"This TWTW will begin with a brief discussion of the assurances that the USA, the UK, and the Russian Federation gave to protect the sovereignty of Ukraine and how Putin has tested the US assurances under different US administrations:
"Writing in the Wall Street Journal two US authors involved with national and international security and nonproliferation of nuclear weapons bring attention to the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances,
a 1994 agreement among the Russian Federation, the United States, and the UK to assure the sovereignty of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan to give up their nuclear weapons left over after the implosion of the Soviet Union.
At the time Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world.
The Clinton / Gore administration persuaded Ukraine to accept the agreement.
In 2014 Putin tested the willingness of the US to honor the agreement by seizing Crimea, in clear violation of Ukraine sovereignty.
The Obama / Biden administration did nothing but impose economic sanctions.
Immediately after taking office in 2021, the Biden / Harris administration removed the remaining sanctions on the expansion of the Russian natural gas pipeline into central Europe, Germany.
The authors of the article “The Lesson of Budapest? Hold On to Your Nuclear Weapons” conclude:
“Until this week, only two countries since 1945 had faced an attack quite like Russia’s against Ukraine today—that is, an attack aimed at the total eradication of their national sovereignty.
Kuwait was saved by prompt, American-led international action against Iraq in 1991.
Israel has saved itself from extinction numerous times.
“Now Ukraine is locked in a battle for its existence.
Mr. Putin has repeatedly declared that Ukraine is not a state, and he insists on surrender terms that would leave the country as nothing more than an appendage to his regime.
Because Mr. Putin’s forces have failed to achieve the quick and easy win in Ukraine that he expected, he hints at nuclear escalation.
“Whatever the endgame, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sends a powerful signal to all countries with unrealized nuclear ambitions:
If you abandon your nuclear program and entrust your security to formal guarantees and conventional deterrence, you gamble with your future.
If you give up your nukes, you give up your national security ace-in-the-hole.
The U.S. and its allies have an enormous responsibility to get this new security challenge right.”
