“Unthreatening and respectful.” That’s how the president of the US described North Korea on Aug. 16, 2026, in his social media submit ordering his secretary of protection to reduce joint workout routines with South Korea. Two years earlier in Seoul, the U.S.-South Korean alliance agreed that South Korea’s position in an American nuclear operation would contain workout routines and coaching, formalizing these pointers at a Nuclear Consultative Group assembly co-chaired by Vipin Narang, then-acting assistant secretary of protection for area coverage.
Three weeks earlier than the president’s submit, on July 24, Narang spoke at the second Deterrence Symposium hosted by South Korea’s Strategic Command. Underneath the title “Goldilocks of the Nuclear Prolonged Deterrence,” he delivered a transparent prognosis of South Korea’s nuclear coverage. The insurance policies South Korea can pursue, he mentioned, divide broadly into three. Denuclearizing North Korea is for now near a delusion, and South Korea’s personal nuclear armament brings long-term ache and danger, so the optimum coverage for assembly North Korea’s advancing nuclear and missile risk is the Goldilocks alternative of strengthening American prolonged deterrence — the “good” choice that avoids each extremes.
Narang then supplied an extra Goldilocks alternative among the many choices for strengthening prolonged deterrence, ruling out the redeployment of ground-based tactical nuclear weapons and NATO-style nuclear sharing. The core argument was that forward-deployed nuclear weapons may not be totally usable from an operational standpoint and will divert sources and a spotlight from standard missions. He supplied a sea-based asset as a substitute: the sea-launched cruise missile, a low-yield nuclear cruise missile fired from U.S. Navy submarines.
Learn into what Narang excluded, and the underlying premise turns into obvious: The importance of this desire is {that a} submarine-launched weapon retains each the operation and supply of the nuclear asset completely in American arms. In different phrases, Narang’s level is that within the Indo-Pacific, People — and People solely — ought to hearth American nuclear weapons, in sharp distinction to Europe, the place NATO allies are assigned the wartime mission of delivering U.S. nuclear weapons below established procedures. The deeper query is how far South Korea’s position ought to prolong in working and delivering American nuclear weapons, however moderately than merely debating whether or not warheads return to the Korean Peninsula, it additionally asks why Korea’s position differs from Europe’s.
The explanation it’s pressing to press this query of nuclear role-sharing is that between North Korea’s standard provocation and America’s strategic nuclear weapons, notably in the meanwhile North Korea crosses the brink with a low-yield tactical weapon, a deterrence hole exists that neither South Korea nor the US alone can totally cowl.
The Goldilocks Thermometer
Goldilocks is the primary character from a kids’s story. Uninvited, a woman enters a house the place three bears reside. There she finds three bowls of porridge and picks the one that isn’t too sizzling, not too chilly, however “good.” She doesn’t set the desk. She chooses amongst bowls another person has already positioned upon it. Logic has a reputation for the extra acquainted model of this drawback. The “argument to moderation” (argumentum advert temperantiam) is the fallacy of assuming that the midpoint between two extremes is appropriate, just because it’s the midpoint. Narang’s drawback lies in the place he set the higher and decrease extremes, not in his having chosen the center.
The metaphor presupposes yet another factor: a single ruler. Porridge is ordered by temperature and nothing else. The controversy over tactical nuclear redeployment in South Korea has no such ruler, as a result of it consists of three completely different questions. The primary is the query of “designation”: Is that American nuclear weapon designated for the Korean theater? Second, the query of “deployment”: Is that weapon inside or outdoors of the peninsula? Third, the query of “position”: Does the US or South Korea hearth the weapon throughout a contingency?
These three questions are distinct, however they’re additionally sequentially associated. A South Korean F-35 can’t hearth a warhead saved in a vault within the continental United States, so South Korea’s “position” in working and delivering an American nuclear weapon presupposes the “ahead deployment” of that weapon to the peninsula. As a result of the 2 allies ought to resolve which belongings are supposed for a Korean contingency earlier than deciding the place to base them, theater designation ought to precede any choice on ahead deployment. Briefly, the ruler of position rests on the ruler of deployment, and the ruler of deployment rests on the ruler of designation, and by no means the reverse. A direct South Korean execution position would require entry to a weapon deployed the place South Korean forces may function it. Designation requires no deployment in any respect.
