I can appreciate this line of thought, but after the fall of the evil empire, the Ukrainians inherited 1/3rd of the extensive soviet nuclear Arsenal. The US, UK and Russians came to an agreement (Budapest Accord) to de-nuclearize the Ukrainians. The only reason the Ukrainians agreed to destroy their greatest defensive deterrent was that the Russians agreed to forever respect their boundaries (oops… their fingers must have been crossed on that… sorry Crimea and Donnboss basin), and that the western allies would come to their defense if the above was threatened.

Had they known BOTH of those pledges were idle hypothetical talk… they would have kept their nukes in 1994 and been better able to prevent the intimidation and invasions they’ve seen.

With out track record of making idle promises of having nations backs in the future in exchange for current actions… it will become all the more difficult to get nations to side with us, make agreements with much less agree to major disarmament agreements. The world (including us) becomes all the more dangerous.

South Vietnam 1975
Afghanistan 2021
Ukrainian 2014 and 2022

Not a good list there.