Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

forbearance of any significant military development.
Relying on the protection of the American security
umbrella, Japan could pursue growth without any
serious investment in military forces, a policy that
satisfied both the material ambitions <strong>and</strong> idealistic
impulses in the Japanese body politic. Security was
effectively outsourced to the United States, relieving
Japan of the economic, political, <strong>and</strong> moral burdens
of providing it for itself. 37 With this background, it is
little surprise that successive governments in Tokyo
continued to tolerate a highly unequal security arrangement
with the United States, one in which they
willfully overlooked the entry of U.S. warships carrying
nuclear weapons to Japanese ports, a practice
Tokyo governments publicly decried but privately
tolerated. 38 Indeed, at key junctures Japan appears to
have knowingly forsworn deeper involvement <strong>and</strong> insight
into defense <strong>and</strong> nuclear planning so as to avoid
further implication in U.S. security alliance membership.
39 South Korea, meanwhile, remained weak <strong>and</strong>
acutely threatened throughout the Cold War, while
Taiwan, of course, had little choice but to cleave to the
United States, especially once Washington shifted its
diplomatic recognition to Beijing.
The upshot of this environment was that, for the
duration of the Cold War, the United States could
<strong>and</strong> was actually expected to maintain a freer h<strong>and</strong>
in Asia, including but not exclusively in the nuclear
weapons field, than it was permitted in Europe. Thus,
despite the Japanese public’s neuralgia over the presence
of nuclear weapons in Japan <strong>and</strong> public commitment
by the Japanese government to refuse to allow
U.S. nuclear weapons into the country, Tokyo turned
a blind eye towards the transit through <strong>and</strong> docking
in Japan of U.S. naval forces carrying nuclear weap-
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