Defense Secretary Les Aspin, in trying to defuse the slow-motion North Korean nuclear crisis, may have set off a high-stakes battle over technology by proposing Japan’s participation in a missile defense system the U.S. is developing.
The proposal also could provoke a political crisis in Japan as that country tries to reconcile its pacifist constitution with the modern world’s increasingly sophisticated air defenses.
During his trip through Asia last week, Aspin asked Japan to help build the next generation anti-missile system, dubbed THAAD for Theater High Altitude Area Defense.
The program is the successor to the so-called Star Wars program, which Aspin folded last spring.
In exchange for Japan’s help in what still shapes up to be a multiyear, multibillion-dollar defense program, the U.S. would like to get its hands on some of Japan’s more sophisticated dual-use technologies-manufacturing systems, electronics gear and advanced ceramics that might prove useful in military and civilian industries.
The offer was treated cautiously in Japan, where defense budgets are tightening, acrimony lingers over previous joint defense programs-specifically the controversial FSX jet fighter-and critics already are questioning the legality of space-based defense.
“It’s very expensive, it will take a long time to deploy and it raises all kinds of political and constitutional problems,” said Masashi Nishihara, research director at the National Institute for Defense Studies, Japan’s equivalent of the National War College.
Aspin’s offer came amid another round of finger-wagging at North Korea, which pulled out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty last March and has refused international inspectors access to its nuclear facilities in Yongbyon, 60 miles north of the capital, Pyongyang.
The U.S. believes North Korea is secretly pushing its program to build nuclear weapons and may be close to achieving that goal.
But Japan and South Korea last week urged Aspin to avoid seeking international sanctions against Pyongyang, fearing a public confrontation could trigger a military attack by its hard-line communist regime.
North Korea is violating international nuclear safeguards by barring International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors from two secret sites where Western intelligence agencies believe there is evidence that plutonium has been produced for weapons use.
North Korea also is denying IAEA inspectors access to acknowledged nuclear sites.
The UN passed a resolution last Monday pressing Pyongyang to cooperate with inspections, and the U.S. threatened to go to the UN Security Council for sanctions against North Korea if it continues to block the inspectors.
While that crisis drags on, the U.S., Japan and South Korea have begun knotty negotiations over how to erect the best defense against the evolving threat from the world’s most isolated regime.
North Korea last summer successfully tested a Rodong missile capable of hitting western Japan, and analysts say the entire archipelago will be within North Korea’s range within three to five years.
On Friday a senior U.S. defense official said grimly that the military standoff on the Korean peninsula is entering a “danger zone” in which a desperate and politically isolated north may launch an attack on the south.
The official said North Korea now has 70 percent of its 1.1 million armed forces in the border area between Pyongyang and the demilitarized zone.
High-ranking Japanese defense officials and think tank leaders traveled to Washington recently for briefings on details of the new defense program, which the U.S. hopes to deploy in Japan and South Korea, where it still maintains thousands of troops. The system uses upgraded land and sea-based missiles-new versions of the Patriot and Aegis systems that proved effective during the Persian Gulf war-with space-based surveillance and command satellites.
On Wednesday, Aspin suggested the U.S. was indifferent as to how the system is finally deployed.
“We could sell them the theater missile defenses we’re developing for our own forces,” he said. “We’ve offered the possibility of a joint technology program for exchanging dual-use technologies. The choice is up to the Japanese government.”
But in a follow-up meeting Friday, U.S. officials outlined a range of programs in which they would like to see the two sides cooperate. High on the list was gaining access to Japan’s advanced manufacturing systems and joint development of new technologies like rocket engines with air ducts. In exchange, Japan would gain knowledge about building advanced missile systems.
One U.S. official familiar with the talks described the Japanese response as “confused.” Japanese defense analysts clearly seemed suspicious about U.S. motives.
“We have no choice but to accept this kind of system in the future,” said Satoshi Morimoto, a senior researcher at Nomura Research Institute and an adviser to the Japanese Self Defense Force. “But many things have to be clarified. Perhaps we need a committee to see where technical cooperation can take place.”
Cost also is a major concern to the Japanese. “This program would be a large part of our annual defense budget,” Nishihara said. “We’re in a recession and reducing defense budgets.”
While the Japanese defense budget appears to be soaring in dollar terms, in yen terms it is barely keeping pace with inflation. Defense spending measured in yen grew 2 percent this year and will rise only 1.9 percent to $44.2 billion next year. A major new program would require large cuts in other areas.
But the largest stumbling block to deployment of the new system could be political. A parliamentary resolution forbids Japan’s Self Defense Force from using space for military purposes.
The peace constitution erected by the U.S. occupation after World War II has been interpreted to mean Japan may not engage in any form of collective self-defense. Any space-based surveillance and command-and-control satellites undoubtedly would be used for missile defenses operated not only by Japan but by South Korea and U.S. forces in the region.
“I’m very afraid some people in Japan may make misleading statements about what this system will mean in both a technical and a political sense,” Morimoto warned.
The circumspect response to the proposed joint defense program mirrored caution in Japan and South Korea about slapping sanctions on North Korea.
“It’s premature to think about sanctions,” said a Japanese government spokesman Friday.
Earlier in the week, Aspin suggested it’s unclear whether sanctions would have any impact on the isolated regime.
China, North Korea’s largest trading partner, has indicated it would not support an economic embargo; and Japan would hesitate to crack down on members of its Korean minority who continue to send money to relatives in the north.
