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In 1994, Ukraine, Russia, the UK and the US signed the Budapest Memorandum. The short version is that Ukraine destroyed its Soviet nukes, and in return, the signatories pledged to respect the territorial integrity of Ukraine and support actions in the Security Council if it should ever be threatened by nukes.
In 1994, this seemed like a good deal. The cold war was over, Ukraine likely did have more urgent spending priorities than a nuclear weapon program and the rest of the world, both the nuclear powers and the others were glad to keep the number of nuclear powers limited. Wars of conquest seemed a thing of the past. While the US engaged in some regime change operations (most of which turned out rather terrible, tbh), in the 1990s the idea to expand your territory through war seemed basically dead.
The rule-based world order was a higher, better equilibrium, just like most people would prefer to live in a country where weapons of war are controlled only by a small group of mostly decent people to living in some failed state where many people carry an assault weapon for the simple reason that many other people carry an assault weapon.
Putin's invasion made some serious cracks in that vision of a rule-based world order (which was always perceived to be strong in Europe), but Trump II basically broke it. Under Trump, the US can not be relied to punish defectors from the rule based system, and might not even relied to provide nuclear retaliation for nuclear attacks on NATO members.
The best time for Ukraine to restart their nuclear weapons program would have been when Russia defected from the Budapest Memorandum by annexing Crimea in 2014, before Russia was ready for a full scale invasion. I think it would have been technically feasible. An experienced Soviet nuclear weapons engineer who was 40 in 1990 would have been 64 in 2014. Ukraine also runs a lot of civilian nuclear reactor and has its own Uranium deposits (which would come in handy once they quit the NPT, because this might make acquiring fuel on the world market difficult). WP claims they even have enrichment plants.
In general, figuring out how to make nuclear weapons is something which took a good fraction of the world's geniuses in the 1940s, but has become much simpler since then. Getting an implosion device to work just right is something which would likely be helped a lot by high speed cameras and microelectronics, and a few decades of Moore's law likely makes a hell of a difference for simulations. Delivery systems might be a bit harder, but at the end of the day you don't need 100% reliability for deterrence to work. Even if your enemy is 50% confident that they can intercept the delivery, that still leaves the expected outcome of a nuclear exchange highly negative for them. Attacking a launch site -- conventionally or otherwise -- is forcing your enemy to either use or lose his nukes, and few think it wise to do so.
On a more personal note, I really hate nuclear weapons, and very much prefer the rule-based world order. I very much preferred the 2010s when Putin was mostly known for riding topless, as well as the odd murder of a journalist or dissident, the US was fine playing world police (which included some ill-advised military adventures, but also providing nuclear deterrence for NATO) and I was comfortably regarding nukes, NATO and large scale wars with the same distant horror I might have for medieval healthcare.
Even besides Ukraine, in the future Europe can not rely on the US for defense, and the UK and France arsenals might not be judged sufficient for deterrence, and some EU nuke might be called for. I am not sure how it would work. Classical EU commission manner, where 27 member states have to push the launch button and Orban can veto if he feels like it? Or give Mrs van-der-Leyen launch authority? Or simply have a common weapon program and distribute the spoils to 27 members?
The International Rules Based Order was always fiction. It was code for “the West has several times as many soldiers, rockets, tanks, and navy vessels than you, and can kick your ass just by thinking about it. What’s changed generally is the global perception of that military might.
We are much more causality adverse than we were. The D-Day invasion alone cost something like 5,000 men, and that was a single battle in a four year war effort. We wouldn’t tolerate such losses today. When 2,000 died over the course of a year in the occupation of Iraq, people in congress started calling for an end to the war. A large scale war like WW2 would mean an Iraq war level of causalities twice a day.
And we are much much more adverse to “bad images on TV syndrome”. Show the leaders pictures of sad children, flattened buildings, or crying women, and we lose sight if the objective. It’s why the Hamas tactics were so effective. If you can hide among civilians, forcing your enemies to destroy civilians and houses, temples, and city streets, the west will take your side. Knowing this, you effectively can neutralize the enemy’s ability to defeat you by causing the BITV syndrome— they won’t fight if it means that people at home will be seeing women cry, because the civilians running the military won’t stand for it. So you either go in with small teams and hope you get lucky, or they win.
Even if that were true (and it could be argued) does it matter? The Pax Romana was clearly a matter of military domination no matter how the Emperors justified it, and it clearly led to practical benefits for as long as it lasted.
The American-led, rules-based liberal international order was a better deal either way.
Yes. It's actually lawless, contrary to what the supporters of this status quo claim. They are actively providing law-breakers an incentive to violate the actual laws of war because they don't want to feel mean.
This may apply elsewhere.
That said, some US wars were just stupid and that doesn't help. The sense of a lack of legitimacy doesn't make people want to jump into the meat grinder.
Many people who "benefited" from this domination felt otherwise at the time. The Jewish-Roman wars don't exactly paint the picture of consensual integration that you may get from late Gaul or the like.
You'd think Americans of all people would understand not wanting to be a province of a foreign empire, given their origins.
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