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Perhaps. And that is why this should have been ratified by the Senate
***By saying it shoulda been ratified, you acknowledge we had a vested national interest in removing those nukes. The Ukes fracked up. Royally.

There’s a reason why the Budapest Accord was not ratified by the Senate - it would not have been ratified.
***Circular reasoning.

So, all parties need to operate going forward with the understanding that when the going gets tough, any one of the parties may decide that their own interests are so important that they may need to act differently.
***The Ukes are being backed into a Nuke corner. We acted a certain way when we were in our existential war, we should expect them to act in a similar fashion. It is in our nation’s best interest not to push this country into a nuke corner — keep it conventional.

To me, this is not “if Russia can do it, so can we”. This is - “what is the US national security interest?” Thus far, I don’t see the compelling interest.
***It is in the US national security interest that the Ukes don’t set off suitcase nukes in a Russian city. That doesn’t compel you?

You’re suggesting we should do so because what happens if the Ukraine gets nuclear weapons? Yes? No?
***I am saying that if I were in their shoes, I’d be building nukes. We should look at this conflagration with that as a perspective. Sometimes that perspective goes down the path of examining the hypothetical of “if they blow the frack out of some Russian city”, so yes, a partial answer to your question is yes.

We could be concerned about that for any number of countries.
***How many are we working on right now? We are basically HANDING a nuke program to the Iranians. Norks? Trying to stop them. South Africa? We encouraged them to get rid of theirs — hint: they also lost THEIR sovereignty. That’s most of the list as far as I can tell. We never signed anything close to the Budapest Agreement with them, other than South Africa. Modern countries now know: Nukes mean Sovereignty.