Posted on 02/23/2015 10:54:34 AM PST by WhiskeyX
KYIV, February 20 /Ukrinform/.The idea of nuclear disarmament has failed and led to a selective reduction of the nuclear arsenal in the world, and, as a result, Ukraine received guarantees that are not performed in exchange for unilateral disarmament.
Former Secretary General of NATO [1999-2004] and Secretary of State for Defence and Shadow Secretary of State for Scotland George Robertson expressed this opinion in his article for Herald Scotland, an Ukrinform correspondent reported.
"I started my own political career, as many people know, carrying a Ban the Bomb banner. By giving up the Bomb I believed that we would give a lead and start a benign chain reaction. I was wrong. As Defence Secretary of this country [Defense Minister of Britain from 1997 to 1999] I was responsible for the biggest ever reductions in our nuclear weapon capacity and it led to no copycut reductions elsewhere," Robertson wrote.
He noted that the Budapest Memorandum of 1994 "when Ukraine, holding the world's third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, agreed to give them up," in return provided "solemn security assurances from Russia, the U.S. and the UK."
Robertson claims it's difficult to forecast how the situation in Crimea and Donbas would have been developing if Ukraine had possessed an arsenal of nuclear weapons.
"And it is legitimate to ask this; would Crimea have been grabbed and Eastern Ukraine occupied if the Ukrainians had kept some of their nukes?" reads the publication.
The author also warns that failure to comply with the commitments made in Budapest in 1994, the neglect of current policy of containment can lead to the fact that the world in the next 50 years will face new, "known and unknown" threats.
Clinton signed it, that's all you need to know.
Mindless leftist discovers reality.
5.56mm
I think in the next few years we’re going to see a lot of Urkel moments where past world leaders say, “Did I do that?”
One could says we interfered first. Specifically John McCain in 2013.
You should probably note that Ukrinform is an Official Kiev State propaganda organ.
That said, the west was terrified that Ukraine’s nukes were going to end up in the bad guys hands.
Ukraine after the fall of the Soviet Union became the world’s largest Arms Bazaar. Anything and everything was for sale to anybody that showed up with cash, from AK’s to entire squadrons of helicopter gunships.
The west had to do something at the time, but as usual, Clinton made promises he knew weren’t going to be kept, and made sure his own cronies were in on skimming the money we were spending.
duh
These people all forgot the cold war and how to stop Russia was with threat of force.
“These people all forgot the cold war and how to stop Russia was with threat of force.”
That’s a pretty naïve, and seemingly uninformed viewpoint.
What doomed the Soviet Union was Soviet “Communism” itself. By the 1960’s, the entire system was already showing signs of decay, with productivity declining, and corruption increasing.
Like Thatcher said, under Socialism, you eventually run out of other people’s money to spend.
Anyone who thought an Agreement signed by Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin...but never submitted to the US Senate or Russian Duma for ratification...was worth the paper and ink that printed it...is just plain dumb.
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