Stacking the three rulers doesn’t make them one query. The issue arises when the Goldilocks body lumps these three stacked rulers collectively right into a single scale. At that second, South Korea’s nuclear position turns into an appendage of ahead deployment, by no means handled as an impartial query. As soon as the US decides to not forward-deploy nuclear weapons to South Korea, the query of South Korea’s position disappears earlier than it even must be requested. In the long run, the true fallacy of the Goldilocks metaphor lies not in Narang selecting the center, however in his cramming of three initially completely different rulers onto one scale and simplifying them.
Europe’s Goldilocks, and Korea’s
Ought to these three rulers be stacked into one? One of the best proof for a “no” reply is Narang’s personal writing, together with his 2025 article in International Affairs, co-authored with Pranay Vaddi, “Find out how to Survive the New Nuclear Age,” the place Narang retains these three aside — at the very least the place Europe is worried — and discusses designation, deployment, and position individually. The 2 authors diagnose that Russia possesses as much as 2,000 low-yield battlefield nuclear weapons “unconstrained by any current arms management,” and posit that there’s a chance for Europe to construct resilience within the nuclear mission through the use of the F-35 program that allies function collectively. They go additional, putting even ground-based choices on the desk for consideration to exchange the B61-12 gravity bomb. This concern just isn’t that of the 2 authors alone. Linde Desmaele and Austin Cooper likewise start from the prognosis that there’s an empty rung on Europe’s escalation ladder and suggest filling that hole with high-yield standard precision strikes. In Europe, the talk over what to fill that hole with is underway.
Narang and Vaddi additional recognized that the theater nuclear hole within the Indo-Pacific is extra severe than that of Europe. For the Indo-Pacific, they described that “the regional nuclear cabinet is much more naked,” and that whereas B-2s and B-52s from the continental United States can deploy gravity bombs and long-range air-launched cruise missiles, the “tyranny of distance” degrades the bombers’ effectiveness. In that sense, Narang is certainly not a nuclear reductionist. He’s an advocate of enlargement, arguing that for the primary time on this century, the US ought to develop “extra, completely different, and higher” nuclear capabilities and deploy them in new methods.
The true asymmetry between Europe and the Indo-Pacific, subsequently, has little to do with whether or not to develop nuclear weapons. The important thing asymmetry is that Narang recommends completely different approaches to the theater nuclear hole in Europe and on the Korean Peninsula. For Europe, he prescribes a nuclear mission carried out by allies and ground-based choices. For the Indo-Pacific, and extra narrowly, the Korean Peninsula, he prescribes sea-based belongings that solely the US operates. Narang opposes ground-based nuclear deployment on South Korean territory, and South Korea performing the nuclear mission straight. Narang doesn’t oppose tactical nuclear weapons as a class. But in Europe he’s prepared to think about each a better allied nuclear position and ground-based nuclear choices.
Narang justifies this asymmetry based mostly on geography. Europe is a continental theater, so a ground-based posture is pure, whereas the Indo-Pacific is an enormous maritime theater, so sea-based belongings are cheap. The purpose itself is appropriate. What geography justifies is at most the type of deployment, or “what to place the place.” It leaves undetermined the questions of designation and position: “Will the US designate that asset to the Korean theater?” and “How far will South Korea take part in working it?” It’s because theater designation is conceptually separate from the bodily location of an asset. The maritime character of the theater precludes neither designating a sea-launched weapon for Korean contingencies nor involving South Korea in planning and focusing on for its potential use. Briefly, geography can function an argument that distinguishes the type of deployment. It can’t function an argument for excluding the position.
