Taiwan once had a secret nuclear weapons program. Beijing didn’t end it. Washington did. 

The fact that it was a strategic partner, not an adversary, that ended it — that is the key to understanding how Iran’s nuclear ambitions could be stopped.

In the 1960s, Chiang Kai-shek launched a covert nuclear weapons program. The rationale was obvious and, by any strategic logic, sound: Beijing had tested its first nuclear device in 1964, Taiwan’s survival was perpetually in question, and conventional deterrence felt insufficient. Beijing’s hostility was not an argument against the program. It was the entire justification for it. 

What ultimately killed Taiwan’s nuclear weapons program was sustained American pressure—brought to a head during the Reagan administration. Washington made its position clear: shuttering the program was a condition of continued American support. No elaborate inducement was offered. None was needed. The weight of the relationship — the arms, the trade, the diplomatic protection, the legitimacy that American backing conferred — made the cost of refusal self-evident. The threat of losing all of that was enough. And critically, that pressure landed because it came from a strategic partner, not an adversary.

Israel knows this history more intimately than most. Ernst........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)