7 ms·

Thus two messages for every other country: 1. Make nukes, never give up on those regardless of what assurances of safety you get 2. If you are bigger and stro

by nuccy 2y ago

Thus two messages for every other country: 1. Make nukes, never give up on those regardless of what assurances of safety you get 2. If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more Lets see where all this will bring the world to in the next 10 years or a generation.

UncleOxidant 2y ago
> Lets see where all this will bring the world to in the next 10 years or a generation. We've seen this movie before. It doesn't go well.
ndidowneb 2y ago
[flagged]
- bigyabai 2y ago
  Does the Budapest Memorandum ring any bells?
  - 0rzech 2y ago
    In the Budapest Memorandum USA promised not to attack Ukraine if it gives back Russian nukes to Russia. They kept the promise. In the same memorandum Russia promised the same thing. They broke the promise. Repeatedly. Nonetheless, I agree that more countries should develop their own nukes. Especially the ones like Poland, Baltics and Nordics. Not because it's a good thing to do, but because the world is what it is.
    - antman 2y ago
      The memorandum also said they would provide assistance, they are not keeping that promise.
      - nradov 2y ago
        The Budapest Memorandum basically only required the USA to bring any violations to the UN Security Council, which we did in 2022. I think we have a moral obligation to continue providing military aid and diplomatic assistance but there is no legal obligation to do anything more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
        0rzech 2y ago
        That's right. And let's not forget that Europe and USA have been helping directly for a few years now anyway. It's really disappointing how much misinformation gets reiterated on the Internet with regards to this memorandum, given how short the document is and how easy it is to verify its contents oneself. PS. NATO's Article 5 is also worth a read. It does not guarantee what is commonly claimed.
        Wololooo 2y ago
        Let's not go there. In the history of the Alliance there is only a single country that invoked article 5, and it was the US with 9/11 that lead to the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand to send resources and troops to help with Afghanistan. And managed to get people involved in Iraq namely United Kingdom, Australia, Poland. And this situation was way worse and way less called for than the Ukrainians defending themselves... EDIT/NB: I listed just the major contributors, some other countries participated in different ways and at different levels, but still this is important to mention here...
        Gud 2y ago
        There was a lot more nations in Afghanistan than those listed, including many non Article 5. When the US requested assistance, Europe provided.
        Wololooo 2y ago
        Yes, it was a non exhaustive list and I should have mentioned it...
  - EGreg 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - hkpack 2y ago
      As Ukrainian, I can say that you don’t understand anything. Some data points might be correct, but you have not enough data to connect the dots, so you make wrong conclusions. Russia was threatening with invading Ukraine right from the beginning of its recent independence. There were two large schools of thoughts how to deal with it: 1) try to “go around rain drops” by not provoking Russia but simultaneously to not give up sovereignty 2) move as fast as possible and seek protection from NATO like baltics and other eastern europeans. When Russia starts regaining power internally, it became much harder to “go around raindrops”, as russia start to perform FSB style operation to discredit Ukraine in the west and to enforce its will on the inside. Kravchuk (2nd president), falls the victim of that when Ukraine was accused of selling weapons to counties under sanctions, which made him a pariah in the west. Later he was accused of ordering of killing a journalist which made him a pariah on the inside. Also it was time when Russia tried to make the first attempt of annexing Crimea by trying to get first island near it - (Tusla). Kuchma was able to make some agreement with russia a relax the tensions. Then russia decided that the next president have to be Yanukovych - a criminal with served jail time. An opposed politician was Yuschenko, who was famous for his reforms on the national bank and was considered by the time a successful manager and politician. What’s worse, Russia helped to rig the elections and later poison Yuschenko with dioxin. This caused a first revolution. Yuschinko understood very well what he was dealing with and saw the only salvation from NATO as the threats from Russia increased. And so on, and so forth. US was not in favor of Ukrainian independence for a very long time and never helped in any way, except for disarming. The first time US president arrived to Ukraine was to talk the parliament out of proclaiming independence. Europe was always afraid of russia and very careful with Ukraine. Russia was always threatening and tried to regain control over Ukraine - both politically, by sabotage, special operations and military. Ukraine was looking for help and screaming that russia will attack sooner or later. Ukraine consider itself to be part of Europe by values, and is fighting russia for more than a century already paying huge price. NATO was considered the only way to finally stop this cycle, but with US withdrawing, it may seems that all of the struggle was in vain as Europe might not be capable to protect even itself.
EGreg 2y ago
Well, in the 90s Clinton negotiated the Agreed framework with North Korea not to get nukes in exchange for lowering sanctions. Then Bush admin called it "appeasement" and let it die. Then NK got nukes. Obama's admin negotiated the JCPOA deal with Iran, same thing. They put the most inspectors ever in any country to make sure Iran doesn't get nukes. Trump's admin then unilaterally ended it. Tom Cotton and Republicans openly warned Iran during Obama's admin that the US is fickle and will change its policy as soon as administrations change. This has been going on ever since treaties with the Native Americans ("white man speaks with forked tongue") but the Cotton letter was refreshingly honest: https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-and-46-fellow-senators-to-send-open-letter-to-the-leaders-of-the-islamic-republic-of-iran https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-and... The messages for every country to get nukes have been loud and clear, but no country has done it in the southern hemisphere, for instance. Even though USA had been involved in regime change or invasions of almost all of them in the last 80 years: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-interventions-1991/ https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-i...
- cratermoon 2y ago
  > no country has done it in the southern hemisphere, for instance South Africa
  - EGreg 2y ago
    Well, they dismantled them all. So it’s back to 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma...
    - cratermoon 2y ago
      Yes but that's not what you asserted. In addition to South Africa, Balarus and Kazakhstan gave up their programs at the same time as Ukraine, for the same reasons.
mewpmewp2 2y ago
Also Europe will have to increase its nuclear arsenal since it is clear that Europe can't no longer rely on US. Europe was too trusting for too long.
- seanmcdirmid 2y ago
  They could ally with China. The Chinese are only frenemies with Russia anyways, and they make way much more money trading with the rest of Europe.
  - rsynnott 2y ago
    Perhaps surprisingly, Europe has more nuclear weapons than China (France: 290 warheads, UK: 225 warheads, China: 500 warheads). China never really bought into the mutually assured destruction doctrine in the same way that the US and Soviet Union did.
    - gruez 2y ago
      Their stockpile is estimated to grow to 1500 by 2035. https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240817_EPC348.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...
    - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
      I don’t think the Chinese have been sitting still for the last 10 years, and I doubt they will sit still for the next 10 years.