There’s, after all, historic background to the Korean Peninsula’s omission from this prescription. In 1991, with the tip of the Chilly Warfare, the US withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons from the Korean Peninsula, and thereafter the character of the risk modified from existential to regional. Jennifer Lind and Daryl G. Press pointed to exactly this transition of their 2026 article in International Affairs, “The Damaged Nuclear Umbrella.” Prolonged deterrence had credibility through the Chilly Warfare as a result of Washington regarded a Soviet conquest of Western Europe as an existential matter threatening America’s survival. After the Soviet collapse, as the US got here to face “regional safety challenges, moderately than near-existential threats,” its incentive to danger nuclear warfare for an ally additionally thinned.
Extending this prognosis, Lind and Press maintain that the “America First” line structurally collides with the elemental dedication of prolonged deterrence, which places the American homeland in danger for an ally. Their conclusion is extra radical than Robert Peters’. The US ought to assist its allies construct their very own technique of deterrence, and even when Seoul had been to withdraw from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and select its personal nuclear armament, the US ought to help this and defend South Korea from the dangers of carrying it out. The actual fact that such an argument appeared in a mainstream outlet like International Affairs is a sign that excluding tactical nuclear deployment as an excessive choice is not self-evident.
That isn’t to say the alliance has been sitting on its arms. The Nuclear Consultative Group between Seoul and Washington, created by the 2023 Washington Declaration as a standing physique through which the 2 nations seek the advice of and plan collectively on American nuclear operations, was a measure that dramatically raised the credibility of prolonged deterrence. However as Narang himself identified, the aim of the group lay in additional forcefully deterring North Korea’s offensive nuclear posture and equally in blocking South Korea’s personal nuclear armament. The previous is a measure aimed on the adversary’s posture, whereas the latter is a measure aimed on the ally’s choices. What deserves consideration, nevertheless, is that U.S. prolonged deterrence has maintained a passive and tailor-made type, elevating its stage of response by small increments every time the North Korean risk advances. Exactly due to this passivity, even with the institution of the Nuclear Consultative Group, if North Korea develops its offensive posture quicker than the U.S. response will increase, the insecurity felt by the protected state deepens.
What is going on in Washington proper now brings this drawback of passivity into sharper aid. Talking on the U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium on Aug. 5, 2026, Elbridge Colby, the undersecretary of warfare for coverage, who had argued that prolonged deterrence doesn’t hinge on standard deterrence by denial alone, confirmed that his workplace is reviewing nuclear employment steerage. The purpose, he mentioned, is much less the vary of the weapons than whether or not the president has restricted choices to make use of rationally and might handle escalation favorably. The risk Colby named as his biggest concern was not a bolt from the blue however a regional warfare through which an adversary makes use of nuclear weapons regionally, and escalation spreads outward. Briefly, the US seeks to plan a brand new nuclear technique aimed on the empty rung that allies, and South Korea particularly, confront.
This variation of route is clearly welcome, and a core query stays. If all that expands is the set of choices introduced to the U.S. president in a disaster, ought to South Korea passively await the result of that call? Even because the technique of deterrence improve, if South Korea, as an ally, stays comparatively excluded in comparison with European allies from the position of working American nuclear weapons, the uncertainty of assurance that South Korea feels won’t diminish within the slightest. Subsequently, on the stage at which the US devises its new nuclear technique, it ought to resolve the place to place tactical nuclear weapons and, along with that, the best way to pursue extra actively the division of roles of their operation and supply with Indo-Pacific allies.
South Korea’s Nuclear Position: Assist or Execution?
On this context, it’s price inspecting in three phases South Korea’s nuclear position in working American tactical nuclear weapons. The primary is the stage through which the US operates alone and South Korea has no position — a stage already handed because the creation of the Nuclear Consultative Group. The second is help, the stage through which South Korean standard forces underwrite U.S. nuclear operations. Missions corresponding to escort, suppression of enemy air defenses, provision of focusing on info, and parallel Korea Large Punishment and Retaliation belong right here. Standard-nuclear integration, the idea that the group tying South Korea’s standard forces and America’s nuclear operations right into a single operation is creating, is precisely this. The third and closing stage is execution, the stage through which South Korean standard forces straight function American nuclear weapons. That is securing deterrence via so-called European-style nuclear sharing, via allied dual-capable plane licensed to ship American warheads.
