| ▲ | davedx 10 hours ago |
| Don’t forget Ukraine - gave up their nukes and look what happened |
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| ▲ | lIl-IIIl 9 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| They never really had them. They were in Ukraine but Moscow had control. |
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| ▲ | varjag 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | This is a minor distinction. In they end they all set off by pyrotechnic charges. Authorization sequence is nothing an industrial power can't get around. | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | You seem to completely misunderstand why the entire world wanted Ukraine to get rid of their ICBMs. 1) They could not operate them. It isn't just about authorization sequence, it's about having all of the required electronics. You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs. All of those were in Moscow hands. Even if Ukraine could ignite them, it could not launch them or set their paths, etc. 2) They did not have the budget to guard them, let alone maintain them, even less reverse engineer. The biggest risk was that rough states with deep pockets would buy those rockets on the black market (and Ukraine notably sold out most of their soviet arsenal). 3) Thus, the only real asset was the nuclear material itself. An asset that was more likely going to end up on the black market than do anything useful for Ukraine's defense. | | |
| ▲ | varjag 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | There's so much wrong you crammed into just three points am at loss to even where should I start. The value of nuclear weapons is in the warheads not delivery vehicles. Even then Ukraine absolutely could maintain a trimmed down nuclear arsenal with the missiles/engines serviced by Yuzhmash. After all bare ass Russia did it in the 1990s somehow. All the American financing of nuclear security to Russia would have been proportionally redirected to Ukraine. Then, Ukraine possessed a stockpile of highly enriched uranium all way until 2011. It was indeed sold off under Yanukovich to a rogue state though: Russia. There is one huge drawback to not signing the memorandum: Lukashenka's Belarus (another signatory) would have also kept the nukes. This is however never brought up by the memorandum fans and non-proliferation enjoyers on the Internet precisely because it's not something they would have minded. | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > There's so much wrong you crammed into just three points am at loss to even where should I start. There's nothing wrong, what I wrote literally comes from official declassified documents and reports, you can read what insiders had to say. Ukrainians didn't want them, feared their meltdown and their inability to even just maintain them. The rest of the world knew they were bound to end up in a rogue's actor hands very soon. https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/sites/default/files/2024-01/slate.... https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/ukraine-illuminated... | | |
| ▲ | varjag 2 hours ago | parent [-] | | Ukraine was presented a carrot large enough to go along with it. This has nothing to do with its technical ability, as it remained a spacefaring nation throughout the recession years. Either way you seem to contradict yourself. On one hand Ukraine, then a major owner of former Soviet military industrial complex could not maintain or use the weapons. On the other you insist unspecified rogue actors would be skilled enough to maintain and use them. Make up your mind. So the rest of the world did not know anything, as the perfect safety record of enriched nuclear fuel in Ukraine illustrates. They did want for the nukes to end up in Russia for the proliferation fears and convenience of negotiating with one power. The decision turned out ultimately misguided, contributing to the unraveling of the postwar world order we see today (ironically including the proliferation of nuclear technology to the rogue states). Bill Clinton, about as insider as it gets have expressed his regrets about it last year. |
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| ▲ | kevin_thibedeau 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > You need satellites that point and guide the ICBMs. No you don't. Cold war ICBMs all used intertial guidance. The most advanced in the form of the MX had a max CEP of 90 m. | |
| ▲ | krzyk 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Don't forget, but keeping nukes in Ukraine, would mean that Russia would get less of them. | | |
| ▲ | cmcaleer 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | It wasn't really particularly material whether Russia had 30,000 nukes or 32,000 nukes in 1994. It was material if other states got the components that were in those 2,000 nukes. |
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| ▲ | Braxton1980 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Could they have jerryrigged them?
For example load one into a truck (similar to the recent drone incident), drive it to the Kremlim, and then force a detonation? | |
| ▲ | varispeed 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Really? 1) Nukes were built mostly by Ukrainian engineers. They would do just fine. They could also build and launch satellites if needed. 2) So Ukraine couldn't launch them because they needed electronics and satellites, but some rogue state with deep pocket could? Okay. 3) Of course! Comrade, that is Russian propaganda you are disseminating here. |
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| ▲ | cromka 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Then why would they need a full Budapest memorandum with co-signees if Moscow could just take them back? This sounds ridiculous. | | |
| ▲ | varjag 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It was indeed because there was no legal foundation for Russian ownership of all Soviet nuclear assets, no matter how every other nuclear power wanted it at the time. | | |
| ▲ | epolanski 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | By the way a "memorandum" is a document that forms no legal foundation at all. |
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| ▲ | dlahoda 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | because rockets to be transported to russkies back. if they would not sign, some bad things could happened along the way. |
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| ▲ | TiredOfLife 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | And Ukraine built them. | | | |
| ▲ | libertine 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That's a recurring Russian propaganda point, which is easily verifiable as a lie. Even basic logic - Ukraine had the technical know-how to do whatever they wanted with the nukes. Moscow didn't have control, at best on paper - if they had control, there was no need for the Budapest Memorandum. I keep debunking this propaganda point over and over again lol |
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| ▲ | justsomehnguy 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Not theirs and you conveniently omit everything what happened in between, including the giant amounts of money directly and indirectly poured into it. |
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| ▲ | o_m 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | What do you mean it was not theirs? The Soviet Union was dissolved and split into multiple states. Russia is not the Soviet Union, just another part of the former Soviet Union like Ukraine. | | |
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| ▲ | walterlw 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| Now every country that has the capacity to get a strategic deterrent will race to get one. So much for Biden's escalation management. Too bad Trump likes Russia so much he does everything not to step on their toes. With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now. |
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| ▲ | b33j0r 7 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | My counter-argument to norms being the main deterrent is simple. It’s never going to get easier to hide an Oak Ridge in your rogue state. The industrial scale of uranium enrichment has a fundamental limit, no matter how you do it. You have to process massive piles of mass into a very small fraction. And you have to collect all those rocks. And that’s just for fission. As long as any country with preemptive strike capability exists, and satellites exist… I just don’t see how anyone could do it. | | | |
| ▲ | averageRoyalty 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Genuine question, if the US has that capability and Trump is the issue, why didn't Biden do what was needed to make the war over? | | |
| ▲ | walterlw 8 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Biden took the approach of keeping 10 pairs of gloves on when dealing with Russia. Don't help too little not to make it too easy for the russians, don't help to much to avoid escalation. | | |
| ▲ | averageRoyalty 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | I understand and agree with that. But you said "With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now.". If that was viable, why would Biden not have done so during the years he had? |
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| ▲ | 7 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | [deleted] | |
| ▲ | lazide 9 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | The US has every incentive to turn Ukraine into Russia’s Vietnam. |
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| ▲ | FpUser 8 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | >"With a heftier backing from the US the Russo-Ukrainian war would be over by now." And you know this how? Accordingly to all those initial predictions Russia should be already disintegrated and fallen under heavy sanctions, Putin's regime replaced etc. etc. I suspect all these analytics and think tanks should be cleaning toilets instead. Also there is a line in that backing crossing which may lead to an all out nuclear war. Rational countries that matter understandably do not want to test it unless their existence is really threatened. |
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