Current estimates are that Russia has about 150,000
troops gathered on its border with Ukraine. And there is little doubt that Russia’s
larger economy, greater reserves, and superior technology would give them the advantage in a war.
You might wonder whether things would be different if Ukraine had nuclear weapons right now.
Perhaps a strategic nuclear arsenal could counteract Russia’s conventional advantage.
Well, it might surprise you to find out that part of the reason why Ukraine does not
have nuclear weapons is because the United States stopped Ukraine from proliferating.
Given that, now seems like a good time to revisit the decision. Was it a mistake?
Let’s jump into a time machine and go back to the chaotic early 1990s. The Soviet Union was
falling apart, splitting into 15 states, and with that, geographically dividing its nuclear arsenal.
Russia was the main nuclear beneficiary, having more than 35,000 nuclear weapons on its soil
when it became independent. For context, the United
States only had a bit more than 10,000. Surprisingly, of all the countries in the world,
Ukraine had the third most nuclear weapons following the fall of the Soviet Union with 2300.
Kazakhstan also had 1400, but that’s a story for a different day.
Of the traditional nuclear powers, France held the next largest stockpile at just 500.
But these statistics are a bit misleading. Imagine that tomorrow
New Mexico declared itself independent. This is notable because New Mexico houses Kirtland
Air Force Base, home of the Airforce Global Strike Command and the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center.
And with that, New Mexico has a large stockpile of nuclear weapons in various states of readiness.
This would seem to be very exciting for the Governor of New Mexico, who could now show
its regional rivals who is really in charge. Except, of course, that is not what would play
out. Actually using the nuclear weapons would require the U.S. President’s authorization.
So unless Joe Biden was on board, the governor of New Mexico doesn’t really possess nuclear weapons
in any meaningful way. She’s just housing them. And that’s basically what happened when
Ukraine became independent. Yes, Ukraine had a bunch of nuclear weapons on its soil.
However, command and control was legally in the hands of the Commonwealth of Independent States,
a loose confederation of the Soviet Successors.
In practice, though, that meant that control was really in the hands of Moscow.
If Ukraine wanted to acquire the nuclear weapons, they would have to physically take them away.
This would have meant a firefight with Russian soldiers,
which didn’t seem like a good idea at the time.
Thus, the Ukraine’s apparent nuclear arsenal was in fact a phantom.
Still, Ukraine had a second pathway: to build nuclear weapons on their own.
Problems with Chernobyl aside, Ukraine was born with a relatively
sophisticated domestic nuclear know-how. Measuring this is difficult, but here is a rough
cut at it. In 1991, Russia had the most extensive nuclear technology infrastructure on the planet.
Let’s standardize them to 1 on this scale. On the opposite end of the spectrum was
Antigua and Barbuda. They had the least infrastructure, so let’s standardize them to 0.
For more comparisons, the United States was close to Russia on this scale.
And Latvia was about halfway in between the extremes.
Upon its birth, Ukraine immediately landed above .8. With a little bit of time and effort,
they were more than capable of building nuclear weapons if they wanted to.
For example, North Korea, 15 years away from testing its first bomb,
scored lower on this scale than Ukraine.
Fearing potential threats in both the west and the east, hawks within the Ukrainian parliament
advocated for the new country to turn its latent capacity into a realized nuclear deterrent.
This sparked a vigorous debate in the United States,
both in the government and in policy circles. The main argument in the “pro” camp was to deter
future Russian aggression against the west, with Ukraine being a stepping stone. That is,
Russia could invade Ukraine, move to Poland, and then reach Germany.
Nevertheless, the “against” camp won out, led by Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar.
The United States long had a policy to reduce the number of countries building nuclear weapons,
dating back at least to President Eisenhower’s 1953 “Atoms for Peace”
speech in front of the United Nations. The atoms for peace program offered
civilian nuclear assistance to countries that pledged to not develop nuclear weapons.
Recipients found the program attractive because it amounted to an economic subsidy.
Meanwhile, the United States benefited from having fewer security risks
and a lower chance of accidental nuclear wars or misplaced nuclear
materials.
Ukraine needed such an agreement right as it was declaring independence.
The country was a mess, with the Soviet government having neglected it in the years prior.
Although Ukraine could have scraped together the funds for a native program,
that money was better spent elsewhere---namely, rebuilding its economy and investing in the state.
The agreement also meant that Ukraine would not face negative economic coercion.
This was a problem on both fronts.
On the east, Ukraine needed fuel coming in from Russia.
On the west, Ukraine needed European markets to sell goods to.
Failure to commit to nonproliferation would have endangered both of these.
In the shadow of those concerns, Ukraine signed the Lisbon Protocol,
which designated Russia as the successor of the Soviet nuclear arsenal and obligated Ukraine
to sign the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The United States spent $2.6 billion over the
next five years to decommission Ukrainian nuclear facilities.
Meanwhile, the now-officially-Russian nuclear weapons went back across the border.
Interestingly, these too were decommissioned. The weapons used uranium enriched
to 90% of the fissile 235 isotope. Russia downblended it to 5% uranium 235---a
mix that is insufficient for a nuclear explosion but is perfect for running power plants.
Russia sold that fuel to the United States, and the proceeds went back to Ukraine.
