The U.S. "Interception" website reported that violating its commitments to small countries will prompt them to never give up their nuclear weapons. In an article, the site's correspondent, Murtada Hussein, pointed out that in the 1990s, international powers promised Ukraine that Ukraine's security would not be violated if its nuclear weapons were disarmed, but those powers reneged on their commitments.
The authors add that Ukraine once possessed thousands of nuclear weapons, which it inherited from the former Soviet Union, and that Ukraine was the world's third-largest nuclear power to gain independence after the end of the Cold War.
In the early 1990s, the Ukrainian leadership gave up these "terrible" weapons in exchange for the international community's signing of pledges to protect Ukraine's security in the future, a "deadly decision" that today seems to be a "deadly decision."
Today, it seems like a bad decision, after Ukraine was occupied by heavily armed "invading" Russian troops, while Ukraine's former friends abroad had little hope of defending it.
In his article, Murtada said, "The tragedy currently unfolding in Ukraine confirms a broader principle that is clearly visible around the world, namely that countries that sacrifice their nuclear deterrent capabilities in exchange for the goodwill commitment of the international community are often themselves writing their death certificates." ”
In a world full of weapons, the authors add, the potential to end human civilization and limit the spread of nuclear weapons becomes in itself a valuable moral end, even an inevitable end.
However, the experience of states that have effectively achieved nuclear weapons denuclearization may lead many countries to decide not to do so in the future, and perhaps, what the author calls a "betrayal of the Ukrainians" – in particular – cannot be underestimated.
In 1994, the Government of Kiev signed a memorandum of understanding allowing Ukraine to accede to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, thus renouncing its status as a nuclear State, and since then Ukraine's territorial integrity has not received much respect.
When Russia annexed Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula in 2014, Ukrainian leaders began to consider the merits of the treaty they concluded 20 years ago, and they seem to be suffering today.
The authors also add that Ukrainians are not the only country that regrets giving up nuclear weapons, and that the late Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi did the same in 2003, when he abruptly announced that his country would abandon its nuclear program and chemical weapons in exchange for normalizing relations with the West.
Libya and Iran
Despite lifting sanctions on Libya and restoring relations with Washington, Qaddafi — during the 2011 Arab Spring revolution — found that those who appeared to be his "economic partners and diplomatic allies" suddenly provided "critical" military aid to his adversaries, even cheering for his death.
Another example is Iran, which concluded a comprehensive nuclear deal with the United States in 2015 to limit Iran's ability to make potential breakthroughs in making nuclear weapons and to exercise broad oversight of its civilian nuclear program.
Soon, the administration of former U.S. President Donald Trump violated the agreement in 2018, and Iran faced strict international sanctions despite Tehran's continued commitment to abide by the JCPOA — as the authors believe.
To date, on the other hand, no matter what actions a nuclear power takes, it has not been invaded on a large scale by foreign powers, for example, North Korea has succeeded in keeping its "closed" political system intact for decades despite tensions with the international community.