The United States and China have both removed the goal of "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" from their top national security policy documents. Analysts say the international community's long-standing unwritten rule of "no tolerance for North Korea's nuclear weapons" is quietly being phased out amid shifting strategic interests between the United States and China.
On the 5th (local time), the National Security Strategy (NSS) that U.S. President Donald Trump released did not include the term "denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" even once. This stands in stark contrast to the 2022 NSS of the previous Joe Biden administration, which specified "complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula." It is also a 180-degree shift from Trump's own first-term 2017 NSS, in which he showed strong resolve by saying he would "enhance options to compel the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula."
This NSS runs 29 pages and lays out the foreign and security blueprint for the second Trump administration. But North Korea was left off even the list of "major security threats." Instead of North Korea, the NSS resurrected a "Trump Doctrine" focused on the Western Hemisphere and put forward an "America First" stance that prioritizes U.S. economic interests. The think tank Atlantic Council, citing experts, said this NSS "shows the United States is strategically focused on the Western Hemisphere and defines the goal of permanent domination over the world as 'impossible and undesirable.'"
China, for its part, removed the phrase "support denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula" from the arms control white paper it released on the 27th of last month, "China's Arms Control, Disarmament and Nonproliferation in the New Era." Instead of the expression "support for establishing nuclear-weapon-free zones" that was specified in the 2005 white paper, the Chinese government used vague language such as "peace, stability and prosperity of the Korean Peninsula" and "political resolution."
These changes appear to reflect both countries prioritizing their strategic competition and economic interests over the Korean Peninsula issue. James Mazzarella, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said, "This NSS is both a national security strategy and an economic statecraft strategy," adding, "It justifies strategy based on economic interests, particularly those in the Western Hemisphere, over security." In other words, rather than clinging to the thorny problem of North Korea's denuclearization, the intent reads as concentrating military power on securing supply chains directly tied to the U.S. economy or on checking China.
In fact, while this NSS held back on references to North Korea, it emphasized the strategic importance of the Taiwan issue in terms of superiority in semiconductor production and defense of the first island chain. DefenseScoop, a security-focused outlet, reported, "The NSS specifies that Taiwan has become a core flashpoint in U.S.-China strategic competition because it leads semiconductor production and is a geographic chokepoint separating Northeast and Southeast Asia."
Experts warned that this shift could be an implicit signal that the United States is effectively recognizing North Korea as a nuclear-armed state and revising its policy goal from denuclearization to nuclear arms control or nonproliferation.
China also appears to have loosened the shackle of "denuclearization" to use North Korea as a strategic asset amid competition with the United States. The absence of denuclearization language in the recent meeting between President Xi Jinping and Chairperson Kim Jong-un, and the omission of denuclearization wording from the joint statement of the Korea-China-Japan leaders' summit, support this view.