A nuclear arms race in Northeast Asia?

Abstract

Speculation is rife that North Korea’s burgeoning nuclear and ballistic missile programs will spark a dangerous new Northeast Asian arms race. In May of this year, senior officials in United States President Donald Trump’s administration reportedly confided in Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop their fears that such an arms race was “inevitable” should the international community fail to rein in Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile advances. During an interview on CNN in October 2017, former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton agreed, asserting that “we will now have an arms race–a nuclear arms race in East Asia”. Senior political figures like Minister Bishop and Secretary Clinton have encountered no shortage of strategic analysts willing to substantiate their claims. The prominent American commentator Michael Auslin, for instance, argued recently that “North Korea is ensuring a nuclear arms race”. Similarly, the late Desmond Ball pointed presciently to a predominantly naval Northeast Asian arms race–through one with clear nuclear dimensions–in a paper published just over half a decade ago.