Obama's Blunders

For decades after WWII the world was able to limit the spread of nuclear weapons and confine these weapons of mass destruction to just a handful of countries that already had them. All hope of limiting them evaporated, however, during the Obama administration as a result of several terrible mistakes.

As part of the old Soviet Union Ukraine was home for a significant arsenal of nuclear weapons, and when the U.S.S. R. collapsed in 1989 Russia wanted them back. Walter Russell Mead, a Wall Street Journal columnist explains one of these blunders.

The Clinton administration devoted much of its diplomatic energy to persuading Ukraine, along with Kazakhstan and Belarus, to return those weapons to Russia, but the Ukrainians resisted American pressure to denuclearize since they were afraid to give them up because they thought that’s the only thing that protected them from an expansionist Russia.

So the Clinton administration promised the Ukrainians that if they give up their nukes America and others would guarantee their defense. This promise was codified in a memorandum signed by a number of countries, including Russia, in Budapest in 1994.

Ukraine trusted these nations to keep their word and returned the weapons to Russia, but as Mead says, trusting the word of a U.S. president and the rules of the international order rather than relying on a nuclear deterrent was a "blunder of historic proportions."

The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty went into effect in 1970 and was permanently extended five months after the 1994 signing of the Budapest Memorandum. In that memorandum, Russia, the U.S. and U.K. agreed not to threaten or attack Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, and to consult on helping if they were attacked; also, the three former Soviet republics joined the NPT as nonnuclear states.

History will mark 2014 as the definitive end of nuclear non-proliferation. In that year Russia violated the Budapest memorandum that they had signed, invaded Ukraine and seized large swaths of territory including Crimea. the Obama administration responded by sending the Ukrainians nothing more lethal than blankets and field rations.

As a result of Obama's failure to do anything substantive to aid Ukraine, Russia was emboldened to seize more of Ukraine in 2022, and, equally as bad, our loss of credibility has spurred other nations to realize that they better get their own nukes because the U.S. can no longer be counted on to protect them against superpowers like Russia and China.

Here's Mead:

The barriers to nuclear proliferation are rapidly weakening around the world. Russia and China are abandoning all pretense of opposing the North Korean arsenal. In South Korea, polls show that 70% of the population believes that the time has come to follow the North’s lead.

In the Middle East, Iran’s relentless progress toward nuclear weapons is touching off the long-feared regional proliferation cascade. Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates are taking the first steps toward acquiring the capability to enrich uranium. Turkey is unlikely to lag far behind as nuclear weapons become a normal part of the arsenal of middle powers.

Nationalists in countries such as Brazil and Argentina will want their countries to join the expanding nuclear club.

The fight against nuclear proliferation has been a centerpiece of American foreign policy since the first bombs fell on Japan in 1945. American diplomacy tried and failed to stop the Soviet, British, French, Chinese, Israeli, Indian, Pakistani and North Korean programs.

And soon Iran will have them.

Mead puts much of the blame on Obama:

History will name Barack Obama as the man on whose watch nonproliferation definitively failed. His waffling response to Russia’s 2014 invasion of Ukraine not only marked the end of the post-Cold War holiday from history; it also marked the death of the dream that the leaders of the democratic world had the strength and vision to uphold the principles of the rules-based international order in the face of a ruthless opponent.

It further taught the world that nuclear weapons are a better defense than American pledges. Coupled with the failure to address North Korea’s nuclear progress and the Iran deal’s sunset clauses, which made the treaty about delaying rather than blocking Tehran’s nuclear advances, Obama-era diplomacy made clear that, despite high-flown rhetoric to the contrary, Washington had no plan to stop the spread of nuclear weapons.

Mr. Obama’s real error was to base his foreign policy around a rules-based international order that he lacked the skill and will to defend. He couldn’t bring about the world he wanted, or prepare the country for life after the death of the dream.

In the Budapest Memorandum, Mr. Clinton made a moral commitment to Ukraine that Mr. Obama declined to honor. The results include an accelerating decay of the nonproliferation regime, a vicious war, the closest alliance between China and Russia since Stalin’s era, and a global decline in the value of America’s word.

Mead alludes to Mr. Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran but doesn't elaborate. Even so, it's surely a contributing factor in the current proliferation of nuclear weapons. The agreement simply postponed Iran's ability to develop a nuclear capability for ten years from the time it was signed.

Today they have all they need to build a nuclear weapon and will soon be in a position to put a nuclear warhead on a missile, a warhead they've sworn to use to attack Israel.

The credibility of America's deterrence also suffered when Mr. Obama warned the Assad regime in Syria that any use of chemical weapons against Assad's foes would be a "Red Line," the crossing of which, it was implied, would bring down the wrath of the U.S.

Mr. Assad ignored the president's tough talk, employed chemical weapons against his own people, and, as Assad expected, Mr. Obama did nothing. Add to this sorry history of fecklessness Mr.Biden's betrayal of the Afghans by suddenly, and without warning, yanking our troops out of that country and abandoning it to the cruelties of the Taliban, and it's little wonder that the rest of the world is leery of American assurances.

This history is surely one reason China feels emboldened to threaten Taiwan. They don't really believe that we'll honor our pledge to defend the island nation, and, given the unreliability over the past fifteen years, it's certainly understandable why they'd think that.