Comment by wat10000
7 hours ago
The Budapest Memorandum only requires going to the Security Council if nuclear weapons are involved. There's no required action at all for non-nuclear attacks. This isn't "weaseling over the exact wording," it's just the plain language of the memorandum.
It really amazes me how much misinformation is out there about this thing. It only has six points, each one a single paragraph long. It's very quick and easy to read, yet people apparently can't be bothered to look up the actual text of the thing they're discussing.
You can argue all day about the letter versus the spirit of the Budapest memorandum, but good luck getting any other countries to give up their nukes in the future.
That's only one consequence of Trump's de-facto betrayal of Ukraine in support of his daddy figure in the Kremlin.
I have a really hard time accepting the idea that the spirit of the memorandum was that the signatories should actively defend Ukraine against non-nuclear attack, when it would have been so easy to write that explicitly.
I completely agree about no countries giving up their nukes in the future, but that's a consequence of the weak agreement, plus other actions like knocking over Iraq and Libya but not North Korea, tearing up the JCPOA with Iran, and... well, it seems like non-proliferation is mostly lip service in general.