NEW YORK, July 22 (IPS) – Shortly after the announcement this summer of a new alliance between Russia and North Korea for a pact promising mutual defense, with the backing of China, South Korea is now shockingly proposing to review its security policy with the US and stop relying on the American guarantee to use US nuclear weapons on behalf of South Korea as part of its “nuclear umbrella”.
The “umbrella” is being offered to all NATO states and the Pacific nations of Japan, Australia and South Korea. Such questions are evidence of the growing chaos in the world over the failure of the United States to fulfill its legal obligation under the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) to make good faith efforts for nuclear disarmament. The nuclear umbrella, insofar as it includes the stationing of nuclear weapons in five NATO states (Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey), is itself an illegal violation of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty in which five nuclear-weapon states, the US, Russia, the UK, France and China, pledged to make “good faith efforts” for nuclear disarmament while all other countries of the world agreed not to acquire nuclear weapons.
Everyone, including South Korea, signed the NPT, except Israel, Pakistan and India, which developed their own nuclear arsenals. The NPT had a Faustian bargain that if a country promised not to acquire nuclear weapons, it would have an “inalienable right” to so-called “peaceful” nuclear energy.
Since every “peaceful” nuclear power plant produced the material needed to make nuclear weapons, the NPT gives those countries the keys to the bomb factory, North Korea opted out of the NPT and used its nuclear energy to produce a nuclear arsenal. Iran has enriched its nuclear materials, but has yet to build a bomb. The fact that Russia is now allied with North Korea and China is the result of the failure of American diplomacy and the drive of the U.S. military-industrial-congress-media-academic-think tank complex (MICIMATT) to expand the U.S. empire beyond its 800 U.S. military bases in 87 countries.
The US is now surrounding China with new bases recently established in the Pacific and forming AUKUS, a new military alliance with Australia, the UK and the US. The US is breaking the agreement made with China in 1972 because we are now arming Taiwan, despite Nixon and Kissinger’s promises to recognize China and remain neutral on the question of the future of Taiwan, where anti-communist forces retreated after the Chinese Revolution.
The US, after the end of the Cold War in 1989 with Russia, withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 1992 and placed missile bases in Poland and Romania, withdrew from the 1987 Intermediate Missile Forces Treaty negotiated by Reagan and Gorbachev in 1972, expanded NATO to the Russian border, despite promises to Gorbachev that we would not expand NATO “one inch” eastward beyond a united Germany. Putin was appalled by NATO expansion, at one point asking Clinton if Russia could be invited to join NATO, which was refused, and in the years leading up to the Ukrainian war frequently and emphatically announced that including Ukraine in NATO was a “red line” for Russia!
The Empire was indifferent and continued to expand until we reached this sad and dangerous moment we are experiencing now. In retaliation, Putin has just placed Russian nuclear weapons in Belarus – a first example of Russian nuclear division!
Ironically, the underlying reason for Nixon and Kissinger to make peace with China was to prevent a more powerful alliance from developing between Russia and China.
The US will reap the whirlwind if it does not fulfill its nuclear disarmament obligations and does not take the path to peace. More nuclear-armed countries like South Korea could emerge. Saudi Arabia is currently pursuing “peaceful” nuclear energy without safeguards for its use.
As our planet faces nuclear destruction or catastrophic climate crisis, it is time to work together with other countries: make peace, not war!!
Alice Slater He is a board member of World BEYOND War and the Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space and is a UN NGO representative for the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
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© Inter Press Service (2024) — All rights reservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service
