They don't announce their secret nuclear weapons programs before they are complete (though they are sometimes discovered), but some countries have violated international law and developed them, precisely to protect their sovereignty:

  - North Korea
  - Israel
  - India
  - Pakistan

All retain their sovereignty, though I can't prove any causal effect and certainly nuclear weapons isn't the only cause.

Others have pursued them, includng Libya, South Africa, etc. Libya agreed to surrender their program, and then their government was deposed with Western help. Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons (left over from being occupied by the USSR) in exchange for peace from Russia, and you can see what happened. That doesn't encourage the next person to give up theirs.

▲ ericmay an hour ago | parent | next [-]

India and Pakistan both rushed their programs back in the 40s/50s ( or maybe later I can't recall off the top of my head). Libya and South Africa were negotiated away. That leaves Israel probably from the, what, 70s or 80s? And North Korea was supported by Russia and China. I'm not sure you could consider any of those countries to be "pursuing nuclear weapons" today. Plus by that logic you'd have to throw in the US, UK, China, Soviets, and France too.

So when you sort of set aside countries from prior to, idk, 1980s ish you don't really have anyone at least publicly (to your point) pursuing nuclear weapons. However it's not just the enrichment of uranium which is tightly controlled it's also the missile technology to deliver the weapons. Keeping a nuclear program secret these days I think is quite a bit more difficult than in the past.

So when you look around today you've got Iran that we know of pursuing a nuclear program. I'm not sure anyone else is by virtue of how difficult (I think?) it would be to do so undetected. Though there are countries (Japan and Korea come to mind) who we think have the ability to scale up a program very quickly.

	▲	drTobiasFunke 9 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		India and Pakistan were late 90s. Japan and South Korea literally have 100s of American military bases on their territory. You really think they are sovereign nations who can pursue an independent nuclear program?

▲ nwellnhof an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons

Ukraine never had nuclear weapons. Russia is the sole legal successor of the USSR and these were all Russian nukes on Ukrainian territory.

> in exchange for peace from Russia

There isn't a single mention of nuclear weapons in the Budapest Memorandum.

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badc0ffee an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Ukraine never had nuclear weapons. Russia is the sole legal successor of the USSR and these were all Russian nukes on Ukrainian territory.

Structuring the breakup so that the nukes are Russia's is not really different than Ukraine giving up the nukes on its territory.

Where did they draw the line? Obviously not all USSR assets are now Russian assets, as Ukraine still has (or had) its own stockpile of Soviet era weapons, and other things like Soviet era airfields.

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saxonww an hour ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> There isn't a single mention of nuclear weapons in the Budapest Memorandum.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170312052208/http://www.cfr.or...

Points 4 and 5 mention and are about use of nuclear weapons.

I think the memorandum was intended to be a security guarantee to Ukraine after they (and Belarus, and Kazakhstan) joined the NPT and transferred formerly-Soviet nuclear weapons to the Russian Federation. I don't know why anyone would suggest otherwise.

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qlte an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

This is over simplified to the point of being misleading/wrong. Russia was the legal successor of the USSR for purposes of diplomatic continuity, but the other Soviet successor states divided portions of the Soviet military/equipment, split Soviet debt obligations, etc on a case by case basis.

	▲	ericmay an hour ago \| parent [-]
		Nuclear weapons are a special case though. Plus Ukraine didn't have the ability to use them anyway without launch codes as far as I'm aware.

▲ riffraff an hour ago | parent | prev [-]

I believe Israel also didn't announce they have nukes, it's just mostly assumed they do.