nuclear-news

In response, Trump retorted that the military aid to Ukraine had been withheld in order to get European countries to step up, because the United States is the only one paying in. That claim has been fact-checked (here, here, and here) and proven wrong. Yet many Americans, for whom Ukraine remains a faraway country about which they know little, may wonder why their tax dollars should be spent on security assistance to this country in the first place.

In fact, there is a very good reason for doing so, with or without the involvement of the Europeans, that Mr. Trump and the American public ought to know. It’s called the Budapest Memorandum, or formally the Memorandum on Security Assurances in Connection with Ukraine’s Accession to the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons. By making its end of the bargain enshrined in the Budapest Memorandum contingent on the president’s whims, the United States is weakening the nonproliferation regime.

The Budapest Memorandum. Concluded in Budapest on December 5, 1994, the memorandum was part of the deal under which Ukraine agreed to surrender the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Ukraine inherited more nuclear weapons than China, France, and the United Kingdom combined: 176 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 44 strategic bombers capable of delivering over 2,000 nuclear warheads,  as well as over 2,800 tactical nuclear weapons. While Moscow still retained operational control over strategic nuclear weapons, Ukraine also inherited a scientific and military-industrial capacity that would have allowed it to become a fully-fledged nuclear weapons state in a relatively short time.

Ukraine chose to surrender nuclear arms for a number of reasons, not least of which was its desire to be an international citizen in good standing. In return, however, it wanted its security concerns addressed. In particular, Ukraine was wary of Russia, which even under the quasi-democratic leadership of Boris Yeltsin remained reluctant to accept Ukraine’s independent statehood and borders……..https://thebulletin.org/2019/10/impeachment-backstory-the-nuclear-dimension-of-us-security-assistance-to-ukraine/