Yeah, it’s best to let Putin drown under the weight of his own misadventures.
This shit wouldn’t happen to a nation like Turkey or North Korea. In the world of nation states either you have nukes or you sign a mutual defense treaty with someone who does otherwise you sit at the little kids table at the UN and complain about international justice and civil rights to a room of deaf people.
Coughing up their nuclear weapons during separation for a treaty of no interference was a stupid move by optimistic Ukrainian politicians.
No idea what the Fogarty Report (the official inquiry by the USN into the shoot down) says, mainly because some of it is still classified, and I can’t find full text of the unclassified bits. This article in Proceedings doesn’t mention a military squawk on the Iran airliner’s transponder. http://m.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1993-08/vincennes-case-study
One interesting explanation for the reported Mode II squawk is that the Vincennes CIC personnel confused the Iran Air track with that of an A-6 bomber operating in the area, and descending towards the carrier USS Forrestal. It’s mentioned in a few master’s theses from various US military schools (Naval Postgraduate, etc…), and IMHO, is more persuasive than attempts by e.g., the International Court of Justice, that there was no Mode II squawk whatsoever. Interesting reading all the same.
To answer the OP, sure, the SAM batteries are legit targets. Who would you like to go bomb them? The Ukraine can’t; the U.S. could, but where’s the casus belli? The US lost 1 citizen, I believe, and I don’t think that NATO obligations have been invoked. If you’d like the Europeans to stand up to Russia a bit more, removing their dependence on Gazprom would be a start. I.e., fast-track LNG port development and give the Europeans an alternative to buying Russian NG. Like buying US natural gas.
Giving Ukraine back its nukes might help too. (Yes, I know they’ve been decommissioned/turned into mixed fuel by now. So sell them some other system Pantex hasn’t taken apart yet. Or if not sell, lend/lease the materiel. What could go wrong?) I’m only somewhat joking on the latter.
If the power differential is large enough, I don’t know that nuclear weapons would help. The US certainly rode roughshod over Pakistan’s wishes for the last decade. And at the other end of the power scale, the Pakistani Taliban don’t much care that Pakistan has nukes either. I don’t think Putin would be discouraged from this kind of adventurism if Ukraine had nuclear weapons.
Honestly, I kinda wish somebody would forget some polonium in his coat pocket or something. But then, he’d probably be replaced by a carbon copy, Russia not exactly lacking in corrupt, power hungry oligarchs.
That’s like giving a drunk the keys to the liquor cabinet and hoping he won’t open it. Just give Chernobyl back to Putin and hope that placates him.
If Putin and his boys were entirely removed from the seats of the power, these guys are their likely replacements (i.e. the largest opposition party). Not necessarily corrupt or oligarchic, but definitely not liberal either.
It is impossible to say what would have happened if Ukraine had nukes. Would that have deterred Putin? Maybe - certainly, it would have prevented the ultimate threat Putin now holds over them - which is an all-out invasion of their country by superior military force. Reckless as Putin certainly is, I doubt he would risk that for such small gains.
No-one is saying that it would be a good idea for Kiev to use nukes on the seperatists - the seperatists aren’t, in any case, the real threat. The real threat is that if Kiev appears to be winning (as it does now), Moscow reserves the right for all all-out invasion.
Now, you and I may well agree that simply allowing Moscow to invade is more sensible than nuking Moscow - of course, you and I aren’t at risk for being invaded. I quite agree that the use of nukes as weapons is crazy. However, demonstrating that nuclear disarmament leaves one vulnerable makes their ownership more attractive, thus leading it it being more likely, rather than less, that they will someday be used for real.
And Russia signed it as well, and it is. Meaning that the agreement as a whole is worthless.
Of course, there never was any chance that the US or UK would invade Ukraine.