RUSSIA UKRAINE WAR AND NUCLEARIZATION IN GLOBAL TENSION AREAS

Abstract

Russia-Ukraine War has reignited the debate over nuclear deterrence, put non-proliferation gains at stake and may likely to cause implications for tension areas across the globe. This has further shaken security assurances from United States, Nato in asymmetrical tension areas, and perceived outcomes are exhibiting more alarming and scarier picture. Ukraine was promised security in line with the 1992 Lisbon treaty. The treaty ensured that through giving up its nuclear weapons Ukraine will be granted the means through which it can ensure its borders through conventional ways. In addition to this, it was also provided guarantees of security by UK, the USA and Russia, should it ever face a threat by an external force. However, as recent events have come to unfold. It has become obvious that all such promises of security were of no use, that when Russia decided to take up arms against the state of Ukraine there was not much standing between Ukraine and destruction.

The paper will examine how this war perpetuates and impacts in other tension areas. States like South Korea and Iran who are being promised security might see this as a case study of why it is pertinent for them to turn to nuclearization. Lastly, we shall also see the case study of South Asian theatre where Pakistan, a financially weaker state chose to develop nuclear weapons irrespective of the promises that the western nations made to deter India through nuclearization. And through these measures it has been successful in maintaining deterrence and a relative balance of power with a much bigger adversary. In the most important sense, the paper explores the impact of power equation on arms race and nonproliferation, and it poses new threats to the power balancing in regions across the globe.