The Case Against a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent

Steven E. Miller

From Foreign Affairs, Summer 1993

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Summary:  Nuclear weapons are not always destabilizing, but for Ukraine to retain its vast arsenal of icbms would be highly dangerous. The circumstances that made the nuclear arms race stable during the Cold War are all absent in the Russian-Ukranian relationship. The nuclear balance between Russia and Ukraine will never be stable and, even if possible, the process of developing a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent is fraught with conflicts over custody, control and targeting. Accidents happen. In the uncertain environment of the former Soviet Union, allowing Ukraine to keep nuclear weapons is not worth the cost.

THE RISKS OF PROLIFERATION

The case for Ukrainian acquisition of nuclear weapons rests fundamentally on two key arguments: first, Ukrainian nuclear weapons will promote peace and stability in a region that might otherwise be prone to conflict; and second, nuclear weapons will enhance Ukrainian security, providing an ultimate security guarantee for a state fearful that its sovereignty might otherwise be jeopardized by its enormous and potentially menacing neighbor to the east-Russia.

These are not trivial or easily dismissable arguments. They suggest that Ukrainian acquisition of nuclear weapons would produce desirable and beneficial security consequences for both Ukraine and the West. At first glance, they appear to provide a convincing rationale for Ukrainian nuclear weapons.

Nevertheless, Ukraine should not become a nuclear power. Its own interests and those of the West will best be served if Kiev fulfills its oft-made pledges to join the Nonproliferation Treaty (npt) as a nonnuclear weapon state. The benefits provided by nuclear weapons are less certain and more conditional than the proponents of nuclear proliferation believe. When the costs and complications associated with nuclear acquisition are taken into account, the case for Ukrainian nuclear weapons is not compelling.

DO NUCLEAR WEAPONS CAUSE PEACE?

The case for nuclear proliferation rests on the pacific effects of nuclear weapons. As Kenneth Waltz asserts in the most famous advocacy of proliferation, nuclear spread "will promote peace and reinforce international stability." Because nuclear weapons greatly in- crease the costs and risks of war, they induce caution in the behavior of states and substantially reduce the likelihood of miscalculation. Wars between nuclear-armed states become simply too dangerous to fight. The force of this argument is greatly strengthened by the experience of the Cold War, in which the two bitterly opposed protagonists avoided war for nearly half a century despite numerous crises and provocations.

If nuclear weapons reliably cause peace, then nuclear proliferation to Ukraine-or any other state, for that matter-is not merely acceptable, but desirable, stabilizing a situation that might otherwise be prone to conflict. But there are a number of reasons to question whether nuclear weapons will promote peace and stability in all conditions and circumstances and whether they will have the desired effects in the particular case of Ukraine.

The Cold War was in fact "the long peace"; for all the tensions and crises of the postwar era, war between the United States and the Soviet Union was avoided. It is widely believed that nuclear weapons contributed substantially to this outcome-a view that I share.

But accounts of the long peace invariably focus on a number of other explanations, including the stability created by the existence of a bipolar international order, and the rough equality of military power between the two protagonists in the Cold War. In the most extensive analysis of the long peace, John Lewis Gaddis identifies no fewer than seven factors contributing to the stability of the Cold War system. These include bipolarity; the remarkable independence of the United States and the Soviet Union from each ...

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