South Korea’s nuclear position ought to now intention on the third stage, execution. The rapid job is to first open the potential for execution via designation and joint planning, adopted by deciding the following position and type of deployment based on the risk setting and the institutional and operational situations of the alliance. This could not demand bringing warheads onto South Korean territory immediately or having South Korean pilots ship them. Europe’s expertise exhibits that allied participation in a nuclear mission can happen whereas the US retains custody and launch authority and whereas the alliance maintains that its preparations are per the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
The Washington Declaration of April 26, 2023, said that the alliance would cooperate to “allow joint execution and planning for [South Korean] standard help to U.S. nuclear operations in a contingency,” and declared the introduction of recent tabletop workout routines to that finish. However the actuality is that no public doc has outlined precisely how far “South Korean standard help” extends. Furthermore, the “execution” within the quoted passage implies that the 2 allies collectively execute and plan that standard help. It carries no sense of South Korea straight working American nuclear weapons. The nuclear position the Washington Declaration codified for South Korea stays, in impact, on the second stage: help. The textual content by no means addresses the third stage: execution. Even that codified help stays an open query as to how far South Korea carries it out.
There’s a motive this codified position has remained hole. The identical motive that killed tactical nuclear redeployment — that forward-deploying tactical warheads on South Korean soil would depart them susceptible, make them an early goal in a contingency, and make a disaster tougher to regulate — additionally prolonged past “deployment” and buried the dialogue of “execution” together with it.
One can’t deny these concerns. However it’s price noting that these grounds are, every one, objections to deployment. One objection to an allied execution position is that it may distract South Korean forces from standard missions, though European allies have lengthy maintained standard and nuclear tasks concurrently. In the long run, the talk has merely handled South Korean execution as a byproduct that disappears every time Washington rejects deployment. The alliance by no means rejected execution after inspecting it in its personal proper. If Washington makes use of the hazard of deployment to erase the dialogue of position itself, then the disagreement is not about danger. It’s about who might increase the query in any respect.
The case standing on the reverse pole from this erasure of South Korea’s position is that of the NATO allies. The nuclear position of NATO allies is already on the execution stage. NATO’s dual-capable plane association is a construction through which allied pilots function American warheads. In peacetime, the US holds absolute custody and management of those warheads. In a contingency, it transfers management after political approval by NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group and authorization by the American president, and dual-key procedures function. For this to work, the situation of the warhead alone doesn’t make execution attainable. Peacetime storage infrastructure, dual-key procedures, certification of pilots and models, and the buildup of repeated workout routines are all needed. In truth, the F-35A acquired B61-12 supply certification on Oct. 12, 2023. The Netherlands obtained “preliminary certification for the deterrence mission” for its personal F-35s in Nov. 2023, and on June 1, 2024, grew to become the primary on the planet to formally assign the F-35A to the nuclear strike mission. All of it is a situation of execution.
South Korea has but to fulfill these situations. NATO’s nuclear sharing stands on multilateral establishments and procedures collected over a long time, whereas the institutional accumulation within the U.S.-South Korean alliance runs shallow. But NATO’s establishments weren’t there from the start both. The 2 allies created the Nuclear Consultative Group for exactly the sort of session and planning European allies conduct. Shallow accumulation is a motive to start now, and never a motive to chorus from starting.
Extending nuclear sharing to a brand new area additionally carries a nonproliferation burden. Japan might demand equal remedy, China will learn it as a change within the regional nuclear order, and stress falls on the nonproliferation regime. Even so, the nonproliferation argument cuts each methods. The Nuclear Consultative Group exists for the aim of preventing South Korea’s personal nuclear armament. South Korean insecurity, produced by an alliance through which nuclear sharing is dominated out, can at any time result in the very proliferation Washington guards in opposition to most. What these two objections share is that they describe situations the alliance can enhance. Neither objection explains why Europe crossed into execution, and South Korea didn’t.
