> The continual attack on the sovereignty of countries around the world has made nuclear weapons one of the few ways to
Name the other countries pursuing a nuclear weapon. Maybe you are drumming up a fear that nobody else really has.
Name the other countries pursuing a nuclear weapon. Maybe you are drumming up a fear that nobody else really has.
- North Korea
- Israel
- India
- Pakistan
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.
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.
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?
Yes? Are you really sitting here telling South Korea, Japan, Germany, and more that they’re not sovereign nations because they choose to have American military bases on their home soil?
> India and Pakistan were late 90s.
Source please
India worked on them on and off for decades and first tested one in 1998, and IIRC Pakistan matched them soon after.
North Korea was in the 2000s.
> 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.
I'm not going through the comment correcting all of it.
Yea, why bother when you're peddling misinformation?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smiling_Buddha
> North Korea was in the 2000s.
Yes supported by Russia and China they got the keys they needed for the delivery mechanism (ballistic missiles). But the problem with North Korea is they threatened to kill hundreds of thousands of people in South Korea if anyone stopped them from building their bomb. South Korea didn't want that to happen and China would have fought against American forces had we tried anything in North Korea. Not much we can do.
For anyone unfamiliar with the topic, I encourage them to lookup when India, Pakistan, and North Korea developed nuclear weapons - you will find the answers in an instant.
Yes, like India successfully tested their first nuclear weapon in 1974, not 1998 like you are asserting.
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.
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.
What split of Soviet debt obligations? Russia took over all Soviet foreign debt, as well as all the foreign assets
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.