On January 3, Washington Post syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer wrote, "We [the US] should go to the Chinese and tell them plainly that if they do not join us in squeezing North Korea ... we will endorse any Japanese attempt to create a nuclear deterrent of its own. Even better, we would sympathetically regard any request by Japan to acquire American nuclear missiles as an immediate and interim deterrent. If our nightmare is a nuclear North Korea, China's is a nuclear Japan. It's time to share the nightmares."