Posted on 09/25/2022 6:34:46 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Russia's invasion of Ukraine is "sadly… perhaps the final nail in the coffin" for the nuclear non-proliferation regime, former top diplomat Bilahari Kausikan says in The Straits Times' latest Conversations on the Future.
"The lesson… many countries have taken away from the Ukraine crisis is that you have to be able to defend yourself.
"And if your likely threat is a nuclear power… I don't think you can deter nuclear power by conventional means; that's a stark fact," said the former permanent secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs - currently chairman of the Middle East Institute at the National University of Singapore.
In North-east Asia, China is modernising its nuclear forces, and North Korea is developing ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) capability, he noted.
It is a matter of time before questions will be asked regarding the efficacy of the United States' extended deterrence - the so-called nuclear umbrella, he said.
French statesman Charles de Gaulle was famously posed the rhetorical question whether, in the event of a nuclear war, New York or London would risk being destroyed to protect Paris, he recalled.
"The answer is obviously, no," said Mr Kausikan. "Similarly, I think quietly, much more quietly, people in Tokyo and so on will be asking similar questions. And I think the answers will be similar, and their actions will be eventually similar to what London and Paris did - acquire nuclear deterrents."
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This does not mean Japan and South Korea are eager to become nuclear weapon states, he emphasised.
"I think they know it'll be very politically difficult, politically divisive," he said. "But (the threat from nuclear armed states) is not something that they can avert their eyes from, and hope it will go away. Because China is there. North Korea is there."
He added: "And while they will do everything they can to preserve (the US) nuclear umbrella, they know this is a delaying battle rather than something that can be decisively fixed. I don't know when, but I think the trajectory is set."
Nuclear weapons do not prevent conventional clashes or wars, but keep a lid on them, he noted.
In this respect, while the world will always be a dangerous place, a multipolar nuclear balance in the Indo-Pacific is "in a way a more stable world, because it will put an end, once and for all, once the weapons are developed and deployed, to any dream of hierarchy, whether by China or anybody else", Mr Kausikan said.
"It freezes the existing configurations," he said. "If I look at the countries involved, once you have this kind of complex nuclear balance, I think the tendency will be to reduce the temptation to adventurism."
And small countries would find that kind of multi polarity provides manoeuvring space, he added.
"In principle, this is a better world for small countries, provided… the process of getting from where we are now to where I think we will land can be managed."
The Conversations on the Future series focuses not on current news but on broader, and larger, long-term issues and trends.
Among the interviewees are Harvard professor Graham Allison, historian Wang Gungwu, science fiction writer Chen Qiufan, Yale Law professor Amy Chua and diplomat Tommy Koh.
Don’t forget Libya. They had WMD but gave them up and then got hit by an Arab Spring revolution and then a civil war and the whole country fell apart. When a government has an ace in the hole, people tend not to move against it. Libya and Ukraine found this out.
Put Japan and Taiwan on the list. They could both go nuclear over a long weekend.
The United States invaded Libya when they were our allies.
And building a lot is very expensive. The US - which is choking on the inflation and debt caused by trying to finance everyting including its MIC, Britain which is holding on to its nuclear deterrent by a thread, North Korea which has beggared its population - nothing new for them however - France which is holding its own, Russia - which a military industrial state, and China which has had an enormous economy to draw on as well as stealing US secrets and personnel trained in the US.
It's not as easy as it looks and it doesn't even look easy.
You seem to be trying to give the impression that the U.S. nuclear arsenal is not the best in the world, with the best delivery systems.
Nukeland in the US is kind of a military backwater. We were into all the stuff that cost gazillions and failed to win the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and ...
“Put Japan and Taiwan on the list. They could both go nuclear over a long weekend.”
Japan could. But it would probably take Taiwan the full week.
PS. A lot of this is irrelevant. Nuclear weapons don’t fight nuclear weapons so the only thing that matters is if your nukes can hit the target and detonate. other than that it doesn’t matter how old they are or the technology level.
Quite a sales pitch for Russia and Red China, but we are still number one in nukes and the dependable delivery of them, even before Trump.
Under Trump, America’s nuclear weapons industry has boomed
Los Angeles Times
“While the country has been preoccupied with the COVID-19 pandemic, economic decline and the election, President Trump’s administration quietly and steadily steered America’s nuclear weapons industry to its largest expansion since the end of the Cold War, increasing spending on such arms by billions of dollars with bipartisan congressional support.
Overall, the budget for making and maintaining nuclear warheads has risen more than 50% since Trump was elected in 2016, substantially outpacing the rates of increase for the defense budget and overall federal spending during his presidency before the pandemic. On Monday, Congress approved Trump’s proposal to increase spending next year for the production of such weaponry by nearly $3 billion.”
Hate to burst your bubble.
President Trump’s administration quietly and steadily steered America’s nuclear weapons industry to its largest expansion since the end of the Cold War, increasing spending on such arms by billions of dollars with bipartisan congressional support.
And with all that money what have we actually built? Nothing yet actually.
“The United States invaded Libya when they were our allies.”
Do you have a copy of that treaty or pact that we can read? Perhaps a link?
Here is a good unclassified summary - https://thebulletin.org/premium/2022-02/nuclear-notebook-how-many-nuclear-weapons-does-russia-have-in-2022/?utm_source=Google&utm_medium=Ads&utm_campaign=SearchAds&utm_content=RussiaNuclearNotebook&gclid=CjwKCAjw-L-ZBhB4EiwA76YzOc7jIvAumDLZlskfdmgRPCeSRF04N5IzNSqyfzznkchsyr1tAcTiwRoCllEQAvD_BwE
Wishful thinking won’t make deteriorated, degraded, rusty Russia, the most powerful nuke power on earth.
Well ok. If you think that the Russians have a degraded rusty stockpile and delivery system you can go on believing that. Meanwhile you might go look up the public testimony of the Commander of US Strategic Command about comparative states of readiness.
The Big Lie About the Libyan War
https://foreignpolicy.com/2016/03/22/libya-and-the-myth-of-humanitarian-intervention/
“The Obama administration said it was just trying to protect civilians. Its actions reveal it was looking for regime change. ...”
More there.
And NATO offensively attacked Libya on Obama’s behalf, breaking its own charter, when Libya hadn’t attacked a NATO member, and under Obama’s unproven allegations that Gaddafi was going to kill 10k of his own people.
“Meanwhile you might go look up the public testimony of the Commander of US Strategic Command about comparative states of readiness.”
It’s their business to cry doom and gloom, because then they can use that to justify new purchases.
It was probably before your time, but there was a little something called the “missile gap” in the 1950s and early 1960s. Our military brass hyperventilated before Congress, decrying the missile gap between the US and the USSR, which they claimed left the US with the short end of the stick. That resulted in a fast-track program to develop and build nukes. Which we did. Made everybody happy, especially the MIC. However, later analyses showed there was no such gap. But we got what we wanted, anyway.
Welcome to the real world.
The result of Russia’s nuclear sabre rattling will be it’s neighbors obtaining nuclear weapons for self-defense. History teaches us that a nation can really only depend on itself for self-defense. Poland, Ukraine and the Baltics are likely to integrate further on defense matters, and adding a nuclear deterrent makes much sense considering the history of their big neighbor.
"Ours work".
A quasi stable nuclear balance in the Eastern Pacific might be attainable for a while.
No way in heck do I trust Europe in the long run, following a Pooty win in Ukraine and a crack-up of NATO. And no way in heck for 2 seconds do I trust ME Muzzies with petro money for nukes in what may be 3 or 5 sided confrontations.
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