Post by ibrake4rappers13 on Mar 6, 2014 21:39:27 GMT -5
www.theaustralian.com.au/news/world/the-lesson-hang-on-to-your-nukes-if-putins-on-the-prowl/story-fnb64oi6-1226846228761#
The lesson: hang on to your nukes if Putin’s on the prowl
THE poet Robert Frost wondered whether the world would end in fire or in ice. Nuclear arms, scientists tell us, can bring about either outcome: a missile exchange would trigger a deadly cooling of the globe.
Atomic weapons have lost none of their apocalyptic force, their terrifying finality, and it is right - yes, right - that we should try to harness them. The Russian humiliation of Ukraine, though, suggests it is also right to hang on to the bomb if you have it.
Twenty years ago Ukraine had the third-largest strategic nuclear weapons stock in the world after the US and Russia, having inherited its share of the Soviet arsenal. It gave up those stocks in return for Western cash and a piece of paper, the 1994 Budapest memorandum that was meant to guarantee its territorial integrity.
Today, it seems that Kiev made a bad deal. The agreement, signed by the US, Britain and Russia, has done nothing to shield Ukrainians. Had Ukraine stayed nuclear Russia would have thought twice about snatching Crimea.
The invasion is thus not just about the regional manipulation of power and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s effective threat to foment a European civil war unless Ukraine stays in his orbit. It is about the new international order and about nuclear security’s role in it. How safe do non-nuclear Japan and Taiwan feel at the moment? How much are their security agreements with the US worth if Washington is powerless to deter a Russian land-grab in a country that borders four NATO members? How credible as world policemen are the five leading nuclear powers - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - as the permanent members of the UN Security Council?
In the 1990s it was briefly possible to believe in the merits of unilateral disarmament and the dream of global non-proliferation. South Africa admitted to having had secret nuclear plans and promptly dropped them. The threat of Soviet encroachment had evaporated. So, too, had the Soviet Union. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus had more pressing economic problems than keeping their nukes in working order.
Ukraine in 1991 boasted inter-continental ballistic missiles, almost two dozen strategic bombers, more than 1000 long-range cruise missiles and several hundred tactical nuclear weapons. To turn that into a purely Ukrainian force, to target it on Moscow rather than NATO, would have meant an investment of $US30 billion to replace Russian-owned early warning systems and communication centres. Some in Kiev argue it would have been worth the effort. “If we had hung on to even a fraction of that force it would have been like hanging a gun on the wall of your living room,” said one Ukrainian politician. “Maybe the gun has no bullets but when the neighbour comes round for dinner, he’s afraid of it.”
Neither the West nor Russia bought into the idea of a Ukrainian deterrent. The US did not trust the 90s Ukrainian leadership to keep tight control of the weapons. It paid Ukrainians to load their nuclear kit on to 100 trains and send it to Russia. In 1996 Ukraine officially became a non-nuclear nation - and soon afterwards the Kremlin piled pressure on Kiev to pay more for its gas.
Unilateral disarmament doesn’t pay. It only results in nuclear weapons becoming the sole property of those nations that do not renounce them. The quest for nuclear advantage can poison the politics of the whole region. Iran is pushing its nuclear program not only to “balance” Israel’s undeclared weapons but also to win a pivotal role in the Middle East. That prods Saudi Arabia towards getting its own atomic deterrent, perhaps with the help of Pakistan - an enormous challenge to non-proliferation efforts. We do know, though, that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace. Although deterrence is always uncomfortable, nuclear balance can be a stabilising factor - between India and Pakistan, for example. The bomb doesn’t eliminate friction between states but it does raise the stakes and forces leaders to act rationally.
And there’s the nub. Over the past weeks, the foreign policy of Putin has been driven by anger over the “loss” of Ukraine. Knowing the costs would be low, he vented his fury in an illegal incursion into a foreign country. He has form: he will do this again and again. A nuclear-armed Ukraine would have forced him to vent this frustration on the judo mat - and it would have brought him to the negotiating table.
