Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

These shifts are the products both of the changing
threat perception among Asian allies <strong>and</strong> of the greater
wealth, strength, <strong>and</strong> stature of the Pacific nations.
The failure of efforts to restrain North Korea’s nuclear
weapons <strong>and</strong> ballistic missile programs <strong>and</strong> its aggressive
behavior in recent years has resulted in Seoul
<strong>and</strong> Tokyo cleaving closer to Washington <strong>and</strong> pressing
harder for a strong stance against the Kim regime.
More significantly, especially for Japan, Australia, <strong>and</strong>
the Philippines, the rise of China, its rapid <strong>and</strong> barely
concealed military buildup, <strong>and</strong> its more assertive
behavior since the financial crisis of 2008 have stoked
fears of a domineering behemoth. This more muted
but deeper <strong>and</strong> more substantial anxiety, now more
openly discussed, was leading allied governments in
Tokyo; Canberra, Australia; Manila; <strong>and</strong> elsewhere to
look to a strengthening of the U.S. strategic position
in the region, <strong>and</strong> to a greater degree of insight into
<strong>and</strong> influence over Washington’s decisions in this regard.
48 Greatly adding to this pressure is the fact that
East Asia is now acknowledged to be the cockpit of
global economic growth. U.S. allies like South Korea
that were impoverished agrarian societies in the 1950s
are now first-world economies at the forefront of global
socio-economic development. Washington thus no
longer retains anything like the degree of leverage it
enjoyed in the early 1950s, when these alliances were
formed.
The confluence of these pressures <strong>and</strong> the recognition
of Asia’s central role in the future of the global
economy began to tell on U.S. policy particularly in
2010 <strong>and</strong> 2011, when Washington, responding to aggressive
Chinese movements on a variety of territorial
disputes in the East <strong>and</strong> South China Seas, embarked
on a policy to reinvigorate its position in the Pacific. 49
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