Nukes, Credibility, and K-Pop: Should South Korea Go Nuclear?

Steve and Galen dive into the wild world of extended nuclear deterrence on this episode of Global Tantrum! They tackle South Korea's recent statements about nuclear armament, the concept of extended deterrence, and the unpredictable twists and turns of US foreign policy. Will South Korea build the bomb? How would Japan and Taiwan react? And what about the infamous Age of Chaos? Tune in and find out—and sleep well, everyone!**************EXCERPT: Tripwires and Nuclear Strategy************************Galen: The famous quote, I think it was Henry Kissinger said, great powers do not commit suicide on behalf of their allies. Right. And that's essentially the problem that extended deterrence confronts. You just mentioned the idea of a tripwire. This is a good illustration of the sorts of things you can try to do with nuclear strategy to make this incredible threat seem credible.So the canonical example was during the Cold War, the United States wanted to defend West Berlin. West Berlin was located something like 100 miles inside East German territory. There was no way it could possibly be defended with conventional weapons. So the only way for the US to provide for the city's defense was through nuclear weapons. That was an especially incredible threat because West Berlin was of zero strategic value. It was purely a value in symbolic terms and what it represented for the credibility of US extended deterrence commitments elsewhere.As Steve said, the U.S. keeps 30,000 troops in South Korea today. During the Cold War, it kept 7,000 troops in West Berlin. And what they could do, they could die, to quote Thomas Schelling, the father of, or wrote kind of the Bible of nuclear strategy. Another example prior to World War I, my colleague James McAllister likes this example. The British asked the French, how many of our troops do you want stationed in France before in case of war? And the French famously said, we just want one and we'll make sure he dies right away so that you're automatically committed.Steve: And we publicize it. Yes. Exactly.Galen: But what you're trying to do is nuclear strategies have said is if you think of this as a game of chicken with two cars heading toward one another, what you want to do is make sure you don't have a steering wheel in the car so that you cannot be the one that swerves.Steve: Yeah, you have to make the other side believe that you will be fully committed if these people die. Another sort of trick that we've played during the Cold War, mostly during the Cold War in Europe, was we had shared command of nuclear weapons, supposedly shared command and way more about this than I do. We also stationed nukes on the territory of various allies, including South Korea, for a long time. You want to speak to that a little bit?Galen: Okay. I believe it was 1958 that the United States first put tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea. In other words, nuclear weapons that are not meant to be city buster weapons. We're not talking about hydrogen bombs with megaton yields or even sizable strategic nukes with kiloton yields. We're talking about weapons that are supposed to be used for battlefield purposes.Steve: Artillery shells, for instance, nuclear artillery shells. And we produced a shit ton of these things during the Cold War.Galen: During the Cold War in Europe, the U.S. had as many as 7,000 of those stationed on the continent.Steve: And I think we had like suitcase bombs. We had all kinds of crazy shit.Galen: A nuclear bazooka, the Davy Crockett, which I believe was a sub-kiloton nuclear weapon. These things are controversial for a few reasons. One, they're considered more usable, which means...Steve: Yes, the threat to use them is more credible. On the other hand- Do you really want to use them and have it potentially escalate out of control?Galen: Correct. I would argue that's the even bigger point is there's debates about this because knock on wood, we've never had to run the experiment and I hope we never do, but can a nuclear war stay limited? Can you have decision makers in various capitals, coolly making calculations about whether to escalate or back down once tactical nuclear weapons start flying.*************************************************************************************************00:00 Introduction02:41 Extended Nuclear Deterrence06:53 Challenges of Extended Deterrence09:43 Nuclear Strategy and Credibility15:41 Proliferation and Security Guarantees21:00 South Korea's Nuclear Ambitions32:33 Trump's Argument and Regional Nuclear Proliferation35:15 Global Non-Proliferation Concerns38:49 Accidents and Misunderstandings with Nuclear Weapons43:23 North Korea's Nuclear Program Development56:01 South Korea's Nuclear Ambitions59:23 Japan and Taiwan's Potential Nuclear Response01:00:37 Conclusion: Regional Stability and Future Prospects This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit globaltantrum.substack.com