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2017
In view of the security assurances that the United States gave Ukraine under the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, a move by Washington to appease Moscow would be another crack in the splintering international nuclear nonproliferation regime. Acquiescence to Russia’s territorial gains in Ukraine would further undermine the already-shattered 1968 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), one of the world’s most important multilateral agreements.
Wilson Center Nuclear Proliferation International History Project, Working Paper #12, 2017
Nuclear deterrence thinking has become so entrenched in US academic and policy circles that it only seems natural that other states regard nuclear weapons in the same terms. Yet is it necessarily so? In this article, Polina Sinovets and Mariana Budjeryn examine the case of Ukraine to understand how its leaders interpreted the value of the nuclear weapons deployed on Ukrainian territory in 1990–1994. Ukraine became the host of world’s third largest nuclear arsenal following the Soviet collapse in 1991. Its pre-independence intention to rid itself of nuclear weapons soon gave way to a more nuanced nuclear stance that developed into a claim of rightful nuclear “ownership.” Western security theories and practices led US leaders to assume that Ukraine sought to keep nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the growing Russian threat. Drawing on Ukrainian and US archival sources and interviews, Sinovets and Budjeryn reconstruct Ukrainian deliberations about the meaning of their nuclear inheritance and find that deterrence thinking was conspicuously lacking. Sinovets and Budjeryn's investigation demonstrates that deterrence thinking, far from being a “natural” or systemically determined way of regarding nuclear weapons, is a socially constructed and historically contingent set of concepts and practices.
The foundation of preserving and enhancing global nuclear security rests on three fundamental pillars: nuclear disarmament; preventing further proliferation of nuclear weapons; and international cooperation aimed at safeguarding nuclear materials. Today, experts argue that the recent decision of Russian president Vladimir Putin to cut cooperative efforts to secure nuclear materials are placing in peril the future of international efforts to promote global nuclear security. We argue that in addition to the clear erosion of the third pillar of nuclear security, there are more threatening ramifications resulting from the recent actions of Russia in Ukraine. The aggressive actions of Russia in Ukraine, together with the unwillingness of the international community to exert sufficient pressure on Russia to honor the promises made to Ukraine in exchange for giving up nuclear weapons in 1990s (the Budapest Memorandum) are detrimental to non-proliferation objectives and reach far beyond the...
2015
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and covert intervention in Donbas subvert the international nonproliferation regime on weapons of mass destruction. The Kremlin has almost fully abrogated the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances, given to Kyiv in December 1994. This agreement between Ukraine, on the one side, and the United States, UK, and Russia, on the other, led to the dismantling of the sizeable Ukrainian collection of Soviet-era atomic weapons.
2016
As a result of Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its “hybrid war” in the Donbas, the present-day nonproliferation regime, with its exceptional treatment of the permanent Security Council members, could in the future, paradoxically, encourage rather than stem the construction or acquisition of weapons of mass destruction.
The Brown Journal of World Affairs, 2017
I explore six possible scenarios—options and strategies for the development of Ukraine’s (as well as, to a lesser degree, Georgia's and Moldova’s) security situation during the coming five to 15 years. As long as Russia’s current regime continues to exist, Moscow’s aggressive stance towards Kyiv will probably last, and Ukraine has no easy way to achieve international organizational embeddedness, as detailed below. The scenarios are: (1) thecontinuation of the current “gray zone” status of Kyiv, Chisinau, and Tbilisi (the capitals of Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia, respectively); (2) Ukraine and Georgia’s permanent neutrality as a result of some Western-Russian bargain; (3) Ukraine, Moldova, and Georgia’s accession to the EU; (4) Ukraine and Georgia’s entry into NATO; (5) Ukraine and Georgia’s Major Non-NATO Ally status with the United States; and (6) the creation of an Intermarium (“land between the seas”) coalition of East-Central European NATO member states on the one hand, and post-Soviet non-NATO countries (Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and perhaps Azerbaijan) on the other. These six scenarios for Ukraine’s foreign affairs may or may not materialize in the foreseeable future and vary in terms of likelihood that they will occur; they would demand very different approaches and would have highly diverging implications for both Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian actors in Eastern Europe. CORRECTION: The phrase "a firm conduit across the passage between the Kerch and Crimean peninsulas" needs to read: "a firm conduit across the passage between the Kerch peninsula of Crimea, and the Russian Federation." This mistake was the result of an editorial change that I failed to notice when checking the pages for proof. The respective formulations in the previously published German, Russian and Ukrainian versions are correct.
