Taipei Times | Michael Mazza On Taiwan — Lessons from NATO: Put nukes front and center in Asia

By: Michael Mazza | TAIPEI TIMES |

Could Asia be on the verge of a new wave of nuclear proliferation? A look back at the early history of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), which recently celebrated its 75th anniversary, illuminates some reasons for concern in the Indo-Pacific today.

…Together, America’s nuclear umbrella and the NPT have been remarkably successful in keeping the nuclear genie in its bottle, with only a handful of notable exceptions. While the introduction of nuclear weapons to South Asia has contributed to decades of dangerous instability on the subcontinent, the rest of the Indo-Pacific has, thus far, avoided that fate. Despite the expansion of Russian and Chinese nuclear arsenals and the development of a North Korean nuclear force, American allies in Northeast Asia have refrained from fielding their own capabilities, Southeast Asia remains a nuclear-free zone, and Australia and New Zealand have eschewed independent nuclear deterrents.

Has the United States drawn the right lessons from these successes and those in Europe under NATO? Is it applying the right ones to tackling current security challenges in the Indo-Pacific?

Read the full article in the Taipei Times