If Ukraine possessed nuclear weapons, would Russia have annexed Crimea in 2014 or invaded in 2022? Should Ukraine and its allies regret Ukraine’s disarmament?

A decade before the unforeseen end of the Cold War, Kenneth Waltz posited that the gradual spread of nuclear weapons, to encompass more states as possessors, “may be better.” It appears paradoxical, or perverse, to suggest that proliferation, however “gradual” or otherwise qualified, could be beneficial. Waltz’s logic was that of ultimate deterrence. It relies on a negative self-interest expressed in the phrase Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD), and which permeated associated considerations. It is negative because it is concerned with prevention or something not happening. Shared awareness among actual or possible adversaries that each had, or might have, the capability to inflict catastrophic damage increased the probability of them not engaging in direct military conflict, conventional or nuclear. They might be involved in proxy wars and other nefarious activities, but would not attack each other. Thus, an increase in the number of states possessing nuclear weapons increases the security of that club’s members, though not necessarily that of non-members.

Two years after it emerged as a new state, Ukraine “surrendered” its nuclear inventory, most of it to another new “post-Soviet” state, the Russian Federation (Russia). Ukraine’s President Leonid Kravchuk was urged to do so by the US, the UK, and Russia, then under the presidency of Boris Yeltsin. At the time, Ukraine had the world’s third highest number of nuclear warheads on its nascent sovereign territory—more than China, the UK, or France. It is likely correct that Ukraine could not ensure safe preservation of all of those weapons, most of which were ageing. The memory of Chernobyl was vivid and in any event Moscow would have retained some control over the strategic component of the arsenal. Ukraine’s political leadership accepted the financial inducement and security assurances to relinquish it.

Less than six years later, Vladimir Putin became president of Russia. During his generation-long tenure he has often evoked Russia’s nuclear force as a defence guarantee, protecting Russia from conceivable threats, not always referred to by name. He sometimes more dramatically refers to advanced special weapons and their potential pre-emptive use. The principal targets of this rhetoric and imagery are the political sectors and societies of western, mainly European, states. There and elsewhere assorted empathisers still concur with Putin’s pronouncements and warn against disturbing his regime.

If Russia’s nuclear forces are a deterrent against the US’ and NATO’s nuclear and conventional forces, or NATO control over Ukrainian territory, the same logic or “principle” would apply to a Ukrainian nuclear capability vis-à-vis any military threat from Russia. If Ukraine had retained, or later acquired, “tactical” nuclear weapons, the occupants of the Kremlin would very likely know it. Would they then have annexed Crimea in 2014 and launched a larger-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022? At least some of the tactical nuclear weapons Ukraine possessed when the Budapest memorandum of security guarantees was signed in 1994 would be capable 20 years later. A state only has to have one and it instills, at the very least, a “strategic ambiguity” in the minds of real or potential enemies. In accordance with Waltz’s and Putin’s deterrence logic, Ukraine’s leaders and population would be justified in the belief that having their own nuclear weapons would have protected them from an unfriendly Russia. People in the political sectors of a few other states and among their citzenries are thinking similarly. Deterrence extended and extends, as many argue, to NATO forestalling a Soviet military attack on Western Europe or a Russian military attack on, for example, Estonia, Lithuania, or Poland. But is NATO and its Article 5 “all for one, one for all” guarantee still as reliable as it seemed to be, or has Waltz’s notion of a “self-help” world gained a new intensity?

Waltz’s deliberations were embedded in his theory or approach of “neo-realism.” Questions and critique emerge, much of it from advocates of other perspectives in International Relations (the discipline), which propounds many and varied factors as relevant to explaining or understanding international relations (what happens, or doesn’t happen, in the political world). Some schools emphasise other underlying or imperceptible influences, and/or that world history cannot be reduced to military power and its sub-dimensions. For example, certain political systems and forms of governance may render nuclear weapons and even armed forces per se unnecessary, or economic prosperity ensures peace, or international law tends to prevail. Related arguments may be valid and neo-realism is far from the full story. Yet for the current Ukrainian government, its predecessor, and its population, the Budapest Memorandum is a scrap of paper, which Bill Clinton, US President in 1994, and others now regret. If Ukraine had nuclear weapons it is highly likely it would still have Crimea and would not be fighting a war for its very existence, now after the apparent exit of a supporting coalition’s most powerful member.

Dr Steve Wood is Associate Professor in Politics and International Relations at Macquarie University, Sydney. He is the author of four books and articles in Cooperation and Conflict, Review of International Studies, Energy Policy, International Relations, and Cambridge Review of International Affairs. In 2022, he was the recipient of an Alexander von Humboldt research grant.

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