Atomic Assurance: The Alliance Politics of Nuclear Proliferation by Alexander Lanoszka

Author:Alexander Lanoszka [Lanoszka, Alexander]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: International Relations, Nuclear Warfare, General, Military, Arms Control, Political Science, History, Security (National & International)
ISBN: 9781501729201
Google: S0RQDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 39875003
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2018-11-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 5

South Korea, 1968–1980

If Germany and Japan were highly dependent on the United States during the Cold War, as some scholars claim, then South Korea should have had even less free rein in determining its foreign and defense policies. It relied on American-led forces to expel North Korean forces from its territory in the Korean War. Thereafter it signed a defense pact with the United States and hosted American tactical nuclear weapons as well as over fifty thousand American troops during the 1960s. The United States even had command of South Korean forces in peacetime and in wartime during the Cold War. South Korea was also much poorer than West Germany and Japan. Having endured Japanese colonialism and devastation in the Korean War, South Korea only began to industrialize in the 1960s and so depended on the United States for its economic and technological needs.

Notwithstanding these conditions, South Korea was able to engage in nuclear proliferation–related behavior. It undertook feasibility studies to explore nuclear weapons development in 1970. Two years later, it began devoting resources toward their acquisition. This program lasted several years before its cancellation in 1975 and the accompanying decision to ratify the NPT. However, these actions did not mark the end of South Korea’s proliferation-related behavior. Suspicions of a nuclear program reemerged in the late 1970s when a major domestic debate erupted briefly in South Korea over its defense policy. Even in the early 1980s South Korea violated safeguard agreements when it conducted plutonium research.

The South Korean case further validates my theoretical framework. First, the military alliance with the United States on its own did not deter South Korea from seeking nuclear weapons. Second, American troop deployments were integral in shaping perceptions of American security guarantees in South Korea. Whereas troop numbers fell by a third during the early 1970s, the number of American tactical nuclear weapons remained stable. Third, American coercion of South Korea resulted in the dismantling of much of the nuclear program, underdeveloped as it might have been, but uncertainty abounds as to whether the United States successfully suppressed all of its activities. Fourth, Washington managed the South Korean proliferation most effectively through nonmilitary instruments. Nevertheless, the application of such tools did not fully prevent unwanted proliferation-related behavior after the mid-1970s.

Before assessing the case evidence, I describe the strategic and domestic context that South Korean leaders faced to clarify the predictions of the alternative explanations. The analysis then proceeds in two parts so as to investigate separately why and how South Korea began and ended its nuclear activities.

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