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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?
Hard agreed on this. Nuclear weapons are a classic prisoner's dilemma, where it's better for nobody to have them, but if one side gets them then that's really really bad if the other side doesn't have them. It was America that underpinned most antiprolif efforts since the end of the Cold War, partially through providing its nuclear umbrella, and partially by strongarming those who thought of getting nukes themselves away from doing so. This has led to the dictatorships of the world playing defect-bot, where no democracies have gotten nukes since the 90s, but Russia and China have increased their stockpiles while North Korea has nukes now, and Iran isn't far behind. Russia's has effectively been using nuclear blackmail in Ukraine as well, breaking the previous norm of nukes giving a strong defense-only shield. Now, anyone with nukes apparently has more right than other nations to offensively invade their neighbors too
It's a sad fate, but Poland, Japan, and South Korea all need nukes now. If Taiwan and Ukraine had nukes, then it's likely they wouldn't face anywhere near the level of insecurity they do. They probably wouldn't be able to get them now since China/Russia would freak out.
I don't think it's clear that American foreign policy has been, in the long run, to reduce nuclear proliferation.
If I were a leader of a country contemplating a nuclear weapons program I'd look at the examples of Kim and Qadaffi.
America made a bunch of noises against North Korea acquiring nuclear weapons, and has imposed sanctions in response to its success. But in the end this appears to have secured North Korea against military intervention.
Contrast with Qadaffi, who on his own accord negotiated to end his WMD programs in consideration for normalizing diplomatic relations and lifting of sanctions. He was rewarded with what was a likely color revolution that resulted in a knife in his ass.
So do you want to be Kim or Qadaffi? The winning move seems to be to develop your nuclear program in secret, or under very heavy fortification, so that it can't be preemptively destroyed. Then once you have your nukes, the West will leave you alone.
The US certainly sparked some prolif itself with foreign policy (mostly Iraq + Afghanistan, Libya was more of a European-led conflict). But on net, the US has been the biggest leader of antiprolif by far. Very few middle powers had nukes under American unipolarity, but that's almost certainly going to change over the coming decades.
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