      - rsynnott 2y ago
        I mean, see Doctor Strangelove. If you have a doomsday weapon, that’s only helpful if you _tell_ people about it! If China had built loads of warheads, they’d hardly keep that secret, as most of these point of having loads of warheads is for everyone else to know you had them. Realistically, by the time China and France got on the nuclear scene, doctrine had shifted from “nuclear torpedos, nuclear guns, nuclear landmines, nuclear everything” to “you have some submarines with missiles; you can have other stuff if you want, but no-one cares about it”. There’s little point in having thousands of warheads, these days. (The UK did briefly go down the ‘nuclear everything’ road, but pulled back for cost/sanity reasons)
bobongo 2y ago
There will be a world war within the next 3 years, not 10.
- moi2388 2y ago
  There already is. It’s just done through non-conventional means, hybrid warfare and proxies, since all superpowers have nukes now.
  - DanielVZ 2y ago
    Also the cyberspace, where Trump just recently surrendered to Moscow as well.
Terr_ 2y ago
With respect to how Ukraine yielded up nukes while Russia gave "assurances" that they would respect Ukrainian borders [0], Putin has claimed it doesn't count now because it's a different Ukraine. If that's really how he feels, then it's time to expel the imposter "Russia" that's been falsely posing as a member of the United Nations Security Council, because it's not reeealy the USSR... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
TheSunSet 2y ago
This has been true since 1945
jesterson 2y ago
> If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more Rules never mattered in history. it's always up to strongest to impose their version of "fairness".
- notarobot123 2y ago
  It's not always the biggest and strongest. Sometimes it's the many. Rules matter as long as they are enforced. It's only when enforcement is asymmetrical that problems begin.
  - jesterson 2y ago
    As a matter of fact, strongest has the capacity to enforce rules. My statement still stands
- aprilthird2021 2y ago
  And the strongest used to have a better version of fairness for so long countries got complacent and didn't realize how quickly it could flip on them
josephstalinOk 2y ago
[flagged]
ozgrakkurt 2y ago
[flagged]
- deeviant 2y ago
  That is incorrect, standard Single-issue tunnel vision (which is very much promoted by Russian propaganda). NATO, with America leading, gave the world the longest stretch of relative peace it has ever seen. The next 80 years will not be the same, if we even survive it. Every major power will have to be nuclear, and every smaller power will be moving to it. Invasion of sovereign countries and Imperialism is going to spike. You think the world is just going to watch Russia invade and conquer a sovereign democratic nation and get away Scott-free and not want to do the same? Frankly, the true propaganda win of Russia wasn't with the red side, they were always easy to influence, but with their splitting of the blue side, carving off great sections of it into purity-testing irrelevancy.
  - jyscao 2y ago
    > NATO, with America leading, gave the world the longest stretch of relative peace it has ever seen. What an outrageous claim to make over the entirety of recorded human history.
jyscao 2y ago
> If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more In reality, that was always the case.
- codedokode 2y ago
  "International laws" are also a weird thing. There is no international parliament, international police and international court. I think the only viable agreements are of a kind "if you don't do A then we don't do B".
- Nathanba 2y ago
  >In reality, that was always the case. *while everybody made sure that they would band together to punish such behavior as the even bigger and stronger combined force
boruto 2y ago
Did the rules matter when hundreds of thousands of iraqi s were killed on lies?
JeremyNT 2y ago
Yes. If Ukraine kept the soviet nukes, they wouldn't be in this position. Non-proliferation - and relying on the benevolence of a few mercurial and spiteful superpowers - is, in hindsight, a horrible miscalculation.

