De geschiedenis van Oekraïne's kernwapen arsenaal uit de Sovjetijd blijkt toch anders gelopen dan veelal wordt gedacht dankzij nieuwe informatie uit dossiers uit die tijd.
Het is een lang artikel, dus wat meer quotes om de essentie samen te vatten.
Deceit, Dread, and Disbelief: The Story of How Ukraine Lost Its Nuclear ArsenalNever-before-released archival files reveal Washington’s error in cudgeling Ukraine to give up its nuclear weapons despite the risk of a Russian invasion.
On the contrary, the evidence reveals President Bill Clinton’s future CIA director concluding that Ukraine did have the means to operate an arsenal. The unearthed papers show the USSR’s last foreign minister, Eduard Shevardnadze, confirming that “just one nuclear missile” in Ukrainian hands would have been enough to safeguard its independence so far as Russian strategic planning was concerned.
They also show top American officials—from both parties—fretting over Russia’s belligerent, irredentist behavior during the negotiations, including repeated concerns about a potential future Russian invasion of Ukraine even as they chided “whiners” in Kyiv for expressing the same anxieties.
Historical materials also illuminate how American officials blocked serious attempts by Kyiv to trade its inherited arsenal for genuine security guarantees—even going so far as to lobby Europeans to keep Ukraine out of non-NATO security arrangements. Perhaps this was because, as the record now reveals, they were also backchanneling to Moscow respect for Russia’s “vital interests in its near abroad” and a willingness to “help in a variety of ways.”
Rather than a serious effort at global nuclear arms control, the actual imperative seems to have been a desire on the part of American officials to coax Russia into joining the Western democratic world. The Budapest Agreement, therefore, amounted to a diplomatic shell game—one where weapons were transferred from a weaker state to a stronger one with imperial pretensions, largely to soothe Russian insecurities about achieving “parity” in its nuclear stockpile vis-à-vis the United States.
That was an understandable and even laudable aim. Yet, it resulted in a doomed policy that required assuaging Russia at almost any cost, ignoring the Kremlin’s own words and actions, and ultimately leaving Ukraine to the perilous fate borne out today.
After all, the only reason Ukraine agreed to surrender its weapons is because Western powers linked that decision to “security assurances” that proved hollow. According to Yuri Kostenko, Kyiv’s former head envoy for disarmament, the outcome deprived his country of “the most powerful method of protecting the state.” It received nothing in return—except, perhaps, its worst fears fulfilled. Now, with forfeited Ukrainian missiles raining down on Ukrainian cities, it is time for Western policymakers to confront the past—their past—with the seriousness it deserves.
But looping, cursive marginalia on Gompert’s memo captured an impasse. “The dilemma we face,” wrote Nicholas Burns, then on staff at the National Security Council, “is that many Ukrainian leaders are concerned about a threat from Russia and will be looking for some sort of security guarantee from the West.” He added, “We cannot give them what they want but is there a way to somewhat allay their concerns?”
Documents unearthed in the last two years similarly undermine the presumption that moral arguments about global nonproliferation played a predominant role in Ukraine’s renunciation of nuclear arms. Rather than embarking on an idealistic crusade to reduce the number of nuclear weapons worldwide, it was more of a shell game carried out with the grittiest and most realpolitik of aims: calming Russian insecurities about the size of its nuclear stockpile compared to the United States and shoring up a legal regime that would soon become a dead letter.
These officials wanted to bring Yeltsin and company into the democratic fold and were willing to pay almost any price to see that happen. It was a gamble—a well-meaning and perhaps even worthwhile one—but the chips they were gambling belonged to someone else.
And what did Ukraine get? With over 100,000 Ukrainian souls lost since 2014 and a trillion dollars of wreckage piled high by Mr. Putin’s war, the country’s brief interregnum of peaceful independence offers little solace.
The only thing Ukraine didn’t get was what it wanted all along: Not nuclear weapons, but the security those weapons provide. Ukrainians would have gladly traded every warhead for serious means by which they could have quashed its neighbor’s imperial impulses. But that was denied to Kyiv as well.
De belangrijkste conclusies zijn dus o.a.:
Oekraïne kon wel degelijk kernwapens onderhouden en lanceren. Het argument dat ze dat niet konden klopte dus niet. Dat is vaak wel een van de belangrijkste punten die terugkomen in discussies over dit onderwerp.
De VS z'n strategie was erop gericht om Rusland binnen het westerse domein van democratie, rechtstaat en kapitalisme te bewegen. Concessies aan Rusland en het negeren van argumenten van Oekraïne leken vooral hierdoor gedreven.
Specifiek, de VS hadden geen oog voor de geopolitieke geschiedenis tussen Oekraïne en Ruslands imperialisme, wat feitelijk al eeuwen teruggaat.
Oekraïne kreeg als gevolg hiervan relatief zwakke veiligheidsgaranties die niet bestand bleken tegen Ruslands hybride oorlogsvoering. De gok van de VS pakte totaal verkeerd uit en de rest resulteerde in een bloederige geschiedenis en heden.
Mijn persoonlijke take is dat nog niets eens zozeer om het kernwapen arsenaal gaat, maar een totale misvatting van de geopolitieke situatie door de VS. Dit is was natuurlijk niet de eerste en laatste keer dat gebeurde door de VS.
De zwakke veiligheidsgaranties voor Oekraïne en zwalkend geopolitiek beleid zijn mede een bloeddruk geweest voor de huidige instabiliteit in de wereld. Nu deze geschiedenis bekend is weten we dat het niet zo had hoeven te lopen was er met meer geopolitieke kennis en nuchterheid t.o.v. Rusland had geacteerd.
"When I am weaker than you I ask you for freedom because that is according to your principles; when I am stronger than you I take away your freedom because that is according to my principles"- Frank Herbert