Should Ukraine Have Kept Nuclear Weapons?

When nuclear disarmament is mentioned, people say that Russia would not have invaded Ukraine if Ukraine had kept its nuclear weapons. This is a short post to question some of the assumption that are made.

Firstly, Ukraine has never had nuclear weapons. While it was part of the Soviet Union, numerous nuclear weapons (about 1/3 of its nuclear force) were sited in Ukrainian territory. This was a unique situation where a nation might be said to inherit nuclear weapons and was not a case foreseen in the Non Proliferation Treaty or international law.

Although it would be possible to have an academic debate about this, it is the facts on the ground that matter.

Control and Communications and Intelligence Systems

As with the USA nuclear weapons in Belgium, Italy, Germany and Turkey, the nuclear weapons have a permissive action link¹ which means the nuclear weapons in Ukraine could only be triggered by Moscow.

The Russian Federation also had the command, control, communications, and intelligence system (C³I) for the nuclear weapons:

early warning, information gathering, and processing systems – reconnaissance satellites, radars and GPS guidance systems
command centres under political and military control
the communications system that linked the two

Although Ukraine could have bypassed the permissive action links and developed their own (C³I) system, this would have taken time and a lot of money. At the time, Ukraine had also been hit by the massive economic downturn created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union² and would have added to the pressure on the divided nation³.

The ICBMs in Ukraine would also have limited use since they have a minimum range and were originally designed to hit targets in the USA. They would probably not be able to hit Moscow and other major Russia targets because they were too close. The warheads would have to be taken out of the ICBM and placed into another delivery system such as a cruise missile.

The United Kingdom’s Trident Nuclear Weapons System is similar in some respects with the UK using the early warning and information gathering, GPS guidance systems and the D5 missile system from the USA. The warheads themselves are also developed jointly, with the USA being the major parter⁴.

Maintenance

Continuing with the comparison to the UK, the UK nuclear weapons are stored in Scotland (Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport) and loaded onto the submarines at Faslane (His Majesty’s Naval Base, Clyde). However, the actual weapons are built at Aldermaston and Burghfield in Berkshire and some components are made at AWE Cardiff. The Vanguard-class submarines are designed and built by BAE Systems Submarines in Barrow-in-Furness in Cumbria. As already mentioned, the missiles for delivering the warheads are built in the USA. As well as building the nuclear warheads, they have to be maintained regularly, which means transporting them back down to Burghfield.

Although Ukraine was home to some of the infrastructure for building and maintaining the Soviet Union nuclear weapon system, it was only the Russian Federation that had access to the complete lifecycle for the weapons system.

Again, it would take time and money to build the necessary infrastructure to do the maintenance. For example, the UK spent over £2billion just redeveloping the Atomic Weapons Establishment in the early 2010s⁵.

Of course, Ukraine could take the UK’s approach and share resources with another country: either Russia or NATO. However, being reliant on Russia for such resources would go against the idea of independence and if the nuclear weapons were integrated into the NATO system this would undoubtedly lead to a major Russian response.

Russia’s Response

The break-up of the Soviet Union proceeded without any military action. However, the situation was very tense. One of the things that caused great concern is that the Russian Federation would intervene if it thought that its security was at risk.It is probably for this reason, the declaration of independence by Ukraine specifically says it would be nuclear-free, and incidentally it would not participate in military blocks e.g. NATO.

“The Ukrainian SSR solemnly declares its intention of becoming a permanently neutral state that does not participate in military blocs and adheres to three nuclear free principles: to accept, to produce and to purchase no nuclear weapons.”(emphasis added)⁶

It would be unlikely that Russia, or any other country, would be willing for a possibly hostile nation to have nuclear weapons next to its borders. Remember that the Cuban Missile Crisis was started when the USA positioned nuclear weapons in Turkey⁷.

Missiles fired from Ukraine would have a much shorter time of flight to essential Russian infrastructure than even those that were based in Turkey.

