MoA - Who Can Give Security Guarantees To Ukraine?

submitted by chakokat from (moonofalabama.org)

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[–]sdl5 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

Russia- specifically Putin.

Anyone else, certainly any other nation, is a guaranteed security RISK.

[–]sdl5 2 insightful - 1 fun2 insightful - 0 fun3 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

HAHAHAHA- and I Wrote my comment before reading a single thing 💅💃✅

[–]RandomCollection 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

From a conventional military standpoint only Russia.

I'm sure the Ukrainians that have Pro Banderist Nazi sympathies though will work the US on trying to execute another Maidan coup.

[–]rondeuce40DC Is Wakanda For Assholes 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

There is only one country in the world that can guarantee peace in Ukraine and the security of its borders. That country is Russia.

That pretty much sums up how this is all going to end up. The shit for brains Straussians thought plan A (sanctions) would work and when that didn't pan out, they depleted NATO weapons and ammo at a record pace. They probably still have their fingers crossed that they can coax Poland and Lithuania to commit more forces to extend the conflict.

[–]chakokat[S] 5 insightful - 1 fun5 insightful - 0 fun6 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

can coax Poland and Lithuania to commit more forces to extend the conflict.

The Poles and Lithuanians appear to be stupid enough to do it. The Russia hate has rotted their brains.

[–]rondeuce40DC Is Wakanda For Assholes 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I believe it, nothing about this whole affair suprises me anymore except its inevitable outcome.

[–]penelopepnortneyBecome ungovernable 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

The NATO Secretary General was even more explicit:

... unless Ukraine wins this war, there's no membership issue to be discussed at all.

There will be no NATO membership or NATO security guarantees for Ukraine, neither now nor ever.

A direct full security guarantee from Washington to Kiev is also impossible. It would create a high likelihood of a direct war between the U.S. and Russia which would soon become nuclear. The U.S. will not want to risk that.

U.S. President Biden presented an alternative:

The US is willing to offer Kiev a sort of security arrangement currently offered to Israel instead of membership in NATO, President Joe Biden told CNN in an interview previewed on Friday.

That however is even more unrealistic than a NATO membership. As Geoffrey Aronson convincingly argues:

The relevance of the Israel model embraced by Biden to Ukraine’s security is deeply flawed conceptually and practically.

In operational terms, the Israel model is barely relevant to the predicament that Ukraine finds itself in and hardly a good model upon which to build the desired security relationship between the United States, NATO, and Ukraine. In conceptual terms, there is little beyond a superficial comparison between Jerusalem and Kyiv to recommend the concept.

[–]chakokat[S] 7 insightful - 1 fun7 insightful - 0 fun8 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

A main question for Ukraine since it became an independent state was who or what could potentially guarantee its security.

In the first years after 1991 the Ukrainian government thought that it could secure itself. It had inherited some Soviet nuclear weapons and it tried to bring those to use. But it failed to circumvent the security locks the Russian engineers had integrated into the nuclear warheads. ( bold mine)

There was also pressure from the U.S. to get rid of those devices as the Ukraine at that time was prolific in selling its Soviet era weapons to various shady actors around the world.

Ukraine, together with Belarus and Kazakhstan, was pressed to enter the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. In exchange it got the Budapest Memorandum, a weak promise of non-interference:

The memoranda, signed in Patria Hall at the Budapest Convention Center with US Ambassador Donald M. Blinken amongst others in attendance, prohibited the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom and the United States from threatening or using military force or economic coercion against Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan, "except in self-defence or otherwise in accordance with the Charter of the United Nations." As a result of other agreements and the memorandum, between 1993 and 1996, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine gave up their nuclear weapons.

Two side notes are of interest:

*Ambassador Donald M. Blinken is the father of the current Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

*Formally Russia has not broken the Budapest Memorandum. It recognized the People's Republics of Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states. It signed security agreements with them and then entered the war in Ukraine, which had been ongoing since 2014, under Article 51 - common self defense - of the Charter of the United Nations. Jurists will debate that argument for years but it is not dissimilar to the argument NATO used to justify the violent break-up Yugoslavia. After the Budapest Memorandum was signed the Soviet nuclear weapons weapons Ukraine and others still had were sent back to Russia.

[–]BlackhaloPurity Pony: Pусский бот 6 insightful - 1 fun6 insightful - 0 fun7 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

It had inherited some Soviet nuclear weapons

That I wager they did not have the launch codes for. That's a lot like they inherited the Russian soldiers stationed in Ukraine, when that was not the case.

[–]kingsmegLiberté, égalité, fraternité 4 insightful - 1 fun4 insightful - 0 fun5 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

They apparently tried to take control of them for some years but never cracked the security measures. Giving them back to Russia was not Ukraine's first choice.