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Kyiv gave up its nuclear weapons in return for security assurances
- tcbawo 5y agoThe possibility of a nuclear skirmish between neighboring countries seems awful. A poor country with a fragile government should not be entrusted with nuclear weapons. Imagine what the terrorist organizations of the last 25 years would do with access to such weapons.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoI wonder if Russia would have invaded if Ukraine had nuclear weapons.
- nso95 5y agoThat's why it's called a nuclear deterrent
- spacemanmatt 5y agoOr more formally, mutually-assured destruction.
- edmcnulty101 5y agoMakes you wonder if every war with a nuclear power, will escalate to mutually assured destruction.
- philistine 5y agoIndia and Pakistan have shown what that looks like: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kargil_War
- 37 5y agoFrom Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine Pavlo Rizanenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament told USA Today that Ukraine may have to arm themselves with their own nuclear weapons if the United States and other world leaders do not hold up their end of the agreement. He said "We gave up nuclear weapons because of this agreement. Now, there's a strong sentiment in Ukraine that we made a big mistake." He also said that, "In the future, no matter how the situation is resolved in Crimea, we need a much stronger Ukraine. If you have nuclear weapons, people don't invade you."
- N19PEDL2 5y agoI would be curious to know what is the nuclear latency of Ukraine, i.e. the technological distance from having a complete working device. Ukraine operates 4 nuclear reactors and Soviet-era expertise on nuclear weapons is likely still present in the form of (retired) engineers and scientists, so they are likely able to develop it again. This said, building a credible nuclear deterrence also requires at least one element of the nuclear triad, i.e. the capability to "deliver the gadget". In practical terms, more expertise to gain and more investments to do.
- hyperman1 5y agoFor delivery, I've always wondered if it was possible to smuggle them in, say, by car. No need for a rocket or anything. Then hide them in the target country in some underground facility or whatever in a big city. If Ukraine did that 10 years ago with Moscow, they could trigger them the second their border was violated. This is probably laughably unpractical, I just don't know why. Radiation? Maintenance? Just the fact that you can only use them, not threaten with them?
- edmcnulty101 5y agoThis is interesting. Curious about this as well. Rent a warehouse or storage unit and just keep the nukes there.
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- _fat_santa 5y agoProbably, even for something as severe as an invasion, I highly doubt that Ukraine would have used Nukes against Russia. Considering how close together all the countries are in that region, unless they pointed it way inside Russia, the collateral damage would have been insane.
- mstipetic 5y agoYou think a single nuke would damage several countries?
- kube-system 5y agoA single nuke may lead to more nukes.
- mstipetic 5y agoOf course, but them saying "unless they pointed it way inside Russia" has me thinking they think a single one would look like in a game of Civ
- evanb 5y agoUkraine, of all places, appreciates the staying power of radioactivity.
- colechristensen 5y agoThe fallout from air bursts really isn’t that bad. There were 65 above ground tests in Nevada before they went underground and then were stopped all together. The destruction on site is of course horrific, but far afield the concerns are fairly minimal, unless you’re actively trying to cause fallout.
- 988747 5y agoNuclear weapons come in all shapes and sizes. Hell, there was a bazooka with nuclear warhead once. Such things can come handy when you need to, for example, destroy few dozens of Russian tanks at once, and since they are not ballistic missiles you do not risk starting Armageddon with them.
- chernevik 5y agoNo way to know, of course, but the risks would have been much higher.
- bloak 5y agoMore information is required to answer that question, but I can imagine two countries that both have a policy of "no first use" could have a conventional war, including an invasion, without the conflict becoming nuclear. Losing a conventional war might be much better than "winning" a nuclear one.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI don't think so, I would rather be dead than face what is probably coming to the Ukrainian people under Russian (Putin's) oppression.
- RicoElectrico 5y agoI've heard an opinion that this was illusion of choice - Ukraine would have had the nukes taken from them anyway - and this was just to save face.
- inglor_cz 5y agoMore likely, the very maintenance cost would prove infeasible. Ukrainian HDP is slightly larger than Slovakia's, and maintaining nukes for decades ain't easy. You need to control the complete supply chain for some very exotic spare parts.
- Darmody 5y agoBack when the USSR fell they barely could maintain their own stock. I read somewhere that the US even gave them money to keep the nukes safe.
