A source within Japan's prime minister's office said Thursday that the country needs nuclear weapons, remarks that deviate from the country's long-standing non-nuclear principles and could trigger backlash at home and abroad.
  • Blackmist@feddit.ukEnglish
    7·
    4 days ago

    Welp, hope you’ve all been saving your bottlecaps.

    I’ve been hiding them all around my house in every openable container, so even in the event that I don’t survive, a lone wanderer can at least benefit from my mild alcoholism.

  • chunes@lemmy.worldEnglish
    15·
    5 days ago

    The more nations that have them, the higher the chance they’ll be used. It’s going to happen sooner than we think.

  • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
    22·
    5 days ago

    Every country needs to have a nuke, based on what we’re seeing the US and Israel do to Palestine and what Russia is doing to Ukraine.

    • TronBronson@lemmy.worldEnglish
      6·
      5 days ago

      Yes more nukes for all! Let everyone fight over old land disputes too! If we remember the history of Afghanistan, we know that nuclear weapons were crucial in their efforts to topple the USSR and the USA!

      • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
        10·
        5 days ago

        I think the best example here is North Korea actually. Nothing stops imperialists in their tracks better than a nuclear program, and if we want a more peaceful world, the answer is every country having a nuke as that inspires more diplomacy and cooperation.

        • TronBronson@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          4 days ago

          I still believe the time old tale, no one bothers North Korea because the humanitarian crisis it would cause… they don’t have a scary amount of nukes. Nor do they have the means to deliver them to us.

          Lot of people in this sub really don’t understand nuclear doctrine or MAD. They don’t just make enemy’s go away, they just make them point more nukes at you…

  • sik0fewl@lemmy.caEnglish
    28·
    5 days ago

    Any nation that wants to keep their sovereignty needs nukes. Agreements like the Budapest Memorandum were a mistake for some of the countries involved (Ukraine).

    • vega208@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      16·
      5 days ago

      Lol, I wonder when Ukrainians will connect the dots that they’re in this position solely because they put their faith into western powers that didn’t deliver on their side of the bargain.

      • halcyoncmdr@lemmy.worldEnglish
        1·
        10 hours ago

        Ukraine did not have the infrastructure at the time to be able to even safely store the nuclear weapons they had. The nukes weren’t going to stay either way at the time.

      • ModCen@feddit.ukEnglish
        4·
        5 days ago

        When did western powers promise that they would stop Putin invading Ukraine?

        Ukraine is in their current position because Putin decided to invade Ukraine

        • Naloxone@lemmy.worldEnglish
          14·
          5 days ago

          Ukraine is the only nation to ever give up their nuclear weapons (after the dissolution of the USSR). At the time, they were assured by the world that their security would be provided for if there was ever a need.

          • ModCen@feddit.ukEnglish
            5·
            5 days ago

            I just looked at the text of the Budapest Memorandum. The US, the UK, and Russia all agreed in that memorandum to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine”.

            Russia is the country who broke that commitment, when they invaded Ukraine in 2014. I wouldn’t say that the US or the UK broke that commitment, because they haven’t used force against the territorial integrity or political independence of Ukraine.

            There’s another commitment in there saying that the US, the UK, and Russia will “seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine… if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression”. It seems there were UNSC meetings - like this one - shortly after Russia sent troops into Crimea. If you think the US and UK didn’t do enough in this regard then fair enough, but I don’t their actions were as bad as Russia invading Ukraine.

            • 3abas@lemmy.worldEnglish
              5·
              5 days ago

              Semantics.

              The point is Ukraine wouldn’t be in this position if they didn’t give up their Nukes, and they gave up their Nukes because they believed more would be done.

              • ModCen@feddit.ukEnglish
                2·
                5 days ago

                I’m talking about what was actually agreed to. To me it seems that Russia quite clearly abandoned its commitments within the Budapest Memorandum. I don’t think you can say that the US and the UK did, unless you’re saying that those two countries didn’t do enough within the UN Security Council to back Ukraine.

                Surely the primary country to blame for this situation is Russia. Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014. Western countries didn’t invade Ukraine.

                • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  2·
                  5 days ago

                  No one is placing blame here.

                  They’re discussing the material factors that have led to the current situation. Lack of nukes is one of those, and it’s likely that Ukraine wouldn’t be under a state of defensive war at the moment had they maintained their nuclear arsenal.

