Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
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Although the geopolitical rationale for the arrangement is understandable, the parties have failed to come to terms with its core problems.
The resulting framework may look very different from arms control of the past. But it would be better than a future in which proliferation proceeds in the absence of any shared guardrails for handling the most dangerous weapons in the world.
If the steps today encourage South Korea to fixate on nuclear weapons, they will end up like past nuclear assurance measures—just more water poured into the bucket and out the hole in the bottom.
With U.S.-Chinese and U.S.-Russian relations becoming increasingly conflictual, existing cooperative security arrangements, such as hotlines and arms control agreements, are likely to become less effective, while new agreements are unlikely to be possible to negotiate. In this environment, avoiding a nuclear apocalypse will depend on increasing unilateral approaches.
In the complex calculus of security risks, especially those involving nuclear weapons, sometimes getting what you think you want is the worst possible outcome. Politicians, political pundits and the public in South Korea are talking increasingly about the country going nuclear.
A statement from Ukraine published on February 10 would imply that, for as long as Russia occupies and controls Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant, the plant will not generate any electricity, and that ZNPP will not be connected to Russia’s power grid.
Perhaps the more effective personnel are in reducing risk at the plant, the less nuclear safety will be threatened by combatants if diplomacy fails to achieve an accord not to attack the plant.
But for now, the United States should not lose site of the essential role that non-proliferation has and continues to have for U.S. interests in Asia and elsewhere. The answers to improved allied security on the Korean Peninsula are unlikely to be found with nuclear weapons.
Crimea should not become an inviolable sanctuary for Russian troops, but Washington helping Ukraine to recapture — or even threaten to recapture — Crimea would be unlikely to lead to productive negotiations and could even spark a nuclear war.
At this fraught moment, perhaps it was inevitable that Moscow would link New Start to Nato and Ukraine. However, until now, Washington and Moscow have been able to maintain work on issues that are in their mutual interest no matter how poor the state of the overall relationship.