by nuccy 2y ago

UncleOxidant 2y ago

> Lets see where all this will bring the world to in the next 10 years or a generation. We've seen this movie before. It doesn't go well.

ndidowneb 2y ago

[flagged]

bigyabai 2y ago
Does the Budapest Memorandum ring any bells?
- 0rzech 2y ago
  In the Budapest Memorandum USA promised not to attack Ukraine if it gives back Russian nukes to Russia. They kept the promise. In the same memorandum Russia promised the same thing. They broke the promise. Repeatedly. Nonetheless, I agree that more countries should develop their own nukes. Especially the ones like Poland, Baltics and Nordics. Not because it's a good thing to do, but because the world is what it is.
  - antman 2y ago
    The memorandum also said they would provide assistance, they are not keeping that promise.
    - nradov 2y ago
      The Budapest Memorandum basically only required the USA to bring any violations to the UN Security Council, which we did in 2022. I think we have a moral obligation to continue providing military aid and diplomatic assistance but there is no legal obligation to do anything more. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum
      - 0rzech 2y ago
        That's right. And let's not forget that Europe and USA have been helping directly for a few years now anyway. It's really disappointing how much misinformation gets reiterated on the Internet with regards to this memorandum, given how short the document is and how easy it is to verify its contents oneself. PS. NATO's Article 5 is also worth a read. It does not guarantee what is commonly claimed.
        Wololooo 2y ago
        Let's not go there. In the history of the Alliance there is only a single country that invoked article 5, and it was the US with 9/11 that lead to the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, Australia, Italy, New Zealand to send resources and troops to help with Afghanistan. And managed to get people involved in Iraq namely United Kingdom, Australia, Poland. And this situation was way worse and way less called for than the Ukrainians defending themselves... EDIT/NB: I listed just the major contributors, some other countries participated in different ways and at different levels, but still this is important to mention here...
        Gud 2y ago
        There was a lot more nations in Afghanistan than those listed, including many non Article 5. When the US requested assistance, Europe provided.
        Wololooo 2y ago
        Yes, it was a non exhaustive list and I should have mentioned it...
- EGreg 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - hkpack 2y ago
    As Ukrainian, I can say that you don’t understand anything. Some data points might be correct, but you have not enough data to connect the dots, so you make wrong conclusions. Russia was threatening with invading Ukraine right from the beginning of its recent independence. There were two large schools of thoughts how to deal with it: 1) try to “go around rain drops” by not provoking Russia but simultaneously to not give up sovereignty 2) move as fast as possible and seek protection from NATO like baltics and other eastern europeans. When Russia starts regaining power internally, it became much harder to “go around raindrops”, as russia start to perform FSB style operation to discredit Ukraine in the west and to enforce its will on the inside. Kravchuk (2nd president), falls the victim of that when Ukraine was accused of selling weapons to counties under sanctions, which made him a pariah in the west. Later he was accused of ordering of killing a journalist which made him a pariah on the inside. Also it was time when Russia tried to make the first attempt of annexing Crimea by trying to get first island near it - (Tusla). Kuchma was able to make some agreement with russia a relax the tensions. Then russia decided that the next president have to be Yanukovych - a criminal with served jail time. An opposed politician was Yuschenko, who was famous for his reforms on the national bank and was considered by the time a successful manager and politician. What’s worse, Russia helped to rig the elections and later poison Yuschenko with dioxin. This caused a first revolution. Yuschinko understood very well what he was dealing with and saw the only salvation from NATO as the threats from Russia increased. And so on, and so forth. US was not in favor of Ukrainian independence for a very long time and never helped in any way, except for disarming. The first time US president arrived to Ukraine was to talk the parliament out of proclaiming independence. Europe was always afraid of russia and very careful with Ukraine. Russia was always threatening and tried to regain control over Ukraine - both politically, by sabotage, special operations and military. Ukraine was looking for help and screaming that russia will attack sooner or later. Ukraine consider itself to be part of Europe by values, and is fighting russia for more than a century already paying huge price. NATO was considered the only way to finally stop this cycle, but with US withdrawing, it may seems that all of the struggle was in vain as Europe might not be capable to protect even itself.

EGreg 2y ago

Well, in the 90s Clinton negotiated the Agreed framework with North Korea not to get nukes in exchange for lowering sanctions. Then Bush admin called it "appeasement" and let it die. Then NK got nukes. Obama's admin negotiated the JCPOA deal with Iran, same thing. They put the most inspectors ever in any country to make sure Iran doesn't get nukes. Trump's admin then unilaterally ended it. Tom Cotton and Republicans openly warned Iran during Obama's admin that the US is fickle and will change its policy as soon as administrations change. This has been going on ever since treaties with the Native Americans ("white man speaks with forked tongue") but the Cotton letter was refreshingly honest: https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-and-46-fellow-senators-to-send-open-letter-to-the-leaders-of-the-islamic-republic-of-iran https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-and... The messages for every country to get nukes have been loud and clear, but no country has done it in the southern hemisphere, for instance. Even though USA had been involved in regime change or invasions of almost all of them in the last 80 years: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-interventions-1991/ https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-i...

cratermoon 2y ago
> no country has done it in the southern hemisphere, for instance South Africa
- EGreg 2y ago
  Well, they dismantled them all. So it’s back to 0 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Africa_and_weapons_of_ma...
  - cratermoon 2y ago
    Yes but that's not what you asserted. In addition to South Africa, Balarus and Kazakhstan gave up their programs at the same time as Ukraine, for the same reasons.

mewpmewp2 2y ago

Also Europe will have to increase its nuclear arsenal since it is clear that Europe can't no longer rely on US. Europe was too trusting for too long.

