By Richard Weitz
A U.S. Senate committee is pressing the U.S. to consider redeploying tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. It’s a bad idea.
Last month, the U.S. House Armed Services Committee enacted an amendment to the Fiscal Year 2013 National Defense Authorization Bill calling for reconsidering the U.S. removal of all its forward-based nuclear weapons from South Korea. The amendment’s supporters justified the proposal by noting the refusal of the new North Korean government, led by Kim Jong-un, to resume nuclear disarmament negotiations as well as China’s alleged sale of “nuclear components to North Korea.” But the South Korean government has correctly refused to endorse the idea, one that’s presently unnecessary and even counterproductive.
The Six-Party Talks designed to negotiate the elimination of North Korea’s nuclear weapons programs have made only fitful progress since they were established almost a decade ago, and they’ve effectively been deadlocked since late 2008. Hopes that Kim Jong-un, who assumed power in December in the sadly misnamed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, would change Pyongyang’s nuclear policies have so far not been justified.
The United States kept tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea for decades before removing them in 1991. At times, South Korean governments have contemplated and even begun their own nuclear weapons programs, which U.S. pressure ended. American diplomats warned that the United States could renounce its pledge to defend South Korea with U.S. nuclear weapons if South Korea sought to acquire its own nuclear arsenal, which U.S. analysts feared would lead to Japan, Taiwan, and perhaps other countries seeking nuclear weapons, too.
Read the full story at The Diplomat