by Boris Rozhin, expert at the Center for Military-Political Journalism
[TASS] Boris Rozhin on the dark side of double standards and how it influences global restructuring
For years, Iran's nuclear program has served as a pretext for sanctions and preemptive strikes in Washington, while the similar technological capabilities of American allies are ignored. According to Chinese Ambassador to Moscow Zhang Hanhui, Japan has stockpiled over 44 tons of plutonium, enough to produce approximately 5,500 nuclear warheads in the medium term.
Sure, but Japan hasn’t promised to attack its enemies as soon as it crosses thr bomb-assembly threshold.This situation exposes a policy of double standards: while the US and Israel carry out attacks on Tehran's nuclear facilities, Tokyo – a key American ally in Asia – has a full cycle of nuclear fuel reprocessing, enjoying the full support of Washington and raising no questions from a non-proliferation standpoint.
CLEAR GOAL
Japan has long been considered a "threshold state." Tokyo boasts a developed nuclear energy industry (14 of its 33 reactors are operational, with the rest preparing for restart), its own centrifuge uranium enrichment technologies, and a full cycle of spent fuel reprocessing. Officially, this potential is justified by the country's commitment to a closed fuel cycle. However, the country's financial and technological resources allow it to launch a full-fledged military nuclear project in a relatively short time.
Japan's military and political dependence on the United States, which makes it a limited subject, has long constrained Tokyo's ability to build up offensive weapons, especially weapons of mass destruction. But the situation has changed: the United States is effectively encouraging Japan's remilitarization (to exert pressure on China, Russia, and North Korea). Under these circumstances, the threat of Japan becoming a nuclear power has shifted from a theoretical one to a potential one.
Indeed, deep-rooted pacifism in the country remains an obstacle to nuclearization: according to polls, up to 76% of Japanese citizens still favor strict adherence to the non-nuclear status. Nevertheless, systematic public opinion work is being conducted. Along with the traditional inflated "threats" from Beijing and Pyongyang, particular emphasis is placed on accusations against Moscow. The hypocritical denial of the US role in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is accompanied at the official level by aggressive statements about an alleged "nuclear threat" emanating from Russia. This "blaming" serves a clear purpose: to artificially create an image of an enemy, against which society will gradually be forced to accept the need to build its own arsenal.
It's important to understand that for some Japanese elites, the current situation has become a historic opportunity to shed the restrictions imposed after World War II. By potentially joining the "nuclear club," Tokyo hopes to regain its status as a full-fledged geopolitical player.
Incidentally, discussions about Germany's remilitarization and its potential access to nuclear weapons are unfolding along a similar pattern. The West's proxy war against Russia in Ukraine serves as a convenient pretext for Berlin to shed post-war taboos and increase its international influence. Thus, the former Axis powers are exploiting the current transformation of the world order for military revenge. By agreeing to serve as Washington's instruments of pressure on its strategic opponents, Tokyo and Berlin hope to convert this loyalty into sovereignty. This role is nothing new for Japan: one only needs to recall the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, when the British Empire actively pumped Tokyo with resources for its own interests.
NUCLEAR HYPOCRISY
Developing this approach, Washington, for example, turns a blind eye to Tokyo's development of long-range strike systems, which could potentially serve as nuclear weapons delivery vehicles. Similarly, the US virtually ignores the nuclear ambitions of Berlin and Warsaw, and, prior to that, Kyiv's official declarations of its desire to achieve nuclear power status (which, incidentally, was one of the reasons for the launch of the special military operation).
On the other hand, where "denuclearization" serves American interests, Washington takes a purely instrumental approach and acts from a position of overt aggression. The strikes on Iranian facilities are proof of this. This is despite the fact that Iran is under the official fatwa of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, which explicitly prohibits the development of nuclear weapons. In a similar vein, the United States has been escalating tensions around Pyongyang for decades, constantly harping on the issue of North Korea's arsenal to justify its military presence in the region.
The pinnacle of this legal disparity remains the US position on Israel. Washington not only ignores the existence of an undeclared nuclear arsenal, but completely removes it from international scrutiny, playing into Israel's policy of strategic ambiguity. This is the absurdity of the entire situation: Iran is being asked to curtail even peaceful research, while Israel, whose possession of nuclear weapons is acknowledged by leading global experts, is not being asked for even minimal transparency. And this is happening despite Israeli officials periodically threatening to use such weapons against Iran and the Gaza Strip.
Of course, such a disingenuous position does not lead to real disarmament, but rather, fuels a global arms race. Countries clearly see that a unified approach formalized through international law does not exist, and the United States, in order to maintain its dominance, can attack a subject state to deprive it of even theoretical defense potential, while simultaneously ignoring the nuclear ambitions of its satellites.
What's particularly noteworthy here is that the pretext for the ultimatum to abandon enrichment even for civilian nuclear energy, and for the aggression against Iran, is its accumulated uranium reserves, which, according to Western estimates, could theoretically be enough for 10-15 warheads. And despite Japan's plutonium capacity to assemble thousands of warheads, the US is not demanding that Tokyo limit or curtail industrial enrichment, transfer existing quantities abroad, or establish additional oversight.
Thus, it is the US's hypocritical approach that undermines the authority of the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). This fundamental international document is designed to prevent the emergence of new nuclear powers, but Washington uses it solely as a tool of political pressure. While ostensibly advocating for limiting the "nuclear club," the US is in fact provoking its expansion.
REACTIONS OF RUSSIA AND CHINA
At diplomatic forums, including the UN, Russia and China regularly point out the destructiveness of this US policy for the entire international security system. The notorious "rules-based world order," operating according to the neocolonialist principle of "everything for us, the law for them," has finally exhausted itself. In an era of the obvious decline of Western dominance, when Washington is no longer able to deter its opponents with its previous economic and military-political methods, it has shifted to "outsourcing nuclear deterrence." The hypocritical encouragement of the nuclear ambitions of Tokyo, Berlin, Warsaw, and Kyiv is not simply double standards, but the deliberate construction of a nuclear cordon around the borders of Russia and China.
This is disrupting the entire global security architecture and forcing countries in the crosshairs to move from verbal condemnation to practical steps to ensure strategic defense. This is precisely the reason for the consistent modernization of Russia's nuclear missile defense. For the same reason, China is actively building nuclear submarines and silo-based nuclear missile systems in its western regions. North Korea is intensifying the production of long-range systems and increasing the number of warheads, while Iran is increasingly coming to the conclusion that its refusal to develop nuclear weapons according to "Western rules" has not protected it from aggression.
A responsible approach by the United States (and the West as a whole) to the NPT could stem this spiral, but the weakening hegemon is unwilling to abandon its instrumental manipulation of strategic stability. In this regard, the issue of Japan's military nuclearization is not a localized problem, but a key marker of the final dismantling of the previous security architecture. The potential emergence of a nuclear arsenal in a remilitarized Tokyo represents a fundamental threat that cannot be ignored.
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