Would the Bomb Have Stopped Putin?

The idea that nuclear weapons are a destructive force for peace is a potent irony that invites disagreement. It depends on a credible threat of retaliation, an imagined consequence. Peace hinges not on rationality, but on fear. 

One thing that Russia need not fear is a nuclear intervention by Ukraine. In 1994 they substituted threat for trust when signing the Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances. By becoming party to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the territorial integrity and political independence of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan was assured. Yet in 2014 Crimea was annexed by Russia. As Ukraine continues to pitch westwards in terms of defence, the actions and rhetoric of Russia render the promises made in Budapest increasingly hollow.

The situation in Ukraine is challenging our imagination. In The Atlantic, Helen Thompson argues that we see Vladimir Putin’s behaviour as anachronistic because we believe such power politics is a thing of the past. The threat of nuclear weapons depends on imagination, but so does the idea of nation states, military alliances, and the idea of historically bound people that Putin employs when discussing Ukraine. As McTague notes, ‘there could not be a more modern conflict than this battle between power and imagination.’

Ukraine essentially gave up their inherited weapons, at the time the third-largest nuclear stockpile in the world, for meaningless, non-binding promises. Former Major General Mykola Filatov, lamented ‘If we still had our nuclear weapons now, we would have our respect and security, and be free of Russian aggression.’ In July 2014, there was a failed bill in parliament to renew their nuclear status. To propose such a programme again now would be to propose an incredible challenge and ultimately a futile endeavour, coming too late to stave off Russian irredentism. 

The costs of Ukraine’s disarmament were numerous. Domestically it was financially and politically challenging. Setting aside the political and financial capital required for Ukraine to have reverse engineered a nuclear weapons programme, would a nuclear Ukraine be safer? The Budapest Memorandum is an acknowledgement of Ukraine’s fears, based on a history of territorial incursions and suffering. This cultural enmity is manifest again.

The secretary of Ukraine’s National Security and Defence has stated that Ukraine gave up its weapons on request of the United States. The fear of undermining arms controls with Russia was a significant factor. The possible leverage was crippling sanctions on the already impoverished Ukraine. But whilst the Clinton administration pushed for disarmament, offensive realist John Mearsheimer challenged conventional wisdom by arguing for a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent.

In many ways Mearsheimer was right: Ukraine is a target of Russian aggression, conventional weapons may not be sufficient to preserve their sovereignty and their use results in a substantial loss of life, and economic sanctions from the West (which have thus far been limited) are no substitute for a proper security guarantee. Mearsheimer is also nuanced, not advocating for unrestricted proliferation but drawing a specific formula for post-Cold War European security, limited to a nuclear-capable Ukraine and Germany. Along with nuclear security goals, Mearsheimer noted that Ukraine’s army could put up a resistance but would be defeated by Russia; today it is still outnumbered and outgunned.

Mearsheimer notes that the proliferation can be dangerous when nuclear capabilities and the authority to use them are put into the hands of the technically and political inept, and because of Russian aggression. These two factors result in what Mearsheimer euphemistically describes as ‘a small but reasonable chance that nuclear war might occur’. Setting aside the global context and assuming Ukraine is a responsible nuclear power, the issue of a preventative Russian invasion upon discovering the creation of a nuclear programme in Ukraine was dismissed by Mearsheimer. He suggests that Russia could not guarantee that Ukraine would not respond with nuclear weapons to such an invasion, even with a limited retaliatory force. But Steven E Miller suggests that without any warning capability, the risk of a preventative attack would be high. Miller claims that the conditions under which the ‘long peace’, to borrow a term from Gaddis, prevailed do not apply to Russia and Ukraine. Thus, nuclear weapons could be seen as more of a threat Ukraine’s best interests, let alone the worlds.

Nuclear weapons are an emotive subjective. The human capacity to obliterate the only known life in the universe raises the threat from political to existential. When one couples this destructiveness with the speculative nature of our understanding of nuclear weaponry and its effects on state behaviour, proliferation becomes a less savoury prospect. Miller suggests that the proposition that nuclear weapons promote peace ‘is properly regarded not as a fact but as an interpretation’.

The larger issue of whether a nuclear Ukraine could foreclose Russian aggression centres on this: would Russia fear a nuclear Ukraine? Miller notedthat the continued nuclear inferiority of Ukraine would render its threat insufficient. Indeed, the Strategic Defense Initiative of the Cold War and the hypersonic weapons of today show that the arms race of nuclear weaponry is not sedentary. One is only a nuclear power with the capacity to use weapons effectively. On the other hand, to be seen as a responsible nuclear power diminishes the credibility of a nuclear threat. Conventional war could still occur out of calculated risk. It is the same vein of calculated decision making that Russia is involved in now. Though Miller is right that nuclear weapons are no guarantee of security, the binary of nuclear security or conventional insecurity that he disputes has somewhat come to fruition.

Would Ukraine have second strike capability? Would Russia have intervened? Ultimately, it is all speculation. But we don’t need to imagine what we are seeing now. In 1994 Ukraine had two choices, and we are witnessing the consequences of its misplaced trust. Whilst imagining the bomb will change nothing, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to foresee the outbreak of another form of conflict. 

 Image courtesy of the US Navy via Wikimedia Commons, ©1996, some rights reserved.