Over the years, the AUKUS and Quad military blocs, as any reasonable observer will have noted, have become sources of militarization in the Asia-Pacific region. However, one of the risks associated with these and other US regional alliances, and one which has so far been overlooked, is the potential, in the near future, for nuclear proliferation and the spread of dual-use technologies in this part of the world.
Nuclear allies
As readers will be aware, the members of the AUKUS alliance, established by official treaties, are the US, the UK and Australia. The US and Australia are also members, along with Japan and India, of the Quad grouping, a more informal body. It is no secret that both blocs were formed on the initiative of the United States. The US and UK are members of the Nuclear Five and each possess their own arsenals of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). India is a de facto nuclear power, yet remains outside the legal framework of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Australia and Japan do not have nuclear weapons, and it is through their alliance with Washington that the line of nuclear proliferation risk lies.
Canberra is considered one of the most likely future buyers of the new US B-21 bomber, which is capable of carrying nuclear weapons. In addition, it has already been reported that US Air Force B-52 strategic bombers, for which a new airbase is being built in northern Australia, may be equipped with nuclear weapons. In 2023, Australia’s secretary of defense, Greg Moriarty,—a surname that may strike readers as rather sinister—openly acknowledged this, saying that even the South Pacific region Nuclear Free Zone Treaty (Treaty of Rarotonga) would not prevent Australia from hosting such a base. With Jesuitical casuistry, he argued that in 1985, when the document was signed, such an issue was simply not provided for in detail, and therefore there can be no prohibition (in fact, the Treaty even has a small loophole—paragraph 2 of Article 5, which allows the participating countries to make decisions on the presence of foreign ships and aircraft in transit to another destination. American ships and aircraft are known to make regular appearances in Australia and its waters as part of their “routine” combat missions). Moreover, continued Greg Moriarty, “successive Australian governments have understood and respected the longstanding US policy of neither confirming nor denying the presence of nuclear weapons on particular platforms.” That’s an elegant way of putting it, isn’t it? That is, a formally separate state (“independent” is not the word one could use to describe Australia, an overseas Dominion of the British Crown) has no idea what American planes, ships and submarines that find themselves on its territories or in its waters may carry on board. And not just has no idea, but prefers not to examine the situation too closely, according to the principle “the less you know, the better you sleep.”
Speaking of submarines, the US and UK have agreed a plan to arm Australia with nuclear-powered submarines by the early 2030s, which should allow “the fleets of the three countries to work together in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans.” The project envisages not only the sale of American submarines to Australia, but also the joint trilateral development of a new class of such vessels, to be known as SSN-AUKUS. They will be built in Britain and Australia using the latest American technology. The allies are still carefully refraining from supplying nuclear weapons to the submarines, but nevertheless, it is already known that all of the new submarines will be equipped to carry them and thus to serve as a possible means of delivery. In addition, from 2027 onwards either American or British submarines will be permanently stationed in Australian waters, and their crews will begin training their Australian counterparts.
The unprecedented arming of a Pacific ally by Britain and the US has already been condemned by Moscow and Beijing as raising the specter of direct nuclear proliferation by the West. In Australia itself, some citizens and community leaders have also expressed dissatisfaction with the apparent limits on their country’s sovereignty, the prohibitive cost of this new militarization, and the terms of the relevant agreements, which are technically more favorable to Washington and London than to Canberra.
A land of rising nuclear ambitions
In terms of militarization, Japan is following closely on Australia’s heels. Literally occupied by American military bases, this country has long been eager to radically revise its anti-war constitution, which was adopted after World War II, and is gradually moving toward an ever more active development of its military capability, even participating in foreign “peacekeeping missions.” Over the past decades, various political forces in Japanese society have repeatedly proposed that the country acquire its own nuclear arsenal. And on a technological level, nuclear experts from around the world rank Japan as a threshold state that is in a good position to rapidly develop WMDs. There have also been some stories straight out of crime thrillers, such as the transfer of more than 300 kilograms of plutonium by the United States to Japan, allegedly for research purposes, and Tokyo’s persistent reluctance to give it back (although Japan’s plutonium stockpile exceeds all logical limits), the concealment of hundreds of kilograms of plutonium from the IAEA, and, strange as it may seem, the highly suspicious contacts (from a nuclear proliferation perspective) between Japan and North Korea with Taiwan acting as an intermediary.
