Weapons 'R Us

[furtherfield]

Weapons 'R Us: "It's time to share the nightmares"

A follow-up to yesterday's email on nuclear proliferation: In Asia Times
on-line today, Mark Erikson quotes from the charming thoughts of Washington
Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, who recently wrote: "We [the
US] should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join
us in squeezing North Korea ... we will endorse any Japanese attempt to
create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically
regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an
immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea,
China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares."

Erikson makes it clear that Japan could, in fact, go nuclear in a major way
in a matter of months, if the decision were made -- and that thoughts of
this are now becoming part of acceptable mainstream discussion in Japan, not
simply of semi-buried right-wing rants.

Weapons 'R Us: "It's time to share the nightmares"

A follow-up to yesterday's email on nuclear proliferation: In Asia Times
on-line today, Mark Erikson quotes from the charming thoughts of Washington
Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer, who recently wrote: "We [the
US] should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join
us in squeezing North Korea ... we will endorse any Japanese attempt to
create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically
regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an
immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea,
China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares."

Erikson makes it clear that Japan could, in fact, go nuclear in a major way
in a matter of months, if the decision were made -- and that thoughts of
this are now becoming part of acceptable mainstream discussion in Japan, not
simply of semi-buried right-wing rants.
http://www.nationinstitute.org/tomdispatch/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=287