Russia and Europe do not need any kind of arms race or any type of war – be it limited or all-out one. So, why not to reach arms control agreements between Russia and Europe separately from the USA in order to maintain stable European security on completely different footing? Only political will is required.
The real situation in the world today shows that there are too many doctrinal and military-technical obstacles preventing the complete and irreversible elimination of all nuclear weapons. There has also been no noticeable increase in the level of trust between nuclear-armed states, which all have different views on nuclear arms control and the doctrinal basis for their actual use.
Having announced the country’s unilateral withdrawal from the INF Treaty, Donald Trump’s administration is planning to enmesh both Europe and Asia in the new intermediate-range and shorter-range nuclear missiles that Washington decided to create a long time ago. Many countries around the world understand this perfectly.
The Trump administration seems to have decided to use the current international security environment to its own economic advantage and kill two birds with one stone. After all, military escalation and a new arms race both provide powerful leverage over opponents and are an effective way to attract financial flows.
So long as the nuclear balance between Pakistan and India can be maintained, then a conventional military peace between the two Great Powers is assured, but the disruption of this equilibrium is dangerous for the entire world because of the encouragement that this could give either state to launch a first strike.
Trump has repeatedly stressed that Russia and the US are the two biggest nuclear powers in the world, and thus the US must live in peace with Russia. On US-Russia relations, Trump is clearheaded. On the contrary, if the US is piling pressure on China today, it is because China, although an economic giant, is still a weak military power.
In the ultimate analysis, North Korea’s goal is to be rid of the sanctions regime imposed on it, seek a place on the international stage as a recognized world power and not a pariah state, while paying lip service to complete denuclearization.
Suspending the provocative and costly war games with South Korea – per the joint Russian-Chinese proposal of a “double freeze”, even if it’s never openly admitted to – was a mature move by Trump that shows his sincerity in making progress with Chairman Kim, thereby stabilizing the Korean Peninsula in the process.
The United States and North Korea are now on a more civilized level of behavior. But nothing basic has been resolved. Maybe Trump has some more concessions up his sleeve, like cutting the number of US troops in the South. But Korea is now on the back burner as Trump wages trade wars around the globe.
The potential use of low-yield nuclear weapons, which is a real fixation for the current US administration and is being discussed with increasing frequency in the US. It is clear that forces have taken the upper hand on Capitol Hill that are still incapable of imagining the consequences of a nuclear Armageddon.
What should one expect from the upcoming US-North Korea summit? Whatever deals are struck, they must be clearly demarcated, so as to leave no room for aberration.
It’s quite alarming to think that the upcoming 54th Munich Security Conference will once again be unlikely to offer the world any effective arms-control solutions or the establishment of a security system that would be in the interests of all the countries involved.
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