Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 4. September
2009 / Timeline September 4, 2009
Version 3.5
3. September 2009, 5. September 2009
09/04/2009
Japan's Election and
Anti-Nuclear Momentum
By: Lawrence S.
Wittner
Although the smashing victory of the opposition Democratic Party in
Japan's parliamentary elections of August 30 had numerous causes,
one of the results will be a strengthening of the campaign for a
nuclear weapons-free world.
In the past few years, Japan's long-ruling conservatives —
grouped in the misnamed Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) — had
shown increasing signs of dispensing with Japan's nuclear-free
status. Pointing to North Korea's development of a nuclear
capability, party officials had publicly floated the idea of
Japan's acquiring nuclear weapons. More recently, a former
government official revealed what many Japanese already suspected:
Decades ago, an LDP government had agreed to allow stopovers in
Japan by U.S. military aircraft and vessels carrying nuclear
weapons. Outside observers even began to voice the idea that
Japan's LDP government, by insisting on U.S. nuclear guarantees,
might undermine plans by the Barack Obama administration
to reduce the importance of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense
policy.
But the stunning victory by Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), with
its sharply antinuclear stand, has altered this situation
dramatically. Pointing to the nation's "Three Non-Nuclear
Principles" — a 1967 government pledge not to possess,
manufacture, or introduce nuclear weapons into Japan —
Democratic Party leader Yukio Hatoyama promised to work to codify
these principles into law. Nor is the party's antinuclear vision
limited to Japan. The DPJ endorses a regional nuclear-free zone.
And as recently as this August, Hatoyama told a public gathering that "realizing a
nuclear-free world as called for by U.S. President Barack Obama is
exactly the moral mission of our country."
The DPJ's victory gives added momentum to a campaign for nuclear
abolition that has recently transitioned from an apparently utopian
vision to pragmatic politics.
Growing Movement
Long before these new U.S. and Japanese officials turned their
attention to abolishing the world's vast nuclear arsenals, citizens
groups had organized vigorous campaigns to do just that. And these
nuclear disarmament campaigns played a major role in convincing
governments to pull back from the nuclear arms race and accept
nuclear cutbacks. As a result, the number of nuclear weapons around
the world declined substantially — from some 70,000 at the
height of the Cold War to fewer than 24,000 today.
Furthermore, in the last few years the call for nuclear disarmament
has turned into a demand for a nuclear-free world. In January 2007 and again
in January 2008, a group of former top U.S. national security
officials wrote op-ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal contending
that, as the very existence of nuclear weapons raised profound
dangers for human survival, the U.S. government should commit
itself to the goal of nuclear abolition. During the recent U.S.
presidential campaign, Obama repeatedly spoke out for building a
nuclear-free world, as he did again this April. On this last
occasion, addressing an audience in Prague, he committed the U.S. government to
"seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons."
Subsequently, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon announced his own plan to spur the world
forward "on its journey to a world free of nuclear weapons."
A number of important constituencies also champion this goal. In
2008, the U.S. Conference of Mayors unanimously adopted a resolution supporting the global
elimination of nuclear weapons by 2020. It followed this up in 2009
by unanimously passing a resolution "enthusiastically"
welcoming "the new leadership and multilateralism that the United
States is demonstrating toward achievement of a nuclear-weapon-free
world" and calling upon Obama "to announce at the 2010 Nuclear
Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference" the beginning of
negotiations for "an international agreement to abolish nuclear
weapons by the year 2020."
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, relatively silent on
nuclear disarmament since its dramatic antinuclear pronouncements
of 1983, displayed a new interest in the subject in 2009. On April
8, speaking on behalf of the Conference, Bishop Howard Hubbard of
Albany welcomed the Obama administration's leadership
"toward a nuclear-free world" and declared that the Conference
"look[ed] forward to working with the Administration and Congress
in supporting legislation" toward that goal. On July 29, in a
keynote talk at a "Deterrence Symposium" hosted by the U.S.
Strategic Command, Archbishop Edwin O'Brien of Baltimore — a
member of the Conference's Committee on International Justice and
Peace — startled the military-oriented gathering by insisting that "our world and its leaders must stay
focused on the destination of a nuclear-weapons-free world."
Labor and Peace
The labor movement has also started to mobilize against nuclear
weapons. On July 10, 2009, the International Trade Union
Confederation — representing 170 million workers in 157
countries (including the members of the AFL-CIO) — launched
an international campaign for nuclear disarmament. A
focal point of the campaign is a petition calling for a nuclear
disarmament treaty signed by all U.N. member states. According to
the world labor confederation, the campaign was "being run in
cooperation with the worldwide 'Mayors for Peace' group," headed by
Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba, which has called for creating a
nuclear-free world by 2020.
Although the U.S. peace movement has been preoccupied with ending
the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, as well as with averting war with
Iran, it recently has increased its efforts around the theme of a
nuclear-free world, especially in connection with the run-up to the
May 2010 NPT review conference at the United Nations. Beginning in
the summer of 2009, peace and disarmament organizations began
circulating a nuclear abolition petition directed to Obama,
calling upon the administration to use the occasion of the
conference to announce negotiations for a treaty abolishing nuclear
weapons. There are also plans afoot for a large antinuclear
demonstration at the United Nations on May 2, 2010, as well as for
smaller events designed to rally support for a nuclear-free
world.
At the moment, the degree to which the Japanese elections will
increase the clout of this burgeoning nuclear abolition campaign
remains uncertain. The DPJ faces a number of challenges if it is to
implement its nuclear-free promises. Although public sentiment in
Japan is strongly antinuclear, there is also a rising fear of North
Korea's nuclear program — a fact that might lead to an
erosion of the new administration's nuclear-free doctrine.
Compromise on maintaining a nuclear-free Japan is alluring, as
Japan has the scientific and technological capability to produce
nuclear weapons easily and quickly. Furthermore, many Japanese (and
particularly LDP members), though uneasy about Japan's development
of nuclear weapons, feel comfortable under the U.S. nuclear
umbrella. Thus, they might resist international efforts to create a
nuclear-free world.
Even so, the DPJ's election sweep should hearten opponents of
nuclear weapons, for it provides not only a symbolic victory for
antinuclear forces but a potentially significant shift in the
nuclear policy of a major nation. Above all, it serves as an
indication that, around the world, the antinuclear momentum is
growing.
From Foreign Policy In Focus www.fpif.org . Published with
permission.
09/04/2009
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