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With Courage and Persistance: Eliminating Nuclear Weapon Systems in Ukraine, 1994-2004

Joseph P. Harahan, Senior Historian, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, and Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center

Date & Time

Tuesday
Feb. 21, 2006
10:00am – 11:00am ET

Overview

At a recent Kennan Institute talk, Joseph P. Harahan, Senior Historian, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, U.S. Department of Defense, and Fellow, Woodrow Wilson Center, explained that intense, complex diplomacy by U.S., Russian, and Ukrainian leaders played the decisive role in Ukraine's decision to give up its claims to its "inherited" nuclear forces, which contained the world's third largest nuclear weapons stockpile, and to become a non-nuclear state. The collapse of the Soviet Union left modern strategic military forces, equipped with thousands of nuclear warheads, in four independent states—Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. According to Harahan, devising a diplomatic solution for the nuclear forces in Ukraine—the 43rd Rocket Army and 46th Bomber Army, proved to be the greatest challenge. The strategic rocket army had 35,000 men, 257 intercontinental ballistic missiles, and more than 1,300 nuclear warheads.

Harahan said that the status of the 43rd Rocket Army in Ukraine was in serious dispute—it remained officially under the command of the Russian General Staff, but most of its missiles and nuclear weapons were located on Ukrainian soil. As a sovereign nation, Ukraine claimed ownership. By late 1993, the rocket army's nuclear storage depots were overcrowded and the strategic missiles needed repair parts. The situation, Harahan explained, triggered intense diplomacy by foreign ministers, defense leaders, and even the presidents of Ukraine, Russia, and the United States. U.S. leaders advocated nonproliferation policies. The U.S. wanted Ukraine to sign and ratify the major arms control treaties, decommission the 43rd rocket army, and send its nuclear weapons to Russia, in return for U.S. assistance and security guarantees. In 1991-1992, Russian leaders endorsed a new regional collective security alliance, the Commonwealth of Independent States Armed Forces, which had command and control, along with the Russian General staff, of the four new states' nuclear forces. Then in mid-1992, Russia changed its national security policy, demanding that Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine return all of the inherited nuclear forces and warheads to Russian bases and depots. According to Harahan, Russian leaders asserted, even demanded, that the Russian Federation would be the sole nuclear power in the region.

Ukraine's political elite was divided over what to do with the 43rd Rocket Army, Harahan explained. Some Rada members believed that Ukraine should nationalize the strategic rocket army and become a nuclear power. President Kravchuk and his government, facing inflation, financial crises, and national economic collapse, argued that the strategic missiles and nuclear weapons would be more valuable as bargaining chips in negotiating security guarantees and economic aid from the Russian Federation and the United States than as a military asset. Harahan said that the government's argument grew more persuasive in late 1993, given the expense of maintaining the nuclear army and Ukraine's financial and economic collapse. In 1994, leaders of Ukraine, Russia, and the United States negotiated and signed the Trilateral Agreement. Under the terms of that agreement, Harahan said, Ukraine agreed to ratify the non-proliferation and strategic arms reduction treaties and to send its nuclear warheads to Russia to be reprocessed into low enriched uranium and then returned to Ukraine as nuclear fuel rods for its electrical generating plants. Russia agreed to provide security guarantees and to compensate Ukraine for the nuclear materials in the strategic and tactical warheads, and the United States agreed to provide security guarantees, technical assistance, and funding for the reprocessing by Russia of the uranium in the nuclear weapons.

The Trilateral Agreement proved difficult to implement, according to Harahan. Ukraine set several conditions for U.S. assistance, including: housing for the displaced military officers, independent environmental surveys of the missile sites, compliance with all Russian and Ukrainian laws on access to military facilities and protection of secret technologies, and employment of Ukrainian workers. U.S. assistance was also conditional, with projects specifically approved by congressional committees, and requirements for prior waivers of Ukrainian internal taxes and customs and the purchase of all equipment from American firms. In the beginning there was a great deal of dissatisfaction on all sides concerning the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, but Harahan contended that the program was saved by the efforts of U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry, 1994-1998 and Ukrainian General Volodymyr A. Mykhtyuk, Commander, 43rd Rocket Army, and Deputy Minister of Defense, 1996-2004. In the end, it took ten years to liquidate the rocket and bomber armies, all of the weapons systems, facilities, and military infrastructure. The United States spent $630 million on the process from 1994-2004. Harahan concluded that Ukraine's successful transformation to a non-nuclear state is a history of courage, commitment, persistence, and professionalism.

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Kennan Institute

The Kennan Institute is the premier US center for advanced research on Russia and Eurasia and the oldest and largest regional program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. The Kennan Institute is committed to improving American understanding of Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus, and the surrounding region though research and exchange.  Read more

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