[nuccy]

Thus two messages for every other country:

1. Make nukes, never give up on those regardless of what assurances of safety you get

2. If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more

Lets see where all this will bring the world to in the next 10 years or a generation.

[mewpmewp2]

Also Europe will have to increase its nuclear arsenal since it is clear that Europe can't no longer rely on US. Europe was too trusting for too long.

[seanmcdirmid]

They could ally with China. The Chinese are only frenemies with Russia anyways, and they make way much more money trading with the rest of Europe.

[Aeolun]

I thinks Europe's trust in the US was fairly reasonable. It's the US and its governance that has gone to shit.

[UncleOxidant]

> Lets see where all this will bring the world to in the next 10 years or a generation.

We've seen this movie before. It doesn't go well.

[Terr_]

With respect to how Ukraine yielded up nukes while Russia gave "assurances" that they would respect Ukrainian borders [0], Putin has claimed it doesn't count now because it's a different Ukraine.

If that's really how he feels, then it's time to expel the imposter "Russia" that's been falsely posing as a member of the United Nations Security Council, because it's not reeealy the USSR...

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum

[EGreg]

Well, in the 90s Clinton negotiated the Agreed framework with North Korea not to get nukes in exchange for lowering sanctions. Then Bush admin called it "appeasement" and let it die. Then NK got nukes.

Obama's admin negotiated the JCPOA deal with Iran, same thing. They put the most inspectors ever in any country to make sure Iran doesn't get nukes. Trump's admin then unilaterally ended it.

Tom Cotton and Republicans openly warned Iran during Obama's admin that the US is fickle and will change its policy as soon as administrations change. This has been going on ever since treaties with the Native Americans ("white man speaks with forked tongue") but the Cotton letter was refreshingly honest:

https://www.cotton.senate.gov/news/press-releases/cotton-and...

The messages for every country to get nukes have been loud and clear, but no country has done it in the southern hemisphere, for instance. Even though USA had been involved in regime change or invasions of almost all of them in the last 80 years: https://geopoliticaleconomy.com/2022/09/13/us-251-military-i...

[cratermoon]

> no country has done it in the southern hemisphere, for instance

South Africa

[jyscao]

> If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more

In reality, that was always the case.

[Nathanba]

>In reality, that was always the case.

*while everybody made sure that they would band together to punish such behavior as the even bigger and stronger combined force

[codedokode]

"International laws" are also a weird thing. There is no international parliament, international police and international court. I think the only viable agreements are of a kind "if you don't do A then we don't do B".

[JeremyNT]

Yes. If Ukraine kept the soviet nukes, they wouldn't be in this position.

Non-proliferation - and relying on the benevolence of a few mercurial and spiteful superpowers - is, in hindsight, a horrible miscalculation.

[bobongo]

There will be a world war within the next 3 years, not 10.

[moi2388]

There already is. It’s just done through non-conventional means, hybrid warfare and proxies, since all superpowers have nukes now.

[TheSunSet]

This has been true since 1945

[boruto]

Did the rules matter when hundreds of thousands of iraqi s were killed on lies?

[bigyabai]

Does the Budapest Memorandum ring any bells?

[deeviant]

That is incorrect, standard Single-issue tunnel vision (which is very much promoted by Russian propaganda).

NATO, with America leading, gave the world the longest stretch of relative peace it has ever seen. The next 80 years will not be the same, if we even survive it. Every major power will have to be nuclear, and every smaller power will be moving to it.

Invasion of sovereign countries and Imperialism is going to spike. You think the world is just going to watch Russia invade and conquer a sovereign democratic nation and get away Scott-free and not want to do the same?

Frankly, the true propaganda win of Russia wasn't with the red side, they were always easy to influence, but with their splitting of the blue side, carving off great sections of it into purity-testing irrelevancy.

[jesterson]

> If you are bigger and stronger - you are right, do whatever you want, international laws and rules do not matter any more

Rules never mattered in history. it's always up to strongest to impose their version of "fairness".

[notarobot123]

It's not always the biggest and strongest. Sometimes it's the many.

Rules matter as long as they are enforced. It's only when enforcement is asymmetrical that problems begin.

[aprilthird2021]

And the strongest used to have a better version of fairness for so long countries got complacent and didn't realize how quickly it could flip on them