- President Joe Biden has warned that a nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies will result in the end of whatever regime.
- The new nuclear deterrence effort calls for periodically docking US Nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea, bolstering training between the two countries, and more.
- The Washington Declaration was designed to allay South Korean fears over the North’s aggressive nuclear weapons program and to keep the country from restarting its own nuclear programme.
President Joe Biden has warned that a nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States or its allies will result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action. Biden issued the warning along with South Korea’s Yoon Suk Yeol as they unveiled a new plan to counter North Korea’s nuclear threat. The new nuclear deterrence effort calls for periodically docking US Nuclear-armed submarines in South Korea for the first time in decades, bolstering training between the two countries, and more.
Biden and Yoon aides have been working on details of the plan for months and agreed that ‘occasional’ and ‘very clear demonstrations of the strength’ of US extended deterrence capabilities needed to be an essential aspect of the agreement.
The officials said the Washington Declaration was designed to allay South Korean fears over the North’s aggressive nuclear weapons program and to keep the country from restarting its own nuclear programme, which it gave up nearly 50 years ago when it signed the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Yoon earlier this year said his country was weighing developing its own nuclear weapons or asking the US to redeploy them on the Korean Peninsula. The US and South Korea also would coordinate more deeply on nuclear response strategy in the event of the North attacking the South, but operational control of such weapons would remain in US Control, and no nuclear weapons are being deployed onto South Korean shores.
Biden said coordination between the US and South Korea remains crucial in the face of increased North Korean threats and blatant violations of international sanctions. He repeated that the US remains open to substantial talks with the North without preconditions.
The state visit comes as the US and South Korea mark the 70th year of the countries’ alliance that began at the end of the Korean War and committed the United States to help South Korea defend itself, particularly from North Korea. Approximately 28,500 US troops are currently based in South Korea.
It was a period when the US had hundreds of nuclear warheads located in South Korea. But in 1991, the United States withdrew all of its nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula, and the following year Seoul and Pyongyang signed a joint declaration pledging that neither would ‘test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy or use nuclear weapons.’
North Korea’s increasing nuclear threats, along with concerns about China’s military and economic assertiveness in the region, have pushed the Biden administration to expand its Asian alliance. To that end, Biden has thrown plenty of attention at Yoon as well as Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida. Next week, Biden will host Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. For Oval Office talks.
In the past year, North Korea has been steadily expanding its nuclear arsenal, while China and Russia repeatedly block U.S.-led efforts to toughen sanctions on the North over its barrage of banned missile tests.
(With inputs from agencies)
