiwan's case). One purpose of this Adelphi book is to examine why this is, and to ask whether the current situation will hold.

The Iran nuclear issue provides another reason for writing this book. Iran has frequently insisted that, with regard to its nuclear programme, it simply wishes to be treated in the same manner as Japan: to be allowed a uranium-enrichment programme for civilian purposes, in accordance with the NPT. This claim has been met with incredulity by most Western experts. Iran's nuclear-safeguards violations, inadequate transparency and development work related to nuclear weapons stand in sharp contrast to Japan's clean record. This disparity may now change. Iran's acceptance in July 2015 of extensive verification measures under the accord negotiated in Vienna known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action brings its status closer to that of Japan. The uranium-enrichment programme allowed for under the agreement, especially when limits on centrifuge numbers and type expire in 15 years, also brings Iran closer to its goal of Japan-equivalent treatment – to the dismay of critics. The expansion of sensitive fuel-cycle technologies – uranium enrichment² and plutonium reprocessing³ – is perhaps the greatest proliferation concern today. As two American nuclear-policy scholars recently put it, ‘nuclear latency is the new nuclear proliferation’.⁴

Many South Koreans have also lobbied for their country to be allowed these technologies. Enrichment and reprocessing have legitimate civilian purposes, but they also provide two paths to a nuclear weapon, and thus have been subjected to attempts at restriction by the US. In the post-war period, the authoritarian governments of South Korea and Taiwan pursued these technologies for non-peaceful purposes, before they were stopped by Washington. During the Second World War, Japan also sought nuclear weapons via both paths.

Circumstances are different today. It would be unprecedented for a US security partner to break its non-proliferation obligations. Only if circumstances dramatically changed in ways that simultaneously enlarged threat perceptions and diminished the credibility of the US security link would indigenous nuclearisation become a consideration for any of these three actors. Yet a nuclear-hedging option is another matter.

Given the well-developed status of their civilian nuclear industries, all three democracies in Northeast Asia can be called latent nuclear powers.⁵ They could produce nuclear weapons without outside help within a few years or less, but they choose to refrain from doing so. Nuclear latency is most pronounced in Japan, due to its reprocessing and enrichment capabilities. Japan is often said also to employ a nuclear-hedging strategy, which analysts Wyn Bowen and Matthew Moran pithily define as ‘nuclear latency with intent’.⁶ South Korea and Taiwan have also at times considered nuclear hedging and it would not take long for them to acquire these technologies if they chose to break away from US-imposed restrictions. The main chapters in this book examine the state of nuclear technology in each of the three states, and assess how long it might take them to produce nuclear weapons, if the fateful decision to do so was taken.

The potential timeline for nuclearisation is another staple of the proliferation literature. In 2010 political scientist Scott Sagan provided the best summary of the literature, according to which the timeline is between four years and less than one year for countries that have access to fissile material, such as Japan, and longer for those without plutonium or enriched uranium.⁷ Nonetheless, the assessments are often mechanistic, based on engineering formulas divorced from real-world context. Estimates vary widely depending on assumptions about the corners a state might be willing to cut and the nature of the arsenal it desires. If in an extremely dire situation a state decided it needed nuclear weapons as quickly as possible, its leaders might sideline issues of nuclear safety, warhead reliability, political and diplomatic considerations, and legal niceties. A more careful developmental process, as pursued by nearly every nuclear-armed state to date, could multiply the length of the timeline manyfold. Producing a handful of bombs at breakneck speed might not be the path taken by a nation that sought a survivable and robust nuclear deterrent.

Any decision to go nuclear would be affected foremost by the nature of the perceived threat. For Japan and Taiwan, this means the threat from China, in terms of both its nuclear and conventional capabilities. For South Korea (and to some degree Japan) North Korea's nuclear threat, exacerbated by its 6 January claimed hydrogen-bomb test, is a dominant factor. Other motivations are possible in the future. Japan worries, for example, about the prospect of an antagonistic unified Korea that has inherited nuclear-weapons technology from the North. South (and North) Koreans have their own concerns about Japan.

