Getting back to the subject before it was derailed by some people...heres another angle to the dangerous nuclear deal with india. If anyone should be eligible for a Nuclear deal , it should be Japan. Its a REAL democracy and an economic Superpower as well as a Civilized country.
Japan's reaction to Indo-US N-deal
BY DR AHMAD RASHID MALIK
As time will come closer, opposition to US-India nuclear deal will also come to crushing points by enlarging uncompromising gulf that exists between the supporters and adversaries to the non-proliferation regime. Understandably, the international reaction against the deal is gearing up. Besides China, Australia, and Canada, which swiftly opposed the deal, strong reaction, has come from Japan, the closest US security ally in the Asia-Pacific region.
Japan's concerns are related to non-proliferation aspects of the deal. Japan believes that the deal would undercut global nuclear NP policies. Japan officially reacted within a couple of weeks or so after President Bush announced in New Delhi that the United States "will push for India to be given a unique position within the world nuclear regulatory regime". Japan adopted an extremely cautious, strong, moral, legal, and a principle based-stand against any possibility of US-India nuclear deal and cooperation.
Talking to the Parliamentary Committee of the Japanese Diet on 22 March, Foreign Minister, Taro Aso told that as a result of the deal, the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) would lose its substance because India has not signed the treaty unlike the United States. Earlier, Aso told the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Australia on 18 March that Japan, even if asked by the United States, to support the US-India nuclear deal, "cannot easily oblige as this would definitely be called a double standard".
While further voicing concerns over the controversial US-India nuclear deal, Japan perceives a set of double standard and apartheid that could hurt its non-proliferation efforts and diplomacy worldwide particularly over the nuclear programmes of North Korea and Iran. Japan's objection against the US-India nuclear deal is based on the fundamentals of NPT.
Japanese media also strongly reacted to US-India nuclear deal. For instance, Asahi Shimbun wrote in its editorial on 3 March that the deal "is totally unacceptable for Japan, the only country to have been attacked by atomic bombs, and one that strongly insists on nuclear non-proliferation and the abolishment of nuclear weapons". The paper further went to comment that "if the United States, which has led this concerted effort, is going to allow exceptions, then the entire framework of non-proliferation is in jeopardy".
Making point on Pakistan's position, the paper maintained that 'Pakistan, the other country that conducted nuclear tests at the same time as India, is not yet welcome in the club of "responsible nuclear powers," and no doubt feels frustrated'.
As far as China's containment is concerned, United States might found Japan not a very 'suitable' strategic partner to contain China in the 21 Century.
Naturally, geography, history, and demography, not only to speak of increasing economic relations, prevent Japan from complete China's bashing and containment. Sino-Japanese relations are not really a hate-hate relationship. Rather their relations have entered into a meaningful and rational phase over the past quarter century. Japan did not abandon China even during the Cold War and during the absence of a peace treaty with China at the height of the Cold War and at the height of containment of China from the 1950s thought the signing of the peace treaty in 1978. Although formal normalisation process was started after Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka made a first-ever visit to China in 1972, informal normalisation was already a part of both countries' diplomacy for quite some time.
This may be one of the reasons for the United States to include India as an important strategic partner in future China's containment, a role which Japan cannot effectively play against China because of the reason cited above.
In East Asia, only China is a declared nuclear power. North Korea's nuclear programme is taken as a serious challenge in East Asia. Japan, together with South Korea has a grave concern about North Korea's nuclear programme. The rest of East Asia is nuclear free right from north to the South East Asia and even down up to South Pacific.
Against this backdrop, US-India nuclear deal is a worrying some affair for this whole region. Australia has already dropped the idea of supplying nuclear fuel to India. Therefore, US-India nuclear deal would not only upset the long prevailing security, strategy, and defense realities of this vast region drawn after World War II, it could strongly upset the economic realities in this part of the world.
Japan appeared to be main beneficiary of the post-war strategic and economic set up in East Asia. Japan's non-military role, under US leadership, created a sphere of prosperity in the region. The creation of sphere of prosperity was a long cherished Japanese desire, which became a reality after 1945 in different fashion with Japan playing the leading role in creating a better economic environment in whole of East Asia for development and prosperity that ultimately ensured peace without granting it a military role.
The deal is not going to be merely China's containment. It is surely going to be Japan's containment in the long run as well as East Asian Tiger's containment. No country in the region wants China's containment at this point in time.
Nevertheless, nuclear proliferation, as perceived under the US-India nuclear deal, is going to affect Japanese preeminence in some way in the economic sphere that was built in the last 60 years. Therefore, it is essential for Japan to come and play a role against the US-India nuclear deal that would help not only to keep the world free of nuclear proliferation, this could also help Japan to keep maintaining its economic hegemony in the world.
