President Barack Obama said Friday that Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s suggestion to allow Japan and South Korea to develop their own nuclear weapons demonstrates he “doesn’t know much about foreign policy or nuclear policy or the Korean Peninsula, or the world generally.”
In a New York Times interview released late last month, and in televised appearances afterward, Trump expressed support toward the possibility of the two nations developing their own nuclear arsenals, a proposal that Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida publicly rejected. South Korean President Park Geun-hye has also reaffirmed her nation’s commitment to denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula in the wake of Trump’s comments.
During a press conference at the end of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., Obama hailed the United States’ alliance with Japan and South Korea as “cornerstones of our presence in the Asia-Pacific region,” one that has “underwritten the peace and prosperity of that region.”
He said American influence – and presumably the U.S. nuclear umbrella in the region – has prevented the potential for nuclear escalation. “You don’t mess with that,” Obama said.
