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It worked so 'well' that it lost part of it's territory. From Budapest Memorandum Wiki: 'The memorandum included security assurances against threats or use of f

• hangonhn 9y ago
  "Now it will be a lesson for others: nukes are way more reliable than some piece of paper, which no one is gonna follow" Is it really though? Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea? The conflict was low intensity warfare, which nukes are not particularly well suited for. I don't think nukes are the be-all-end-all weapons people think they are. There are huge consequences to using them, especially against another nuclear power.
  • googletazer 9y ago
    They couldn't launch them anyway, its the same as US nukes in Turkey.
  • greedy_buffer 9y ago
    > The conflict was low intensity warfare, which nukes are not particularly well suited for. Firstly "was" is not the right word, the war is ongoing: http://tass.com/world/965974 http://tass.com/world/965974 Secondly, imo the nature of the conflict is less important than whether a concentrated population of the adversary's citizens are within range of the weapon as far as determining the effectiveness of nuclear deterrent. > Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea? Would those that made the decision to invade have accepted the risk of even the most minute possibility? No leader has done that so far.
    • YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      China, India and Pakistan, all three of them nuclear powers, have been fighting a low-level conflict over Kashmir for several decades. So far none of them has nuked the others. Presumably, they realise the consequences of dropping a nuclear bomb in a region of the world with a couple billion people or three.
      • greedy_buffer 9y ago
        Didn't know much about this conflict, thank you for educating me. One other difference between those combatants and a theoretically nuclear armed Ukraine is that that war is more widely seem as an existential threat to an independent Ukraine. Kashmir political disagreement seems to rest on somewhat more limited territorial claims versus the desire of one party to post its military inside the other as well as to exert widespread political influence.
      • sfifs 9y ago
        And no one has lost any territory to the other since they developed nuclear weapons. All conventional millitary conflicts date from before they became nuclear powers.
        • caf 9y ago
          The Sino-Soviet border conflict occured after both were nuclear powers, as did the Kargil War between India and Pakistan.
        • muro 9y ago
          India lost territory to China after both had nuclear weapons.
  • dragonwriter 9y ago
    > Even if Ukraine had nukes, would it have threatened and actually have the will to use it over the lost of the Crimea? Over a conventional invasion by a neighboring nation-state with massive conventional superiority with a paper-thin cover story? Probably. I mean, that’s why the USSR didn't pull that stunt against any of the NATO countries bordering its satellites, ever, even though they did similar things to other neighbors. And those bordering states were merely allies of the nuclear powers, not nuclear powers themselves.
    • pvg 9y ago
      "Nation-state" is not another way to say "country". The Russian federation, for instance, isn't a nation state.
    • YeGoblynQueenne 9y ago
      So what would Ukraine have done if they had nukes? Nuked the enemy troops in the Crimaea, with their own population in the way? Or bomb some Russian city and start a nuclear war ...against the second larges nuclear power? Honestly, use of nuclear weapons just sounds like pure madness, no matter what the threat one is under. I mean, unless we're talking about an alien invasion (and I'm not impartial to keeping around a few nukes just in case that ever happens).
      • jpatokal 9y ago
        The difference is deterrence: Russia would have thought twice before invading a nuclear-armed neighbour.
        • ObeyTheGuts 9y ago
          Ukraine is russia, ukraines nukes were rusian, ukraine is birthplace of russia, eastern side of ukraine is ethnicaly russians, u r saying nonsense
        • blowski 9y ago
          Thought twice, and then done the same thing anyway.
  • nasredin 9y ago
    Ukraine couldn't have used the threat of nukes WRT Crimea. It happened too fast (IIRC Russians used old school messengers to avoid Western SIGINT), and at least the majority of the population supported or did not actively oppose them (e.g. Ukrainian generals defecting to the Russians) It's another story WRT to Eastern Ukraine. Ukraine's military units had poor morale and were repeatedly destroyed by regular Russian soldiers AKA "volunteers". The time frame is not days as in Crimea. Perhaps the threat of nukes would have stopped Russian tanks and soldiers from "volunteering" in Ukraine. It is now up to the armchair historians and alt-history writers to contemplate the what-ifs.
    • sfifs 9y ago
      The utility of nuclear weapons is strategic, not tactical. The only relevant deterrent is their use against against major cities for which speed is not really relevant. What's relevant is maintaining launch capability in your control - hence major powers go for stealthy submarine platforms.
• abandonliberty 9y ago
  Yes, I was being facetious. However, some are arguing that this view is incorrect - there's a paper linked on the wikipedia page. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine#Denuclearization https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine#De...
• sfifs 9y ago
  And the lesson has been rammed home multiple times by now unfortunately... Iraq, Libya, Ukraine... so it's not even ambiguous. All politicians of calibre by now understand this.
• rmetzler 9y ago
  > It worked so 'well' that it lost part of it's territory. Yeah, but the US got the Ukrainian gold.