The Biden administration is working to “reassure” allies that they can continue to rely on the United States to deter nuclear-armed adversaries and need not acquire their own nuclear weapons.
“We are determined to take the necessary steps to buttress this message of partnership and the nuclear umbrella … and I think that has been successful in South Korea,” Deputy Secretary of State Kurt Campbell said Wednesday at the Hudson Institute. “We have an existing bilateral dialogue with Japan on nuclear deterrence. And I believe that we will be taking steps, in time, to have also trilateral engagements on these topics as well.”
Those trilateral discussions would extend a theme of American efforts to network the foreign and security policies of Japan and South Korea, two Indo-Pacific states that have long-standing alliances with the United States but have a history of tensions with each other. Yet it also underscores a more fundamental misgiving that a combination of factors, both in the form of threats from other countries and an erosion of confidence in the United States, could drive a new round of nuclear proliferation.
“If any one country chose to break out, I think you would have, possibly, a chain reaction that would be deeply concerning,” Campbell said. “And so I think it is important for the United States to be attuned to these issues and to recognize what factors drive what we would call nuclear reconsideration.”
The reliability of that commitment has come into question for several reasons, Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine not least of all, as Campbell acknowledged. Russian President Vladimir Putin and other prominent officials have invoked Moscow’s nuclear arsenal throughout the conflict, with the apparent intent of deterring U.S. intervention and discouraging Western powers from providing advanced weaponry to Ukraine.
“A Russia that threatens nuclear use openly has created real anxieties that they do not see a gap between conventional operations and potential smaller battlefield uses of nuclear weapons — that’s deeply concerning,” Campbell said. “Not just to the United States but to other nations.”
Putin’s nuclear saber-rattling has given a vivid glimpse of the risks that could arise in the Indo-Pacific as China conducts “one of the largest nuclear buildups in history” and North Korea upgrades its arsenal.
“It used to be that we thought some of the activities that North Korea were taking were somehow [intended] to be bartered in some kind of dialogue with the United States or with other countries,” Campbell said. “But it’s clear that they are determined to create greater capability, in a number of areas, and to refine capacity, whether it’s long-range ballistic missiles or the like.”
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has made a series of decisions that raise the specter of a nuclear crisis with the regime. A recently codified law on North Korean nuclear doctrine “disturbingly lowered the threshold for its use of nuclear weapons in some scenarios described in the legislation,” as a Heritage Foundation analyst assessed, and the dynasty chief presided over a “Nuclear Trigger” military drill on Monday.
“The drill served as an important occasion in thoroughly preparing our nuclear force to be able to rapidly and correctly carry out their important mission of deterring a war and taking the initiative in a war at any time and in any sudden situation,” Kim said, per state media.
With China and North Korea looming as nuclear-armed threats and Putin on the march in Ukraine, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has repeatedly acknowledged his fear that “Ukraine of today may be East Asia of tomorrow,” with fearsome consequences for states that lack the capacity to deter nuclear-armed enemies.
“There exists an imminent danger of nuclear weapons proliferation in East Asia,” Kishida said during his April 11 address to a joint session of Congress. “In this reality, close coordination between Japan and the U.S. is required more than ever to ensure that the deterrence our alliance provides remains credible and resilient.”
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Campbell, while careful to skirt a discussion of U.S. politics, acknowledged that “anxiety in many countries about where the United States is headed” is one of the potential drivers of nuclear proliferation.
“The entire framework rests on a confidence in the United States standing behind countries and extending a deterrent capacity, and what we call a nuclear umbrella, that is designed to deter aggression and provocation,” Campbell said. “And some of those countries, sometimes, in the future, worry about that.”