I'm gonna get flak for this, but both Trump and Biden are heavily to blame for nuclear proliferation. Trump due to his actions against Iran in ripping up the nuclear deal just because he didn't like the person who negotiated it in combination with his decision to assassinate Soleimani. But Biden is just as much to blame due to his refusal to do anything of consequence when Russia broke the agreements of the Budapest Memorandum. We should have had boots on the ground when they invaded, but we waffled back and forth on selling them 50 year old weapons technology for months and now years. Unacceptable, and now the whole world knows that the major nuclear powers can't be trusted to come to anybody's aid.
I had to Wikipedia the memorandum to even know what it was, but wasn't Obama president in 2014 when Russia first breached it? Asking honestly, was that not a crucial failure but Biden's response (or lack of one) in 2022 was crucial?
Yes, I consider Obama to also be to blame somewhat. But in practice, the situation with the 2014 invasion was a lot more complex to respond to. Russia quite successfully obscured their involvement in the first couple of days...all signs pointed to Russia but they denied involvement and the little green men wore no Russian insignia, so it could have just as easily been framed as internal separatist activity, which was the Russian intent. It actually took a couple of weeks before it was crystal clear that Russia was behind everything. By then, Crimea was already occupied.
The war in Donbas was only a little bit more clear. Even though Russia's fingerprints were all over every action there, there was also no doubt that there was significant Ukrainian separatist activity, and even the most resolute of allies will hesitate to defend their allies from separatist activity.
With Biden, we saw the buildup, knew it was going to happen, and had been warning Ukraine that it was going to happen. We saw it for what it was on day one without any equivocation. We just did nothing about it.
Yes, Obama also bears a lot of the blame for this. If US reacted properly back in 2014 (or at any later point before 2022), the 2022 invasion wouldn't have happened.