Such concerns increase the likelihood of a nuclear cascade. Japan's acquisition of nuclear weapons would give South Korea an almost irresistible motivation to follow suit. The same may also hold true for the reverse case, although this is less certain, given Japan's stronger societal aversion to nuclear weapons. The breakdown in the global non-proliferation order that would ensue from either or both Japan and South Korea going nuclear could cause Taiwan to abandon its non-proliferation commitments as well. The nuclear domino theory that was seemingly taken as an article of faith among early theorists has been called into question by more recent studies.⁸ Yet it is hard to put the nightmare scenario out of mind. South Korean President Park Geun-hye evoked it by commenting in May 2014 that a fourth North Korean nuclear test could topple nuclear dominoes in the region.⁹

The existence of a nuclear threat is not sufficient reason to go nuclear; if it were, all three states in question would have nuclear arms by now. In each case, the reliability of the US security commitment is the dominant variable. Maintaining the credibility of US extended deterrence is the strongest safeguard of nuclear non-proliferation in the region. This credibility is frequently questioned in Asian security circles, usually with positive conclusions. However, when US President Barack Obama failed to enforce his declared ‘red line’ on the Syrian government's use of chemical weapons against rebel forces, and when Russia occupied Crimea without a military response from the US and its NATO allies, questions were raised about how the US would respond to similar actions by China. The analogy is inapt, of course. Syrian rebels and Ukraine are not covered by US security commitments of any sort. But questions are still being asked about whether events in Crimea might embolden Beijing to take aggressive steps in places not covered by US extended deterrence, such as Vietnam's territorial waters and, arguably, Taiwan.¹⁰

This book does not predict that Beijing will be so blatantly aggressive, nor that the Northeast Asian democracies will seek nuclear armament. But it does assess the circumstances that could push them in this direction in the future. It also addresses what must be done to keep Asia's latent nuclear powers from moving up the hedging ladder. Reassuringly, most of the policies needed to prevent the nuclear dominoes from falling are already in place, although they require constant attention.

Notes

1 James Clay Moltz, ‘Future Nuclear Proliferation Scenarios in Northeast Asia’, Nonproliferation Review, vol. 13, no. 3, November 2006.

2 Uranium enrichment is the physical process of increasing the percentage of the fissile isotope U-235, which comprises 0.7% of uranium in the metal's natural state. Most nuclear-reactor fuel requires a concentrate of about 3.5% U-235, while weapons-grade uranium is around 90% enriched. In theory, nuclear weapons can be made with uranium enriched to only 20%, which is considered to be the cut-off point between low-enriched uranium and highly enriched uranium.

3 Plutonium reprocessing is the chemical process of separating the plutonium produced by irradiating uranium from other components of spent reactor fuel.

4 Jeffrey M. Kaplow and Rebecca Davis Gibbons, ‘The Days after a Deal with Iran: Implications for the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime’, RAND Corporation, 2015, http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE135/RAND_PE135.pdf.

5 Other oft-used terms include ‘virtual’, ‘threshold’ or ‘recessed’ nuclear capabilities, each of which connotes a robust level of development and ambiguous intent that does not necessarily apply to all of the three cases.

6 Wyn Bowen and Matthew Moran, ‘Iran's Nuclear Programme: A Case Study in Hedging?’, Contemporary Security Policy, vol. 35, no. 1, April 2014. Other notable works on the subject include Stephen M. Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1984); Ariel E. Levite, ‘Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited’, International Security, vol. 27, no. 3, Winter 2002–03, pp. 59–88; and Scott D. Sagan, ‘Nuclear Latency and Nuclear Proliferation’, in William C. Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova (eds), Forecasting Nuclear Proliferation in the 21^st Century, Volume 1: The Role of Theory (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2010).

7 Sagan, ‘Nuclear Latency and Nuclear Proliferation’.

8 For early studies on the subject, see Lewis A. Dunn and Herman Kahn, Trends in Nuclear Proliferation, 1975– 1995: Predictions, Problems, and Policy Options (Washington, DC: Hudson Institute, 1976); and US Committee on Nuclear Proliferation, ‘A Report to the President by the Committee on Nuclear Proliferation’, 21 January 1965. For more recent studies, see Nicholas L. Miller, ‘Nuclear Dominoes: A Self-Defeating Prophecy?’ Security Studies, vol. 23, no. 1, 2014, pp. 33–73; and William Potter, ‘Divining Nuclear Intentions: Review Essay’, International Security, vol. 33, no. 1, Summer 2008.

9 Gerard Baker and Alastair Gale, ‘South Korea President Warns on Nuclear Domino Effect’, Wall Street Journal, 29 May 2014.

10 Nobumasa Akiyama, ‘Japan's Disarmament Dilemma: Between the Moral Commitment and the Security Reality’, in George P. Shultz and James E. Goodby (eds), The War that Must Never Be Fought: Dilemmas of Nuclear Deterrence (Stanford, CA: Hoover Institution Press, 2015), p. 466.