ABSTRACT
East Asia represents one of the most “proliferated” regions in the world when it comes to nuclear weapons. Four out of six stakeholders in the region are either nuclear weapon states recognized by the NonproliferationTreaty (NPT) or the one widely thought to possess nuclear weapons – the United States, Russia and China are in the former category, while North Korea in the latter category. Only Japan and the Republic of Korea (South Korea) are nonnuclear powers, although the two have advanced civilian nuclear energy programs and not a small number of experts regard those countries as potential nuclear-weapon states given their nuclear expertise and the possession of fissile materials. As China’s nuclear arsenal develops both in quantitative and qualitative terms, the question
of how to establish and manage strategic stability between the United States and China becomes more pertinent. At the same time, Japan and South Korea are under explicit US nuclear guarantee, which represents yet another characteristic of the region, not enjoyed (or needed) by other regions except Europe in the context of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In short, the role of nuclear weapons – and more specifically the role of extended nuclear deterrence – in the region is believed to be rising, unlike Europe and some other regions of the world, in light of North Korea’s development and the rise of China’s military power including its nuclear weapons.1
