As North Korea increases its nuclear weapons supply, Northeast Asia becomes more unstable due to the fact that it changes nuclear balance, meanwhile the US and its allies have struggled to set arms control and encourage disarmament regions for decades, North Korea strives to get total control over nuclear weapons in the region.
Unfortunately, during Trump’s administration, the indifference to keep military pacts such as Japan and South Korea, diminished non-proliferation measures to contain nuclear weapons. Moreover, Trump has suggested that the US should remove the nuclear umbrella from these countries allowing Japan and South Korea develop their own nuclear programs. Although Trump and Kim Jong-un leader of North Korea met several times nothing new came up from these meetings, the US has not changed the status quo in the region and the nuclear umbrella remains in place, and North Korea is still focused on working harder on its own nuclear deterrent.
On the other hand, Japan and South Korea have bristled at Trump’s extreme burden-sharing demands and relations between the United States and China have significantly worsened. Currently the US needs to move forward on a number of stalled arms control and disarmament initiatives, and maybe now under Biden’s government is a new opportunity to advance and take urgent measures to halt proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Kevinn,
Fortunately, from the standpoint of nuclear proliferation, North Korea’s continued pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles has not changed the behavior of the other main actors in the region. Both Japan and South Korea have been–and remain–under the US nuclear “umbrella” and have therefore agreed to refrain from developing nuclear weapons. (Japan could probably build one in less than a year if it chose to.) China and Russia, of course, are already nuclear weapons states. All of that said, the DPRK’s actions are still potentially destabilizing, especially if they renew their testing of nuclear weapons and missiles.
–Professor Wallerstein