The final element of the agreement was the Budapest Memorandum, which gave Ukraine
security assurances. From today’s perspective, the most pertinent part of it was this section:
“The Russian Federation reaffirms their commitment to Ukraine to respect the independence and
sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine. That takes us to the current saga. During the
Euromaidan crisis, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula, apparently violating their security
assurances under the Budapest Memorandum. And now Russian 150,000 troops sit on the
border with Ukraine, seemingly in an effort to extract other concessions.
Meanwhile, Russia and the west could not appear any further apart in reaching an agreement.
This takes us back to the original question: was the Nunn-Lugar strategy a mistake?
Maybe. But there are a couple of important caveats to this.
The first goes back to the start of the Euromaidan crisis. As it became clear there was about to be
a revolution, President Viktor Yanukovych fled to Russia. The result was temporary political chaos.
This was exactly the type of thing that the United States---as a general policy
on nuclear weapons---wants to avoid. In fact, you may have heard of this
in the context of another state: Pakistan. Sometimes, Pakistan is described as “too nuclear
to fail”---that the United States cannot allow for political instability within the country,
without triggering deep proliferation concerns. This is why the United States tends to support
the current leader of Pakistan with large sums of aid and little accountability,
whoever that person may be. So, in effect, the Nunn-Lugar
strategy was correct. The United States would not be in the current situation
without having advanced past a potentially major leak in the nonproliferation regime.
But even if that went off without a hitch, it is still not clear whether Ukrainian nuclear weapons
would do much in the current crisis. Let’s imagine that if Ukraine and
Russia fought a war today, the expected average division would look like this.
Now suppose that Ukraine had nuclear weapons. Naturally, you would expect the average outcome
of war to be more favorable to Ukraine. In terms of this graphic, that means
pushing the line further southeast. Obviously, more weapons are better than fewer weapons.
Exactly how far might be a point for debate. Maybe they would only be of minor tactical
or strategic use, and so the line would only shift marginally in favor of Ukraine.
Alternatively, you might think they are extremely important, and would mean
Russia’s expected gains are fleeting at best. It is tempting to think that the latter case is
more plausible. After all, nuclear weapons are mankind’s most destructive creation---surely,
they should have a major impact on war. However, most of the recent theoretical
work on nuclear coercion is skeptical. Any use of nuclear weapons would come
at a substantial diplomatic cost from the international community. That doesn’t make their
use impossible, but it does make it difficult to use nuclear coercion on peripheral issues.
This is why the United States never used nuclear weapons in the Vietnam War,
or the Iraq War either. It’s also how India and Pakistan---both nuclear
powers---fought a war against each other over Kargil without resorting to a nuclear exchange.
The key is that Kargil is peripheral for both countries, and exchange of control over it does
not threaten the existence of either state. In contrast, if Washington DC were at stake,
there is little doubt that the United States would use nuclear weapons to prevent its fall.
We can actually see how war aims evolve due to nuclear weapons by
looking at the Arab-Israeli conflict. In the 1948 war,
the Arab coalition had an explicit goal to capture all Israeli territory. They failed.
Things got worse for Egypt in the Six-Day War of 1967,
in which Israel captured the Sinai Peninsula. But by the time of the Yom Kippur War in 1973,
Israel’s facilities had operated long enough that the country had solidified a nuclear deterrent.
Continuing to pursue war aims to take all of Israel was no longer a good idea.
Even if they would be militarily successful, a few nuclear weapons detonated over Cairo
would make the process unprofitable.
Sadat instead moderated Egypt’s strategy, limiting his goals to retaking the Sinai.
Heading back to Ukraine, it is not clear what Russia’s underlying desires are.
If there is a war, will Russia limit itself to taking eastern portions of Ukraine?
Or does Putin have eyes on the entire country? If you think this latter case is correct,
you may be right. But it’s not obvious. This is an ethnicity map of Ukraine.
Ethnic Ukrainians are large majorities in most of the central and western parts of the country.
They would be much more difficult to administer than the east.
And Russia knows something about hard-to-administer regions,
having fought a war in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
More recently, during the Russo-Georgian War of 2008, Russia limited its territorial
push to two Russian-loyal regions, rather than the entirety of Georgia.
If it were the case that Russia’s war aims would be limited to the eastern portions of Ukraine,
imagine that the expected division of territory after a war would look like this.
Now consider a counterfactual world where Ukraine magically had nuclear weapons.
If those eastern segments of Ukraine are the periphery, then the nuclear weapons won’t do
much to deter Russia from achieving those goals. The expected division line will not budge.
Let’s go back to the real world, where Ukraine does not have nuclear weapons.
Now suppose that Russia has full war aims, intending to capture all of Ukraine.
It might not seem obvious at first, but this has the effect of shifting the expected
division further west. Why? In the event that Russia wins the military confrontation,
they will capture more of the territory, which in turn shifts the expectation in that direction.
Now imagine the counterfactual world where Ukraine has nuclear weapons. If
Russia were to try to move past Kyiv and go west a nuclear response is a reasonable expectation.
So, internalizing the threat of those nuclear weapons,
Russia limits itself to the eastern portions.
But as I describe in my book “Bargaining over the Bomb”, this has the effect of shifting the
expected post-war division of the territory in Ukraine’s favor. It also allows Ukraine
the ability to be more aggressive in crisis bargaining because the nuclear weapons act as
an insurance policy. Russia, by contrast, would have to adopt a more conservative approach.
And that leaves us with the trillion-dollar question. If Russia will have extensive war aims,
then the U.S. might indeed regret---at least to some degree---its nuclear buyout from the 1990s.
But if Russia will have limited aims, then it seems like it was the right call.