Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
1/22/2016
The United States and Japan continue to work together in the areas of nonproliferation, deterrence, and disarmament, U.S. and Japanese officials said last Thursday at the Center for American Progress. Jon Wolfsthal, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, said the U.S.-Japan partnership to counter weapons of mass destruction involves “nonproliferation cooperation,” the United States’ “extended deterrence commitment to Japan,” and the two countries’ “mutual commitment to pursue the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.”
Wolfsthal said the partner nations “have achieved significant technical improvements to protecting and accounting for nuclear materials” and are “cooperating to create the next generation of verification tools and techniques.” He added that the two countries helped establish the International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification, which is meant to help nations “develop the best techniques and tools for monitoring nuclear stockpiles at increasingly low numbers,” and that both support ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). The partnership was established in 2014 to address future nuclear verification challenges through the development of technical expertise and new technologies.
Wolfsthal also said Japan has served a key role in the Nonproliferation and Disarmament Initiative, a group of states working toward transparency in disarmament and a strengthening of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty regime, by “offering a moderating and bridging voice between nuclear and non-nuclear weapon states as we pursue a pragmatic … approach to nuclear disarmament.”
Nobuyasu Abe, commissioner of the Japan Atomic Energy Commission, said elimination of the world’s nuclear weapons is a common interest for both Japan and the United States and that “Japan has full confidence in American extended nuclear deterrence.” He expressed his support for “measured nuclear modernization by the United States” rather than “full steam” modernization. Although this might be unavoidable, he said, U.S. nuclear modernization “should not be such that [it] accelerates the nuclear arms race around the world.” Abe agreed that CTBT ratification remains a priority for the Japanese, and noted that Japan’s technology developments could contribute to joint nonproliferation efforts. “Japan has worked on nuclear forensics,” he said, and “can work on detection devices.”
