Why NATO Has Become an Enemy of Peace and Security Around the World

I’m aware of those points and the situation was much more complicated between Ukraine and Russia and nuclear weapons than Florida seceding from the United States.

Regurgitated Russian propaganda does not answer my point. Specifically,

(1) You likely live within a few miles of numerous "biolabs" that routinely process samples for medical and agricultural tests and research. Such biolabs are not nefarious, and the usual Russian tactic would be to trumpet a "UN investigation" as de facto proof that something suspicious was underway. So why investigate when there is nothing of substance to investigate?

(2) Russia is the aggressor against Ukraine. When forces loyal to the central government in Kiev attacked (or more accurately, counter-attacked) Russian supported separatists, Kiev was acting within the law.

(3) Similarly, under international law, Crimea belongs to Ukraine, not Russia. In any event, the claimed lessening of agricultural water supply from Ukraine came a few months ago AFTER the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

By the same logic, Russia had no rightful say in the disposition of or claim to former Soviet weapons on its territory. As it was, by custom and the terms of the decree of dissolution, the old Soviet Republics like Ukraine and Russia got to keep what they had on their territory. Of course, if Ukraine had continued to keep their nukes, Russia would not have invaded.

The “coup” you refer to was the Maidan popular uprising due to a Ukrainian government repudiating their election promises and aligning with the Russians.

Your analogy is flawed.

The very first line of the preamble to the Belovezha Accords stated that the “geopolitical reality” of the USSR no longer existed. At the time of it being signed, Glasnost and Perestroika applied. Moscow didn’t rule Kyiv, Minsk or any other capitol. The Supreme Soviet was like the Federal Government.

So Belovezha was in effect the equivalent of Washington being abolished and all Federal assets being disseminated to fifty free States overnight.

Which made it unequivocally clear that Soviet Union assets did not all belong to Russia. Those that sat in Belarus became Belorussian, those that sat in Ukraine became Ukrainian, and so on.

Russia never asked for all the guns, the tanks, the buildings, the bases, the missiles OR the nukes, because they never belonged to Russia in the first place. They were Soviet (union) assets.

So a better analogy would be if all US states agreed in writing that the USA no longer existed as a single federation, and then had to negotiate which state owned which assets.

The tendency today is to look at the Soviet nuclear arms as a prized asset that the former Soviet republics would have been scrambling to keep.

The reality is that they were generally seen as enormous LIABILITIES at the time — for several reasons. For one thing, they are expensive to maintain, and most newly independent republics did not have the resources to keep them. It would be like giving a palatial estate to a family on welfare.

Secondly, there was no way any external players on the international stage would have allowed these marginal, barely functional new nations to suddenly become members of the “nuclear family” on the world stage. Countries like the U.S. and Great Britain that are hell-bent on minimizing nuclear proliferation would have rather seen the Soviet Union remain intact than deal with up to 15 new potential nations with nuclear arms.

Good description of that situation.

Seeing how military age men can’t leave the Ukraine, I’m imagining You are referring to Ukraine.

--- "Today, Russia's $1.8 trillion GDP is a veritable joke when arrayed against the $45 trillion of GDP resources embedded in the US and the balance of NATO; and its $85 billion defense budget amounts to not even 7% of the $1.25 trillion combined NATO defense budgets." --- Russia can, however, still actually build things.

This small exchange is most interesting, if one can step away from name-calling.

One hypothetical nation "A" has millionaires a plenty and mansions a plenty and lots of entertainment, while another "B" has tanks and troops it is willing to risk, and the ability to make more war materiel than movies. and then....

"US and NATO grapple with critical ammo shortage for Ukraine"
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/18/politics/ukraine-critical-ammo-shortage-us-nato-grapple/index.html
"Ukraine Is Running Out of Ammo. The West Doesn't Have Enough"
Source: https://www.rand.org/multimedia/video/2023/05/23/ukraine-is-running-out-of-ammo-the-West-doesnt-have-enough.html
"Ukraine is running out of ammo. So is the U.S."
Source: https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2023/05/03/commentary/world-commentary/u-s-ukraine-ammo/
"America Is Running Out of Ammo"
Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/american-munitions-shortage-ukraine-joe-biden-pentagon-defense-military-congress-4e6d6576
"Ukraine Is Running Out of Ammo. So Is the US. "
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2023/04/28/ukraine-and-the-pentagon-are-using-ammo-far-faster-than-us-makes-it/297c7afa-e57e-11ed-9696-8e874fd710b8_story.html
"Ukraine war: Is the army running out of ammunition?"
Source: https://www.dw.com/en/ukraine-war-is-the-army-running-out-of-ammunition/a-64710592
"Investigation: EU inability to ramp up production behind acute ammunition shortages in Ukraine"
Source: https://kyivindependent.com/investigation-eu-inability-to-ramp-up-production-behind-acute-ammunition-shortages-in-ukraine/

To "array" a checkbook against a thug with a gun is ....

It will be impressive when the European nations "array" actual armed soldiers and march them into Ukraine, for a land war. Waving a really big number at opposing armed forces is neither logistics nor strategy. But it probably feels good, from afar.

Ah, that pesky really big number stuff, though....

$32,715,705,565,478 and rising rapidly.

That's not GDP.... That's what the US owes as against its GDP, of late circa $26.854 trillion.

As Ben Stein observed: "If something cannot go on forever, it will stop."

Or as the Blonde joke goes: "I can't be overdrawn, I still have checks!"

Ukraine was a special case in that she was industrialized, educated, with nuclear power, a high degree of technical skill, and a UN member even during the Soviet days. Ukraine would have found maintaining a couple of dozen Soviet era nukes expensive but well within her means and capabilities. And that would have been enough to make Russia behave.

Diplomatically, the line could have been drawn as permitting nuclear capable former Soviet Republics that were already UN members (Russia and Ukraine, but not the less developed Belarus) to keep Soviet nukes, while requiring all other former Soviet Republics to give up their nukes as a condition of recognition and trade ties with the West and UN membership.

At the time though, the US approach was to appease and prop up the Russians so that they would play nice. It didn't work. The feared outcome, a so-called Weimar Russia with revanchist dreams run by KGB types happened anyway.

In that era after the fall of the USSR, I met a visiting Russian math professor who feared the same but warned against any US financial help to Russia because it would be stolen and diverted. I agreed, but left him pondering my alternative in a favorable frame of mind.

I suggested that the US and Europe should take out the domestic base for anger at the West in the former USSR by providing "gratitude pensions" in dollars to the aggrieved and genuinely suffering older generation as recognition of their sacrifices in the fight against the Nazis. If distributed under tight conditions and with a bit of fanfare, it would prevent theft and quickly form the basis for a Western style banking system while turning the older generation pro-US.

My back of the envelope calculation was that the total cost over time would be about 20 billion dollars -- far cheaper than the costs that Putin has imposed.

Exactly.

Plus, the old saw about Russia being “a gas station with nukes” still essentially means that Russia has resources it is willing to obtain as well as decisive military force. Not something to be dismissed lightly.