Ukrainian Nukes?
It won’t surprise many here to discover that there’s no real road to Ukrainian security through nuclear weapons, either in 1994 or 2024:
President Zelenskyy has grown into an adept international statesman, and it is pretty likely that he is aware of all these problems. His statement should be taken as a rhetorical gesture, a reminder of what Ukraine has given up in the interests of world peace and the costs that Ukraine has been forced to pay.
Nuclear weapons do not spare Ukraine the kind of political and economic interference that Russia has engaged in over the past three decades. Nuclear threats can’t prevent the infiltration of Russian criminal networks into Ukraine or the subversion of Ukrainian religious institutions. They cannot avert Russian money from corrupting the Ukrainian political system or buying off key actors in border regions. They cannot prevent cyberattacks or the relentless streams of disinformation that Russia has rained upon the Ukrainian body politic.
Other links:
- Ukraine cutting religious ties with Russia, in what’s probably a long overdue move to reduce Russian political influence in the country.
- On the political complexities of modern wargaming…
- India and China have maybe decided to not fight the world’s dumbest war?
- On the Trumping of American libertarianism.
- US Grant vs. the KKK
- Is the attack helicopter done?