Will the war in Ukraine become a factor contributing to the proliferation of nuclear weapons?
Many observers believe that Ukraine has made a fatal mistake by agreeing to surrender its nuclear arsenal (once the third largest in the world), writes Project Syndicate. The author of the article considers the arguments "for" and "against" this point of view and expresses his opinion
Joseph Nye
Cambridge — After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine inherited part of its nuclear arsenal. However, in the Budapest Memorandum of 1994, Ukraine agreed to return these weapons to Russia in exchange for "assurances" from Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States about respect for its sovereignty and borders. In 2014, Russia brazenly violated this promise by annexing Crimea, and with its full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, it completely tore up the Memorandum. Many observers have concluded that Ukraine has made a fatal mistake by agreeing to surrender its nuclear arsenal (once the third largest in the world). Are they right?
In the early 1960s, U.S. President John F. Kennedy Kennedy predicted that by the next decade at least 25 States will have nuclear weapons. But in 1968, the Member States of the United Nations agreed to join the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, which limited nuclear weapons to five States that already had them (the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, France and China). Today, only nine States have it — the five mentioned signatories of the treaty, plus Israel, India, Pakistan and North Korea — but there are other "threshold states" (countries with the technological potential to quickly create nuclear weapons) considering this possibility.
Some analysts suggest that proliferation may be a boon, because the world of nuclear-armed porcupines will be more stable than the world of nuclear wolves and unarmed rabbits. In their opinion, Russia would not dare to invade Ukraine armed with nuclear weapons. Moreover, they wonder why some States should have the right to nuclear weapons and others should not.
Others advocate the elimination of all nuclear weapons, a goal enshrined in the 2017 UN Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, which entered into force in 2021. It is currently signed by 86 States and 66 parties (although none of the nine nuclear-weapon States have signed it).
Skeptics of this approach argue that while giving up nuclear weapons may be a worthy long-term aspiration, efforts to achieve this goal can lead to instability too quickly and increase the likelihood of conflict. In their opinion, the real ethical problem is not the existence of nuclear weapons, but the likelihood of their use. Perhaps it would have been better if humanity had not learned to control the power of a split atom in the 1930s; but this knowledge cannot be canceled, so it is better to focus on reducing the risks of its use for military purposes.
Suppose you live in an area where destructive burglaries, robberies and assaults are constantly occurring. One day, some of your neighbors decide to equip their homes with massive explosive devices and tripwires, as well as post warning signs to scare off intruders. The problem is that if these devices are used, your home will also be damaged. However, attempts to dismantle this system in the short term are also fraught with significant risks.
What would you do? You can ask your neighbors to use the system only to protect against intruders, and not to threaten others. You can encourage them to install devices to reduce the risk of accidents and demand compensation for the risk they expose you to by extending their warning signs to your home as well. And you could convince them to take steps to dismantle the system sometime in the future when a relatively safe means can be found.
By rough analogy, these are the same conditions that are enshrined in the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), and that is why the Russian invasion of Ukraine is so destructive. Russia not only violated its direct security guarantees under the Budapest Memorandum; it also hinted at nuclear escalation to deter others from coming to Ukraine's aid. In doing so, it weakens the taboo against treating nuclear weapons as conventional weapons of war — an agreement that Nobel Prize-winning economist Thomas Schelling has called the most important global norm since 1945.
But it would be a mistake to exaggerate the damage caused to the nonproliferation regime by the events in Ukraine. Firstly, those who think that an invasion will convince other States that they would be safer if they had nuclear weapons oversimplify history. It cannot be assumed that nothing would have happened if Ukraine had retained its Soviet-era nuclear weapons.
After all, such weapons are not delivered "off the shelf" ready for use. The fissile material in Soviet long-range missiles deployed in Ukraine had to be removed, redesigned and repurposed. This would not only require time and experience, but could accelerate Russia's intervention. When States approach the nuclear threshold, they fall into a "valley of vulnerability", which can reduce their security and increase overall instability. Even in cases where stable containment can be imagined in a particular region, it is very risky to try to get from here to there.
Some theorists argue that just as nuclear weapons encouraged prudence among the great Powers by giving them a "crystal ball" with which to anticipate the destruction that would follow a nuclear war, the proliferation of nuclear weapons would similarly ensure stability among smaller regional rivals. Nuclear porcupines will behave like rabbits, not like wolves.
But not all regions are equal in terms of the risk of escalation, and it cannot be assumed that all leaders will show wisdom and use their crystal balls. The regions differ in the number of civil wars and overthrown governments, civilian control of the armed forces, security of communications and arms control protocols. If new distributors have a higher risk of using nuclear weapons — even unintentionally — they and their neighbors will become even more vulnerable in the "valley of vulnerability".
Ultimately, when nuclear weapons spread, the chances of their unintentional or accidental use tend to increase, the management of potential nuclear crises becomes more complicated, and the establishment of controls that may someday help reduce the role of nuclear weapons in world politics becomes more and more difficult. In a word, the greater the spread of supposedly defensive weapons, the higher the risks of blowing up the entire neighborhood. The real lesson of the events in Ukraine is that we must strengthen the existing NPT and refrain from actions that undermine it.
