NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is proposing to establish a fund of allied contributions worth $100 billion over five years for Ukraine as part of a package for alliance leaders to sign off when they gather in Washington in July.
I’ve never read it directly, just seen this referenced, but I remember seeing something about it in a textbook (or something? That kind of paper), and an anti nuclear friend of the family holding Ukraine up as an example back in like the 90s.
That I don’t have a link or the exact text of a treaty on hand? Yeah. I don’t.
But Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons. So clearly something happened. Citing sources is a bitch on mobile, and ive never found it to convince anyone who wasn’t already receptive, so I don’t bother unless I’m on desktop.
Finally, Ukraine, as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan, obtained security assurances from the NPT depositary states in the now-infamous Budapest Memorandum signed on December 5, 1994 (see Budjeryn 2014). France and China extended similar assurances in separate statements. At the time, Ukrainian leaders knew full well that these assurances were not the legally binding guarantees they sought. This was not for the lack of trying on Ukraine’s part: negotiations on security guarantees had proceeded since mid-1992, but Ukrainians found it virtually impossible to exert from the United States the kind of security commitments it pledged to its NATO allies and strategic partners. Russia would agree to recognize Ukraine’s borders only within the borders of the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a condition Ukraine refused to accept and which was eventually lifted in the Budapest Memorandum. After the signature of the Memorandum, Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk stated: “If tomorrow Russia goes into Crimea, no one will even raise an eyebrow” (The Moscow Times 1994).
So they got promises but everyone knew how empty and bullshit they were at the time?
I still say the right thing to do is keep the promise yo do the good thing and protect the people who made the world overall safer by making themselves more vulnerable.
I’ve never read it directly, just seen this referenced, but I remember seeing something about it in a textbook (or something? That kind of paper), and an anti nuclear friend of the family holding Ukraine up as an example back in like the 90s.
That’s what I thought.
That I don’t have a link or the exact text of a treaty on hand? Yeah. I don’t.
But Ukraine doesn’t have nuclear weapons. So clearly something happened. Citing sources is a bitch on mobile, and ive never found it to convince anyone who wasn’t already receptive, so I don’t bother unless I’m on desktop.
From Was Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament a Blunder? by Mariana Budjeryn (emphasis added):
Finally, Ukraine, as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan, obtained security assurances from the NPT depositary states in the now-infamous Budapest Memorandum signed on December 5, 1994 (see Budjeryn 2014). France and China extended similar assurances in separate statements. At the time, Ukrainian leaders knew full well that these assurances were not the legally binding guarantees they sought. This was not for the lack of trying on Ukraine’s part: negotiations on security guarantees had proceeded since mid-1992, but Ukrainians found it virtually impossible to exert from the United States the kind of security commitments it pledged to its NATO allies and strategic partners. Russia would agree to recognize Ukraine’s borders only within the borders of the Russian-dominated Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a condition Ukraine refused to accept and which was eventually lifted in the Budapest Memorandum. After the signature of the Memorandum, Ukraine’s first president Leonid Kravchuk stated: “If tomorrow Russia goes into Crimea, no one will even raise an eyebrow” (The Moscow Times 1994).
So they got promises but everyone knew how empty and bullshit they were at the time?
I still say the right thing to do is keep the promise yo do the good thing and protect the people who made the world overall safer by making themselves more vulnerable.
Uff yes, but the right thing is scarcely ever done just because it’s the right thing in geopolitics.
Yes but I was arguing about reasons we (globally) should. Not reasons we are or will.