Thread by @ClaireBerlinski

A few thoughts about this. 1) Your question is rhetorical, but the answer is obvious: It's because no one is scared of Ukraine, which doesn't have nuclear weapons. This is what is *so* morally--and long-term, strategically--obtuse:

https://twitter.com/McFaul/status/1463208640962199554

2) Why doesn't Ukraine have nuclear weapons? Because *we forced them to give them up.* And in turn, guaranteed their territorial integrity. No matter how people try to argue the Budapest Memorandum doesn't count, it does:

3) Why? Because if we don't stand by it, what kind of damned fool will ever give up his nuclear weapons, or abandon his program to build them, because we promise that in exchange, we won't let anyone chew them up and spit them out?

4) Our *long-term, strategic* interest is a world with the minimum number of nuclear powers and nuclear weapons. This is what's really at stake here: Either the US credibly guarantees the security of smaller, more vulnerable countries,

or every last one of them will want the shortcut to security--and how could you blame them?
5) And for people who say, "Well, maybe that's not such a bad idea. Maybe all these countries--Japan, Germany, KSA, etc--should just nuke up and leave us out of it,"

This is insane. Any study of the record of nuclear accidents and near-misses--try this cosmopolitanglobalist.com/nuclear-roulet… --makes it very obvious that the world you're envisioning would quickly destroy itself.

After you destroy the last taboos of the NPT, *everyone* will be on the horn with North Korea; the world will be awash in loose nukes; the countries that can't afford it will go chem-bio; and you will not like living in this world, I promise, because if Putin scares you to death,

just wait until ISIS gets the Bomb.
It is very true that Russia is scary. But Putin obviously isn't suicidal, and he can be deterred. No one wants accidents or situations that get out of control.

But no one wants a world in which nuclear states gobble up their weaker neighbors and no one does a thing about it, either. That's a world in which every small state *must* proliferate or be subjugated.

If your advice to the former satellite states is, "Roll over and die because we don't want to antagonize Russia," well, I don't think they're going to share your sense of the beauty of this strategy. They're going to do what they have to do to avoid this fate.

Probably, if Ukraine looks too hard to invade, Putin will conclude it's not worth the candle. The principles of deterrence that worked in the Cold War will work now.

If Putin is antagonized because we've made it harder for him to subjugate his neighbors, that's a shame, but it isn't reasonable for him to demand that he be allowed to invade Ukraine at will, is it?