China said it opposes a deployment of nuclear weapons to South Korea as it would pose danger to regional countries. Beijing was reacting to a report suggesting the United States should take such a measure to enhance deterrence against threats from North Korea.
"If the U.S. deploys tactical nuclear weapons in Asia-Pacific region, it will be a dangerous move that will seriously threaten the security of regional countries and undermine regional peace and stability," said Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese Embassy in Washington.
"We will continue to handle Korean Peninsula affairs based on their merits and our own position," he said in a statement sent to VOA on Monday. The embassy spokesperson described China's position on the Korean Peninsula as ensuring peace and stability and advancing political settlement that suits the common interests of all parties.
The remarks were made in response to a report released May 29 by U.S. Senator Roger Wicker, the highest-ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, calling for a major boost to U.S. military buildup and readiness against countries such as North Korea and China.
In the report, "Peace Through Strength," Wicker suggested the U.S. explore new options, such as a "nuclear sharing agreement in the Indo-Pacific and re-deployment of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in the Korean Peninsula."
He said these would "bolster deterrence on the Korean peninsula" as North Korea "continues to build more nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of striking the United States and our allies in the Indo-Pacific."
In response to Wicker's report, a U.S. State Department spokesperson told VOA's Korean Service on Friday that "the United States does not assess returning nuclear weapons to the Indo-Pacific as necessary at this time" and "has no plans to forward deploy nuclear weapons to the Korean peninsula."
The spokesperson continued, "U.S. security commitments to allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific region are steadfast and U.S. extended deterrence commitments to the Republic of Korea, Japan, and Australia remain ironclad."
In 1991, the U.S. withdrew from South Korea its nuclear weapons, which had been stationed there since the late 1950s. The U.S. has been providing extended deterrence commitment to South Korea and Japan, which means the U.S. military would use its full range of capabilities, including nuclear weapons, to defend its allies.
Washington and Seoul will hold their third Nuclear Consultative Group (NCG) meeting next week in Seoul to discuss ways to enhance extended deterrence, South Korea's Defense Ministry said Tuesday.
The NCG was set up under the Washington Declaration announced in April last year when U.S. President Joe Biden and South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol held a bilateral summit in Washington.
On Sunday, after the U.S., South Korean and Japanese defense chiefs met in Singapore, the three countries announced they will conduct their first trilateral, multi-domain exercises, dubbed Freedom Edge, this summer.
Robert Peters, a research fellow for Nuclear Deterrence and Missile Defense at the Heritage Foundation, told VOA via email, "The United States should seriously consider redeploying nonstrategic nuclear weapons to [South] Korea" as they would help strengthen deterrence.
Nonstrategic nuclear weapons refers to low-yield tactical nuclear weapons designed to be used on the battlefield.
However, Thomas Countryman, who recently served as acting undersecretary of arms control and international security under the Biden administration, said "such a deployment would draw [South Korea's] attention away from building conventional capabilities that are more essential to continued deterrence."
Out of 200 tactical nuclear weapons the U.S. has in its active inventory, 100 are located in Europe and the other 100 are stored as a strategic reserve in the U.S, according to Bruce Bennett, a senior defense analyst at the RAND Corporation.
"With the Russian aggression over Ukraine, it is hard to imagine the United States taking any significant number of weapons out of Europe," said Bennett.
"With China on the rise, the United States will be inclined to leave its strategic reserve in the United States and certainly not deploy it in South Korea where it could potentially be vulnerable to Chinese or North Korean interdiction," he continued.
Gary Samore, former White House coordinator for arms control and weapons of mass destruction during the Obama administration, said, "The U.S. military opposes the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons or any nuclear weapons to [South] Korea, because they would be vulnerable to a North Korean attack."
Japan would not object to the U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons in South Korea "as long as they remain under U.S. control," said David Maxwell, vice president of the Center for Asia Pacific Strategy. "It is only when South Korea develops its own nuclear weapons, would it potentially kick off an arms race in the region."
