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Ukraine had nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union. They were persuaded to get rid of them. I don't think you're disagreeing with me, you're just c
by sanderjd 1y ago
Ukraine had nuclear weapons after the fall of the Soviet Union. They were persuaded to get rid of them.
I don't think you're disagreeing with me, you're just comparing to a more recent status quo.
Nuclear non-proliferation was based on the idea that small countries didn't need their own nuclear weapons, because they could ally with a superpower / bloc with nuclear weapons, and piggy-back on those superpowers not wanting to go to war, to avoid nuclear confrontation.
It is true that some countries, like Israel and North Korea, never bought that idea, and went ahead and got their own nukes.
That those countries who didn't buy into non-proliferation have fared better in the last couple decades than the ones on your list who have been attacked with little repercussion, is exactly the point.
Ukraine was willing to give up its nukes decades ago, now it's clear they shouldn't have. Iran was willing to enter into a non-proliferation agreement a decade ago, now it's clear they shouldn't.
But this is a much worse equilibrium than if we could have actually made non-proliferation work. Now every small country should clearly be trying to build nuclear weapons, if they can. And I think that's bad.
- 827a 1y ago> Nuclear non-proliferation was based on the idea that small countries didn't need their own nuclear weapons, because they could ally with a superpower / bloc with nuclear weapons There are dozens of examples of denuclearized countries that are, today, at near-zero risk of being attacked or invaded, possibly because of their political and economic relationship with the United States. Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, many others, these are all countries that do not have nukes, have a great political and economic relationship with the US, and are currently at 0% risk of attack or invasion by our shared enemies (ok, you can put Taiwan at slightly higher than 0%). Ukraine never had this kind of relationship. They tried to play both sides with their denuclearization agreement; that's what screwed them. Other countries picked a side when they denuclearized. Statistically: There are, I believe, zero examples of a US political or economic ally being attacked or invaded, regardless of their nuclearization status, post-Vietnam. The only example of anyone who is remotely close to this is Taiwan, and even that's very far away from igniting.
- voytec 1y ago> Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, many others (...) have a great political and economic relationship with the US, and are currently at 0% risk of attack or invasion I'm sorry, are you from the past? You literally listed Canada which Trump threatened with invasion. The U.S. has no stable economic relationship with any country under the current administration and won't regain the trust for years or decades to come. There's just these two quite different non-economic relations - not relationships - Israel and Russian Federation. The latter may even be Trump's hallucination but I'm giving him a benefit of the doubt. He finds common language with warmongering dictators.
- sanderjd 1y ago> Taiwan, Japan, Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, many others, these are all countries that do not have nukes, have a great political and economic relationship with the US, and are currently at 0% risk of attack or invasion by our shared enemies (ok, you can put Taiwan at slightly higher than 0%). Including Taiwan in this list is hilarious. Poland, Canada, Spain, Australia, and others, are certainly reevaluating the wisdom of their current strategy. That's the whole point I'm making.
- 827a 1y agoNo they aren't. Literally none of them are. You just made all that up. Poland has said that they want nukes, but their specific ask was that US nukes be hosted on their soil; not that they want sovereign nukes under their own control, that the public has heard.
- chasd00 1y agoIirc Ukraine had nukes but no way to use them. They didn’t have the keys so to speak so they were basically a storage location. The nukes were worthless as a deterrent.
- sanderjd 1y agoIt would have been easier to solve that problem than to spin up an entire nuclear weapons capability from scratch.