Former Secretary General of NATO [1999-2004] and Secretary of State for Defence George Robertson wrote in his article for Herald Scotland:
“I started my own political career, as many people know, carrying a Ban the Bomb banner. By giving up the Bomb I believed that we would give a lead and start a benign chain reaction. I was wrong. As Defence Secretary of this country [Defense Minister of Britain from 1997 to 1999] I was responsible for the biggest ever reductions in our nuclear weapon capacity and it led to no copycut reductions elsewhere.”
“The Budapest Memorandum of 1994 when Ukraine, holding the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, agreed to give them up,” in return provided “solemn security assurances from Russia, the U.S. and the UK.”
“…Ukraine, holding the world’s third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, agreed to give them up in return for solemn security assurances from Russia, the US and the UK.
“These countries, with France and China as well, promised to a) respect Ukrainian independence and sovereignty in its existing borders, b) to refrain from the threat or the use of force against Ukraine, and c) to refrain from using economic pressure on Ukraine in order to influence its politics. Don’t these promises look good in the light of the carnage we see on our TVs every night?
“Yet that is what Ukraine got in return for unilaterally disarming. Some bargain. And it is legitimate to ask this; would Crimea have been grabbed and Eastern Ukraine occupied if the Ukrainians had kept some of their nukes?
“The real world out there is a dangerous place, as the people of Ukraine are sadly finding out. It is no place for those who would bargain away our long-term security and safety.”
24 February 2015
So what do you do when one of the countries sworn to protect your sovereignty is performing subversion along with a hybrid war against you?