Japan's Announcement Can't Save Nuclear Nonproliferation

Breaking the Ukraine deal killed it. It won't come back.

by Rod D. Martin
March 24, 2014

Japan announced today that it would turn over to the United States a large cache of weapons-grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium.  The New York Times described the decades-old research stockpile as "large enough to build dozens of nuclear weapons."

Needless to say, the Times puts the best possible face on this, lauding it as "the biggest single success in President Obama's five-year push to secure the world's most dangerous materials" and quoting an Obama NSA appointee glowingly about The Messiah's latest miracle.  The angle -- an admirable one -- is to reduce the amount of fissile material in the world, and more important still, show North Korea, Iran and others that it's not only safe to disarm, but U.S. allies are leading by example.

But in reality, as even the Times notes, Japan is only giving up a small fraction of its stockpile:  so much for the example thing.  And why should it?  The surest way to deter Chinese aggression is probably a Japanes…