Fifth is maintaining extended deterrence through explicit assurances---

that’s key to prevent nuclear exchanges.

Richard Fontaine 7-7-17, the President of the Center for a New American Security
(CNAS), “Time to Lose Your Illusions on North Korea,” July 7, War on the Rocks,
retrieved at: https://warontherocks.com/2017/07/time-to-lose-your-illusions-on-north-
korea/

Strategy Sans Illusions

The casting aside of these four illusions leaves the United States with a policy built
mainly around deterrence, which is premised on Pyongyang’s essential rationality
– or at least its survival instinct. The available evidence suggests that Kim Jong Un
and his lieutenants seek regime survival, and that their nuclear pursuits and extreme
repression are aimed squarely at maintaining it. In this sense, they are likely more like
the Soviets and Maoists than the Islamic State. Yet mutually assured destruction-type
deterrence always represents a bet on the other side’s rational calculation of costs and
benefits.
It’s also undesirable. Americans do not like Russian nuclear missiles pointed at the
United States, but they tolerate it because it remains preferable to the alternatives.
Moscow and Beijing understand that any nuclear attack on the United States or an ally
would result in massive American retaliation. Adding a third country to that
number is unpalatable. Yet deterrence will remain key to ensuring that North
Korea’s actions represent provocations rather than direct aggression.
Otherwise, allies pursue their own nuclear capabilities, which destabilizes
the region.
Aaron L. Friedberg 15, Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton
University, “The Evolving Nuclear Order: Implications for Proliferation, Arms Racing,
and Stability,” Roundtable: Approaching Critical Mass: Asia’s Multipolar Nuclear Future,
Asia Policy 19, January 2015

In East Asia, those states most likely to contemplate pursuing nuclear status are
also anxious friends and allies of the United States. Japan, South Korea, and (albeit
implicitly) Taiwan have until now been content to take shelter under the U.S. nuclear
umbrella. But they could come to doubt the reliability of U.S. guarantees in the
face of North Korea’s new capabilities, China’s nuclear modernization programs,
or, especially in the case of Japan, both developments taken together.

While this once-taboo topic has been discussed more openly in both Japan and
South Korea in recent years, neither country shows any overt signs of moving to acquire
its own nuclear forces. Still, as Noboru Yamaguchi explains in his essay, there is
nothing in Japan’s “peace constitution” that absolutely precludes the
possibility, should the nation’s leaders deem it necessary for self-defense. Like
South Korea and Taiwan, Japan has shown an interest in acquiring rocket and
cruise missile technology that could someday serve as the basis for an
independent deterrent force. For the moment, however, the potential for further
proliferation in East Asia remains latent.
Regional proliferation spills over globally.
Sharon Squassoni 16, Director and Senior Fellow, Proliferation Prevention Program at
the Center for Strategic & International Studies, “East Asia Will Take Trump’s Nuclear
Talk Literally and Seriously,” November 18, Foreign Policy, retrieved at:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/11/18/east-asia-will-take-trumps-nuclear-talk-literally-
and-seriously/

It’s hard to assess which would have more severe consequences for Northeast
Asian security — a withdrawal of U.S. forces or the nuclearization of Japan and
South Korea. Beyond Northeast Asia, however, the withdrawal of Japan and South
Korea from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty would damage the global
nonproliferation regime irrevocably and call into question the United States’
commitments of extended deterrence to all its other allies.