> However, just a couple of nukes could have avoided this whole fiasco. Yes. Or it could have resulted in Ukraine using the same weapons to blackmail its neig

> However, just a couple of nukes could have avoided this whole fiasco. Yes. Or it could have resulted in Ukraine using the same weapons to blackmail its neighbors in the same way Russia is doing now. The point to the decision was risk management. There were zero "good" options for what to do with the USSR nuclear arsenal. But leaving it all under the unitary control of a giant established military bureaucracy that had managed not to blow up the world for 50 years seemed "less bad" than just handing them out like candy to all the follow-on bootstrapped governments.