To the Editor,

In an article titled “Why South Korea Should Go Nuclear”, in the January – February 2025 issue of Foreign Affairs,  Robert E. Kelly and Min-Hyung Kim make their case for adding nuclear weapons to the arsenal now already present in South Korea. They site both the growth of weaponry now held by North Korea and the probable lack luster support from the United States as critical reasons for their conclusions.

From the perspective of this U.S. citizen, this is a hopelessly tired and dangerous recommendation to be giving to our policy makers.

Adding nuclear weapons to South Korea will surely prompt North Korea to develop its weaponry even further. The U.S. military presence on the Korean Peninsula over the past seven decades and the continual saber rattling via U.S. and South Korean military “exercises” has done nothing but promote increases in weaponry and hostility. How can the authors possibly believe that adding additional weapons of mass destruction to the mix could calm things down in the region?

The authors argue that a “security gap” that has now widened for South Korea because of the election of Donald Trump and the world’s preoccupation with Ukraine and the Middle East, should now be filled by South Korea “building its own nuclear weapons”. In the article’s closing sentence, they suggest that “Washington should drop its barriers to Seoul’s finding its own way to security”.

What kind of sensible leadership is this? Our goal as a people should be to decrease our planet’s saturation with weapons of all kinds and especially nuclear weapons. We need to make honest moves toward reducing our own nuclear and conventional arms while widely promoting this strategy to the populations of the world. Leadership now more than ever needs to turn down the heat of conflict by suggesting and delivering calm proposals and actions to the nations of the World.

The authors make a strange statement early on in their arguments by stating that South Korean nuclearization “would not trigger the breakdown of the international nonproliferation regime, as critics fear”. How could it be anything but another crack in the regime? Another revisionist slide down the slope toward the darkest of times!

The authors even take the liberty to suggest that South Korea would need “no more than 100 warheads” to achieve nuclear parity with North Korea. It seems to me that this buildup would prompt North Korea to add another 100 warheads to their arsenal, and on and on.

In closing, I must give kudos to the authors for even mentioning the nonproliferation ideal of “global zero”. Unfortunately, they call this ideal “admirable but probably unattainable unless nuclear weapons states act first” and they call this an “unlikely prospect”. How on Earth is my country ever going to make headway toward “global zero” if our university professors continue to make just the opposite suggestions and while many, but not all, U.S. citizens profit directly from the proliferation of weapons around the planet.

Let’s send food and essential living supplies to North Korea rather than promoting and funding increases to weapons arsenals. I want my tax dollars to purchase and distribute food, not weapons.

Dale S. Scott

Former Supervisor, Friendship Township, Michigan

231-357-7339

March 28, 2025