Worth noting that Ukraine had nuclear weapons and negotiated them away in exchange for a promise that Russia would not use nuclear weapons against them.
The Bucharest memorandum contained the promises that:
- None of the countries (US, UK, and Russia) would threaten Ukraine’s territory
- If nuclear weapons were used against them, or they were threatened by nuclear weapons, the other signatories would “Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance”
Among other promises. So it seems like they’ve already had their promises violated.
China and France didn't formally sign the Budapest Memorandum. They made separate statements generally in support but aren't obligated to take any real action.
Worth also noting that the nuclear weapons that Ukraine had were useless. All modern (post-1960s) nukes except the UK's are equipped with PALs [1]. Without the launch codes, they are just very expensive hunks of lithium deuteride. The launch codes for Ukraine's nukes remained with the KGB/FSB in Moscow throughout the breakup of the Soviet Union. They had essentially zero negotiating leverage, and as a result got essentially zero out of the negotiation.
Without the launch codes they still had highly enriched weapons grade nuclear material. That’s the tough part. Making it go bang we figured out in the 1940s.
We also saw with DVD encryption that physical access to the device makes it tough to fully protect. Nuclear codes are protected significantly by “no one gets to tinker with the device without rapid lead poisoning”.
Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine. If Iran and North Korea can do it, Ukraine certainly can. Hell, even today, in the midst of a war, they have 8 operational reactors at 3 power plants, plus 2 under construction, one damaged and recently repaired, 6 at the Zaporizhzhia power plant in contested territory, and 4 in the decommissioned Chernobyl plant.
Physical access to a nuke does not let you disable the PAL. They are constructed so that they are embedded within the device, and cannot be disabled or altered without deconstructing significant parts of the warhead. (I suspect that the PAL is not actually a separate device that can be separated from the warhead, but a series of design choices for how the warhead is constructed that make it unable to fire without the input of a cryptographic code. But then, details on this are very highly classified for obvious reasons, so we'll never know for sure.)
The real reason they didn't and don't do this is because they don't want to end up an international pariah state like Iran and North Korea. It's very clear that the U.S. has a vested interest in nuclear non-proliferation; they were the ones who gave the PALs to all our adversaries in the first place, because in the game-theoretic calculus of MAD, a small number of enemies that you can bargain and reason with is better than a large number of nuclear states even if many of those states are on your side. We would not have supported Ukraine if they attempted to retain the nukes in the 1990s, and we wouldn't support them developing nukes now.
> Enriching uranium is within the capability of a nation-state the size of Ukraine.
Sure. But standing up a program makes you an international pariah. “We’re keeping this” would have had a bit less uproar.
> Physical access to a nuke does not let you disable the PAL. They are constructed so that they are embedded within the device, and cannot be disabled or altered without deconstructing significant parts of the warhead.
People say this sort of thing, but it comes out that the US arsenal was set to 00000000 in fear that they couldn’t be used. I have… severe doubts on the uncrackable nature of Soviet nuclear cryptography.
The US invaded Iraq, because of the phantom prospect of a nuclear proliferation. A state which was just created and gave up Crimea without a shot fired in 2014 was not about to fight to keep nukes which were not theirs in the 90’s. With the combined forces of the West and Russia breathing down their necks there was zero chance that they would be able to keep them.
No country in the world is free to develop nukes, for any reason. Some still do, of course, but it is expressly forbidden by international laws and agreements.
Кожний Учасник цього Договору в порядку здійснення свого
державного суверенітету має право вийти з Договору, якщо він
вирішить, що пов'язані зі змістом цього Договору виняткові
обставини поставили під загрозу найвищі інтереси його країни. Про
такий вихід він повідомляє за три місяці всіх Учасників Договору і
Раду Безпеки Організації Об'єднаних Націй. В такому повідомленні
має міститися заява про виняткові обставини, які він розглядає як
такі, що поставили під загрозу його найвищі інтереси.
Загроза силою чи її використання проти територіальної
цілісності та недоторканності кордонів чи політичної незалежності
України з боку будь-якої ядерної держави, так само, як і
застосування економічного тиску, спрямованого на те, щоб підкорити
своїм власним інтересам здійснення Україною прав, притаманних її
суверенітету, розглядатимуться Україною як виняткові обставини, що
поставили під загрозу її найвищі інтереси.
Цей Закон набирає чинності після надання Україні ядерними
державами гарантій безпеки, оформлених шляхом підписання
відповідного міжнародно-правового документа.
Machine translation (Gemma2):
Each Participant of this Treaty, in the exercise of its state sovereignty, has the right to withdraw from the Treaty if it determines that exceptional circumstances related to the content of this Treaty have threatened the supreme interests of its country. Such withdrawal shall be notified to all Participants of the Treaty and the Security Council of the United Nations three months in advance. The notification shall contain a statement on the exceptional circumstances which it considers to threaten its supreme interests.
Threat of force or its use against the territorial integrity and inviolability of borders or political independence of Ukraine by any nuclear state, as well as the application of economic pressure aimed at subjugating the exercise by Ukraine of rights inherent in its sovereignty to its own interests, shall be considered by Ukraine as exceptional circumstances that threaten its supreme interests.
This Act shall enter into force after Ukraine has received security assurances from nuclear states, formalized through the signing of a relevant international legal document.
> Such withdrawal shall only take effect 12 months after the date of the receipt of the notification of withdrawal by the Depositary. If, however, on the expiry of that 12-month period, the withdrawing State Party is a party to an armed conflict, the State Party shall continue to be bound by the obligations of this Treaty and of any additional protocols until it is no longer party to an armed conflict.
As with any treaty, it can be broken/withdrawn from.
The treaty does not establish a right/recourse to a nuclear weapons program to NPT members in Ukraine's scenario. Ukraine just, when agreeing to it, said they'd leave if they had to. They would be non-compliant with the treaty, as North Korea was/is. They would be similarly sanctioned for it.
The Budapest Memorandom was a separate agreement, predicated on acceptance of the NPT. Similarly, nothing in it says "you can have a nuclear weapons program in scenario x".
If Ukraine started a nuclear weapons program, they would be in violation of the NPT treaty. Sanctions and loss of Western support would be virtually guaranteed.
It's not so simple, because Ukraine will join NPT when we will have security assurances from nuclear countries. It found recently, that security assurances, given to Ukraine, either a) broken, b) fake, so Ukraine may claim that the essential step is not completed yet.
Ukraine already joined the NPT, in the 1990s. That's a done deal.
Ukraine does not automatically leave the NPT just because Russia violated the Budapest Memorandum; such a mechanism linking the two does not exist. Ukraine would have to explicitly leave the NPT, which they will not do.
Except it's just not going to happen. I don't believe in the stupid propaganda (that gets repeated here almost every week) that Ukraine was manipulated into this war, by Boris or anyone else. Ukraine is entirely independent and makes its own choices.
But the simple fact is, it doesn't have unlimited control over its destiny in this particular regard, and pretending otherwise won't change that fact. It is entirely dependent on Western help at this point -- its benefactors are 1000 percent against any further nuclear proliferation, and are infinitely more concerned about that issue than they are about the borders of Ukraine, or Ukraine's survival in any other sense. They have no interest in the inevitable and far wider confrontation with Russia that would ensue from such recklessness -- and they just aren't going to allow it.
