The Foreign Service Journal, October 2022

THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | OCTOBER 2022 33 tries with big and dangerous neighbors. Such countriesmay see acquiring nuclear weapons as the only answer for their security. By contrast, a good outcome for Ukraine, withU.S. and allied support, would bolster the case for these countries to refuse nuclear weapons and continue to depend on conventional defense. Among U.S. allies, faith in the U.S. extended nuclear deterrent would also strengthen. In truth, most outside experts do not give full-throated sup- port to the notion that Ukraine should have held on to its nuclear weapons in 1994. They mostly reflect the idea that the Budapest Memorandumwas worth a shot. As Marjana Budjeryn maintains in “Was Ukraine Wrong to Give Up Its Nukes?” ( Foreign Affairs , April 2022), the memorandum failed because Russia did not respect it and the U.S. was not paying enough attention. Even Ukrainian commentators stress that Kyiv would have found it difficult and expensive to sustain a nuclear arsenal over time. Ukraine’s lack of enrichment facilities for fissile material would have been a particularly expensive problem. What We Saw and Thought … This rush of criticism has been difficult to withstand. Over and over, I and others who were among the U.S. negotiators have had to answer the question: “What were you thinking? Did you not know that Ukraine would have to deter Russia, and nuclear weapons would enable it to do so?” The answer is no. At the time we were conducting the negotia- tions over the breakup of the Soviet nuclear arsenal, all of the former Soviet republics had agreed to respect the borders within which they existed when the USSR dissolved. Russia agreed that Crimea was within Ukraine’s borders, a position it reiterated in 1997 when the two countries signed several legally binding trea- ties to govern the relationship between Russia and Ukraine and the basing rights for the Russian navy at Sevastopol. The trilateral negotiations that we conducted with the Ukrai- nians and Russians were tough but amicable. Indeed, Moscow and Kyiv worked out some of the most sensitive issues them- selves, such as access for Ukrainian inspectors to ensure that the warheads leaving Ukraine to return to Russia were indeed being dismantled rather than redeployed. This is one of the only examples, as far as I know, of foreign inspectors being allowed inside sensitive warhead facilities—but of course, the Ukrainians weren’t really “foreigners,” having served in the Soviet nuclear forces. They already knew the warhead facilities inside and out. It was because so many former nuclear officers ended up in Ukraine that I believe some in Kyiv thought that they might be able to hold on to the warheads and create an independent nuclear arsenal. Colonel General Volodymyr Tolubko, for example, had been a senior commander in the Strategic Rocket Forces, the land- based intercontinental missiles so important to Soviet nuclear deterrence strategy. He argued publicly throughout the negotiat- ing period that Ukraine could constitute a national nuclear force. We Americans argued, in return, that it would not be so easy from a technical standpoint. Command and control of the nuclear missiles located in Ukraine were based in Moscow. To create an independent force, those command-and-control lines would have to be guillotined and a new system put in place, linked to the leadership in Kyiv. In my opinion, such an action would have led to early conflict between Russia and Ukraine, perhaps even of a nuclear nature. Moreover, the political and economic costs for Ukraine would have been high. On this score, we argued that Ukraine would be isolating itself just at a time when it needed help to establish its independence and sovereignty, including a healthy economy able to stand on its own feet. The high-technology industries based in Ukraine, such as the space and aircraft industries, would only prosper if they had access to the global marketplace. If Ukraine insisted on hanging on to its nuclear weapons, we argued, such access would be denied it. Instead, it would be iso- lated, unable to do business. We emphasized the willingness of the United States to help Ukraine to prosper, but not if it insisted on becoming a nuclear power. In short, we saw Ukraine’s path to becoming a viable nation-state as one requiring economic and political development and emergence onto the global stage as quickly as possible. Insisting on nuclear status would isolate Ukraine and, in the end, destroy that process. Ukraine’s Fighting Spirit Despite my pain at the Russian invasion of Ukraine and all that has gone with it—the atrocities, the death, the damage both human andmaterial—I continue to believe that Ukraine’s formation as a nation would have been stunted from the start if it had insisted on hanging on to nuclear weapons. Instead, Ukraine bought itself three decades to become a sovereign state with a strong national identity and commitment to independence and democratic principles. The road has been rocky—Ukraine has been plagued by corruption, messy politics, poor economic performance, meddling fromMoscow—but it has persevered. I would go so far as to say that Ukraine’s strong sense of national self, born of these 30 years, has given it the spirit to fight this war so successfully with Russia. In doing so, it has gained the respect and, indeed, the awe of its friends around the world. Seen in that way, its decision to become a non-nuclear weapon state in 1994 was the right one. n