At the time of independence of Ukraine, Russia probably had a lot more information about the nuclear weapon infrastructure in Ukraine than Ukraine did. This might have prompted Russia to strike the sites before Ukraine had time to take over the nuclear warheads.

Rather than securing Ukrainian independence the nuclear weapons could have stopped it happening in the first place.

Dangers

While other states that have nuclear weapons have gradually built up their nuclear weapons infrastructure over time, Ukraine would be in a unique position that it would have one of the world’s largest nuclear arsenals overnight.

All other countries built up their trained personnel and C³I systems as their nuclear arsenals grew, and could learn from their errors and mistakes.

At the same time, the Ukraine would have to build up their reconnaissance and information systems. Until they had done this, they would be blind to any possible attack and much more likely to launch a counterstrike on false positive warnings.

One of the arguments put forward during the discussion on whether Ukraine should keep the weapons was the response by the international community – not just Russia. Ukraine wanted support from other countries for the fledgeling state, and being a nuclear power may impede any progress.

The USA and other Western countries gave a lot of support for the overthrow of Yanukovych in 2014. Would they have supported this period of instability if Ukraine had nuclear weapons? Who would have had the nuclear launch codes? It might have been a case of “better the devil you know”.

Budapest Memorandum

There are probably people who are surprised that it is only at this point that I mention the Budapest Memorandum⁸ . This is the treaty signed by Ukraine, USA, UK and Russia where they “Respect the signatory’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders”, Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”

Treaties are agreements between the parties to act in certain ways⁹. Unless they become part of international law they are not enforcable but if the agreement is breached by one side then the ‘agreement’ can be suspended.

These agreements can be useful but since political leaders cannot be trusted there has to be a balance of interests in upholding the treaty.

Ukraine has very little leverage in this respect, since in a case of a breach it can only seek to acquire nuclear weapons. Zelenskyy, who was president of Ukraine at the time, did suggest that Ukraine might ‘consider its nuclear status’ on 19 February 2022¹⁰ – Russia attacked a few days later.

The only part of the agreement that has any possible force is that the parties would seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”. However, since the states that are likely to threaten with nuclear weapons, i.e. Russia and USA, have veto rights on the Security Council even this is unlikely to have any effect.

Ukraine removed nuclear weapons from its territory for several reasons. Although this is stated in the memorandum it would be naive in the extreme for Ukraine to believe that they could trust the word of the other parties.

Nuclear Disarmament

I am not going to talk about nuclear disarmament in general in this post but would like to summerize some of the issues raised in the above:

Without removing nuclear weapons from its territory it is unlikely that Ukraine would have had the relatively peaceful transition to an independent state that it did.
If it had kept them then it would have been a target of strategic nuclear forces of USA, Russia or both.
It may have also led to instability in the area and even other bordering countries (Belarus, Poland, Romania, Hungry, Slovakia) seeking to aquire nuclear weapons. Belarus also had Soviet Union nuclear weapons on its territory and not all of those had been removed by the time of the agreement¹¹.
The cost to Ukraine would have been extremely large not just in terms of developing the nuclear weapons infrastructure necessary but also through being seen as a possible security risk from neighbouring states.
The dismantaling of a large part of the Soviet Union nuclear weapons stock that was located in Ukraine was an important step in nuclear disarmament.

What If?

Although many people have asked “what if Ukraine had kept the nuclear weapons”, there are many other “what ifs” that could be asked:

What if the West had supported a better approach to the dissolution of the Soviet Union rather than then “shock therapy” imposition of the “free market economy”²?
What if, when President Putin asked about joining NATO in 2000¹³ it had been taken seriously. Not necessarily allowing the Russian Federation to join NATO but to discuss a wider security framework in Europe?
What if, NATO had not rejected the Russian Federations draft agreement for a new security architecture in Europe¹⁴ in December 2021?
What if Ukraine and its Western supporters took the Russian Federations claim that Crimea was a extremely strategically importat area for them seriously and allowed Crimea to remain an independent republic or an autonomous region?
What if the Istanbul agreement in March 2022¹⁵ had ended the conflict in Ukraine?
…