The bus is driving past the rice fields. We, a group of diplomats, are chatty and curious. Every now and then, posters depict a white dove with an olive branch. Peace is written below. The villages soon disappear, and silence ensues.
There’s barbed wire everywhere. We are approaching the Joint Security Area in the Korean Demilitarized Zone. On both sides, a few families are allowed to grow rice and “co‑exist in peace.” However, there have been incidents in which South Korean villagers were kidnapped by North Koreans, and there have been shootings. There is also a derelict “bridge of no return” for prisoner exchanges, where prisoners could choose — a one-time offer, to stay or cross to the other side.
We arrive at a border post manned by US troops. The building is spacious, with assembly halls, paintings on the walls, and young soldiers everywhere. The North Korean post is directly in front of us. There is nothing. Their building seems empty. The windows are pitch black, and only what looks like binoculars are pointed at us.
As we walk around the rooftop, memories from the Soviet era come rushing back. Once, during sunset on a Baltic Sea beach, a tractor raking sand drove by. I asked my parents what the point was. “So that no one drags a boat to the sea at night,” they replied. “Why is it not allowed?” I didn’t understand. “So that no one tries to sail to Sweden,” my mother said. “And Swedes do not disembark here,” my father added. I snickered. Only the Soviets could have imagined someone wanting to invade their wasteland.
Only the Soviets and the laughably mistitled Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (the DPRK), that is. The country is an object lesson in a number of ways. It is the poster child for regimes wanting to crush the human spirit; it is a living example of how tiny elites can menace entire geopolitical regions; and it is yet another reminder that arms control, including the nuclear variant, only works with the goodwill of the bad guys.
Now that New START, the nuclear arms reduction treaty between the United States and Russia, has expired, some warn of a new nuclear arms race. They call for disarmament and the prohibition of nuclear weapons. They believe a new global movement for peace is needed.
Who should be the first to disarm? The US and its allies, they say. Or at least start negotiating, on the assumption that the problem is Western-made and so too must be the solution.
This cannot work. Not because the message of global peace is wrong, it is not, but because reality tells a different story.
The global proliferation of nuclear-capable countries and nuclear warheads was not caused by the US and its smaller nuclear allies, France and the UK. While the US has kept roughly the same number of nuclear weapons for decades, nuclear armament is happening on a massive scale elsewhere.
First, the end of New START was in Russia’s hands. The Kremlin ended inspections of its nuclear weapons in 2020 with COVID and never allowed them to resume, then suspended the treaty altogether in 2023 entirely after years of violating every other treaty under the sun.
Even with New START in place, Russia developed nuclear‑capable systems like Skyfall, Poseidon, and Oreshnik — all new systems to threaten the US and its neighbors without falling under the treaty. It announced a nuclear deployment to Belarus, installed nuclear-capable systems in Kaliningrad, and bolstered its nuclear presence in the Kola Peninsula, encircling and threatening non‑nuclear European states.
It was Russia that severely damaged the safety-critical sarcophagus at the Chernobyl nuclear site last year, risking a catastrophic radiation release. It also occupied and hid military equipment on the grounds of the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, held its workers at gunpoint, and has consistently neglected safety standards.
Meanwhile, a Kremlin blithely indifferent to nuclear arms controls developed thousands of tactical nuclear weapons not covered by New START. So, when Russia “offered” to adhere to numerical limits to keep the treaty alive, only the naïve could believe they meant it.
Secondly, US nuclear weapons are not a luxury. They protect one billion citizens in 32 NATO countries, as well as their non-NATO allies, including Japan, South Korea, and Australia. The nuclear arsenal now requires extensive modernization. As the Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby told the Munich Security Conference on February 12, the US will continue to provide “an extended nuclear deterrent” to Europe. It is precisely because of US nuclear weapons that the Baltic states and their Nordic neighbors, among many others, remain free nations and have not yet pursued their own bombs.
Third, nuclear weapons remain credible. Look at China, a “peace‑loving” country (irony intended). It is nuclear arms racing at a rate of production that likely exceeds a nuclear warhead a day, refuses any arms control or restraint, and rejects all verification or transparency. Experts have told the New York Times that its huge program is likely to almost double its nuclear stockpile by 2030, albeit from a lower starting point than the US or Russia.