seanmcdirmid 2y ago
They could ally with China. The Chinese are only frenemies with Russia anyways, and they make way much more money trading with the rest of Europe.
- rsynnott 2y ago
  Perhaps surprisingly, Europe has more nuclear weapons than China (France: 290 warheads, UK: 225 warheads, China: 500 warheads). China never really bought into the mutually assured destruction doctrine in the same way that the US and Soviet Union did.
  - gruez 2y ago
    Their stockpile is estimated to grow to 1500 by 2035. https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240817_EPC348.png https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=8...
  - seanmcdirmid 2y ago
    I don’t think the Chinese have been sitting still for the last 10 years, and I doubt they will sit still for the next 10 years.
    - rsynnott 2y ago
      I mean, see Doctor Strangelove. If you have a doomsday weapon, that’s only helpful if you _tell_ people about it! If China had built loads of warheads, they’d hardly keep that secret, as most of these point of having loads of warheads is for everyone else to know you had them. Realistically, by the time China and France got on the nuclear scene, doctrine had shifted from “nuclear torpedos, nuclear guns, nuclear landmines, nuclear everything” to “you have some submarines with missiles; you can have other stuff if you want, but no-one cares about it”. There’s little point in having thousands of warheads, these days. (The UK did briefly go down the ‘nuclear everything’ road, but pulled back for cost/sanity reasons)

bobongo 2y ago

There will be a world war within the next 3 years, not 10.

moi2388 2y ago
There already is. It’s just done through non-conventional means, hybrid warfare and proxies, since all superpowers have nukes now.
- DanielVZ 2y ago
  Also the cyberspace, where Trump just recently surrendered to Moscow as well.

Terr_ 2y ago

With respect to how Ukraine yielded up nukes while Russia gave "assurances" that they would respect Ukrainian borders [0], Putin has claimed it doesn't count now because it's a different Ukraine. If that's really how he feels, then it's time to expel the imposter "Russia" that's been falsely posing as a member of the United Nations Security Council, because it's not reeealy the USSR... [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

TheSunSet 2y ago

This has been true since 1945

jesterson 2y ago

> If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more Rules never mattered in history. it's always up to strongest to impose their version of "fairness".

notarobot123 2y ago
It's not always the biggest and strongest. Sometimes it's the many. Rules matter as long as they are enforced. It's only when enforcement is asymmetrical that problems begin.
- jesterson 2y ago
  As a matter of fact, strongest has the capacity to enforce rules. My statement still stands
aprilthird2021 2y ago
And the strongest used to have a better version of fairness for so long countries got complacent and didn't realize how quickly it could flip on them

josephstalinOk 2y ago

[flagged]

ozgrakkurt 2y ago

[flagged]

deeviant 2y ago
That is incorrect, standard Single-issue tunnel vision (which is very much promoted by Russian propaganda). NATO, with America leading, gave the world the longest stretch of relative peace it has ever seen. The next 80 years will not be the same, if we even survive it. Every major power will have to be nuclear, and every smaller power will be moving to it. Invasion of sovereign countries and Imperialism is going to spike. You think the world is just going to watch Russia invade and conquer a sovereign democratic nation and get away Scott-free and not want to do the same? Frankly, the true propaganda win of Russia wasn't with the red side, they were always easy to influence, but with their splitting of the blue side, carving off great sections of it into purity-testing irrelevancy.
- jyscao 2y ago
  > NATO, with America leading, gave the world the longest stretch of relative peace it has ever seen. What an outrageous claim to make over the entirety of recorded human history.

jyscao 2y ago

> If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more In reality, that was always the case.

codedokode 2y ago
"International laws" are also a weird thing. There is no international parliament, international police and international court. I think the only viable agreements are of a kind "if you don't do A then we don't do B".
Nathanba 2y ago
>In reality, that was always the case. *while everybody made sure that they would band together to punish such behavior as the even bigger and stronger combined force

boruto 2y ago

Did the rules matter when hundreds of thousands of iraqi s were killed on lies?

JeremyNT 2y ago

Yes. If Ukraine kept the soviet nukes, they wouldn't be in this position. Non-proliferation - and relying on the benevolence of a few mercurial and spiteful superpowers - is, in hindsight, a horrible miscalculation.