What, then, lifted Europe to this execution stage, and what holds South Korea at its threshold? There are numerous elements, and one core determinant separating South Korea from the NATO allies is whether or not the US has made a theater designation. Designation doesn’t indicate deployment and is feasible even when the asset is way away. Whether or not the sea-launched missile resides within the Indo-Pacific, or ground-based nuclear weapons come to Guam or Japan, designation for the Korean theater ought to come individually. Designation is a variable impartial of an asset’s location. It isn’t merely an administrative measure marking the place an asset sits — it’s the precondition that enables South Korean standard forces to collectively have interaction within the operation and supply of American nuclear weapons. Solely when there’s a designated object can the 2 sides focus on what to combine and the way, and to what extent to divide the roles. The demand for designation is subsequently not a roundabout expression of the redeployment argument.
Washington has strategic causes for having deferred designation. Tying a specific asset to 1 theater reduces discretion in a disaster and makes it tougher to shift scarce low-yield belongings to a different theater. That truth in itself tells Beijing and Moscow that Washington now treats the Korean Peninsula as a theater it has dedicated nuclear weapons to. But these three prices could also be smaller than generally assumed. Designation doesn’t quantity to computerized use. Theater designation of an American nuclear asset is a planning relationship moderately than the bodily task of the asset. Washington could make the designation quietly, and neither authorities has to publish the planning paperwork.
One other level deserving consideration is that these prices of theater designation come up in Europe as effectively. Belongings designated to Europe are likewise troublesome to shift to a different theater, and that designation tells Moscow the identical factor, that the US has dedicated specific nuclear weapons to a European contingency. Even so, the US has judged these prices as price paying. The query to pose, then, is why the prices are bearable in a single theater and never in one other, not whether or not the prices will be borne in any respect.
That mentioned, nobody ought to learn theater designation of nuclear belongings as “a 3rd compromise, neither redeployment nor neglect.” Designation just isn’t a compromise adopted merely as a result of its availability. Its goal is to diversify the choices for strengthening deterrence and assurance. Above all, the rationale designation is decisive is as a result of it attracts these questions into the procedures of allied joint planning, and never as a result of it solutions the query of which stage we’ve reached.
As soon as the US designates belongings to the Korean theater and the 2 allies start operating the nuclear focusing on cycle, the next questions grow to be substantive outputs moderately than topics of political dispute: what yield every goal requires, how distant the asset is and what the response time is, and who takes on what. Joint focusing on strikes the issue out of a public discourse the place taboo operates and into the procedures of technical planning. Put succinctly, designation doesn’t logically assure joint focusing on. If the US unilaterally designates the theater and doesn’t share the cycle, designation can finish as an emblem. Designation subsequently wants a second half. South Korea has to hitch the focusing on cycle.
This demand meets none apart from Narang’s personal concern. He emphasised that conventional-nuclear integration needs to be made actual, “should not stay an acronym.” But if the focusing on cycle dialogue begins with it already nailed down that South Korea’s position stops at help, this cuts off the vary of outputs from the beginning. What dialogue can produce determines substantive integration. If Washington excludes a specific conclusion beforehand, what stays is session in type solely. What makes integration an acronym stems from Narang’s personal exclusion of the tactical nuclear deployment choice.
At this level, some consultants say the sea-launched missile is the choice. This asset could be a channel for prompting the US to designate it to the Korean theater, and it may also be a route for South Korea to safe a substantive stake by contributing financially to modernization prices. However there isn’t a means for South Korean forces to function it. An American submarine fires it, and South Korea waits for that call. Working American belongings with American crews does have benefits in command and management and in operational reliability, and even so, that can not be a motive to consign South Korea’s nuclear position to help. It circumvents the position drawback moderately than fixing it, and so it stands as a short lived second-best and falls wanting a substitute for redeployment. And as soon as policymakers take the second-best for the choice, they deal with the apparent subsequent questions as already answered.
Who Units the Default?
The second the demanded designation and joint focusing on come about, an unavoidable query follows. As soon as the alliance designates belongings to the Korean theater and begins operating the focusing on cycle, the query of the scope of roles is certain to floor. When one critically calculates which goal requires which asset, the query of who takes on what, and the way shortly, turns into pressing. What issues in the long run is whether or not the alliance solutions that query intentionally or evades the reply and accepts as a default the boundary line another person has drawn on its behalf. Till now, it has been the latter. Designation, deployment, execution — Washington has rejected every of those choices with out ample examination.
