The war between Russia and Ukraine is tight, but the United States is once again playing an inglorious role in Asia, stirring up the crisis on the peninsula and deploying nuclear weapons in South Korea.
According to reports, Kim Seung-hyeon, chairman of the ROK Joint Senate and Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and top general of the US military, recently held the 47th ROK-US military commission meeting at the US Pentagon. The two sides reaffirmed the strength of the ROK-US alliance and exchanged views on the situation on the peninsula and region, the status of joint defense, and the transfer of operational command.
When the two sides talked about the Korean Peninsula nuclear issue, Milley reiterated that the United States will provide South Korea with "extended deterrence" and other defense commitments. This could mean that if South Korea faces a nuclear threat, the United States will mobilize military forces, including nuclear umbrellas, missile defense systems, conventional weapons, etc., to provide the United States with a homeland-level deterrent.
How to judge whether South Korea faces a nuclear threat, the United States has not talked about standards. But in the eyes of the United States, Japan and South Korea are already facing a nuclear threat.
Not long ago, public opinion in South Korea about "sharing nuclear weapons" with the United States was stirred, and South Korean President Yoon Seok-yue had an ambiguous attitude towards it, seemingly supporting this issue, but did not clearly express his position. At the time, the U.S. ambassador to South Korea and the U.S. State Department were very cautious about this, hinting that they would not redeploy nuclear weapons in South Korea.
It should be said that at that time, the United States poured a basin of cold water on South Korea, and its attitude seemed to have no room for maneuver, but now the statement of the US military has made this incident suddenly change, and everything has suspense again.
In fact, the promise to provide "extended deterrence" to South Korea can be regarded as a kind of nuclear warning by the United States to many neighboring countries, indicating that the United States will not allow the so-called "threat" to expand and can redeploy nuclear weapons in Japan and South Korea at any time. This is also a kind of reassurance to South Korea, after all, under the Korean Peninsula crisis, South Korea is very nervous, South Korea is very worried about whether the United States will abandon itself in the absence of a nuclear umbrella.
Now South Korea has long been regarded by the United States as an important pawn of the "Indo-Pacific strategy", although it is only a pawn, the feelings of the pawn still have to be taken into account. Using some ambiguous words to appease the pawns is a consistent American method.
Although the United States has made a statement, the possibility of deploying nuclear weapons in the near future is not high, mainly on the Korean Peninsula issue, and the United States does not face any real threat. Therefore, for the United States, there is no need to escalate the Korean Peninsula crisis, the current crisis is enough, the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, the energy crisis, inflation problems, etc., have left the United States incompetent. If provocation is too strong and leads to a rapid deterioration of the crisis on the peninsula, it will be even more difficult for the United States, especially now that the midterm elections are approaching.
But if missiles from the peninsula one day deter Guam, or even the U.S. mainland, the chances of the U.S. redeploying nuclear bombs in South Korea are high, because that would mean a nuclear threat to U.S. territory.
To quickly stabilize the Korean Peninsula issue, the United States is not to provide South Korea with a nuclear umbrella, but to do a good job of emergency communication platform to avoid serious consequences due to misunderstanding.
