The logic of moving South Korea to the kiddies' nuclear table
RAND suggests US nuclear sharing with ROK
The US currently stations nuclear weapons in five allied nations (Belgium, Germany, Italy, Netherlands, and Turkey). It is a very select club, but an entirely NATO-centric one deterring Russian strikes (and theoretically, someday from a nuclear Iran). Now, with the DPRK recognized as a nuclear power, RAND suggests, in a study for the Defense Department, that America go back to stationing nuclear weapons inside South Korea as a deterrent. We pulled out our nukes back in 1991 (having once stationed as many as 1,000 nuclear weapons there), with the understanding that our mutual defense pact committed the US to ROK’s nuclear deterrence.
We can say this is a consequence of a multipolar world, and one in which the US is perceived as being in strategic retreat thanks to our populist nationalism of late. South Korea clearly feels it is in a more dangerous neighborhood, not so much because of the continued threat from the North but also because of China’s rising military bullying across the region. It may well want stronger assurances — as in, nukes on the ground, per the RAND recommendation.
For now, it’s just a thought, but even the suggestion is a powerful expression of our world. Nations are choosing sides amidst globalization’s regionalization push, and I imagine ROK is feeling quite Asian and less global right now, thanks in large part to China’s rise. By returning nukes to the peninsula, Washington would be recommitting itself in an era when US commitments are all under scrutiny — both internally and abroad.
It would also be a powerful signal to Beijing that, no matter how much we are perceived as being in strategic retreat, we will continue to honor our commitments in profound ways.
Here’s the summary of the report:
North Korea has been vastly increasing its nuclear weapon threat and plans to accelerate this process in the future. North Korea has also adopted an extremely hostile campaign of threatening the Republic of Korea (ROK) and the United States with nuclear attacks. China is also vastly increasing its nuclear weapon capabilities and is no longer trusted by most people in the ROK.
To counter these threats, the United States provides extended deterrence for the ROK and promises a nuclear umbrella to cover the ROK so that the ROK does not need its own nuclear weapons. The United States wants a nuclear weapon–free Korean Peninsula to avoid imperiling the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the foundation of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy. The United States has constructed its nuclear umbrella on a high degree of strategic ambiguity in the belief that this ambiguity will achieve the most-effective deterrence of North Korean aggression.
But this ambiguity, the growing North Korean threat, and U.S. withdrawal from other allied countries (e.g., Afghanistan) have caused many in the ROK to question the existing U.S. commitment and seek more-concrete assurance. Sensitive to this concern, President Joe Biden supported ROK President Suk Yeol Yoon with the Washington Declaration in April 2023. This report proposes options that the United States and the ROK could exercise to strengthen ROK nuclear assurance consistent with the Washington Declaration, including enhancing strategic clarity, coercing North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons, and committing U.S. nuclear weapons to support the ROK.
Digging into the report’s fifth chapter (“Nuclear weapon force assurance options”), the element of US unreliability is introduced (“potential political abandonment”) as a lingering result of the Trump presidency. In effect, RAND is saying Trump permanently damaged our preferred model of “strategic ambiguity” by being such an erratic character. Fair enough.
Thus the report argues for a replication of America’s NATO model of strategic assurance, which gets us to re-introducing tactical nukes to the peninsula in “sharing” mode. In effect, we double-down on our commitment by signaling to any and all threats that ROK ain’t going down without a nuclear fight. A bit melodramatic, and a development that still doesn’t change America’s inherent right to decide yes or no on use, and yet, that’s the gist. You put nukes on the ground and that says we are committed to nuclear escalation (otherwise, why put them there?).
The RAND report exhaustively examines every possible way to strengthen ROK’s deterrence posture and to limit the DPRK’s threat before suggesting the stationing of US nuclear weapons on the peninsula.
That suggestion (p. 91) runs like this:
Modernize or build new US nuclear weapons storage facilities in the ROK
Dedicate all or part of the nuclear weapons on a US ballistic missile sub operating in the Pacific to targeting North Korea
Modernize 100 or so US nuclear tactical weapons otherwise slated for dismantling and thereafter commit them, while still stored by the US, to supporting ROK and signaling the option of moving them during a crisis to those enhanced storage facilities in the ROK
The kicker: deploy a limited number of tactical nukes to those storage facilities
The sum commitment is thus on the order of 150-200 nukes total, with maybe just 8-12 actually stationed on ROK soil.
A bold move but one that gracefully degrades America’s ongoing (now in its 15th year) worldwide strategic retreat with regard to the specific case of the ROK.
In America’s New Map, I described this dynamic/instinct as such:
Most debate on nuclear proliferation focuses on its horizontal expression— an increase in the number of nuclear powers. It is the vertical form—nuclear powers increasing their arsenals—that dangerously blurs the non-nuclear/ nuclear boundary by insinuating that limited nuclear warfare can be successfully waged in a regional conflict without escalating to world-decimating strategic nuclear missile exchanges. That could well become the most dangerous legacy of Russia’s war with Ukraine, which once hosted Soviet nuclear missiles only to surrender them to Moscow following the USSR’s collapse.
Expect more US allies to seek such missile-hosting privileges (both nuclear and non-nuclear) in the years ahead, meaning there remains plenty of work— largely self-disciplinary—for US diplomats on the proliferation issue.
My sense is, that, in general, this is not a proposal that the State Department will care for. And I realize that, in giving such a commitment to the ROK, it could easily trigger plenty more such requests from nervous allies. But it fits nicely with other arguments I make in the book:
While it diminishes over time, the United States retains its role as external balancer in both the Center and Asia slices. But as we saw with Russia-v-Ukraine, our safest path forward in such conflicts is serving as an “arsenal for democracy”—Franklin Roosevelt’s pre-WWII policy that balanced America’s strong isolationism against Washington’s strategic instinct. Preemptively performing the same role with Taiwan vis-à-vis China, rendering the island nation an un-swallowable “porcupine,” seems another wise move by the Biden administration. We live now in a world of sufficient multipolarity where we can always find a worthy side to pick in any conflict without getting directly involved. In effect, this approach resurrects the 1980s Reagan Doctrine of bankrolling insurgent forces resisting a hostile superpower’s imperial strategies: it is relatively cheap and often effective.
When you’re balancing an electorate that wants fewer military interventions with a multipolar world full of powers eager to revise the global ruleset, you have to pick your fights. Look already how the GOP in Congress routinely seeks to tie any defense aid to similar security spending commitments to our southern border. It doesn’t get much obvious than that. However, the isolationist impulse still believes in a “fortress America” full of weaponry and the capacity to generate them, so, if indulging that instinct is necessary to gracefully degrade our global military presence, the RAND report suggests a reasonable path.
As for America’s China hawks? Again, a powerful signal, but one I see worth delivering. China has not reined in the DPRK. There must be strategic consequences to both that failure and Beijing’s nuclear arsenal expansion.