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Comment by btilly | Hacker News Reader

Several other countries also gave them up with better results. Including South Africa, Sweden, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

Belarus and Kazakhstan are vassal states of Russia now and for the foreseeable future; possibly they will be annexed officially at some point, like the Crimea and probably Donbas. Sweden would probably still be neutral if it hadn't given up its nuclear weapons; it seems to be at significant risk of being invaded by Russia again (it was invaded in the 18th century and again in the 19th), which is why it joined NATO in March. That, in turn, puts it at great risk of going to war this decade even if it doesn't get invaded, for the first time in 200 years.

It's unclear if Belarus and Kazakhstan really had nukes in the first place such that they could "give them up"—as with Ukraine, the nukes stationed there were Soviet nukes, controlled by Moscow.

South Africa does seem to be doing okay, though. It's not that likely to be invaded by Zimbabwe, and since the end of apartheid, a civil war is looking increasingly unlikely.

Kazakhstan is by no means a Russian vassal state, and is in essentially no danger of annexation. It's worlds away from Belarus.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2022_Kazakh_unrest#7_January

> Tokayev (...) went on to thank Russia for sending troops to help establish order.

> Russia's Defence Ministry stated that more than 70 planes were flying, around the clock, to bring Russian troops into Kazakhstan and that they were helping to control Almaty's main airport.

On the other hand:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kazakhstan%E2%80%93Russia_rela...

> Kazakh leadership including Kazakh Foreign Minister Mukhtar Tleuberdi did not condemn the Russian invasion and abstained on the UN vote to condemn it, but at the same time they refused to recognize the Russian states of Donetsk People's Republic and Luhansk People's Republic.

> In addition to sending humanitarian aid to Ukraine, the Kazakh military increased spending and training. (...)

> Russia suspended shipments of Kazakh oil after Tokayev’s statements at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, where he stated that Kazakhstan considered the DPR and LPR as “quasi-state entities” and would not recognize them. On the other hand, in spite of some tensions, Kazakhstan's relations with Russia remain strong and mostly friendly, as shown by Tokayev's visit to Moscow in November 2022. (...)

> In 2022, Kazakhstan agreed to share the personal data of exiled anti-war Russians with the Russian government. In September 2022, Kazakh authorities detained a Russian journalist who was wanted on charges of "discrediting" the Russian military. In December 2022, Kazakhstan deported a Russian citizen who fled mobilization.

I'm no expert in foreign relations, but to me, this sounds like the relationship between the Trump administration and the municipal government of Portland, Oregon, not like the relationship between France and Germany, the relationship between Argentina and Brazil, or even the profoundly unequal relationship between the US and Canada. Tokayev can posture a bit about disagreeing with Putin, but Russia will punish him, and when push comes to shove, he depends on Russian military support to stay in power; and when Russian dissidents or draft dodgers show up in Kazakhstan, he arrests and deports them. (Contrast Vietnam-War-era US draft dodgers fleeing to Canada.)

They can leverage China at this point. They have options. They told the extra Russian military to leave after the last unrest.

Argentina, Brazil. although they say brazil is just a few days away of developing a nuclear bomb if it decides to. It would not be able to throw it anywhere useful tho at maximum south american neighbors

Neither Argentina nor Brazil has ever had nuclear weapons, although both countries did historically produce low-grade enriched reactor fuel. Argentina resumed its enrichment activity in 02015. Brazil resumed its enrichment activity in 02006 but still does not have enough production capacity to supply even its minuscule fleet of nuclear power stations.

> Neither Argentina nor Brazil has ever had nuclear weapons

Brazil holds the key technologies to develop it and the sixth bigger deposit of uranium (with only 30% of the territory mapped). The navy is even currently developing a nuclear submarine that will be totally based on local technology.

Yes, both Argentina and Brazil could produce nuclear weapons, given enough time and effort, but neither one of them has ever had them. Neither does either country currently have plans to produce or acquire nuclear weapons, as far as is publicly known. So they are not examples of countries that gave up nuclear weapons.

A nuclear submarine is also not what is meant by "nuclear weapon", although it is arguably a weapon and has the word "nuclear" in its name. The phrase "nuclear weapon" conventionally refers to "atomic bombs" and "hydrogen bombs", which are bombs powered by respectively fission and fusion. A nuclear submarine is just a regular submarine powered by a nuclear reactor. Brazil already has many nuclear reactors that are in some sense "totally based on Brazilian technology" and has for decades.

> Brazil already has many nuclear reactors that are in some sense "totally based on Brazilian technology" and has for decades.

I only knew of the three commercial reactors, the third of them under construction for something like four decades and still far from done (and they are also mostly foreign technology AFAIK). So I went looking, and it does seem there are a couple of decades-old research reactors I didn't know about: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lista_de_reatores_nucleares_Br...

Ten, in fact. Most places have a lot more research and medical reactors than power reactors in nuclear power stations, because you can build one of those for something like 1% of the cost of a nuclear power station. (Remember that the first research reactor, Chicago Pile-1, was built under the stands in a football field, by a team of about 30 people, between November and December of 01942, without any engineering data from existing reactors, on a budget of under 3 million dollars—US$51 million in today's money: https://data.bls.gov/cgi-bin/cpicalc.pl?cost1=2700&year1=194....)

I went to a state university in the US that had its own research reactor, and I thought their university hospital had another one, but it turns out they don't now if they ever did.

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