Reducing Nuclear Salience: How to Reassure Northeast Asian Allies

Abstract

One of the Biden administration’s top foreign policy challenges is to reinvigorate US alliances. Regional threats in Eastern Europe and Northeast Asia have become more complex in recent years, just as President Trump hastened allies’ and partners’ doubts about US security commitments. It is tempting for officials in Washington and in allied capitals to think or hope that increasing the salience of nuclear deterrence can help to meet the challenges of deterring growing threats and assuring nervous allies. This temptation is especially pertinent in Northeast Asia, which lacks the multi-party alliance and nuclear sharing structures institutionalized in Europe through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Proponents of more nuclear salience argue that forward-deployment of US nuclear weapons or forming nuclear planning groups with Japan and South Korea would strengthen deterrence of North Korea and China. They argue that such steps would also assure worried officials in Tokyo and Seoul about the credibility of US security ties and would prevent leaders in Japan and South Korea from deciding that they need to develop their own, independent nuclear arsenals. In these prescriptions, elevating the role of nuclear weapons would improve security with relatively few risks or second-order consequences. The broad diagnosis that growing threats require renewed US alliance deterrence and assurance initiatives in Northeast Asia is correct. Yet, is augmenting