Commentary To counter Beijing’s growing belligerence in the South China Sea, Australia last week changed course: It canceled an order with France for conventional submarines that it feared were no longer adequate to protect its national interests, and entered into an alliance with the United States and the UK that involves acquiring a fleet of nuclear-powered submarines. Taiwan and Japan, which have no lesser concerns about China’s intentions, should now join Australia in protecting their national interests by acquiring the one deterrent likely to assure their safety: nuclear weapons. In the past, they couldn’t do so because of opposition from the U.S. government, which promised them protection, because the rest of the Western world would also have objected to seeing its dream of denuclearization recede, and because many of Taiwan’s and Japan’s own citizens opposed nuclearization. Those reasons to stand down no longer carry much clout, not after America’s debacle …