Britain Considers Israel-Style ‘Iron Dome’ for Missile Defense | North Korea’s Military Might Means Tough Choices for South Korea | Congress Helps Steer Taiwan Toward the ‘Porcupine Strategy’, and more

But even the administration of former President Donald Trump did not deviate much from the path set by Obama and now followed by President Joe Biden. In 2018, Trump withdrew the United States from the JCPOA and announced the start of a so-called maximum pressure campaign toward Iran. Yet his administration did not come up with any plan for dealing with the ballistic missile program or regional interventions—despite Iran’s activities in Syria having become more extensive than they were during Obama’s time in office.
Iran never fully abided by the terms of the JCPOA, but the U.S. withdrawal from the deal gave Tehran the opportunity to publicly blame Washington, increasing Iran’s political capital among its supporters. And although Trump used the term “maximum pressure” to describe his Iran strategy, the reality was that the measures taken by Washington were actually not very maximal. They amounted to the designation of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)—a branch of the Iranian military—as a terrorist organization in 2019, the assassination of IRGC elite commander Qassem Suleimani in 2020, and the imposition of additional sanctions.
The Trump administration’s measures did not cause Iran to modify its behavior. If anything, Iran became more emboldened. The terrorist designation did little to curb the IRGC’s financial transactions because the group does not rely on international banking networks. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s declaration that the United States implemented the designation at his “request” only served to support Iran’s narrative that it was defying victimization by its enemies. Suleimani’s assassination did not cause the IRGC to crumble, and it carried on its destabilizing activities. And while Iran did suffer financially from sanctions, they have not been sufficient to cause a change in the regime’s behavior.
Iran also benefited from the lukewarm reaction of the Trump administration to the attacks orchestrated by Iran and its proxies against U.S. targets in the Middle East. Washington blamed Tehran for the 2019 attack by Yemen’s Houthis on a critical Aramco oil facility in Saudi Arabia—but it never came up with a robust policy toward Yemen itself. That failure is now vividly playing out in the context of the Israel-Hamas war.

Congress Helps Steer Taiwan Toward the ‘Porcupine Strategy’  (Jack Detsch, Foreign Policy)
Shifting Taiwan onto the U.S. military’s dole will give the Pentagon more leverage to focus on providing Taipei weapons from Washington’s priority list. The U.S. government is also looking into building more weapons on the island, as Taiwan has done with its attempts to build itself a fleet of submarines.
“The challenge that Taiwan has is, in essence, they need two types of militaries,” said Heino Klinck, a former U.S. deputy assistant secretary of defense for East Asia. “One to deal with steady-state operations such as contending with PLA incursions into the [air defense identification zone]. And then they need a different type of military to deal with the worst-case scenario—an invasion.”
Building up both of those capabilities is difficult to do for all the obvious reasons, not least being the cost. U.S. officials have long urged Taiwan to spend more on its military. It has boosted spending by more than one-fifth, to about 2.6 percent of GDP, the highest figure in its history. Taiwan has also acquired U.S.-made High Mobility Artillery Rocket System launchers and SeaGuardian drones.
But there is pressure for Taiwan to do even more as Chinese military exercises in the region have intensified—dating all the way back to then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island in August 2022. According to Taiwan’s Ministry of National Defense, the number of Chinese aircraft crossing the median line in the Taiwan Strait or entering the island’s air defense identification zone surged by 50 percent in the first six months of 2023.
“The Chinese have been establishing this new normal,” Klinck said. “There’s no warning time anymore in case the Chinese were to do something.”

Stronger Alliance or Nuclear Weapons? North Korea’s Military Might Means Tough Choices for South Korea  (Hugh White, National Interest)
While the risk of a large-scale North Korean military assault on the South remains very low, Pyongyang’s newly hostile tone portends a very significant shift in the strategic balance on the Korean Peninsula, with important implications for America’s position in East Asia more broadly.
This interpretation reflects the profound but often underestimated consequences of North Korea’s growing nuclear and missile capabilities for the strategic situation in the Western Pacific. In recent years, Washington’s attention has shifted away from the North Korean problem, but it has not gone away. Pyongyang is now believed to have at least twenty nuclear weapons and perhaps the material to build seventy. It has also developed a range of increasingly sophisticated ballistic missiles to deliver them, including intercontinental-range ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that can reach the United States itself.
North Korea’s ICBMs fundamentally change the strategic calculations of all the key players and immensely increase the significance of North Korea’s nuclear arsenal. That is not because Pyongyang might mount an unprovoked nuclear attack on America itself—the certainty of massive U.S. retaliation makes sure of that. But it intensifies North Korean nuclear threats to U.S. allies by undermining the credibility of extended deterrence. Hitherto, it has been relatively easy for America to neutralize Pyongyang’s nuclear threat to South Korea and Japan. Its promises to mount devastating nuclear strikes on North Korea in retaliation for any North Korean nuclear attacks on U.S. allies or partners have been highly credible as long as North Korea could not hit America back.
Now, Pyongyang can respond to a U.S. retaliatory attack on North Korea with a counter-retaliatory nuclear strike on the United States. Washington would try to minimize this threat with preemptive strikes on North Korea’s ICBMs, but big risks would remain. The potential cost to America of fulfilling its extended deterrence promises to its allies is, therefore, much higher than it was before, so the risks of America reneging on them in a crisis are much higher, too.
That has enormous implications for strategic calculations in Seoul, Tokyo, and Pyongyang. Let’s start with Seoul. Pyongyang’s ability to strike the United States will radically undermine Seoul’s confidence in U.S. extended nuclear deterrence. South Korean decision-makers must now recognize the real danger that the North Koreans will convince themselves that they can launch a nuclear attack on South Korea without incurring a U.S. retaliatory strike on themselves because they believe that the threat of North Korean counter-retaliation against the United States itself would deter Washington
What can Seoul do in the face of this new and grave danger? It has only two options. One is to try to strengthen the credibility of U.S. extended deterrence. The other is to cease depending on Washington and instead build its own nuclear forces to counter and neutralize North Korean nuclear threats. The second option must be taken very seriously. In January last year, President Yoon openly canvassed the idea that South Korea might need to build its own nuclear weapons to counter North Korea’s. Polling suggests that 60 to 70 percent of South Koreans would support this move. South Korea is well-placed technically to develop nuclear weapons and has already built ballistic-missile firing submarines to deliver them.