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Who was going to invade South Africa? Ukraine proved you should keep them.
by FrustratedMonky 3y ago
Who was going to invade South Africa?
Ukraine proved you should keep them.
- alephnerd 3y agoThere are 2 existential crises that every country risks: 1. The worry of invasion 2. The worry of implosion South Africa in the 1990s was at a very risk of imploding into civil war. Access to nuclear weapons would have made this risk of implosion even worse. This was a similar worry most of the world had about Ukraine and Kazakhstan after the USSR collapsed - look at what happened to Tajikistan, Georgia, Moldova, Armenia, and Azerbaijan in the 1990s. Hell, there was even an attempted coup in Moscow in the 1990s. The fewer countries that have nuclear weapons, the easier it is to decrease the chances of the next conflict (war or civil war) using nuclear weapons.
- fractallyte 3y agoBut trusting Russia with stewardship of nuclear weapons, all the while knowing its deplorable record with regards to its neighbors? That was a colossal geopolitical mistake, and the consequences were predictable. And I would posit that the aim of limiting countries with nuclear weapons is simplistic. If a nuclear power decides to terrorize a non-nuclear, but industrially advanced neighbor, the victim is likely to acquire a nuclear capability, one way or another, either now or in the future. It hasn't happened yet with Ukraine, but I believe it is inevitable. Furthermore, that nuclear capability will come with a (justified) grudge. I would certainly want to vaporize my bully. The end result is that the probability of nuclear conflict has increased, not decreased.