Great, more ways for people to die.
Was it a good thing that they could not successfully defend themselves?
"If no-one has weapons..." / "If people would just be nice..."
That is not the world we live in. We can only control what we do, not what other countries do.
The entire scenario rewrites 30 years of history, everything would be different. Would Russia have invaded? Would Ukraine have made itself more of an international player if it were on the list of nuclear powers? Would Ukraine have actually used nukes after an invasion? Could their allies have pressured Ukraine to avoid a nuclear war? Would Russia be in the same position or is today if Ukraine left the USSR as a nuclear power?
What you are saying is that Germany could use US nukes, and so is de facto a nuclear-armed nation, and so is any country that hosts US nukes.
> They were soviet nukes. They had as much control over them as Germany has over the US nukes parked in Germany.
The Soviet Union ceased to exist in 1991. We are talking about what happened after that.
You compared the situation with US nukes in Germany today. But that is not the same situation at all. The US has not ceased to exist like the Soviet Union did.
And if it did, it is far from obvious which US states will control the nukes in the mainland ex-USA. That would be the parallel with the Soviet Union and Ukraine/Russia. Not US nukes in a foreign state.
Do you not see a difference in comparing post-USSR Ukraine with Germany while allied with the very much alive US? Hosting US military installations that house nuclear weapons is very different from hosting abandoned nuclear weapons of a state actor that no longer exists.
Also, Ukraine was a significant engineering powerhouse while part of the Soviet Union, they had the people to both build and maintain nukes.
Who guarded the ex-Soviet nukes in Ukraine? Ukrainian troops, or Russian?
Since Russia had to negotiate to transfer the weapons from Ukraine to Russia, it stands to reason that Russia did not physically control them. Otherwise, it would just have transferred them on its own.
Do you have any sources to back up your claims in this thread?
If your greatest achievement ended up with a bunch of people dead - maybe there would have been more utility in self-destruction.
If you feel like defending cool missile tech to avoid offending a potential juicy customer - maybe you need to get your family bombed and remember that “skin in the game” can be literal.
If you think that violence is necessary - maybe you need to be in situation where violence is a possible outcome to remember no one wants it.
Everyone deserves the receiving end of their designs.
In other words, American Indians who were proud of their spears and axes should instead have embraced self-destruction.
Yikes.
My ancestors were vikings. Should their victims also have embraced self-destruction rather than make the best weapons they could to defend themselves from the vikings?
> maybe you need to be in situation where violence is a possible outcome to remember no one wants it.
Tell me more about how the vikings "didn't want violence"?