No Nukes Is Good News in Ukraine

As Putin asks for and gets approval from his Parliament for military actions in Crimea...it could be much worse.  Remember that when the Soviet Union broke up, several of the breakaway republics took with them some of Mother Russia's nukes.  Ukraine had many of them.   But somehow, with our help, they gave them up.  Amy Davidson of The New Yorker reviews the history here.

What are the lessons for the current crisis, other than to be abjectly relieved that we don’t live in a world where nuclear weapons are even more loosely held than they are? One is to not disparage diplomacy, or treat it as a lesser form of foreign policy, or to think that there is no place for a calm middle. Another is to remember how human and fallible the actors are, and how much listening and getting a sense of their interests can help.