Issue Great-power nuclear competition as the defining security challenge for the next generation

Summary

The conclusions frame the biggest foreign and security challenges of 2050 as clusters of problems that could bring about the destruction of humankind. For today's older generation, division and North Korea's nuclear and missile programs dominate security thinking in Korea, while the China threat dominates in Japan, so attention centers on the fate of the alliances with the United States. By contrast, the more serious geopolitical challenge the next generation will face once it enters the mainstream is a crisis of great-power nuclear competition. The most likely and hardest security environment common to both countries is an intensifying and militarizing US-China rivalry, in which changes to the East Asian nuclear balance, especially China's nuclear buildup and nuclear cooperation among North Korea, China and Russia, will be the core driver of change. China has set a goal of raising its warhead stockpile to a level equal to that of the United States by the mid-2030s, so Korea and Japan will need to act as joint responders to prolonged rivalry, closer alignment among Pyongyang, Moscow and Beijing, and uncertainty over US engagement.