2015
If Ukraine, formerly the world’s third-largest atomic power, can be treated this way after having naively given up its post-Soviet nuclear arsenal, what kind of support can non-nuclear states expect to receive in a crisis situation? Having seen Russia’s deception, China’s studied refusal to stake a position, and the three Western Security Council powers’ hesitance, safeguarding territorial integrity will again be the sole matter of national states. When a guarantor of the international non-proliferation regime so demonstrably questions the inviolability of borders, the message to some current and future national leaders may be: possessing one’s own atomic deterrent is the only effective instrument for ensuring a state’s full sovereignty.
The essay aims to unsettle a simplistic narrative of Ukraine's decision to renounce nuclear weapons in 1990-1994 by exposing some of the complex elements of the story that rarely get a mention in political debated. The essay highlights the unprecedented nature of circumstanced under which Ukraine and other post-Soviet republics came into their nuclear inheritance and the challenges it posed. In the end, Ukrainian leaders successfully negotiated this complex predicament, not only to get concessions from the West in exchange for its denuclearization but also to allow the country to join international community on good terms. Ukraine should be proud of its denuclearization decision, while the West is under the obligation to do more to reward and support Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression.
Russia’s annexation of Crimea and covert invasion of eastern Ukraine places an uncomfortable focus on the worth of the security assurances pledged to Ukraine by the nuclear powers in exchange for its denuclearization. In 1994, the three depository states of the Treaty on Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT)—Russia, the United States, and the United Kingdom—extended positive and negative security assurances to Ukraine. The depository states underlined their commitment to Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity by signing the so-called “Budapest Memorandum.” Using new archival records, this examination of Ukraine’s search for security guarantees in the early 1990s reveals that, ironically, the threat of border revisionism by Russia was the single gravest concern of Ukraine’s leadership when surrendering the nuclear arsenal. The failure of the Budapest Memorandum to deter one of Ukraine’s security guarantors from military aggression has important implications both for Ukraine’s long-term security and for the value of security assurances for future international nonproliferation and disarmament efforts. Russia’s breach of the Memorandum invites strong scrutiny of other security commitments and opens an enormous rhetorical opportunity for proliferators to lobby for a nuclear deterrent.
The NDC Research Paper shows how the nuclear disarmament agenda and the debate over further reductions of nuclear weapons in Europe have been affected by recent events in Ukraine. The authors point out that the most important consequences of the crisis in terms of nuclear arms control have been “the dramatically worsened relations between Washington and Moscow, the loss of trust, and the hostile environment which poisons the chances of cooperation. These circumstances are definitely not ideal for further arms control measures and, in many cases, threaten the survival of already existing regimes.” Consequences of these dynamics include “undermined solidarity among the P5 states, the distress of the arms control regime as a whole (especially the NPT and its ability to advance the interests of the non-nuclear weapon states), and the weakened value of great power assurances.” These problems have been escalated by the weakened positions of arms control advocates, and the strengthened arguments of hardliners. Parallel to these events, the United States and Russia both conducted regular nuclear strike exercises in May 2014 which further fueled strategic tensions. The authors argue that maintaining existing arms control regimes is one of the few options remaining for Washington and Moscow to keep open this important field of cooperation, one which has the potential to provide some level of trust and transparency despite the general decline in U.S. and NATO relations with Russia. This will require a balanced mix of political, diplomatic, economic, and military steps to assist Ukraine and stand up to Russia in such a way that it will be deterred from repeating its actions, but not alienated from future cooperation. These challenges will make arms control harder in the coming years, but that does not mean that the process has lost its viability in the current international security system. Dr Jeffrey Larsen, Division Head Research
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