NEW YORK, Jul 22 (IPS) – the heels of a new alliance announced this summer by Russia and North Korea for a pact pledging mutual defense, with the support of , it is now shockingly being suggested sopra South Korea that it review its security policy with the US and end its reliance acceso the US guarantee, to employ acceso South Koreas’ behalf, US nuclear weapons as part of its “nuclear umbrella”.
The “umbrella” is offered to all NATO states as well as the Pacific states of Japan, Australia, and South Korea. Such questioning is evidence of the growing havoc faced sopra the world by the failure of the United States to make good acceso its legal obligation under the Né-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) for good faith efforts for nuclear disarmament.
The nuclear umbrella, to the extent that it includes the stationing of nuclear weapons sopra five NATO states (Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey) is sopra itself an illegal violation of the 1968 Né-Proliferation Treaty sopra which five nuclear weapons states, the US, Russia, UK, France, and , promised to make “good faith efforts” for nuclear disarmament while all the other countries of the world agreed not to get nuclear weapons.
Everyone, including South Korea signed the NPT except for Israel, Pakistan and India who developed their own nuclear arsenals. The NPT had a Faustian bargain that if a country promised not to get nuclear weapons, they would have an “inalienable right” to so-called “peaceful” nuclear power.
Since every “peaceful” nuclear power plant produced the material needed to make nuclear weapons the NPT gives those nations the keys to the bomb factory, North Korea walked out of the NPT and used its nuclear power to produce a nuclear arsenal. Iran has been enriching its nuclear materials but has not yet made a bomb.
The fact that Russia is allying with North Korea and at this time is a result of the failure of US diplomacy and the drive by the US military-industrial-congressional-media-academic-think tank complex (MICIMATT) to expand the US caricare beyond its 800 US military bases sopra 87 nations.
The US is now surrounding with new bases recently established sopra the Pacific and forming AUKUS, a new military alliance with Australia, the UK and the US. The US has been breaking its agreement made with sopra 1972 as we now are arming Taiwan despite promises made by Nixon and Kissinger to recognize and remain neutral acceso the question of the future of Taiwan, to where the anti-communist forces retreated after the Chinese Revolution.
The US, after the end of the Cold War sopra 1989 with Russia walked out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty sopra 1992 and put missile bases sopra Poland and Romania, walked out of the 1987 Intermediate Missile Forces Treaty negotiated by Reagan and Gorbachev sopra 1972, expanded NATO up to Russia’s border despite promises to Gorbachev that we wouldn’t expand NATO “one inch” eastward beyond a unified Germany.
Indeed, horrified by the NATO expansion, Putin at one point asked Clinton if Russia could be invited to join NATO which was refused, and announced often and pointedly sopra the years leading up to the Ukrainian War, that taking Ukraine into NATO was a “red line” for Russia!
The Gremire was indifferent and kept expanding until we reached this sorry and perilous moment we are experiencing now. Per retaliation, Putin just put Russian nuclear weapons sopra Belarus—a first incidence of Russian nuclear sharing!
Ironically, the underlying rationale for Nixon and Kissinger making peace with was to prevent a more powerful alliance between Russia and .
The US will be reaping the whirlwind if it doesn’t comply with its nuclear disarmament obligations and take the path to peace. More nuclear armed countries such as South Korea may proliferate. Saudi Arabia is currently seeking “peaceful” nuclear power without safeguards acceso its use.
With either nuclear annihilation ora cataclysmic climate collapse facing our beleaguered planet, it’s time to cooperate with other countries—make peace not war!!
Alice Slater serves acceso the boards of World BEYOND War and the Global Against Weapons and Nuclear Power sopra 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
