The current Ukraine crisis runs against the assurances the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States had made to Ukraine in the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances of 1994 and later reinforced by Moscow in a bilateral treaty with Kyiv in 1997. It is a serious blow to the confidence of Non-Nuclear Weapon States (NNWS) depending on Nuclear Weapon States (NWS) for security guarantees.
The three primary signatories of the Memorandum had incentivized Ukraine to accede to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and give up the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal it had inherited from the disintegrating Soviet Union in exchange for future security guarantees and economic incentives from the nuclear troika.
The nuclear saber-rattling that continues around the Ukraine conflict has undermined the credibility of no-first-use assurances of nuclear powers to non-nuclear states signatories to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Further, the traditional role of nuclear weapons as a last resort has also gained currency.
The global cooperative security goals now seem a distant dream as many NNWS have started to doubt the reliability of security commitments extended by NWS and have hinted at developing nuclear weapons of their own. More and more countries, including a few close US allies, are advocating for nuclearization. Like, South Korea has been continuously signalling to develop its own nuclear weapon to reduce the probability of a nuclear war on the Korean Peninsula. Japan, too, after following pacifism for more than seven decades is contemplating the idea of developing its own nuclear deterrent.
Fears of nuclear proliferation are increasing as the war in Ukraine grinds on. The US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken at the NPT Review Conference admitted that a clear message the war gives to NNWS is to acquire their own nuclear capability for defending sovereignty and deterring any aggression than depending on security assurances of nuclear powers.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in his speech at the 58th Munich Security Conference expressed regrets over the failure of the guarantors of the Budapest Memorandum to restore peace in his country, stating that ‘all the package decisions of 1994 are in doubt.’
The world is witnessing a new round of arms race as the key pillars of the arms control regime set up during the Cold War are falling apart. The war in Ukraine is accelerating two major global developments with direct bearing on the arms race and disarmament debate.
First, the war is directly pitting Russia against the US and its allies. Resultantly, European states are witnessing a dramatic increase of 47 percent in their military imports, with Ukraine alone surfacing as the third largest importer of arms. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) members cumulatively saw a sharp increase of 65 percent in imports of conventional weapon systems.
Second, as the Ukraine conflict tends to isolate Russia through sanctions, the latter has deepened reliance on China to compensate for the loss. The military cooperation between Moscow and Beijing has reached an unprecedented level with China also boosting its arms imports by 4.1 percent mainly from Russian exports. In return, the US policy of containing China is fueling an arms race in South and East Asia. For instance, China has condemned the US and UK move to help Australia build nuclear-powered submarines, saying the partnership will add fuel to the regional tensions and stoke an “arms race.”
The US share of arms exports has increased from 33 percent to 40 percent in the last five years. In addition to Kuwait (4.8 percent), Qatar (6.7 percent), and Saudi Arabia (19 percent), Japan (8.6 percent) also topped the list of the top four importers of US arms. The US allies in East Asia, like South Korea, Japan, and Australia, also increased their arms budget by a whopping 61, 171, and 23 percent respectively. France’s share of global arms export to the Middle East and Asia Pacific states has also increased from 7.1 percent to 11 percent.
Russia, the world’s second-largest exporter of arms, on the other hand saw a decline in its total arms exports from 22 percent to 16 percent. This sharp decline can be attributed to two reasons; first, Russia wants to make sure that its forces fighting in Ukraine remain armed to the teeth, and second, to a larger part, due to increasing pressure from the US and its allies to not buy Russian arms. For instance, Egypt cancelled a large order of combat aircraft from Moscow. On the other hand, the fierce competition Russia faces in exports of its military equipment, coupled with the enlargement of NATO, prompted it to withdraw from the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE), a 1990-treaty mandating reduction of troops and armaments in Central Europe between NATO and Warsaw Pact member states.
In addition to the disintegration of conventional arms control mechanisms, Russian concern about the West arming Ukraine has led to its suspension of New Start, the last remaining nuclear arms control treaty between Moscow and Washington that limits the number of nuclear warheads and launchers for both states. The treaty is not only about limiting nuclear warheads, but it also stipulates various verification mechanisms, like inspection of nuclear weapon facilities and regular exchange of data between the two nuclear powers.
The inspection regime of New START has already checkered since the breaking out of the COVID-19 pandemic. Earlier the Trump administration withdrew from the Intermediate‐Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in 2019 and exited from a multilateral but largely Russia-focused Open Skies Treaty in 2020. Former US President George W. Bush left the Anti‐Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002. The ending of bilateral and multilateral arms control treaties will increase the risk of nuclear escalation in an era that is already witnessing a perilous arms race all over the world.
Russian foreign ministry has extended an olive branch if the US adopts ‘general de-escalation,’ meaning stopping the aid to Ukraine and addressing security concerns of Russia. The US and its allies, however, do not appear in a mood to put the lid on their export of arms to Ukraine.
This uncertain situation will give birth to a renewed desire for nuclear proliferation since it encourages the idea of self-help in an anarchical world structure, where the reliance on American extended deterrence is likely to decrease. As the world is witnessing re-armament both in the nuclear and conventional sphere, an enduring peace may become a chimera. In seven decades of the nuclear age, we have moved full circle.
This article was published in another form at https://ipi.org.pk/the-ukraine-war-a-bane-for-non-proliferation-disarmament-and-arms-control/
Mobeen Jafar Mir
Mr Mobeen Jafar Mir is Research Officer at the Center for International Strategic Studies (CISS) Islamabad.