Specialists from Nagasaki University with whom the present author has discussed this issue in the past, recognize that Japan has a very complicated relationship with nuclear weapons in principle. The country has its own nuclear ambitions, and these are especially promoted in far-right circles. The US nuclear umbrella is considered an absolute necessity. Japan’s renunciation of nuclear weapons is not perceived as a legal obligation. If, for example, the Americans want to bring nuclear weapons into Japanese territory, the Japanese government can, in theory, refuse, but that is only possible if the US itself officially and openly requests its permission. In reality, the US simply does not thoroughly report the contents of every ship or airplane, and will not do so in the future. That is, in the case of Japan, the situation is the same as with the US-Australian alliance, i.e. “we don’t know what the US is importing and deploying.”
In addition, the Japanese state is purposefully doing all it can to make the Japanese forget that the US dropped atomic bombs on them. Young people have already developed an “indifferent” attitude toward nuclear weapons. The memory of World War II is being presented in a distorted way, in favor of an alliance with Washington in the present. No one even remembers anymore that the US failed to provide any aid to the hibakusha, the people affected by the bombings. On the contrary, the American medics who arrived in Japan after Hiroshima and Nagasaki had only one task—to study the effects of the atomic explosion on people and to use them as material for experiments, without providing any assistance. Their results were then sent to the US and each person surveyed was assigned an individual number. The Americans didn’t even need the names of the victims. Now these archives have been declassified, but little research is being done on them and the data has not been published.
The Bangkok pillar
But how is this possible, you may ask, what about the international law on WMDs and the non-proliferation treaties? After all, everyone knows the fundamental principle pacta servanda sunt—that treaties must be honored. After all, there are the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty and the regional nuclear weapon-free zones (in the Asia-Pacific region these zones are Southeast Asia, under the Treaty of Bangkok, and the South Pacific zone, under the Treaty of Rarotonga). However, the West (broadly defined, to include both Japan and Australia) repeats the phrase “rules-based order” like a mantra. They do not live by right, but by “rules” that they have made up for themselves and impose on others. Therefore, the NPT, CTBT and the regional nuclear-weapon-free zones, which could be described as the three pillars of nonproliferation, are unable to work to their full potential.
Against the backdrop of what is happening in the rest of the Asia-Pacific region, only Southeast Asia remains an island of stability, and the Treaty of Bangkok is the only one of these pillars of the WMD nonproliferation regime that is actually working. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations has always demonstrated a commitment to security principles and in terms of its political course it clearly adheres to these. Although it is possible that some members, say the Philippines, may follow the dangerous lead of the US allies already referred to in this article. When it comes to Northeast Asia, other potential “candidates” for nuclear proliferation are South Korea and Taiwan, both of which are considered to be threshold countries which already have dual-use technologies and are willing to fulfil US command missions. Not so long ago, Seoul once again began considering the possibility of acquiring its own nuclear arsenal, and this was not the first time this question had come up for discussion.
The most disturbing aspect of this issue is not simply the fact that non-nuclear-weapon states have their own nuclear ambitions, or the transfer of technologies and deployment of weapons, but also the attitude of Western politicians and societies to the process of nuclear proliferation. If a decade ago, the possibility of Japan’s acquiring nuclear weapons was seen as genuinely shocking (remember the famous letter from American nuclear scientists to President Obama asking him to withdraw his support for Japan’s processing of plutonium), then with time and the very real decline of political elites in the West, and the “zombification” of Western societies with military propaganda, such an idea may soon be taken for granted.
The trends discussed in this article do not inspire optimism. However, it seems that it is not too late for the international community and, in particular, for the majority of its population, to fully comprehend the situation and come to an agreed position on the inadmissibility of the creeping nuclear proliferation that the US and its allies are engaged in. Such changes do not bode well for regional stability in the Asia-Pacific region and lead to increased tensions in international relations as a whole. Of course, they will inevitably trigger symmetrical responses and chain reactions. It is therefore necessary to draw attention to and speak openly about this problem. The people and public organizations in the countries in the region need to be aware of what kind of future their overseas neighbors are trying to prepare for them. The issue of the emerging risks should be on the agenda of all regional organizations. Only then, perhaps, can public opinion pressurize those who may potentially cause the proliferation of WMDs into choosing the path of peace.
Ksenia Muratshina, PhD in History, Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Southeast Asia, Australia and Oceania, the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
