The Foreign Service Journal, October 2022

32 OCTOBER 2022 | THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL against the territorial integrity or political independence” of each of the three countries. Famously, these assurances were not present in a legally bind- ing way in the documents they received, the Budapest Memoran- dums, but the countries providing themwere reaffirming a legal obligation housed in the United Nations Charter. And they were doing so at the highest level: Russian President Boris Yeltsin, U.S. President Bill Clinton, and U.K. Prime Minister JohnMajor signed the individual memorandums. Thus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus became Non-Prolifer- ation Treaty (NPT) non-nuclear weapons states, since they agreed to give up the nuclear weapons on their territory. In terms of war- heads for strategic delivery vehicles (missiles and bombers), there were 1,900 in Ukraine, 1,410 in Kazakhstan, and 100 in Belarus. The delivery vehicles could be destroyed in situ, but the warheads would be handed off to Russia, which would become the single NPT nuclear weapon state to emerge from the breakup of the Soviet Union. Russia would have to eliminate most of the warheads, although a few fromBelarus would be redeployed on missiles in Russia. Critics Gather Force Ukraine’s Budapest Memorandum has been under assault by critics ever since the Russians seized Crimea and went to war in the Donbas in 2014. However, the attacks against it have risen to new heights since Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24. Among Ukrainians, no less than President Volodymyr Zelenskyy blasted the agreement at the Munich Security Conference in 2022, just days before the invasion. His foreign minister, Dmytro Kuleba, told Lesley Stahl on CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Feb. 20, 2022, that it was a mistake for Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons; on that account, the United States “owed” Ukraine. And Leonid Kuchma, who was president of Ukraine when the Budapest Memoran- dum was signed, stated to the BBC: “Without nuclear weapons, Ukraine is not in a condition to respond adequately to Russia.” Experts outside Ukraine are questioning the original rationale for the Budapest Memorandum and raising the alarm that its failure could spur nuclear proliferation. (See, for instance, “The Russia-Ukraine war may be bad news for nuclear nonproliferation, ” by Michael O’Hanlon and Bruce Riedel of the Brookings Institu- tion.)They mostly agree that the outcome of the war will determine howmuch damage there will be to the nuclear nonproliferation regime, as Toby Dalton argues in “Nuclear Nonproliferation After the Russia-Ukraine War” ( Georgetown Journal of International Affairs , April 2022). A bad outcome for Ukraine would bring pressure on coun- “MAY THAT NUCLEAR WAR BE CURSED!,” BY MARIA PRIMACHENKO WIKIOO.ORG -THEENCYCLOPEDIAOFFINEARTS