Weekend Reads | The Budapest Memorandum
This weekend's read is the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, signed by the leaders of Ukraine, the Russian Federation, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It's remarkably short, but there is a tremendous amount of historical and political context surrounding it. And 30 years later, it figures centrally in the current wrangling over how the war in Ukraine might end.
The breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 re-created a set of separate nations, largely following the borders that existed prior to Soviet assimilation in the mid-20th century. But since the breakup happened so suddenly, the property and resources of the Soviet Union were left scattered across those new nations — including its arsenal of thousands of nuclear weapons. Not only were there fears of leaving them in the hands of nascent governments, there were also issues simply accounting for all of them, creating further concerns some might illicitly be funneled into the hands of dictators or terrorists in other parts of the world. All of this led to renewed efforts to stop the proliferation of nuclear weapons, which resulted in the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT).
Ukraine was a former Soviet state that found itself with over 1,000 nuclear warheads, many old and quickly falling into disrepair. It responded positively to invitations to sign on to the NPT, but it had a few conditions. First, safely decommissioning and disposing of the arsenal would be expensive; the United States agreed to pay for it. Second, it recognized that the highly enriched uranium in the nuclear warheads was very valuable; the Russian Federation agreed to swap it for low-grade uranium fuel rods that could be used in Ukraine's nuclear power generators.
Third, Ukraine had not forgotten the primary lesson from the Cold War: Nuclear warheads, even if never used, are an effective deterrent against aggression from other nations. By eliminating its nuclear warheads, Ukraine was giving up that deterrent. It wanted to know that its sovereignty and borders would be respected once it no longer had a silent deterrent.
The Budapest Memorandum was negotiated to satisfy that third condition, as a precursor to Ukraine signing on to the NPT. Ukraine would give up its nuclear arsenal; in return, Russia, the U.K., and the U.S. agreed:
To respect Ukraine's independence, sovereignty, and borders.
To refrain from the threat or use of force against Ukraine (except in self-defense).
To refrain from "economic coercion designed to subordinate to their own interest the exercise by Ukraine of the rights inherent in its sovereignty and thus to secure advantages of any kind."
To seek U.N. Security Council action to provide assistance to Ukraine if it should become a victim of an act of aggression.
Not to use nuclear weapons against any non-nuclear-weapons state that is a party to the NPT, except in self-defense.
To consult with each other in the event that a situation arises questioning these commitments.
Russian President Vladimir Putin violated the Budapest Memorandum in 2014 when he seized Crimea, and then again in 2022 when he invaded Ukraine. In the five weeks since he assumed office, Trump has violated two sections: He has taken Russia's side, which shows he does not respect Ukraine's traditional borders; and he has tried to force Ukraine to sign over a significant portion of its rights to rare-earth minerals within its borders, a form of economic coercion. Arguably he violated it a third time by voting against a U.N. resolution condemning Russia as the aggressor in the ongoing war.
Plenty has been written about the Budapest Memorandum over the past 30 years, detailing the difficult politics of the time. Then-President Bill Clinton felt that the Senate would not ratify a treaty that commits to American military support for Ukraine, so instead the agreement has a list of "assurances" instead of guarantees — and even then, the Memorandum does not provide assurances that the U.K. and U.S. will provide military support to Ukraine to defend its borders. And even in 1994, Russian Federation President Boris Yeltsin complained that the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) expansion was a threat to Russia; in fact, he did so loudly at the Budapest summit where the Memorandum was first signed, much to the displeasure of President Clinton. Putin has echoed these same concerns about NATO expansion as a pretense to his invasions of Ukraine.
Without a doubt, though, Ukraine had a stronger negotiating position in 1994 than it does today. Even though its nuclear warheads were deteriorating and the cost to maintain them was beyond the means of the newly independent Ukraine nation, and even though the warheads were pointed at the United States, not at Russia, their mere existence was a significant deterrent to military force, and the large nuclear powers had a strong incentive to make concessions to secure them. For its part, Ukraine quickly fulfilled its responsibilities to hand over the nuclear arms, and while it maintains a conventional military force, the large deterrent is long since gone.
Even if the Budapest Memorandum is not legally binding, as the Trump administration argues, it speaks volumes that the United States has chosen to violate it multiple times at a critical juncture in the war in Ukraine. That will change how both the United States' allies and its foes interpret U.S. foreign policy and, in particular, any treaties it negotiates. Putin is viewed negatively around the world, but in contrast, the United States is supposed to be a beacon of democracy, freedom, and justice. If it can't be trusted to uphold an agreement that has been in place for 30 years, when the very circumstance occurred that motivated the agreement in the first place (a foreign aggressor invaded a weakened Ukraine), one could argue that the Trump administration has undermined its own ability to achieve its foreign policy goals — and perhaps the nation's standing on the global stage beyond Trump's term.
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