- 1024core 5y agoYou don't need to maintain _all_ the 1800 nukes; you can just maintain a credible deterrent. See, for example, Pakistan, which has > 100 nukes.
- julienfr112 5y agoYou could also sell a few of them every year to petromonarchy to finance the support.
- juancampa 5y agoAs a Venezuelan, let's not do that.
- stjohnswarts 5y ago32 or so would have been plenty
- KptMarchewa 5y agoNorth Korea can afford not only maintanence, but also development of their own nukes. >You need to control the complete supply chain for some very exotic spare parts. ...if you want 100% guarantees of their success, sure. But not everything has to be maintained to the US Air Force standards. At the very least, dirty bombs are successful too.
- bko 5y agoArchive: https://web.archive.org/web/20220224101533/https://www.wsj.com/articles/how-ukraine-was-betrayed-in-budapest-russia-vladimir-putin-us-uk-volodymyr-zelensky-nuclear-weapons-11645657263 https://web.archive.org/web/20220224101533/https://www.wsj.c... also useful link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_weapons_and_Ukraine
- syki 5y agoIt’s hard to give meaningful security assurances when the powers involved have nuclear weapons. Ukraine is far more important to Russia than it is to the U.S. Clearly the U.S. is not willing to go to war with a nuclear power over Ukraine. Treaties are only as useful as the willingness of the signatories to abide by them and/or enforce them.
- Miraste 5y agoThat's the point: nuclear weapons are a much better guarantee of safety than treaties and assurances. Compare what happened to Libya and Iraq to Iran and North Korea and it's clear that the only way to be secure in the modern age is to get nukes as fast as possible, and ignore any threats or offers to the contrary.
- chernevik 5y agoTrue, but we could have done a great deal more to help Ukraine. Keeping Europe energy independent from Russian for one thing, and better supplying the Ukrainians with arms for another.
- dmarlow 5y agoThis is sending a strong message that everyone must own nukes to control their own destiny.
- philistine 5y ago"Every great House of the Landsraad has a hidden cache of family atomics."
- shrimp_emoji 5y agoThe only way to be safe without nukes is to have some kind of "world police", but nobody wants that (especially naive populists).
- hirundo 5y agoAnd then the danger is from the world police.
- calyth2018 5y agoIt's rational to do so, even if there are pressing issues within. And of course, the world's going to say any country wishing to do that is insane.
- tibbydudeza 5y agoNorth Korea is actually right - promises and agreements are worth their weight on paper.
- lenkite 5y agoRussia considers the Budapest Memorandum as broken far earlier - after the Euromaidan coup/revolution (depending on your point of view).
- robert_foss 5y agoHow convenient for Russia.
- yucky 5y agoYeah I believe their argument from day 1 has been that was fomented and partially financed by the US, and that their "meddling in 2016" was a response to that.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoPutin considers any agreement as toilet paper when sized up beside his white supremacist ambitions.
- bko 5y agoIs there a list of countries that underwent some major form of disarnament? I know Libya also had chemical and nuclear program that they gave up, only to be overthrown by the West in 2011 From just a few examples in my head, disarnament doesn't work out compared to holding on to your capabilities. Can anyone more knowledge comment on the track record of disarnament? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syria_and_weapons_of_mass_dest...
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- robert_foss 5y agoSo Ukraine agreed to denuclearization in exchange for having it's borders recognized and protected by the US and Russia. It is rather clear the an agreement written by the US is not worth the paper ot os written on. Iran learned this about denuclearization. Ukraine learned it in 2014.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoUnless the US Congress passes a treaty with 2/3 vote, yeah it's pretty much useless when a different party president enters the scene. Then again Russia has shown it will not abide by any agreements under the same dictator it has had for 20 years.
- robert_foss 5y agoThe internal workings of the US is not relevant to the signing of any of the treaties. It may affect if the US chooses to uphold it's obligations, but the Budapest memorandum[1] was certainly signed by the US. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Securit...
- VictorPath 5y ago
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- kerneloftruth 5y agoIf Ukraine had kept its nukes it would have been destabilizing. It was a big concern at the fall of the Soviet union about all the "loose nukes" in the unstable, newly free former members. It was wisely deemed best to not have a bunch of new (unstable) nuclear states in the club. We keep calling it a "democracy" to invoke sentiment and sympathy. The fact is that they're quite corrupt, and them having nukes would have been foolish for Europe and everyone.
- Proven 5y ago
- mam4 5y ago