South Korean president: We could quickly build our own nukes but don't worry, we don't feel like it right now (CW: )

(ROK = Republic of Korea = what I'm gonna use a synonym so I don't have to keep typing "South Korea)

There's quite a bit of anxiety in South Korea as Trump at various times has had a lot of fawning praise for Xi, Putin, and especially his sidekick Kim Jong-un. This became reality with Trump's negotiations with North Korea.

Less well known in Burgerland but even more telling is Trump's demand that South Korea pay 400% of the costs of US troops stationed there. His policy was that the relationship was not an alliance, it was a simple mercenary contract with American servicemen pimped out to the South at a profit. While adults at the White House were able to eventually get Trump to back down, the increasingly difficult and deteriorating dementia patient will be harder to deal with in a second term.

With Trump's reelection looking more likely every day, the ROK is in a bind. North Korea has a potent nuclear arsenal able to devastate the South in a few minutes. China is in a massive buildup, perhaps reaching parity and then surpassing the USA in nuclear weapons soon. At any point Trump may simply stop renting American troops out and bring them home, leaving the ROK alone with three crazy hostile neighbors with major nuclear arsenals and no umbrella of its own. It would be like at the end of a k-drama episode where the girl is waiting for a bus alone in the rain and sad music plays because no guy is running up with an umbrella.

In this situation it's very likely that South Korea would be forced to develop its own bomb. Korean voters are not as childlike and short-sighted as Americans and Europeans. They don't simply get distracted and forget about key issues of national survival. While it's not a majority opinion yet, there has been strong support for an indigenous nuclear program for years, especially if the US refuses to deploy its own nuclear weapons.

The result would be a diplomatic shitshow. China of course would saber rattle and try to economically and militarily bully the ROK into backing down. Japan would go apeshit causing a huge crisis in relations with the US and possibly their own acquisition of nuclear weapons. The Nonproliferation Treaty would lose most of its credibility if it couldn't even keep one half of Korea.

Am I doom mongering? I don't think so. We had a similar crisis in the 1970s when South Korea doubted our resolve to defend them and pursued the bomb. But we solved that with sane adults having sane conversations. Today our country is run by demented geezers, peepeeless congressmen terrified of their donors and crazed constituents, intellectuals in the ivory tower who rode there on the short bus, and instagram thots. Nobody in our policy making process is capable of coming up with anything beyond an immediate emotional response.