Why Banning Nuclear Weapons Could be Dangerous

By Peter Huessy, President, Geostrategic Analysis, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute

(Washington D.C.) Opponents of US nuclear modernization and the US strategy of extended deterrence teamed up recently to support a trifecta of new policies. William Hartung of the Quincy Institute, Robert Dodge, the President of the Physicians for Social Responsibility and Doug Bandow of CATO, called for unilateral cuts in the US nuclear and conventional arsenals, the banning of all nuclear weapons, and for the US to withdraw its forces from the Republic of Korea, respectively, even as the nuclear threats from North Korea, China and Russia expand markedly.

Bandow has previously argued that the ROK conventional capability was significantly better than the DPRK military so that the US conventional and nuclear extended military deterrent to help the ROK was not necessary. In addition, Bandow for years initially took the strange position that US withdrawal was without consequence, as the ROK conventional capability was sufficient to defeat a possible North Korean invasion so deterrence would hold.

But then simultaneously, Bandow also admitted that even if a nuclear armed North Korea invaded after a US withdrawal under the belief that the ROK deterrent would not stop the North’s invasion, at least American soldiers would not be fighting or American cities would not be at risk.

As such, Bandow’s argument is the US should not be militarily involved in the ROK and our forces should be withdrawn in order to protect Americans, which Bandow concludes should be a higher priority than protecting people in South Korea. Indeed, if American soldiers are not in the ROK to help defend that country, the reasoning goes, America would no longer need to protect its homeland from North Korean long-range ICBM rockets able to strike US cities.

Apparently now realizing the contradiction in his previous assessment of the military balance on the Korean peninsula, Bandow admits that the ROK could solve its problem by building its own nuclear arsenal to match that of the North Koreans. This implicitly concedes that the withdrawal of the US nuclear umbrella would leave a big hole in the ROK defense and that historically the US extended deterrent has been a key ingredient in defending the ROK, as otherwise why would the ROK need to build its own nuclear forces to continue to deter the DPRK?

Bandow tries to dismiss the implications of blowing up the NPT or the 1969 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty to which the ROK is a party. The US, claims Bandow, cheered on the development of nuclear weapons in India, Pakistan and Israel, so what’s the big deal? But Bandow fails to mention that none of the three nations he lists are or have been members of the NPT, and thus their proliferation status is well known and not a violation of legal proliferation norms.