Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine. Mariana Budjeryn. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

Mariana Budjeryn’s Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine looks at the diplomatic process that led to the removal of nuclear weapons on the territories of newly independent Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine, with a focus on the latter. She argues Ukraine’s efforts to alter the terms and conditions of denuclearization failed because the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) was “too comprehensive a regime” for a nascent state to challenge amid substantial diplomatic pressure.[1] Inheriting the Bomb contributes to a resurgence of interest in Ukraine’s denuclearization in the wake of Russia’s first invasion of Ukraine in 2014. This discussion has spurred speculation on an alternative history where Ukraine never denuclearized. With her book, Budjeryn provides an “evidence-based account of Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament to the debates that are often more mired in myth than grounded in fact.”[2]

Budjeryn highlights the complexity (a myriad of factors) rather than contingency (one factor) that affected Ukraine’s denuclearization. The normative framework of international arms treaties, as well as contemporary domestic and international developments, restricted the number of options available to Ukraine. Ukraine had hoped that, in asserting its ownership over the nuclear warheads on its territory as a successor state to the Soviet Union, it could have secured international recognition, economic aid, and security guarantees prior to denuclearization. However, the Non-Proliferation Treaty had no category for a temporary nuclear state. The treaty only stipulated the existence of nuclear-weapon states (NWSs) and non-nuclear weapon states (NNWSs). Because the United States and Russia shared the view that Russia should inherit the Soviet Union’s spot as a nuclear-weapon state, they managed to combine their political, diplomatic, and economic influence to pressure Ukraine to abide by the provisions of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

Responding to counterfactuals on Ukraine’s denuclearization, Budjeryn emphasizes that Ukraine’s lack of time and resources made rapid denuclearization the best option at that moment.[3] Economically, Ukraine desperately needed American financial aid that the U.S. made contingent on Ukraine’s implementation of a swift and complete denuclearization. In international politics, Ukraine’s greenhorn-diplomats faced an alliance of seasoned American and Russian diplomats adamant that Ukraine follow the letter of existing treaties. In domestic Ukrainian politics, the lack of consensus on an alternative denuclearization plan prevented the formation of a unified Ukrainian front against the Americans and Russians.

Arms control treaties such as the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) play central roles in the author’s analysis of the denuclearization process. Through their “web of institutions, relationships, practices, norms, and shared understandings,” these treaties informed interactions between the international players in Ukraine’s denuclearization.[4] The Non-Proliferation Treaty’s clear categories and definitions on nuclear possession proved the major stumbling block to Ukraine’s claim to temporary ownership. The U.S. and Russia, both wanting Ukraine to denuclearize quickly, justified their position to the international community as integral to the survival of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, which would require renewal in 1995.

Budjeryn convincingly juxtaposes Ukraine’s denuclearization with those of Kazakhstan and Belarus to stress that these states’ contemporary historical context shaped their denuclearization process. Belarus was first to denuclearize because its parliament was unified and in agreement with Russia’s views on the process. Kazakhstan completed its denuclearization later than Belarus because Kazakhstan had a credible claim to nuclear ownership vis-à-vis the Non-Proliferation Treaty and was willing to make that argument to secure international financial assistance.[5] However, once President Nazarbayev decided to sign the NPT, there was no opposition in Kazakhstan’s parliament to oppose him. Of the three states, Ukraine held onto its nuclear warheads the longest because it faced persistent Russian threats to its national security and had a strong nationalist group in parliament to lobby for a better denuclearization deal with security guarantees.

Though a political scientist by training, Budjeryn’s extensive use of historical primary sources also makes her work an important contribution to historical scholarship. The book includes memoirs and interviews from key officials involved in the diplomatic process, state archives, and the texts of relevant arms control treaties. Ukraine’s Declaration of State Sovereignty (1990) and the Budapest Memorandum (1994) provide convenient bookends to the analysis.

Overall, Budjeryn is convincing in her argument. She points out the substantial hurdles that prevented Ukraine from retaining its nuclear arms while still acknowledging Ukrainian officials’ agency in influencing the course of denuclearization. This book should help bridge the gap between the two extremes of the ongoing debate on Ukraine’s denuclearization. Those who believe that Ukraine missed an historic opportunity to build an effective deterrent against Russia will find some hard truths here. At the same time, those who lament yet another chapter in Ukraine’s saga of victimization at the hands of bigger powers will find some counterevidence showing that, historically, Ukraine has been able to punch above its weight.

Scholars and policymakers will find this work most relevant. Scholars will appreciate the diplomatic history and interpretation of treaty provisions. Policymakers should take note of Russia’s history of aggression towards Ukraine and how Russia has used diplomacy as part of a multi-pronged strategy to reassert its control over its neighbors. Russia’s empty gestures towards a diplomatic solution of the war it instigated against Ukraine is evidence this strategy remains one of Moscow’s favorites.[6]

Shawn Conroy is a PhD candidate in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian history at the Ohio State University. His research interests include the collapse of the Soviet Union and regionalism in eastern Europe. His dissertation looks at how Dnipropetrovsk managed the transition from the Soviet Union to independent Ukraine.

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Header Image: Missile Transport Truck MAZ-537 With a Special Missile Container, Strategic Missile Forces Museum, Ukraine 2008 (Vladimir Zinin).

Notes:

[1] Mariana Budjeryn, Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2023), 186.

[2] Budjeryn 7-8.

[3] See Yuri Kostenko, Ukraine’s Nuclear Disarmament: A History (Cambridge: Ukrainian Research Institute, 2020) for a robust argument that Ukraine could have secured a better denuclearization deal.

[4] Budjeryn 13.

[5] The NPT stipulates that only those powers that tested a nuclear weapon on their territory prior to 1967 could be considered nuclear-weapon states. The Soviet Union started testing nuclear weapons on the territory of the Kazakh SSR in 1949. Independent Kazakhstan argued that this was evidence that it deserved the status of a temporary nuclear state.

[6] Minor correction: on page 213, the author writes that Leonid Kuchma became director of Pivdenmash in 1982. He actually became director in 1986.