Volodymyr Kukharenko

Helping translation companies to automate business and project management | ℙ𝕣𝕠𝕥𝕖𝕞𝕠𝕤 𝕋𝕣𝕒𝕟𝕤𝕝𝕒𝕥𝕚𝕠𝕟 𝔹𝕦𝕤𝕚𝕟𝕖𝕤𝕤 𝕄𝕒𝕟𝕒𝕘𝕖ment System

Sept 30, 2024

“Budapest Memorandum did not have guarantees, only assurances, it was not approved by Senate, so we are not obliged to do anything” – another troll comment. OK, let me explain things plainly.

First, let me talk a bit about my business. My companies have many customers from EU and US. We sign contracts, NDAs, and all sorts of papers. But what happens if any of us breaks it? If they do not pay for the work or we take money and do nothing. How the other party will deal with this? No lawyer will help any of us, because these are different jurisdictions, and the contact amounts are so small (hundreds of dollars, maybe thousands). If I come to a Ukrainian layer and tell that I need his help to get 3500 EUR/USD from EU/US, he’d recommend just forget it. And I have no idea how to hire a local lawyer, and even if I do, I am sure that the invested money and time won’t pay off.

But somehow, I have been working successfully for 14 years already, and had just a couple cases of non-payment, and most of them were solved. So why my clients never p!ss me off if I can do nothing? The answer is simple: reputation. If they do it, I will make sure my colleagues in the industry know it, so no one suffers from them again. They will start having problems with finding new business partners, and their business will suffer and may even disappear if the reputational losses are too high. In a couple of cases when I was not paid, I did not go to lawyer, but just told the non-payer that I would make him famous. Worked like magic.

In geopolitics, it works similar way. There are no international laws as such, because there is no enforcement. There is no cosmic police, bailiff or prison for countries ruled from above. Russia has broken many international agreements, there is no one who would punish them without the agreement of the world. World is more like a small village where everyone has some degree of power and reputation. You know someone is quite reliable, someone can’t be trusted, someone is involved in shady deals, and so on. And everything is decided by the village council. If someone promised you protection and then says “well, I said it without performing a magical ritual correctly, so…”, everyone still sees it. And it weakens your reputation, makes you look weak. If you do not keep this promise, how do everyone know you’ll keep next? Some may think going under the protection of someone else who look more reliable, and you’ll have to prove your leadership sooner or later or you lose it.

So, we have given our nukes in exchange for security assurance from US, UK, and… Russia. Lots of nukes, we were 3rd after US and Russia, had enough of them to burn the world. Yes, I know we look stupid now. But consider this: there are lots of countries that may make their own nukes quite fast. And they are watching. So, either you prove your promises are worth something, or you’ll get a nuclear race, as it will become the only way to protect oneself.

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Comment from :

Matej Markič; Ambassador and Envoy to the EU at the World Roma Federation | Co-Founder and Vice-President at the United for Kosova and Bosna i Hercegovina | Master’s Degree in History

“So, we have given our nukes in exchange for security assurance from US, UK, and Russia”.

I dare to predict that this continuous US and UK unreliability, passiveness, lack of action, kowtowing to their enemies, and relentless efforts to time and again appease their arch-enemies while hindering their friends and allies’s efforts to defend themselves in one way or another is going to become such an enormous burden for the vast majority of US allies in the following years that countries will slowly but steadily cease to share any information related to national security, military capabilities, intended actions against our enemies, etc. with the representatives of the US administration because cooperation and alliance with the US will be increasingly seen more as a burden than an asset.

From all the people around the world, it is perhaps none other than Kurds who have learned of that in the most hard and cruel way.

Joe Biden’s Betrayal of the Syrian Kurds Is as Great as Donald Trump’s

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