By Andrew Latham
“Gradually, then suddenly.”
That line from Ernest Hemingway’s novel “The Sun Also Rises” reveals a lot about the way catastrophe happens. Tragedy strikes, as if out of the blue. But in retrospect, we realize that disaster was all but inevitable, the outcome of a long train of seemingly minor events building inexorably then abruptly in catastrophe.
And that’s precisely how South Korea is going to become a nuclear weapons state — gradually, then suddenly.
First, gradually.
The systemic pressures pushing Seoul in the direction of acquiring nuclear weapons have been building for quite some time. The most obvious source of these pressures has been North Korea’s nuclear program. Since the 1960s, but with growing earnestness since the 1990s, Pyongyang has sought to acquire nuclear weapons to deter what it perceives to be an implacably hostile United States.
This piece was originally published in The Hill on February 2, 2023. Read more HERE.