It is deploying new missiles of global range and has tested space-based weapons. It claims this is not a concern for anyone because it would never use nuclear weapons first. And we are just supposed to take them at their word, as they build a massive new nuclear arsenal. Why? For strategic stability? “For peace”?
Nuclear‑weapons‑prohibition activists propose a solution that is not just unrealistic, but is misleading and dangerous. The world, they say, should ban nuclear weapons completely because they are deadly. States should sign the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW) and eliminate their arsenals. Around 100 non-nuclear countries have signed or ratified the treaty.
But it is a statement of perfection detached from the real world. Reducing nuclear stockpiles is difficult. Abandoning them entirely is even harder. How do we ensure states reduce their arsenals? How do we verify it? The TPNW offers no details because implementation is the hardest part. Besides, we already have a mechanism for nuclear disarmament: the Treaty on the Non‑Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, signed by 191 states since 1968.
One thing the TPNW certainly does is to blindly see all nuclear weapons states as equivalent, even those that possess them simply to keep themselves safe.
It places blame equally on responsible states while omitting the faults of others. Russia, which threatens a nuclear attack every few months, or the DPRK, “ready to annihilate” South Korea and perhaps Japan, are not the same as the US and NATO countries, which believe, and insist, that nuclear war must never be fought.
There is another crucial flaw in the disarmament argument: it ignores the core of the problem.
It is not the nukes. It is the regimes. It is the fact that armed autocracies demand that democracies disarm.
For some countries bordering long‑time aggressors, nuclear weapons are the ultimate deterrent. For the Baltic states, under Russian attack since the 15th century, NATO’s nuclear‑sharing arrangements and nuclear deterrence are existential. The last time deterrence failed, we lost one‑third of our nation to Nazi and Stalinist mass murder. After the occupation and bludgeoning, the USSR deployed its nuclear weapons on our territory.
They asked no permission when they built 400 military bases in Lithuania, including 43 missile units. They needed no advice when bringing nuclear‑capable weapons into our forests in the 1960s. If they needed “clean territory” for a base, they simply exiled nearby villagers to Siberia. Rocket assembly lines were disguised as farms. Hangars with SS‑4 (R‑12) nuclear-capable rockets, each weighing 42 tons, were carefully covered with carpets.
They “assigned,” at least on paper, 175 grams of meat per day to dogs and 150 grams to servicemen. These same men, in 1962, were being prepared to go to Cuba to “launch missiles at the USA.” Soviet missiles in Lithuania were also aimed at Czechoslovakia, Spain, Norway, Turkey, and the UK, depending on the USSR’s political mood.
For generations, service in the Soviet army was seen as trauma and tragedy. Prison or a psychiatric ward instead of the draft was not unusual. And as late as 1991, the occupiers still inflicted trauma by massacring Lithuanian civilians who dared to assert their rights and freedom.
Fortunately, half a century after the occupation, at 15 minutes to midnight on August 31, 1993, the last echelon of 35,000 Soviet troops left Lithuanian territory. We still celebrate this milestone today.
While our common goal is a world without nuclear weapons, democracies must remain armed if dictatorships and autocracies maintain theirs.
Instead of pointing fingers at the US and offering imaginary solutions, demand adherence to international law. Request accountability. Pressure governments to respond to violations. Punish the ambition to conquest. Deter your enemies. Ensure that nuclear states like Russia never again attack non‑nuclear states like Ukraine (which now ruefully acknowledges that surrendering its nukes in the 1990s opened the door to today’s Kremlin aggression).
Until we reach that day when peace is declared on earth and borders and nation-states are abolished, the best way to stop them will be to raise the price through deterrence. Before asking that the vulnerable be disarmed, make sure the danger has been neutralized.
Gabrielė Klimaitė-Želvienė is a Lithuanian diplomat, working on security policy, arms control and non-proliferation issues. Previously, she headed the Middle East and North Africa Division at the Global Affairs Group, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania. During her diplomatic career, Mrs Želvienė worked in Washington DC, Moscow, Stockholm, Dublin, and Brussels. She graduated from Vilnius University’s Institute of International Relations and Political Science, and joined the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2003.
Europe’s Edge is CEPA’s online journal covering critical topics on the foreign policy docket across Europe and North America. All opinions expressed on Europe’s Edge are those of the author alone and may not represent those of the institutions they represent or the Center for European Policy Analysis. CEPA maintains a strict intellectual independence policy across all its projects and publications.
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