Quote:
Originally Posted by burn_this_city
We can haggle over assurance vs guarantee, but this is precisely what paved the way for the invasion. Ukraine was hesitant to relinquish their arsenal but was cajoled into doing so with assurances on sovereignty, territorial integrity, and some form of military assistance from the UN security council.
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It's not a small distinction, as the US made it quite clear during negotiations for it that they were never willing to offer security guarantees to Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. I mean why would they? Russia was trying to get its weapons back and the US had an interest in preventing nuclear proliferation, but that doesn't mean they would offer security guarantees to every country who might try to get access to nuclear weapons. Whatever assurances they were offering to those countries were clearly spelled out, and were tantamount to a non-aggression pact. I mean, if Russia invaded Belarus tomorrow, do you think the UK and US are obligated to defend Belarus because of the Budapest Memorandum?
And the relatively weak assurances aren't too surprising, because Ukraine (as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan) wasn't really giving up all that much in the context of the time. They never really had a nuclear arsenal, at least in any way that could provide deterrence. The weapons were based in Ukraine, but the codes and infrastructure to maintain and use them were in Russian leadership's hands, both before and after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. It's possible that over a long enough time period they could have bypassed the blocking devices and created their own delivery systems for warheads, but that would have been difficult and likely would have severely impacted their standing with other countries. The bigger incentive for Ukraine was the billions in debt forgiveness and guaranteed access to fuel for their nuclear reactors that came along with the agreement.