Growing nuclear dangers from China and North Korea require Washington and Seoul to return battlefield nuclear weapons to South Korea, according to a think tank report.
The weapons are needed because the security situation in Northeast Asia is deteriorating and nuclear deterrence is weakening. U.S. allies in the region also are raising questions about the credibility of U.S. nuclear protection, the Heritage Foundation study concludes.
“The United States should return non-strategic nuclear weapons to South Korea to stave off proliferation and strengthen deterrence,” the report says.
According to the study, the United States would prefer to avoid reintroducing tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula, where 28,000 U.S. troops are deployed.
The report recommends an interim step of sending a limited number of air-delivered nuclear gravity bombs to U.S. air bases in South Korea that could be delivered by U.S. nuclear-capable fighter-bombers stationed in Korea.
“This deployment of gravity bombs would be an interim measure until the next-generation nuclear-armed cruise missiles come online over the next five to 10 years, specifically the air-launched long-range standoff missile and the sea-launched cruise missile-nuclear,” the report said.
“Both systems will have a greater range than a gravity bomb, be able to penetrate adversary air defense systems from a stand-off range and contribute to regional deterrence and stability — but they will not be available for years to come.”
One reason for reintroducing nuclear arms is to counter public support in South Korea for developing an indigenous nuclear deterrent.
The Energy Department in January quietly added South Korea to its list of sensitive nations over concerns the Seoul government will build its own nuclear weapons instead of relying on U.S. deterrence.
The designation was the result of growing popular support in South Korea for nuclear arms. A 2023 poll found 71% of South Koreans favor building nuclear weapons.
It is not known if President Trump discussed South Korean support for nuclear weapons during the summit with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung.
Mr. Trump said after the meeting that he would like to have denuclearization talks with China and Russia, and that he would like to meet again with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
“We can’t let nuclear weapons proliferate,” he said. “We have to stop nuclear weapons. The power is too great.”
The Pentagon has recognized since the 1950s that keeping the peace on the Korean Peninsula requires a set of credible conventional, strategic and non-strategic nuclear weapons.
Mr. Lee said North Korea is continuing to enhance its nuclear arsenal and could soon produce 10 to 20 nuclear weapons a year. He also said South Korea is committed to conventional weapons deterrence.
“The hard fact is that the number of nuclear weapons that North Korea possesses has increased over the past three to four years,” he said during remarks at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, however, the United States deactivated most of its non-strategic nuclear arms.
Today, stockpiles of those weapons are “insufficient for the threats posed by China, Russia and North Korea,” the report said, noting most tactical nuclear arms are in Europe.
The main deterrence platforms used today are patrols by U.S. strategic nuclear missile submarines. Other current regional deterrence platforms include U.S.-based intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Both lack low-yield capabilities that could be used to deter similar enemy attacks.
Expanding nuclear and conventional military arsenals by both China and North Korea are a major security problem in the region.
According to the report, North Korea is now armed with a sizable and increasingly capable ballistic and cruise missile force with a nuclear warhead stockpile that has grown over the past 20 years.
“Over that period, North Korea’s ruling Kim family has threatened the United States, South Korea, and Japan with nuclear strikes,” the report said.
The threat must be taken as credible and one that can inflict significant damage. Mr. Kim also has threatened to use all instruments of his power to “thoroughly annihilate” the United States and South Korea with nuclear weapons.
Nuclear talks since the 1990s have failed to lead to denuclearization and means North Korea will remain a nuclear threat until the Kim regime collapses, the report said.
The Chinese threat is America’s main strategic challenge and China is engaged in increasingly brazen behavior that is backed up by a large and increasingly capable and growing conventional military capabilities that threaten allies in the region.
“As disconcerting as these capabilities are, the most serious development of China’s military capabilities is its nuclear arsenal,” the report said.
The Pentagon has identified Beijing as the world’s fastest-growing nuclear power with more than 500 nuclear warheads now and increasing to 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030.
The weapons also are being deployed at higher readiness levels.
The threat includes hundreds of new missile silos in its western desert, nuclear-capable bombers, and dual-capable cruise and ballistic missile systems that can strike targets from Japan to Guam to northern Australia with nuclear or conventional weapons.
China also is likely to build asymmetric nuclear capabilities like anti-ship nuclear capabilities, hypersonic weapons that carry nuclear warheads, and fractional orbital bombardment systems that are loaded with nuclear munitions, the report said.
With the removal of theater nuclear weapons in Asia and the Western Pacific after the Cold War, China now maintains a major advantage over the United States in such arms.
“Such expansion will swell as China continues to develop and deploy new warheads capable of being delivered to targets across the Western Pacific from dual-capable missiles,” the report said.
Beginning in the 1990s and extending to the 2010s, U.S. forces unilaterally removed tactical nuclear weapons, including nuclear Tomahawk missiles, from Asia, based on China’s small nuclear force at the time and an immature North Korean nuclear program.
Now it has been nearly 35 years since the weapons were removed while nuclear threats sharply increased, the report said.
The report was written by Robert Peters, a Heritage senior researcher for strategic deterrence. Mr. Peters formerly served as lead strategist for the Pentagon’s Defense Threat Reduction Agency.
