I’ve got to admit that I’m confused by Fareed Zakaria’s most recent Washington Post column. I don’t like President Trump’s foreign policy any more than he does but I don’t think the key asset that prevented the use of nuclear weapons or nuclear proliferation was trust. The slug is “For decades, global trust in Washington kept nuclear weapons in check. Now that restraint is fading.” Here’s the meat of the column:
After World War II, the United States pulled off something close to a geopolitical miracle. Japan and Germany became the second- and third-most-powerful economies on earth, yet neither sought nuclear weapons or the ability to defend itself alone. They aligned their security policy with Washington and entrusted their ultimate defense to American soldiers and American nuclear weapons.
Think how strange that arrangement was. Great powers throughout history have acquired armies to counter the top dog. Yet America’s allies agreed to depend on it for their survival. They did so not because America was invariably wise or generous but because the entire international system thus created benefited the U.S., too. American power was formidable but trust in America was priceless.
Nowhere in the column does he mention global strategic superiority, unsurpassed industrial capabilities, or mutually-assured destruction. IMO what stayed the Soviets’ hand from using nuclear weapons was their belief that the United States would retaliate overwhelmingly with nuclear weapons. Those were the same forces that prevented other countries from developing their own nuclear weapons.
The perfect counter-example is North Korea. North Korea did not develop nuclear weapons because they did not trust us. They developed nuclear weapons because the Chinese allowed them to and the Chinese had a nuclear deterrent of their own.
To me the more important question is why did the Chinese allow the North Koreans to develop nuclear weapons? Certainly they didn’t trust the North Koreans. My best guess is that the Chinese trust the North Koreans more than they do us and believe their own nuclear weapons deter the U. S. sufficiently. China did not have to trust North Korea with nuclear weapons. It merely had to be unwilling to accept the consequences of preventing North Korea from acquiring them.
In the case of Japan / Germany, instead of “they entrusted the US….”, a better description would have been “the US didn’t trust them to have an independent foreign policy….”.
A reminder, the constitution of Japan was written by MacArthur and it forbids a military (Japan has “self defence forces”) or to use military force outside of self defense. For West Germany, Ismay’s summary of NATO’s purpose — “to keep the Russians out, the Americans in, and the Germans down”.
Japan and Germany were not given a choice on having an independent foreign policy.