the US, China, Russia, Britain and France are supposed to pledge in writing at Phnom Penh that ASEAN will be nuke-free... it did not happen... but it is not really surprising... the West Philipine Sea boundaries of ASEAN is currently embroiled in competing territorial disputes... and China is a major party to all these disputes... ASEAN countries with territorial claims in the West Philippine Sea will insist that their claims should be treated as part of ASEAN territory... and, therefore, should be covered by the Nuke-Free Protocol... Beijing, on the other hand, will insist otherwise... and because they think that the entire territory is theirs, Beijing expects the rest of the world to accept as a fait accompli the West Philippine Sea deployment of the full-range of nuclear weapons in Beijing's arsenal... so the Virginia and Los Angeles subs of the USN will have to keep re-surfacing once in a while... just to remind Beijing that, yes, you may have nukes... but yours are not the biggest and most accurate ones in the neighborhood... reassuring... but there goes our Nuke-Free ASEAN Protocol water pipe dream...
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