Tactical nuclear redeployment just isn’t the one reply, and the considerations surrounding it are legitimate. The advantage of putting ground-based tactical nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula just isn’t as nice as generally hoped. In a contingency, such weapons are prone to grow to be North Korea’s first goal, and a nuclear weapon positioned on a slender peninsula may grow to be the flashpoint that escalates a disaster right into a great-power confrontation, inviting instability on the order of the Cuban Missile Disaster. Insofar because the Chilly Warfare forward-deployment mannequin is susceptible and can’t be the one appropriate reply, the gap between this place and Narang just isn’t nice. Guarding in opposition to the rote repetition of an outdated mannequin and excluding a specific choice from the dialogue altogether are totally completely different issues.
There’s a clear hole in South Korea’s deterrence posture. The second a disaster strikes previous South Korea’s proportionate standard response in its early stage, what lies instantly above it’s only prolonged deterrence by American strategic nuclear weapons, and the area in between is empty. The bigger drawback is that this hole is exactly the place North Korea goals. If North Korea detonates a tactical nuclear weapon on an uninhabited island or chooses an especially restricted methodology corresponding to an electromagnetic pulse, American strategic nuclear retaliation loses credibility as a result of it’s not proportionate. Add to this the chance of mutual assured destruction and the potential for Chinese language and Russian intervention, and strategic nuclear weapons grow to be ill-suited as a method of confronting nuclear use at such a low stage. Briefly, even excluding redeployment wouldn’t make this hole disappear, and the query of what to fill it with stays.
What is evident is that deterrence doesn’t rely upon functionality alone. Deterrence works solely when the adversary perceives that functionality. Strategic strike and missile protection programs grow to be deterrents solely when the alliance shows and makes that functionality perceptible to the adversary. This implies one can’t flatly conclude that “designation of nuclear weapons alone suffices, and the situation of the asset is irrelevant.” If visibility is a element of deterrence, then the asset’s location just isn’t a completely impartial variable. For that motive, the alliance shouldn’t rule out ground-based choices prematurely both. The trail subsequently runs in steps.
Designation to the Korean theater and participation within the joint focusing on cycle come first, lifting South Korea’s position from help onto the trajectory of execution. Designation means stating that an American nuclear asset is for the Korean theater, and joint focusing on means the 2 allies operating the identical calculation over that asset. And if the safety setting on the Korean Peninsula deteriorates sharply, extra direct types of execution, together with floor deployment, ought to stay inside the scope of consideration. The 2 allies ought to agree upon the situations for that assessment now, moderately than after the state of affairs arrives. An choice first raised inside a disaster all the time comes late.
South Korea has the standing to ask how far its personal share extends within the alliance’s nuclear division of labor. Within the alliance’s reorientation, Washington is putting on Seoul the first accountability for standard deterrence in opposition to North Korea, and the boundary of that accountability is the nuclear threshold. Past that threshold lies a niche the 2 allies can solely cowl collectively. Who takes on what to cowl that hole is a query the alliance ought to reply collectively. A default just isn’t merely given however set by somebody. There is no such thing as a motive South Korea needs to be not noted of that “somebody.”
Hanbyeol Sohn is a professor within the Division of Strategic Research at Korea Nationwide Protection College. He concurrently serves as director of the Heart for Nuclear and Weapons of Mass Destruction Affairs and director of analysis planning on the Analysis Institute for Nationwide Safety Affairs, and as a coverage adviser to South Korea’s Nationwide Safety Workplace.
Kyung Suk Lee is an assistant professor on the Graduate Faculty of Worldwide Research at Yonsei College. His analysis focuses on nuclear coverage, prolonged deterrence, and the alliance between South Korea and the US. His work has appeared in main journals corresponding to Worldwide Research Quarterly, the Washington Quarterly, and Modern Safety Coverage.
The views expressed listed here are the authors’ personal and don’t characterize the positions of any establishment with which they’re affiliated.
Picture: Michael Chen through Wikimedia Commons
