Japan's Defense Chief Says the Country Cannot Avoid a Nuclear Weapons Debate

Japan "cannot avoid" a debate over nuclear weapons, Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said, as the government weighs revising the country's long-standing three principles against producing, possessing or hosting nuclear arms, The Japan Times reported. The remarks are an unusually direct acknowledgment from a sitting defense minister that the postwar consensus is open for discussion.

Russia framed Japan's wider military expansion as a threat. Deputy Foreign Minister Andrey Rudenko said Moscow was "closely following" Japanese efforts to expand military activity and warned that the deployment of American Typhon missile systems in Japan threatens Russia's Far East, according to TASS. Tokyo has separately moved toward developing and exporting longer-range weapons.

Taken together, the two developments point to an Asian rearmament that is gathering pace, with Japan reconsidering constraints it has held for decades and neighboring powers responding to each move.