Any western government or leader surprised that Ukraine is now talking about developing their own nuclear weapons program needs to understand that they wouldn’t even be considering that if we had just fucking held up our end of the deal.

With the Budapest Memorandum, they surrendered their (former Soviet) nukes in exchange for security guarantees. The guarantees ended up being worth less than the paper they were written on. Ergo, Ukraine, seeking security guarantees on its own terms, feels compelled to re-develop nuclear weapons technology, because that’s a guarantee nobody’s going to be able to forcibly take from you once you have it.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

We did hold up our end.

We brought it before the UNSC, Russia vetoed any proposal. That was our agreement, Russia did not hold up theirs.

This is why the VETO power needs to go.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Unfortunately, without the veto power I expect the nuclear-armed countries would just leave the UN and it would lose what little usefulness it still has.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

Test that argument and build something better if it holds true?

Btw, peer pressure works on countries too!

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