In recent years, speculation among analysts, experts, and scholars that America’s two key allies in the Indo-Pacific could finally pursue nuclear weapons has intensified. The eminent diplomat Henry Kissinger predicted in 2023 that Japan would go nuclear within the decade. The international relations scholar John Mearsheimer has made the point that nuclearization by Seoul and Tokyo would be the “logical outcome” if the United States were to continue being distracted by conflicts in the Middle East. The Washington Post columnist Max Boot has argued that the increasingly uncertain credibility of the U.S. nuclear umbrella should prompt South Korea to seek its own nuclear deterrent. Their conjecture is neither surprising nor unprecedented. In the 1970s, for example, South Korea tried unsuccessfully to develop a covert nuclear program in response to concerns about U.S. abandonment. And the security environment has rarely been so uncertain for Seoul and Tokyo as it is today.…