Elections, Nukes, and the Future of the South Korea-U.S. Alliance
Toby Dalton and Ain Han | Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
The impressive victory of President Moon Jae-in’s Democratic Party in South Korea’s April 2020 National Assembly elections obscured underlying security policy tensions within South Korea (or the Republic of Korea, ROK). These tensions reflect a deep and long-standing domestic split over how to deal with a nuclear North Korea and, to a lesser extent, concerns about the security alliance with the United States amid rising regional threats. In public opinion polls a consistent majority of South Koreans support acquiring nuclear weapons in some form, and centrist and conservative political parties have adopted official platforms calling on the United States to re-station nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. Looking beyond the November 2020 U.S. election, the stage is set for a potentially disruptive period in ROK-U.S. security relations. If today’s tensions build, a worst-case clash of ideas and priorities between Seoul and Washington could rupture the ROK-U.S. alliance and lead South Korea to pursue nuclear weapons. This is not highly likely, but it is imaginable.
Treaty to Prohibit Nuclear Weapons Passes Important Threshold
Rick Gladstone | New York Times
A treaty aimed at destroying all nuclear weapons and forever prohibiting their use has hit an important benchmark, with Honduras becoming the 50th country to ratify the accord — the minimum needed for it to enter into force as international law. The United Nations announced late Saturday that the ratification threshold had been achieved, a little more than three years after the treaty was completed in negotiations at the organization’s New York headquarters. Secretary General António Guterres said the 50th ratification was “the culmination of a worldwide movement to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons.”
Putin Says He’ll Limit Cruise Missile Deployments to Get Missile Defense Site Inspections
Joseph Trevithick | The Drive
With Russian and American officials still locked in negotiations over the future of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or New START, the Kremlin has now put its controversial 9M729 ground-launched cruise missile on the table as part of a separate arms control pitch. While Moscow continues to deny it, Washington and its NATO allies say this weapon, also known as the SSC-8 “Screwdriver,” violated the terms of the Cold War-era Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or INF, and it directly led to that agreement's final collapse last year. Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a formal statement on “additional steps to de-escalate the situation in Europe in the wake of the termination of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty” via the Kremlin's website on Oct. 26, 2020. This comes more than a year after the U.S. government formally withdrew from the INF over the 9M729/SSC-8.
Path to Install Hypersonic Weapons on Arleigh Burke Destroyers Unclear
Sam LaGrone and Mallory Shelbourne | USNI News
In order to accommodate the equivalent of an intermediate-range ballistic missile aboard the Navy’s current crop of destroyers, the service would need to undertake complex modifications to both the Zumwalt and Arleigh Burke classes of ships to install a long-range hypersonic strike weapon on DDGs, as the national security advisor called for this week. This week, White House National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said the Navy would field its new hypersonic weapon on all classes of Navy guided-missile destroyers — including the oldest flight of the Arleigh Burke-class.
U.S. Slams Iran With Another Round of Sanctions Over Support for ‘Terrorist Entities’
Amanda Macias | CNBC
The Trump administration on Monday announced a slew of fresh sanctions and additional measures targeting Iran’s petroleum sector as Washington continues to up the ante in its maximum pressure campaign against Tehran. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on Iran’s Ministry of Petroleum, the National Iranian Oil Company and the National Iranian Tanker Company for providing financial support to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the Assad regime in Syria, according to a release Monday. Treasury also designated multiple entities and individuals associated with the petroleum ministry, the oil company and the tanker company, including front companies, subsidiaries and senior executives.
Trump, Biden Trade Barbs Over North Korea’s Nukes
Joe Gould | Defense News
In the final presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle, former Vice President Joe Biden attacked President Donald Trump over his chummy relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, who recently unveiled a new, larger intercontinental ballistic missile. Trump noted that Biden and President Barack Obama had not curtailed Kim’s nuclear ambitions, and then falsely claimed that Obama had tried and failed to secure a meeting with Kim. “We have a different kind of relationship. We have a very good relationship, and there’s no war,” Trump said of himself and Kim. Biden shot back: “We had a good relationship with Hitler before he, in fact, invaded the rest of Europe. The reason [Kim] wouldn’t meet with President Obama is because [Obama] said we’re going to talk about denuclearization.”