Your sarcasm is out of place here really, and yes, Ukraine gave up its nukes and got this outcome. Ukraine had nukes after the union’s breakup.

We naturally can’t compare Russia without nukes to Russia with nukes, having only one version of history, but it’s pretty clear that having nukes is beneficial, from comparing countries treated by western media similarly between which have nukes and which don’t have nukes.

Say, there is North Korea with nukes, which, despite all its despotism, still survives, even somewhat modernizes and doesn’t even have hunger as it did in some other periods of its history. It’s a functional nation.

And there’s Syria, where rebranded ISIS took power, is openly massacring Alawites and Druze and basically everyone not Sunni Arab whom they can get (Kurds they can’t, Kurds have their own military organization still existing), and the western media is praising them and behaving as if it’s regrettable, but necessary that genocide took place. Say, Bashar al-Assad didn’t do genocide. He really had an unpleasant regime, basically abusing all dissenters and selling drugs as the basis of his rule, and he even all by himself put off payroll the units most useful in preserving his power in the civil war. And he is to blame that this happened and the Syrian state fell apart like some rotten fruit, for pieces to be picked up by jihadis. Except all those civilian Alawites are not to blame, and if you read something in western media about it, it’s almost as if they were. Because what’s a little genocide between friends, right. It’s not a functional nation.

And then there’s Iran, which got invaded by Saddam Hussein with western cheering almost immediately after its revolution (against western-approved “Shah”, whose father, by the way, was a half-literate cavalry officer who took power in a coup, it wasn’t any kind of respectable legitimate government), and then they decided that they need nukes. And if they really had nukes, they might have had more peace. It’s a very corrupt nation ruled by religious nutheads, but compared to fucking Saudi Arabia it’s almost progressive.

I mean, these are all not even important. It’s a pretty commonly accepted thing that the Cold War was “cold” because of nukes. We got half a century of peace in most of the world thanks to nukes.

Most people are kinda sane, only a few are insane. Sane aggressors fear nukes on their victim’s side, and don’t use nukes first because they want to win something, not burn themselves and the victim. A revolution in strategic armaments discouraging most aggressors and encouraging only a few helps peace.

All hail nukes.