NATO casts aside reservations about arming Ukraine as Seoul looks to counter Pyongyang with nukes of its own.

(Originally published Jan. 13 in “What in the World“) Ukraine says Russia is pouring more troops into eastern Ukraine as it tries to break the stalemate around Bakhmut, where both sides have been locked in trench warfare for months. Fighting is now concentrated around the small nearby town of Soledar.

The U.S. and its allies in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization are now racing to supply Ukraine with weapons they once feared might provoke Moscow into retaliation against NATO, either because Kyiv could use them to launch attacks inside Russia or because Moscow might simply consider them tantamount to direct NATO involvement. But as Russia’s progress in the war stalls, those concerns are being replaced by a desire to give Ukraine the capacity to win the war before Moscow can organize a new offensive.

Now both Poland and the United Kingdom are considering sending Ukraine battle tanks. Poland’s tanks are German-made, so Berlin’s approval would be necessary first. While Berlin says no decision has been made, it just approved sending Kyiv one of its U.S-made Patriot missile batteries along with armored personnel carriers, so it may raise little objection.

As explained last week in this space:

Tanks, fighter jets and long-range Atacms are the only weapons left that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky hasn’t yet been able to convince [U.S. President Joe] Biden to give him… But in May, Biden caved on allowing shipments of M177 howitzers to Ukraine. By the end of the month, Biden had also reversed his refusal to supply Ukraine with M142 High Mobility Artillery Rocket System, or Himars, a reversal so significant that Biden took the trouble of explaining his decision to The Times. Last month, Biden promised Ukraine a Patriot missile battery after Ukraine showed that, even without long-range American weapons, it had the capability to organize attacks inside Russia.

Amid growing concern in South Korea about the threat posed by North Korea’s steady drumbeat of missile tests, South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol for the first time explicitly raised the possibility that Seoul may develop nuclear weapons to protect itself, or ask the U.S. to redeploy nuclear weapons to Korea as a deterrent.

Also last week in this space:

The U.S. kept nukes in Korea until the early 1990s, when it withdrew them as part of an arms control treaty with the soon-to-collapse Soviet Union. Seoul can’t develop its own nukes as a signatory to the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. But North Korea, which withdrew from the treaty in 2003, conducted a record number of missile tests last year, even launching an intercontinental ballistic missile and Washington has warned that it’s close to conducting a fresh nuclear test.

The last straw for many South Koreans, apparently, came last week when North Korea managed to slip five drones across the demilitarized zone into South Korea, with one even reaching Seoul.

South Korea is already under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, meaning the U.S. would deploy nuclear weapons to defend it if necessary. And South Korea is already protected by some of the best anti-missile systems money can buy, including the Patriot missiles Washington has now promised Ukraine and a Thaad (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) system.

South Korea isn’t the only nation fearful that the U.S. current posture in Asia isn’t sufficient to protect them from an increasingly assertive China. Korea’s moves coincide with a visit to Washington by Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, during which Japan and the U.S. agreed to tighter military cooperation, including Japan’s purchase of Tomahawk cruise missiles and the addition of a new U.S. Marine regiment in Okinawa.

From Japan to India, nations are creating military alliances that, though still short of a NATO-style mutual defense treaty, look a lot like a NATO-style alliance of training, coordination and weapons procurement.