The White House on Thursday forcefully dismissed Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s suggestion that it might be better to have Japan and South Korea develop nuclear weapons than to continue covering them under the U.S. military umbrella.
The “entire premise of American foreign policy, as it relates to nuclear weapons for the last 70 years, has been focused on preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional states. That’s been the position of bipartisan administrations, everybody who’s occupied the Oval Office,” said Ben Rhodes, deputy national security adviser for strategic communications.
Speaking to reporters ahead of the Obama administration’s fourth and last Nuclear Security Summit, Rhodes added that, “Frankly, it would be catastrophic were the United States to shift its position and indicate that we support somehow the proliferation of nuclear weapons to additional countries. The fact of the matter is also that Japan and the Republic of Korea benefit from our very rock solid security assurances; that we will come to their defense in any event.”
In an interview with The New York Times, and then in televised town hall events this week, Trump questioned why the United States is not being reimbursed for providing military defenses for wealthy nations such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea.
“At some point we have to say, you know what, we’re better off if Japan protects itself against this maniac in North Korea, we’re better off, frankly, if South Korea is going to start to protect itself, we have…” the billionaire said during a CNN event on Tuesday. He added: “Now, wouldn’t you rather in a certain sense have Japan have nuclear weapons when North Korea has nuclear weapons? And they do have them. They absolutely have them. They can’t — they have no carrier system yet but they will very soon.”
Following Trump’s comments, Japan reaffirmed its commitment to its decades-old policy not to possess or develop nuclear weapons or allow them on Japanese soil. South Korean President Park Geun-hye, meanwhile, told Bloomberg on Thursday her nation wants zero nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula, not more.
In a Wednesday town hall shown on MSNBC, Trump also said nuclear weapons should not be absolutely ruled out in the battle against ISIS: “Look, nuclear should be off the table. But would there be a time when it could be used, possibly, possibly?”
Rhodes said Trump’s suggestions are “not particularly relevant to the very serious discussions we’re having here. It also flies in the face of decades of bipartisan national security doctrine.”
White House Announcements
As leaders from 52 nations and several multilateral organizations began arriving in Washington, D.C., on Thursday, President Barack Obama conducted a bilateral meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping and a trilateral session with Park and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
In a joint U.S.-Chinese statement on nuclear security collaboration, the White House cited a laundry list of cooperation between the two nations, including an ongoing program of annual talks that began in February and the opening of a nuclear security Center of Excellence this month in Beijing.
The leaders participating in the summit gathered at the White House for a working dinner on Thursday. The summit plenary session, in which individual and groups of nations presented new nuclear security initiatives, was held from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Friday. The event was scheduled to continue through the day, ending with a closing press briefing by Obama.
The White House on Thursday and Friday issued several additional announcements and fact sheets addressing different aspects of its effort to ensure terrorists or other rogue actors are not able to access nuclear weapons or materials.
In an update on U.S. nuclear security efforts since the 2014 summit, the White House cited a large number of accomplishments, including extracting or confirming disposition of 250 kilograms of nuclear material from foreign partners, with another three nations divesting themselves of all highly enriched uranium; providing more than 300 nuclear and radiological security workshops “with key international partners,” and further deploying fixed and mobile radiation detectors around the world.
In a release on cooperation with Kazakhstan, the White House noted that a Kazakh research reactor had been converted to use proliferation-resistant low-enriched uranium and that all fresh highly enriched uranium from the facility had been downblended. The nation remains committed to converting two other reactors to LEU once a viable fuel is available and to returning all HEU spent fuel to Russia, according to the announcement. A national security training center is also due to open in Kazakhstan this year.
