Fracturing the Security Map

Trump 2.0 and an unpalatable compromise in Ukraine could spark a stampede to redraw the world's nuclear security arrangements.

Flickr: Megan Eaves

By Robert M. Holley

The credibility of NATO’s Article Five provisions are being put to the test today in Ukraine, even though Kyiv is not a member of the Alliance. So is the United States’ credibility as a steadfast, reliable security guarantor, and not just in Europe, where the war rages on, but around the world, wherever nations look to Washington as the ultimate safeguard of their freedoms and existential national interests.

In some of those places, we have standing security pacts in place—and at risk. In others, we have no formal commitments, but we nonetheless have a profound interest in the region’s stability. If we fail to ensure Ukraine’s victory over Russian aggression, it will have far-reaching strategic consequences not only for Ukraine and our partners in Europe, but for other simmering and dangerous hot spots. This is especially true where the tensions involve states that are currently, or potentially, nuclear powers.

While we judiciously aided the UK and France to reinforce our deterrent posture, it has been the policy of the United States since the Second World War to attempt to halt the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The Non Proliferation Treaty was a signal achievement in that effort. It did not, however, prevent India, Pakistan, Israel, or North Korea from joining the nuclear weapons club. It’s difficult to argue that their membership has enhanced the stability of their regions, especially in the case of North Korea.

If outcome of the war in Ukraine, and the way that outcome is achieved, are unsatisfactory, the world’s nuclear security map is apt to be redrawn in ways that are deeply troubling for global peace and stability.

Imagine how countries like Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan, facing pressure from nuclear powers like China and North Korea, will assess their security situations if they conclude the American nuclear umbrella no longer safeguards their fundamental national interests. Imagine how the Poles will react if Russian nuclear blackmail results our coercing Ukraine to accept an unwelcome outcome to the war. And the Baltic states? Finland? Sweden?

Sweden and Finland rushed to join NATO after decades of post-WWII neutrality because they believed Russia had become so serious a threat to their security that they required NATO’s Article Five protections. If those protections begin suddenly to appear dangerously insufficient, and the threat from Russia even more menacing, what then?

If they perceive NATO to have failed in Ukraine, each of these sophisticated, technologically advanced European nations is entirely capable of arming themselves with a nuclear arsenal and delivery system on relatively short notice. Others in the European Union are equally capable and might also seek to buttress their security postures with a nuclear muscle-up.

If the Ukraine war ends badly, there are innumerable possibilities for new defense arrangements in Europe and the Far East, not to mention the Middle East. Some of them are as frightening as they are dangerous to American security, economic interests, and well-being. In Europe, a less-than-optimal conclusion to the war in Ukraine could spell the serious weakening, if not the end, of a trans-Atlantic security space that has been defined, since the end of World War II, by America’s dominance, leadership, and massive military spending as the senior partner in NATO.

Europeans were already more than a little nervous about the political trajectory and intentions of the United States following four years of Trump’s presidency. With his imminent return to office, they will feel even further exposed to what will certainly be growing pressure from Russia, even as they have far less assurance that the US will have their back. Trump has made no secret of his disdain for NATO, and has frequently suggested he isn’t much inclined to rescue its European members should circumstances require.

France, Poland, the Baltic states, Finland, Sweden, and maybe even Germany, as well as others among NATO’s new members in East and Central Europe, will very likely decide that Europe requires its own very much more robust military structure, including a seriously enhanced nuclear posture, to guarantee its freedom to make its own choices without bending the knee to its newly aggressive and emboldened neighbor to the east. If such arrangements cannot be achieved within the current structures of the European Union, owing to the revanchist attitudes of some EU member states, it is conceivable that other subregional arrangements will emerge. Lacking a reliable NATO and EU commitment to their security, states like Sweden, Finland, Poland and the Baltics might arm themselves in new sub-regional mutual security pacts, some with nuclear weapons. The Far East could also see the emergence of such regional, nuclear-armed security arrangements.

