STRUGGLING TO RESPOND TO THE NORTH KOREAN NUCLEAR MISSILE THREAT
The result of this greatly expanded North Korean capability is credibility anxieties about the US commitment. If North Korea can nuke the US homeland, will the US automatically meet its alliance commitments to the South? Will it join a war without hesitation? It might, of course, and American officials signal relentlessly that it will.
But it might also hesitate. We know, for example, that former president John Kennedy was far more willing to make concessions to the Soviet Union during the Cuban missile crisis than was known at the time.
We can also see hesitation in the Western response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The US and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies have not fully supported Ukraine, because they fear Russian nuclear escalation. Ukraine and its supporters have complained bitterly that Russian nuclear threats have unnecessarily crippled Ukraine’s defence. One might imagine a similar US hesitation in a Korean scenario.
South Korea is a treaty ally, of course. Ukraine is not. And South Korea has a US military presence, which Ukraine also does not. So that suggests greater US credibility.
But still, the US commitment was instituted, and persisted for decades, around a regionally contained conventional threat. That has changed dramatically, for the worse, in the last decade. So it is simply not as clear as it once was how the US would respond in a Korean crisis. North Korea would almost certainly make the same nuclear threats Russia is now making.
Given all this, the South Korean public and a growing number of elites want the South to be able to counterpoint North Korean nukes on its own – local deterrence instead of extended deterrence.
