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Comment by 20after4 | Hacker News Reader

If you are sincere then I think this must be the most reckless, unhinged proposal I've read on this website.

Are you really literally suggesting to start a nuclear war with Russia?

It is quite logical. Budapest Memorandum signed in 1994 where UK, USA and Russia guaranteed sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine in exchange for nuclear weapons on Ukrainian soil which remained there after dissolution of USSR. If Russia wants to renege on Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine should get their nukes back.

Also you can see another side of the coin - Iran and DPRK would need to be insane to get rid of their nukes because only reason why big powers won't touch them is the nuclear poison pill, which Ukrainians gave up and look where they are.

The Budapest Memorandum was a way to force a potential* nuclear player and/or nuclear wildcard out of the game.

When you see it for what it is, giving Ukraine nuclear weapons is the last thing anyone (except internet posters) wants.

* They didn’t control the weapons, nor could they financially afford to maintain them.

Control is very relevant here. The hardest part of nuclear weapon - plutonium core - was there. The fact that you don't have access keys from electronics which controls explosives around the plutonium core is kind of non-issue for a state actor.

Trump wants everyone to get nuclear weapons. He wants a world of transactional big players and unreliable alliances with shakedowns. That is a world were everyone scrambles for a nuke, naturally. And pakistan is broke- you can get one there relatively cheap.

The USA and Israel regard Iran as enough of a threat that they won't allow it to obtain nuclear weapons. Strikes against Iranian nuclear facilities are one of the primary missions that B-2 bomber crews train for. There's no intent to seize Iranian territory, they'll just wreck everything and leave.

Sad to say but the only way to be taken seriously and avoid military incursions/invasions is to hold nuclear weapons.

I do wonder how nuclear disarmament will continue when it looks like obtaining nuclear arms is one of the few ways to truly achieve sovereignty and not rely on the benefactors of your neighbors.

Curious if anyone has reading materials about this.

Nuclear disarmament is over because, otherwise, you’re putting your nation’s sovereignty in the hands of the US electorate. Would you trust them with your life and future? I certainly wouldn’t.

If you can’t trust superpowers (including the US), you have to protect and defend yourself. That’s the nuclear way (and perhaps a bit more percentage of GDP towards defense for everyone).

In a civil world, it wouldn’t be necessary, but based on who keeps floating to the top of the power hierarchy, it’s mandatory. Maybe a nation worth trusting will rise again, but I’m not hopeful.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Si_vis_pacem,_para_bellum

Sad to say, but it's true. The US wasted the opportunity that was created by the end of the USSR.

My guess is, that if USA will keep playing around and pretend that Ukraine is somebody else's problem to solve, they will find out that Eastern Europe can make a nuke too. Then what is USA going to do? Sanction Europeans? Then there is no reason to continue sanctioning Iran from Europeans perspective for exactly same thing.

Which Eastern European country do you mean? Most are already NATO members. Of those that aren't, Belarus is already a Russian client state, Serbia is too far away, and Moldova is too poor to do anything.

What's the point of NATO membership, when chief elect is openly saying that he is not going to help if Russia will make move into Baltics.

Personally I would expect that Poland with cooperation with Czech Republic (they have whole nuclear research facility north of Prague) would be able to do it in short amount of time - less than 5 years.

90% chance they’re already hard at work on it for at least 2 years.

> chief elect is openly saying that he is not going to help if Russia will make move into Baltics.

What has Trump said about the Baltics?

I am sure that Poland would be eager to develop a nuclear arsenal. Countries like Germany, Italy and Turkey could also easily develop one if they thought that the NATO nuclear umbrella was unreliable.

France has nukes... And my semi-educated guess would be, a NATO where a Putin-puppet leaves a US-shaped hole might get France exporting its nukes to the east quickly, in exchange for some clout.

No it's suggesting giving Ukraine effective deterrent power, which is the opposite of nuclear war.

What deterrent? Putin doesn't care about that and would use those warheads (largest stockpile of warheads) if necessary even as soon as Ukraine tries to attempt to get a deterrent.

It is bad enough that the US is already in a proxy war and that does not help at all and arming Ukraine with nuclear warheads just further escalates the risk into another world war.

The US is in a proxy war akin to the French role in the US's founding war, the revolution. But different, in that the fear is that one defeated country dominoes into a wider European and cross Atlantic war, i.e. ww3. Not protecting Ukrainian sovereignity is seen as not protecting polish or Romanian independence. It isn't seen like Vietnam; it is seen as China after the mukden incident or Czechoslovakia had they fought a Nazi invasion.

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