re: ABC: Ukraine Agrees to Terms of US Peace Deal

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Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.

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We should have let Ukraine keep their nukes.

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Was never happening, they didn't have the codes, and there would have been war in 1994 if they didn't give them up.

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There is a war going on now, so obviously it didnt work.

Nukes are the ultimate deterrent and peacekeeper.

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Yea, but they didn't have the codes to any of them,

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seems like that could be worked around.

All they really need is the warheads.

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To make a Dirty Bomb?

We would have tomahawked them in a heartbeat.

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What are you talking about? I'm talking about something that happened 3 decades ago when Ukraine gave up their nukes (at our behest)

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Again, what are they going to do with said warhead.

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Buy or build a delivery vehicle.

Codes are old school. They have a new system now.

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Buy or build a delivery vehicle.

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What in the hell?

From who in 1994?

But the main problem is the nukes WONT GO OFF.

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Codes are old school. They have a new system now.

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in 1994...

There would have been war in weeks if they decided to not give them up.

Your assumptions about the technology are completely wrong.

Like in every way, that's not how it actually works.

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They should have kept their nukes and told us to pound sand

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They would have been attacked by Russia immediately and probably the US as well, they were well aware of that.

Read up on it, no one saw Ukraine as the good guy, they would have been a pariah state, swiftly becoming Russian again.

They only faced little external threat because they denuked.

It was made very clear during Budapest.

If Mexico separated from us I'm quite positive them keeping a single nuke would be a line in the sand for us.

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I think your timeline is out of whack.

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https://lieber.westpoint.edu/budapest-memorandums-history-role-conflict/

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Both Russia and the United States recoiled at the notion of a nuclear-armed Ukraine. Additionally, although somewhat controversial within domestic political discourse, many in Ukraine supported relinquishment of its nuclear arsenal. Indeed, in its 1990 Declaration of State Sovereignty, Ukraine asserted its “intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that … adheres to three nuclear free principles: to accept, to produce and to purchase no nuclear weapons.” Almost immediately after Ukraine gained independence, the three States began discussing how Ukraine would transfer the nuclear weapons from its territory.

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No one liked it

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Each of the three states had its own reasons for pursuing the transfers. The United States aimed to eliminate or remove nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory “as part of a broader effort to ensure that the break-up of the Soviet Union did not increase the number of nuclear weapons states.” Similarly, Russia’s goal was to consolidate the Soviet nuclear arsenal on Russian territory, so that “Russia emerged as the sole-post-Soviet nuclear weapons state.” (After the Soviet Union fell, Russia quickly came to agreements with the other former Soviet republics, including Belarus and Kazakhstan, on transfer of Soviet nuclear weapons from those States to Russia).

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https://www.belfercenter.org/publication/budapest-memorandum-25-between-past-and-future

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In 1992-1993, Ukraine, concerned about its security vis-a-vis Russia, as well as about getting a fair deal, had real misgivings about surrendering its nuclear inheritance. While operational control over nuclear arms in Ukraine remained in Moscow and Ukraine lacked key elements of a nuclear weapons program, it possessed the scientific and technological capacity to develop the missing links in a relatively short time. Indeed, in mid-1993, many units of the Strategic Rocket Forces that were on Ukraine’s territory, including those with physical custody of nuclear warheads, took Ukrainian military oaths. Reports emerged that Ukraine has been making attempts to gain control over the nuclear control systems.

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They made some effort to

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President Bush announced unilateral arms control measures to consolidate and de-alert nuclear forces, in the hope, quickly realized, that Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev would take reciprocal action.4 Among other things, the PNIs provided for the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons to central storage facilities, which allowed Moscow to remove all tactical nuclear weapons from the non-Russian republics by May 1992.

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But the tactical ones were gone by 1992

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In view of Russia’s breach of the Budapest Memorandum and the insufficient Western response, many in Ukraine and some in the West believe that Ukraine would be better off today had it kept a nuclear deterrent. On the anniversary of the Budapest Memorandum, Ukrainian newspapers described it as the greatest “treason” in Ukraine’s history.20 This line of reasoning, however, erroneously assumes that a world in which Ukraine became a nuclear power would have remained unchanged in every other way. A number of conference participants pointed out that Ukraine’s effort to take control of those weapons in the 1990s would have incurred major risks to Ukraine’s security and sovereignty, as well as major economic and political costs.

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It would have been ugly

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The United States and Europe made clear that for Ukraine to acquire control of nuclear weapons would mean violating the NPT, as well as Ukraine’s own initial pledge to become a non-nuclear state.21 Desperately needed economic assistance, International Monetary Fund and World Bank restructuring funds, and military cooperation within NATO’s Partnership for Peace program would not have been forthcoming.

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Financial issues

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Russia, too, would not have been a passive bystander. At the very least, it would have sought to sabotage Ukraine’s nuclear weapons program or to co-opt it into its military-strategic realm; at the worst, it might have used military force to prevent a nuclear-armed Ukraine on its border. Very possibly, Ukraine would not be an independent country today if it had sought to seize control of nuclear weapons then. Nuclear disarmament was a geopolitical choice by Ukraine’s leaders: painful though it might have been, it enabled the emergence of Ukraine as an independent state and a strategic partner to the West.

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And finally, Russia would have moved.

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It was made very clear during Budapest.

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