Comment by nradov
4 days ago
What a weird non sequitur. Unlike the North Atlantic Treaty which established NATO, the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 was explicitly not a mutual defense treaty (or even a treaty at all). It merely required the USA to bring violations to the UN Security Council, which we did in 2022. Promises made, promises kept.
Again, in a legalistic sense, sure.
But again, in a legalistic sense, even NATO Article 5 also doesn't obligate the US to do anything.
No document (Budapest memoranda or NATO treaty) can require the US to do anything, so all that matters is whether the US is signaling itself as a country that defends its partners.
If you believe that Article 5 obligates the US to do anything more than what we've done so far in Ukraine, please explain why.
If you don't believe that Article 5 does that, then I'm not sure why you seem dismissive of the idea that we're creating conditions for a nuclear proliferation spiral.
If you don't understand the basics of how NATO operates then I really can't help you. All of the signatories clearly understand that it's a mutual defense treaty, requiring more than just diplomatic or economic assistance. Which is why the US threatened to withdraw from the treaty after repeated failures of many other members to meet their defense spending targets while freeloading on US security guarantees. If the US government didn't believe that the North Atlantic Treaty obligated us to do anything then they wouldn't have bothered to threaten to withdraw in the first place.
You should go listen to some international law experts talk about it. No, Article 5 does not obligate the US to more than "assistance." We can send them a dollar and call it done.
"All of the signatories clearly understand..." just like all of the signatories of Budapest understood that it meant that each side would prevent each other side from invading Ukraine.
Good luck getting anyone else to give up their nukes, now that the world has seen what the US is made of. We, yourself included, are less safe because of Trump's treachery.
The Trump administration has made numerous foreign policy errors but when it comes to nuclear proliferation there is plenty of blame to go around. The Budapest Memorandum was signed under the Clinton administration, and it specifically didn't require the USA to defend Ukraine. Russia first invaded Ukraine in 2014 and the Obama administration didn't do much about it (and other EU/NATO countries also did effectively nothing). Russia then re-invaded Ukraine in 2022 and the Biden administration provided a little support but still the Ukrainians were largely left to fend for themselves. I'd like to see the Trump administration do more (short of direct military involvement) but still this is primarily a European issue. Why have the other European countries been so lazy and passive instead of asking their citizens to accept the risks and sacrifices necessary to defeat Russian aggression?
We'll probably see more nuclear proliferation going forward, regardless of who sits in the White House. No way to stop it now.