Ok, so it sounds like you basically agree with what I said; that increasing the West’s willingness to compromise over the Baltics would be actively bad.
However, I think you over-estimate how valuable treaties are in the absense of the institutional will to defend them. We had a Memorandum to defend Ukraine, but that neither prevented Putin from invading nor caused us to defend Ukraine. Treaties are credible only because there are hawkish politicians and voters who assign terminal value to honour, even if in retrospect they wish they could avoid having to fight.
I’m confused, the Wikipedia page you link to doesn’t quite seem to support what you’re saying:
The Budapest Memorandum was negotiated at political level, though it is not entirely clear whether the instrument is devoid entirely of legal provisions. It refers to assurances, but it does not impose a legal obligation of military assistance on its parties.[1][17] According to Stephen MacFarlane, a professor of international relations “It gives signatories justification if they take action, but it does not force anyone to act in Ukraine.”[16]
One reason I was disturbed about that when the Ukraine crisis started was that Ukraine had been given those security assurances in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal. So the later Russian invasion and NATO acquiescence support the view that states shouldn’t give up nuclear weapons, since the nukes offer more protection than any promises they are offered in exchange.
Of course, that doesn’t mean NATO should have fought over the Crimea or Donbas and risked triggering an immediate nuclear war, far from it. But it is a reminder of the complexity of reducing nuclear risk, and the sign of a given action is often in question, not just the magnitude of the effect.
Note that the sources on that page are all from 2014. It’s easy to come up with excuses after the fact for why you need not act. But then how can we credibly claim to be willing to die for Latvia? There will be excuses then too.
Ok, so it sounds like you basically agree with what I said; that increasing the West’s willingness to compromise over the Baltics would be actively bad.
However, I think you over-estimate how valuable treaties are in the absense of the institutional will to defend them. We had a Memorandum to defend Ukraine, but that neither prevented Putin from invading nor caused us to defend Ukraine. Treaties are credible only because there are hawkish politicians and voters who assign terminal value to honour, even if in retrospect they wish they could avoid having to fight.
I’m confused, the Wikipedia page you link to doesn’t quite seem to support what you’re saying:
One reason I was disturbed about that when the Ukraine crisis started was that Ukraine had been given those security assurances in exchange for giving up its nuclear arsenal. So the later Russian invasion and NATO acquiescence support the view that states shouldn’t give up nuclear weapons, since the nukes offer more protection than any promises they are offered in exchange.
Of course, that doesn’t mean NATO should have fought over the Crimea or Donbas and risked triggering an immediate nuclear war, far from it. But it is a reminder of the complexity of reducing nuclear risk, and the sign of a given action is often in question, not just the magnitude of the effect.
Note that the sources on that page are all from 2014. It’s easy to come up with excuses after the fact for why you need not act. But then how can we credibly claim to be willing to die for Latvia? There will be excuses then too.