By Andrew Gawthorpe
Could China’s East Asian neighbors be tempted to seek nuclear weapons? That would be a mistake.
Recent events in Eastern Europe raise the issue not only of Russia’s future actions but also the lessons that will be drawn regarding other revisionist states. In East Asia, a China that is nurturing territorial ambitions of its own and has recently become less shy about asserting them will watch to see how the West reacts to Vladimir Putin’s expansionism. So will China’s East Asian neighbors, who fear they may become the next Ukraine.
One of the most potentially disturbing effects of the situation in Ukraine is the possibility it may drive nuclear proliferation. The present crisis in that country could well have been a nuclear nightmare. When the USSR was unraveling in the early 1990s, a sizeable portion of its strategic forces, along with tactical nuclear weapons, were deployed in Ukraine. Had the new Ukrainian government in Kiev taken control of these weapons upon becoming independent, it would have been the third-largest nuclear power in the world. behind only the U.S. and the Russia.
Concerned about nuclear proliferation throughout Europe if new nuclear powers were created by the Soviet Union’s demise, the U.S. pressured Ukraine to denuclearize and to return its nuclear forces to Russia. Basking in a post-independence glow and seeking U.S. support on other issues, Kiev went along. This was the origin of the so-called Budapest Memorandum of 1994, in which Ukraine promised to give up its nuclear weapons in return for Russia, Britain and the U.S. guaranteeing its sovereignty and territorial integrity. With the wholesale invasion of Crimea by Russian forces in recent days, Kiev can be forgiven for asking if the agreement is any longer worth the paper it’s written on.
Read the full story at The Diplomat