Generolo Jono Žemaičio Lietuvos karo akademija

The purpose of this article is to elucidate the problem of Japan’s nuclear security deterrence strategy dilemma, which is balancing between pursuing nuclear autonomy and remaining under the United States’ (the U.S.) extended nuclear deterrence protection. Through an examination of Japanese official documents, scholars’ relevant literature on both Japanese and U.S. nuclear security and an analysis of Japan’s geopolitical structure, the researchers resolve this dilemma through a nuclear deterrence perspective. Based on the evaluation of how Japan’s nuclear deterrence credibility’s potential is changing when pursuing either of the two options, the researchers conclude that the three geopolitical factors — the proximity to the strong nuclear adversary, the smallness of territory and lack of nuclear armament experience — determine that it is not in Japan’s national interest to leave the U.S. nuclear umbrella and pursue autonomy through independent nuclear capabilities. In addition, given the similarity of three such geopolitical factors shared by them, the majority of small states (e.g. Eastern European countries such as Lithuania), it is reasonable to constitute them into an empirical model and conduct a further deductive study on the cases of other small cases.

The purpose of this paper is to elucidate the problem of China’s ambiguous neutral stance towards the Russian invasion of Ukraine. For around a two-month period (i.e., between February and April) since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began on February 24th 2022, there has been no clear diplomatic message from Beijing concerning its final choice of position between Ukraine and its quasi-ally Russia. Parallel to this obscurity in China’s foreign policy, there are numerous arguments (this paper lists eight of them) that attempt to speculate Beijing’s next move based on their respective rationales that might prompt China to aid Russia’s military venture or abandon support for its quasi-ally. In this paper, the researcher tries to study China’s neutrality through an offensive realist prism and frame these arguments into two major underlying raison d’état: 1) to immediately rebalance the power equilibrium in the system by aiding Russia and soliciting it into China’s coalition—namely, to change the configuration of the units in the system; 2) to sustain the positive relat`ive gains in long-term until China surpasses the USA by abandoning Russia, thereby buying time as a diplomatic détente with United States—namely, to change the systemic capability distribution among its units. By comparing the weight of the two raison d’états through an examination of the eight major arguments respectively, the researcher concludes that the inextricable uncertainty of gains/losses between the two antinomic grand strategy approaches is exactly the reason that causes Beijing’s obscure attitude of neutrality between the two belligerents.