The full text of the article “Japan's Ambition for Nuclear-Powered Submarines Is Thoroughly Aimed at Nuclear Armament,” published by Pak Ju Won, a commentator on international security affairs, is as follows.
As the military moves of the present right-wing conservative regime of Japan, which reduce all previous administrations to insignificance, press hard against the danger line, the recent public airing on the Japanese archipelago of the claim that Japan should possess nuclear-powered submarines is arousing the concern of the world.
Not long ago, the Japanese Prime Minister, at a plenary session of the House of Representatives of the Diet, sidestepped the issue of possessing nuclear-powered submarines by saying that no decision has been made at this point on the handling of new types of propulsion, while asserting that, in light of changes in the security environment, discussions on defence capability will be deepened in order to revise the three security-related documents within this year.
Prior to this, the Defence Minister had boasted on several occasions that no option would be excluded from consideration, that, in connection with the revision of the three security-related documents, the possession of nuclear weapons and nuclear-powered submarines should not be excluded, and that the matter should be discussed without taboos.
To formulate reactionary security policy, the established and cunning method of Japanese policy-making is first to use cabinet members to float the relevant policy in the media as “one of the options,” sound out domestic and foreign reaction, then have the matter promoted through a council of experts, and finally push it through by surprise deliberation and decision.
This is borne out by the fact that in September last year the Defence Ministry's council of experts recommended to the government that it review the possession of submarines with “next-generation propulsion”; that in October, when the Liberal Democratic Party and Nippon Ishin formed a coalition government, the same purport was reflected in the twelve-item agreement on major policies; and that the Chief Cabinet Secretary and the Defence Minister then came forward to utter the reckless declaration that no option would be excluded.
The fact that the present Japanese ruling circles have now thrown aside even the ambiguous phrase “next-generation propulsion” and are openly clamouring for the possession of nuclear-powered submarines betrays the sinister design of whipping up public opinion in order to drive this issue into the three security-related documents to be revised at the end of this year.
To formalize the possession of nuclear-powered submarines and ultimately pave the way for the possession of nuclear weapons—such is the true aim of Japan's new militarist forces.
It is the common view of the international community that Japan, which plunged into the top-secret research and development of nuclear weapons during the Second World War, has covertly built the foundation for possessing the capability to manufacture nuclear weapons at any moment even after its defeat, and that all that now remains is a political decision.
The barrier obstructing that political decision may be said to be the country's Atomic Energy Basic Act, which restricts the research, development and utilization of nuclear energy to peaceful purposes, and the deep-rooted opposition in Japanese society, the only society in the world to have suffered nuclear devastation.
For Japan, which has shed one after another of the shackles of a war criminal state while placating public criticism with clever wordplay—turning “enemy base strike capability” into “counterstrike capability” and the “Three Principles on Arms Exports” into the “Three Principles on Transfer of Defence Equipment”—and all the more for the Japanese new militarists who are desperately bent on amending even the “Peace Constitution” that prohibits the possession of war potential, discarding the signboard of the “peaceful use of atomic energy” would be nothing at all.
The noisy talk of the Japanese ruling circles in recent times, on every available occasion, about the “increasingly severe surrounding security environment” is nothing more than a scheme to instil extreme security anxiety and the “need to strengthen independent deterrence” among the people, thereby systematically removing the institutional and legal barriers to the expansion of aggressive armed forces and attempting to cross the threshold of nuclear armament.
What is even more impossible to overlook is that the United States, which is shifting as much of the security burden as possible onto its allies in order to shore up its crumbling hegemonic position, is giving the green light to the possession of nuclear-powered submarines so as to use the Japanese reactionaries as a shock brigade in executing its hegemonic strategy.
The fact that a US Navy official, at an interview with the Japanese media held in Hawaii not long ago, said that Japan already possesses the power generation technology that would serve as the basis for nuclear-powered submarines because it already has nuclear power plants suggests that the United States intends to connive at and encourage Japan's moves toward nuclear armament.
Japan has long made surprise attack and preemptive strike its specialty and its basic method of warfare. Should Japan, under the patronage and connivance of the United States, come to possess nuclear-powered submarines whose operational radius reaches far beyond the coastal waters of the archipelago, there is no guarantee anywhere that it will not launch a nuclear preemptive strike at any moment.
The new militarist manoeuvres of Japan, which has thrown off entirely the cloak of “exclusively defence-oriented defence,” is bent on developing and deploying in actual combat various cutting-edge offensive equipment that places neighbouring countries within striking range, and now even dreams of possessing nuclear-powered submarines, together with the behind-the-scenes manipulation of the United States, are acting as the fundamental factor that brings about a military imbalance in the region and creates a new structure of confrontation.
Reality is confirming how just has been the path of strengthening national strength that we ourselves chose and have walked without pause for the sake of defending the sovereignty of the state and ensuring the security of the region and the world, and is throwing into relief the necessity of thoroughly suppressing, at the budding stage, the malicious schemes and acts of the hostile forces with an absolutely reliable self-defensive deterrence.
Japan's ambition for nuclear-powered submarines, aimed at nuclear armament, will assuredly bring a raging tide of catastrophe upon the Japanese archipelago.