        • Zron@lemmy.worldEnglish
          3·
          5 days ago

          Western powers promised Ukraine protection against attack or invasion by themselves and Russia in the December 5th, 1994 Budapest Memorandum.

          The US, France, UK, Russia, and China all agreed not to invade Ukraine and in fact to provide protection, and in exchange, Ukraine gave up their nukes.

          Russia violated this just 20 years later when they invaded and stole Crimea from Ukraine, and now 30 years later they are trying to conquer the entire country.

          Thats why everyone is so hell bent on providing support for Ukraine. Not just because it’s the right thing to do, but because they were promised protection by world powers.

          • ModCen@feddit.ukEnglish
            3·
            5 days ago

            I looked at the text of the Budapest Memorandum. The main commitments seem to be a commitment to not use force against Ukraine, and a commitment to “seek immediate United Nations Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine… if Ukraine should become a victim of an act of aggression”.

            I absolutely hope that every country supports Ukraine and helps them at the moment. I’m just saying that it seems to me that Russia is the one who has abandoned its commitments within the Budapest Memorandum. I don’t know if you can say that the US and the UK have (Wikipedia says that France and China gave assurances in separate documents, not in the Budapest Memorandum). Although I absolutely hope that the US will take a more pro-Ukraine stance as soon as possible.

    • WoodScientist@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      4·
      5 days ago

      I mean, I have a chaotic solution we might try. Let’s simply…reverse the Budapest Memorandum! Let’s just hand Ukraine a few hundred thermonuclear warheads, with launchers and launch codes and say, “here, go have fun!”

      “The president has announced…that we have reversed the Budapest Memorandum…”

      :D

  • porcoesphino@mander.xyzEnglish
    17·
    5 days ago

    This is scary for the increased risk of some pretty terrible outcomes but with US security guarantees as untrustworthy as they have become then actions like this are tough to argue against

    • porcoesphino@mander.xyzEnglish
      14·
      5 days ago

      If I was a South Korean or Taiwanese government official working to ensure future sovereignty, I’d be considering the same

    • FlashMobOfOne@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      5 days ago

      Actually, no.

      We’ve heard WW3 analogies tossed around for the last 30 years.

      I think it’s more fair to say that we’re not facing WW3 precisely because the world has seen the destructive power of nuclear weapons and they’ve proliferated so much. That is, obviously, particularly true for Japan.

  • luciferofastora@feddit.orgEnglish
    4·
    4 days ago

    The Security Dilemma of international relations: Keeping your own country safe requires doing things that will make your neighbours feel less safe.

    • wewbull@feddit.ukEnglish
      12·
      6 days ago

      No country should have nukes, and more countries acquiring them makes that goal even harder to achieve.

      • venusaur@lemmy.worldEnglish
        3·
        5 days ago

        Yeah but who’s gonna stop them? I know that’s the right answer for a pageant contestant, but be realistic.

  • Jym66@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    4 days ago

    I thought Japan could never have an army again after WW2, never mind nukes??

    • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
      2·
      3 days ago

      Japan has been allowed a self-defense force. What that force can consist of/have/do has been quite restricted. They’ve built a lot of stuff that they probably technically aren’t allowed to but have said “oh, that’s not a ThingWeCannotHave but a SimlarButAllowedOrReducedThing”. Recent rumblings have been about what constitutes self defense, which some wanting to include attacks on Taiwan, cyber warfare, pre-emptive strikes, and other stuff.

      Then there are the factions that want to strip out the article of the constitution about self-defense-forces-only entirely. Unless I missed it, this has yet to be done.

      As for nuclear weapons, I don’t actually know if that’s covered anywhere in the constitution or self-imposed. We’re only recently getting to the point that there aren’t really any survivors left, but their kids are still around and many fight against having it. As the US becomes a less-reliable ally, I see this resistance falling. Tension has always been high, particularly in Okinawa which always get shafted, between the US forces and civilians and I suspect it will continue to increase.

      ~ Dude living in Japan for a bit over a decade.

      • tiredofsametab@fedia.io
        2·
        3 days ago

        Not exactly, or at least not insofaras repealing article 9 (I think is the one). Japan has done a lot of “this isn’t what it looks like and you can’t prove it’s not what we say it is” as a strategy for building things they probably “shouldn’t”.