By this time, Ukraine must have many regrets. Among those, two stand out as the most regretful — the sale of the aircraft carrier Varyag to China in April 1998 and the handover of its nuclear weapons to Russia in 1996.
In retrospect, Ukraine would wish that both actions had not been taken, but the damage has been done.
In 1996, at the urging of then-US president Bill Clinton, Ukraine sped up, and actually completed, the handover of the country’s nuclear arsenal in exchange for assurances of its territorial security and integrity delineated by the Budapest Agreement of 1994 and signed by five parties — the US, the UK, Russia, China and France.
Last year, after years refurbishing the vessel, China successfully placed its first aircraft carrier in service, thanks to the Ukrainian ready-built hulk.
In early March, Russia trashed the Budapest Agreement and invaded Crimea.
Given that China has been enjoying almost unlimited access to Ukraine’s military technologies over the past decade and a half, it would have been expected to lend support on behalf of Ukraine. However, China acquiesced when Russia annexed Crimea in late March. Russian assurance weighs less than the paper on which it was written.
Worst yet, China is now threatening countries, including Taiwan, in the East and the South China seas with the aircraft carrier.
Decisions made and actions taken at an earlier time in a seemingly benign setting often have unexpected, sometimes malignant, consequences.
Ukraine’s sale of the ship to China under the pretext that it was to be converted into a floating hotel is exactly one of those decisions thought innocuous when it was made.
The past few days, Russia has dispatched half a dozen of its naval cruisers and frigates to China for a joint exercise. In the meantime, a Chinese oil rig with a military escort has anchored in disputed waters near Vietnam, with the action stirring up riots against Taiwanese and Japanese investments in several Vietnamese cities.
There is a huge difference between a floating, commercial hotel and a mobile airfield equipped with dozens of attack fighters. A self-powered platform carrying unmanned aerial drones in the Strait of Malacca, or the Taiwan Strait, is perhaps not what Ukraine had envisioned when it decided to sell the ship.
The financial gain that Ukraine derived is not only now a thorn in the side of Taiwan, Japan, Malaysia, Vietnam and the Philippines, but also a boomerang that can potentially bite Ukraine too.
Kengchi Goah is a senior research fellow at the Taiwan Public Policy Council in the US.
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