Beware: I am not a political scientist, so you should not take this seriously. Also, to whom it may concern: I wrote this as a midterm paper for a class on nuclear security!
Nuclear Weapons in Ukraine: Past, Present, and Future
The Budapest Memorandum – a 1994 agreement in which Ukraine agreed to give up its nuclear weapons and join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) in return for security assurances from the United States, United Kingdom, and Russia – was once considered a model example of successful nuclear nonproliferation. However, as a result of the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the subsequent escalation to a full-blown invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine’s decision to relinquish its arsenal has now been repeatedly called into question [1-2]. As the conflict drags on with no end in sight, even Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has publicly commented on the role of nuclear weapons in establishing lasting peace, stating that Ukraine’s only realistic options are to join the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or to reacquire nuclear weapons [3]. It is the goal of this document to explore Ukraine’s relationship with nuclear weapons in the past, in the present, and in the future. In particular, we aim to examine the reasoning behind the decision to become a non-nuclear state through the Budapest Memorandum and the NPT, to discuss the role of nuclear weapons in the current war as well as in its possible end, and to determine the feasibility of Ukraine resuming its nuclear program in the future in order to deter further conflicts.
Ukraine’s decision to forfeit its Soviet-era nuclear arsenal – at the time, the third largest in the world, consisting of some 1700 warheads including almost 200 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) – was met with wide praise1 [4]. The primary motivation for doing so was safety; locally, Ukraine wanted to ensure it would not be subject to (further) nuclear disaster2, and globally, Ukraine wanted to convince the rest of the world that its young government had no intention of participating in aggressive proliferation. These local safety concerns were well-founded; despite the weapons being physically located in Ukraine, Russia retained launch control over the ICBMs, and Ukraine also lacked the resources and infrastructure to properly maintain these weapons [5]. Globally, it’s hard to imagine a bolder commitment to nonproliferation than joining the NPT with a timely plan to remove all nuclear weapons. With our now-established (and admittedly simple) frame of reference, it is not hard to see why Ukraine would have so willingly disarmed – especially given that the forfeiture of their arsenal also came with the security assurances described in the Budapest Memorandum. In this frame of reference, the idea that Russia would completely disregard its own role in the Budapest Memorandum and take aggressive military action towards Ukraine is completely unthinkable – but unfortunately, reality is not so simple.
The Russo-Ukrainian conflict has been ongoing since 2014, but was significantly escalated in February 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine. Russian dictator Vladimir Putin has stated many different reasons for these actions, but here we will focus on his claim that Russia had no choice but to invade and protect itself, as “it is only a matter of time” before Ukraine creates nuclear weapons [6]. It is true that at present, the world is at its greatest risk of nuclear warfare since perhaps the Cuban Missile Crisis. However, the threat comes not from Ukraine, but from Russia. It is impossible to be blind to the optics of a nuclear state starting a war with a non-nuclear state, especially given that the longer the war continues, the more often said nuclear state repeatedly makes threats to use weapons of mass destruction in order to finish said war [7]. How serious Mr. Putin is about these threats is anybody’s guess, but what is abundantly clear is that, for better or for worse, Ukraine is not going to have nuclear weapons – and therefore threaten Russia with mass destruction – any time soon. Why? Put simply, Mr. Putin’s claim that Ukraine is close to creating nuclear weapons is completely baseless. The hardest part of creating a nuclear weapon is undoubtedly acquiring highly enriched nuclear material, i.e. uranium-235 or plutonium-239. Ukraine currently has no such facilities for enriching uranium or plutonium created as byproducts of its nuclear reactors, and building so called reprocessing plants would likely take years [6], even assuming a supply chain and workforce not decimated by war. Using its nuclear reactors to produce weapons grade plutonium by tuning the fuel cycle is also not a realistic option. This approach would require enough time to complete that Russia would almost surely catch on and attack the reactor facilities, possibly leading to uncontrolled release of nuclear waste. In other words, this route is much more likely to lead to nuclear disaster than it is to lead to effective deterrence. Clearly, Ukraine has no realistic hope of ending the war through re-establishment of a nuclear program, and unfortunately, it seems equally unlikely that President Zelenskyy’s goal of NATO membership will also play a direct role in ending this conflict [8].
Where does Ukraine go from here? This question is impossible (for us) to answer with any amount of certainty. It is entirely unclear what level of support Ukraine will continue to receive from the West, especially with the pivotal US election so soon, and it is therefore entirely unclear what the outcome of this conflict will be3. What is clear, however, is that Ukraine’s relationship with nuclear weapons at present is inextricably linked with its relationship with them in the future. As we have already discussed, it takes a great deal of time to build the necessary infrastructure to enrich nuclear material to weapons grade. Ukraine can’t start today – why would it be foolish enough to begin such an undertaking, when it is already focusing its efforts on trying to win a war for which it never asked? The best time for Ukraine to resume its nuclear program was perhaps ten years ago. The next best time seems to be never.
Endnotes
References
R. S. Norris, "The Soviet Nuclear Archipelago," Arms Control Today, vol. 22, no. 1, pp. 24-31, 1992. [Online]. Available: http://www.jstor.org/stable/23624674. Accessed: Oct. 25, 2024.