The lesson: hang on to your nukes if Putin’s on the prowl
THE poet Robert Frost wondered whether the world would end in fire or in ice. Nuclear arms, scientists tell us, can bring about either outcome: a missile exchange would trigger a deadly cooling of the globe.
Atomic weapons have lost none of their apocalyptic force, their terrifying finality, and it is right - yes, right - that we should try to harness them. The Russian humiliation of Ukraine, though, suggests it is also right to hang on to the bomb if you have it.
Twenty years ago Ukraine had the third-largest strategic nuclear weapons stock in the world after the US and Russia, having inherited its share of the Soviet arsenal. It gave up those stocks in return for Western cash and a piece of paper, the 1994 Budapest memorandum that was meant to guarantee its territorial integrity.
Today, it seems that Kiev made a bad deal. The agreement, signed by the US, Britain and Russia, has done nothing to shield Ukrainians. Had Ukraine stayed nuclear Russia would have thought twice about snatching Crimea.
The invasion is thus not just about the regional manipulation of power and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s effective threat to foment a European civil war unless Ukraine stays in his orbit. It is about the new international order and about nuclear security’s role in it. How safe do non-nuclear Japan and Taiwan feel at the moment? How much are their security agreements with the US worth if Washington is powerless to deter a Russian land-grab in a country that borders four NATO members? How credible as world policemen are the five leading nuclear powers - the US, Russia, China, Britain and France - as the permanent members of the UN Security Council?
In the 1990s it was briefly possible to believe in the merits of unilateral disarmament and the dream of global non-proliferation. South Africa admitted to having had secret nuclear plans and promptly dropped them. The threat of Soviet encroachment had evaporated. So, too, had the Soviet Union. Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus had more pressing economic problems than keeping their nukes in working order.
Ukraine in 1991 boasted inter-continental ballistic missiles, almost two dozen strategic bombers, more than 1000 long-range cruise missiles and several hundred tactical nuclear weapons. To turn that into a purely Ukrainian force, to target it on Moscow rather than NATO, would have meant an investment of $US30 billion to replace Russian-owned early warning systems and communication centres. Some in Kiev argue it would have been worth the effort. “If we had hung on to even a fraction of that force it would have been like hanging a gun on the wall of your living room,” said one Ukrainian politician. “Maybe the gun has no bullets but when the neighbour comes round for dinner, he’s afraid of it.”
Neither the West nor Russia bought into the idea of a Ukrainian deterrent. The US did not trust the 90s Ukrainian leadership to keep tight control of the weapons. It paid Ukrainians to load their nuclear kit on to 100 trains and send it to Russia. In 1996 Ukraine officially became a non-nuclear nation - and soon afterwards the Kremlin piled pressure on Kiev to pay more for its gas.
Unilateral disarmament doesn’t pay. It only results in nuclear weapons becoming the sole property of those nations that do not renounce them. The quest for nuclear advantage can poison the politics of the whole region. Iran is pushing its nuclear program not only to “balance” Israel’s undeclared weapons but also to win a pivotal role in the Middle East. That prods Saudi Arabia towards getting its own atomic deterrent, perhaps with the help of Pakistan - an enormous challenge to non-proliferation efforts. We do know, though, that nuclear deterrence keeps the peace. Although deterrence is always uncomfortable, nuclear balance can be a stabilising factor - between India and Pakistan, for example. The bomb doesn’t eliminate friction between states but it does raise the stakes and forces leaders to act rationally.
And there’s the nub. Over the past weeks, the foreign policy of Putin has been driven by anger over the “loss” of Ukraine. Knowing the costs would be low, he vented his fury in an illegal incursion into a foreign country. He has form: he will do this again and again. A nuclear-armed Ukraine would have forced him to vent this frustration on the judo mat - and it would have brought him to the negotiating table.