Under New Scrutiny: China's Nuclear Pledge to Ukraine

[Uncle Joe]

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China’s 2013 promise to Ukraine of unspecified security guarantees echoed the kind of commitment nuclear-armed states—including China—have long made to nonnuclear ones, assurances that the U.S., U.K. and Russia had earlier also extended directly to Ukraine for relinquishing Soviet-era weapons. Yet Beijing appeared to be promising more than it had in past commitments, and why it singled out Ukraine for such an arrangement has confounded nuclear experts ever since.

Now, its existence appears to further muddy Beijing’s policy stance in the context of Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine and Moscow’s warning last month it was raising the alert level of its nuclear forces.

“It’s a promise of a nuclear-weapon state to stand up for a nonnuclear-weapon state being threatened by a nuclear-weapon state,” says Gregory Kulacki, a Japan-based analyst who focuses on nuclear issues and China for the nonprofit Union of Concerned Scientists. “It means something and it should be pointed out to China,” he says.

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In its 2013 guarantees, Beijing praised Ukraine’s 1994 agreement to give up thousands of nuclear weapons from its time as a Soviet republic in exchange for security assurances from the U.S., U.K. and Russia. “China pledges unconditionally not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear Ukraine, and under the conditions of Ukraine suffering an invasion using nuclear weapons or suffering the threat of such kind of invasion, to provide Ukraine with corresponding security guarantees,” the statement said.

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https://www.wsj.com/articles/under-new-scrutiny-chinas-nuclear-pledge-to-ukraine-11647007200