A regional fracturing of the global nuclear security map would necessarily reduce US leverage in any given region while simultaneously raising local tensions. There is little guarantee that an outbreak of hostilities in any of these regions could be confined. If mutual deterrence fails, the prospect of escalation to a larger scale of conflict are as serious as they are dangerous. Indeed, in some instances this prospective fracturing and beefing-up of security arrangements could become an accelerant to conflict, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

China is already making noise about a military solution in Taiwan and arming its forces appropriately to resolve the two-China problem. Imagine how the timetable on this action might be accelerated if China were faced with the prospect of a soon-to-be-nuclear armed Taiwan, especially one with a mutual defense arrangement with a nuclear Japan, a nuclear South Korea, or both.

Given our current entanglements in these regions and with the states involved, the stakes and consequences would be serious. Our leverage under such circumstances with any of the states would clearly be much reduced, assuming the new Trump Administration decided it was in the American interest to become involved at all, which is not a given by any means.

Following the arrival of Trump 2.0 and a less-than-satisfactory outcome in Ukraine, the rush to acquire nuclear weapons would likely be proportionate to the threat these nations perceive from newly-emboldened nations like Russia, China, Iran, and North Korea. Add to that the conclusion everyone is sure to draw about the efficacy of open military aggression coupled with nuclear threats, and you have a recipe for any one of a number of potentially horrific disasters.

---

So, what to do? First and most important, the “to do” list must include, as its number one priority, preventing these circumstances from arising in the first place. How do we do that?

It all hinges on helping Ukraine succeed in defeating Russian aggression. The so- called “escalation management” strategy is not the solution, even though this is likely to get worse, not better, now that Trump has been re-elected.

The longer the US and its NATO allies dither fecklessly instead of providing Ukraine the weapons it needs to defeat Russia decisively, and as quickly as possible, the more NATO and the EU squander what little credibility they have remaining, and the more likely it is that nations threatened by aggressive nuclear neighbors will look for alternative security arrangements.

It is not sufficient to provide Ukraine only the weapons it needs to stave off a Russian victory, baselessly hoping that Russia will tire of the war, and its increasingly unsustainable costs in blood and treasure, and sue for a peace on terms that some in the West might find palatable, even if Ukrainians do not. Indeed, that would only increase the likelihood that those who feel threatened would move as quickly as possible to begin seeing to their own security outside the structures that clearly failed Ukraine.

The lesson that must be applied in Ukraine, with vigor, is that unprovoked aggression in the cause of territorial expansion will not be tolerated, and that NATO and the EU community will act quickly and decisively to ensure that it does not succeed in Europe.

Anything less—any waffling or unpalatable compromise in the face of the kind of brutal, inhumane aggression being pursued by Russia—will inevitably lead to the dissolution of the current security arrangements, the decline of US global leadership and influence, and a world rushing dangerously toward nuclear proliferation with all the horrific, attendant consequences this threatens for all of us.

---

Post Script: It deserves further attention that China, a nation allegedly given to taking the long view of historical developments, hasn’t yet cottoned on to the idea that its support for Russia in this war could very well result in creating several more nuclear-armed states whose weapons are pointed at China. That shouldn’t be giving them any comfort. The only reason I can see why China is helping Russia, apart from the opportunity to weaken the United States and drive wedges among the members of NATO and the European Union, is to keep the Russians in the conflict long enough for the West to bleed them dry militarily and economically with a Ukrainian bludgeon, making them less of a threat and more dependent on China than ever before. Nice reversal of roles from the good old Cold War days. It’s possible those are their motives, but the likely cost—creating all of these new, hostile, nuclear-armed neighbors—is pretty high.

Robert M. Holley is a retired Foreign Service Officer who served as the State Department’s Deputy Director of the Office of European Political and Security Policy during the run-up to the first round of NATO expansion, which saw the admission of Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic, the establishment of the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council, and significant enhancements to NATO’s Partnership For Peace programs. He is also a former US Army Aviation officer and a combat veteran of the war in Vietnam.