WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden moved Wednesday to bolster the American nuclear umbrella guarding South Korea and vowed that any nuclear attack by North Korea would “result in the end” of the government in Pyongyang, underscoring a broad turn from diplomacy to deterrence in response to the threat from the volatile dictatorship.
Hosting President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea at the White House for a state visit, Biden committed to giving Seoul a central role for the first time in strategic planning for the use of nuclear weapons in any conflict with North Korea. In return, the South disavowed any effort to pursue its own nuclear arsenal, a move Yoon briefly appeared to embrace earlier this year. Biden also announced that the United States would send American nuclear ballistic missile submarines to dock in South Korea for the first time in decades.
“Look, a nuclear attack by North Korea against the United States, its allies or partisans — partners — is unacceptable and will result in the end of whatever regime were to take such an action,” Biden said during a news conference in the Rose Garden, where he and Yoon described their agreement, called the Washington Declaration. “It’s about strengthening deterrence in response to the DPRK’s escalatory behavior, and the deal is complete consultation” between the allies, Biden said, using the initials for the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
While past presidents had also warned North Korea that a nuclear attack on the South would result in a devastating U.S. response, the blunt language about bringing about the end of the North Korean regime was reminiscent of Biden’s bellicose predecessor, Donald Trump. Trump once threatened North Korea “with fire and fury like the world has never seen” if it were to attack.
Trump later pivoted 180 degrees to open personal negotiations with Kim Jong Un, the North’s iron-fisted leader, and even declared that the two of them “fell in love,” but their talks never resulted in Kim surrendering a single weapon. And throughout the Trump presidency, and into Biden’s, the North has accelerated the expansion of its nuclear arsenal and the variety and range of its ballistic missiles.
In his public comments with Yoon on Wednesday, Biden all but abandoned any talk of a negotiated diplomatic resolution of the 30-year-old confrontation over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. While saying he would still “seek serious and substantial diplomatic breakthroughs,” he and Yoon offered no path for doing so and instead emphasized their plans for “extended deterrence,” implicitly acknowledging that North Korea’s nuclear weapons were a reality unlikely to be reversed anytime soon.
As part of the new agreement, the United States and South Korea will create a Nuclear Consultative Group to coordinate military responses to North Korea, and Washington vowed “to make every effort to consult” with Seoul before using nuclear weapons to retaliate against the North.
Still, the agreement made clear that the U.S. president reserves the sole authority to decide whether to launch a nuclear weapon. And Biden noted that beyond the mainly symbolic submarine visits, he had no intention of stationing nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula. The United States withdrew its last tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991.
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