Even if it doesn’t prevent conflict, Japanese prolif prevents nuclear escalation
Schoff, 2009 [James L., Associate Director of the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis Asia-Pacific and specialist in East Asian Security and non-proliferation issues; “Realigning Priorities: The U.S.-Japan Alliance & the Future of Extended Deterrence,” Accessed online: http://www.ifpa.org/pdf/RealignPriorities.pdf]
Some prominent Japanese foreign policy specialists, however, do suggest that even if it was not sufficient to de- ter a China-scale force in all circumstances, a Japanese national nuclear deterrent could so complicate strategic calculations in Beijing that China would think twice before threatening to use (or actually use) its own nuclear forces in a regional crisis or conflict (Okazaki 2003). In this way, so the argument goes, Japan could play a reinforcing role to the U.S. strategic deterrent, as the British nuclear force to some extent has done in Europe (Group Ichigaya 2007). Strategic calculations are beginning to find their way into the debate.
Flanigan 2003 With the global side of the Japanese economy doing so well, does it matter that, back home, the economy is such a mess?
It does. Japan can't afford a weak and isolated domestic economy -- and the United States can't afford for Japan to have one either. Japan is a leading U.S. trading partner and lender-investor, with the Japanese government holding an estimated $500 billion in U.S. Treasury notes and bonds.
Japan literally holds a mortgage on the U.S. economy.
JAPANESE ECONOMIC COLLAPSE WILL DRAG THE U.S. ECONOMY WITH IT.
Atlantic Monthly 2004 <1/1, lexis, Sherle R. Schwenninger is a co-director of the Global Economic Policy Program and the director of the fellowship program at the New America Foundation. He is also a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute>
Despite its unchallenged military might, the United States has an Achilles' heel: its economy depends on foreign capital. Though hardly anyone acknowledges this publicly, China and Japan already hold so much American debt that, theoretically, each could exert enormous leverage on American foreign policy. So far, the economic dependence of these countries on American consumers has kept them from exercising such power. But what would happen if, for instance, Washington changed its one-China policy and officially recognized Taiwan? Or if the Bush Administration threatened to invade North Korea? Simply by dumping U.S. Treasury bills and other dollar-denominated assets, China--which holds more federal U.S. debt than any other country--could cause the value of the dollar to plummet, leading to a major crisis for the U.S. economy. China and Japan wouldn't have to be consciously hostile to wreak havoc; they could create a currency crisis by accident, through either bad policy decisions or instability in their own economies. Both countries have weak banking systems that are burdened by bad loans that will never be repaid. Economists have long warned that the collapse of Japan's banking system could devastate the United States. A Chinese banking crisis could cause equally severe problems.
Foley, US Ambassador of Japan, 1999http://usembassy.state.gov/posts/ja4/wwwh5008.html >
And just a word about a subject very dear to the heart of the United States, and that is the subject of the growth and development of the Japanese economy. I am occasionally distressed by reading reports that many people in Japan believe that somehow the United States wants a weak Japanese economy. In one poll, about 30 percent of the Japanese respondents indicated that they believed that the United States wanted a weak Japanese economy rather than a strong Japanese economy. The absolute opposite is true. And not just out of respect and admiration and friendship for our ally Japan, but because in the U.S. self-interest, a strong, robust, growing Japanese economy is what helps our economy and helps the world economy.
We value very highly the measures that have been taken by the Japanese government in stimulating the economy, providing opportunities for the recapitalization of the banking system, and reduction of taxes, and other efforts to bring the Japanese economy back to a period of growth. We now hope that Japan will consider restructuring some of its business regulatory regime which prevent the private sector from carrying forward stimulus efforts and restoring the Japanese economy to even greater levels of productivity and growth.
General Prolif Good
Proliferation solves large scale Asia war
Layne, 96- fellow of the Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government (Spring 1996, Christopher, “Less is more - realistic foreign policies for East Asia,” http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_n43/ai_18298481/pg_9/?tag=content;col1, CJC)
Finally, as the post-Cold War strategy of preponderance calls for the United States to reprise in East Asia its Cold War extended nuclear deterrence policy, it is dangerous.Extended nuclear deterrence has always been a difficult strategy to implement successfully because deterring an attack on one's allies is harder than deterring an attack on oneself. This is doubly true when the potential aggressor is a nuclear power because, as Charles de Gaulle reasoned well, rational states will not risk suicide to save their allies. For both protector and protected, extended nuclear deterrence raises constant and ultimately insoluble dilemmas of credibility and reassurance. The conditions that contributed to successful extended nuclear deterrence in Cold War Europe do not exist in post-Cold War East Asia. Unlike the situation that prevailed in Europe between 1948 and 1990 -- which was fundamentally stable and static -- East Asia is a volatile region in which all the major players -- Japan, China, Korea, Russia, Vietnam -- are candidates to become involved in large-scale war. There is no clear and inviolable status quo. The lines of demarcation between spheres of influence are already blurred and may well become more so as Chinese and Japanese influence expand simultaneously, increasing the number and unpredictability of regional rivalries. The status of Taiwan, tension along the 38th Parallel in Korea, conflicting claims to ownership of the Spratly Islands, and the Sino-Japanese territorial dispute over the Senkaku Islands are only a few of the flash-points that could ignite a great power war in East Asia. Washington will clearly exercise far less control over the policies of East Asian powers than it exercised over America's European allies during the Cold War. Hence, the risk of being chain-ganged into a nuclear conflict are much higher for the United States in post-Cold War East Asia if it maintains or extends nuclear guarantees to any of the region's major states.