For all but a few scientists, the nuclear age began with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The “arms race” officially began on August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union completed its first successful test of a nuclear weapon in present-day Kazakhstan. Nine years later, in 1958, Bertrand Russell founded the “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament” (CND), the first of more than three dozen anti-war and anti-nuclear organizations to be created through the 1980s, many of which still exist today (Freeman, Dreams for a Decade). The social impact of these organizations has been felt worldwide. In fact, over the years, three of them have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Not only grassroots organizations but also nations of the world have come to understand the dangers of nuclear war. As a result, both the nuclear-weapon states (NWS) and the non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS) have reached multiple arms control agreements.

Looking at the trajectory of arms limitation efforts over the past sixty years, it is clear that the apogee occurred on December 5, 1994, when Ukraine officially joined the NPT (Non-Proliferation Treaty). Once that happened, the Clinton administration succeeded in obtaining international approval at the 1995 NPT Review Conference to extend that treaty indefinitely. The controversy surrounding Ukraine’s accession to the NPT figures prominently in Mariana Budjeryn’s study, Inheriting the BOMB.

In 1968, the “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” (NPT) was negotiated under UN auspices.Footnote ¹ The treaty defined nuclear-weapon states as those that had tested a nuclear device prior to January 1, 1967: the US, USSR, United Kingdom, France, and China. All other nations that are signatories to the treaty are deemed to be non-nuclear-weapon states. The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) that was signed in 1972 had a five-year term.Footnote ² The follow-on agreement, dubbed SALT II, was signed by Leonid Brezhnev and Jimmy Carter on June 18, 1979.Footnote ³ On December 12, 1979, NATO promulgated a “dual-track strategy” in response to the Soviet deployment of missiles to Warsaw Pact nations. The strategy called for negotiations with the USSR to limit the number of nuclear weapons, while simultaneously deploying Pershing II and intermediate-range cruise missiles to provide a response in the event of an attack against western Europe. The SALT II agreement was bitterly opposed by conservatives in the US Congress, such that Senate ratification had a low probability of success.Footnote ⁴ This soon became moot, however: on December 24, just two weeks after the NATO announcement, the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan. Carter immediately withdrew the treaty from consideration, imposed economic sanctions on the USSR, and announced a boycott of the 1980 Summer Olympics. Such was the pessimistic tenor of the times in the US and western Europe as the decade of the 1980s began.

The invasion of Afghanistan sent shockwaves around the world: public response in the west to the war was almost immediate. Freeman’s first sentence captures the mood: “In April 1980, four American organizations published a four-page document that would spark a nationwide grassroots movement to end the nuclear arms race” (Freeman, 1). That document had a simple message: the US and the USSR should adopt a verifiable freeze on development of nuclear weapons while they negotiated a reduction of such devices. Thus began the Freeze Movement in the United States. Also in April 1980, the CND issued an “Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament,” also known as the “END Appeal” (Freeman, 24). The END organization would become the leading British advocacy group urging elimination of all nuclear weapons in Europe. The Freeze Movement and END are the touchstones for Stephanie Freeman’s analysis of geopolitics in the 1980s and the interactions between Ronald Reagan and the leaders of the Soviet Union. Freeman provides a very detailed account of the anti-nuclear activities conducted in the US and Europe.

These activities were remarkably successful through the first three years of Reagan’s presidency. Grassroots projects in the US produced great momentum, generating anti-war proposals in state and local referenda around the country, freeze proposals in Congress, and a disarmament plank in the 1984 Democratic Party platform. The high point occurred in June 1982 when around 750,000 Americans demonstrated in New York City “demanding nuclear disarmament” (Freeman, 75). The Freeze Movement never supported Reagan, however, even when he actively sought significant arms reductions (Freeman, 41). In Europe, “millions took to the streets across Western Europe to demonstrate against the ‘Euromissiles’ in the early 1980s” (Freeman, 2). In 1980, responding to NATO’s dual-track policy, “peace activists issued an appeal urging the West German government to rescind its support for the planned US intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) deployments” (Freeman, 35). That document, dubbed the “Krefeld Appeal,” attracted more than four million signatures (Freeman, 36).

Reagan came to the presidency with no foreign policy experience. Accordingly, he surrounded himself with leading Washington Republicans, nearly all of whom had a very conservative outlook: Kenneth Adelman, Richard Allen, James Baker, Richard Burt, Frank Carlucci, William Casey, Lawrence Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, Edwin Meese, Oliver North, Richard Perle, John Poindexter, Eugene Rostow, and Caspar Weinberger. Reagan was a kindred spirit. A true “cold warrior,” he had opposed every previous arms control agreement. Most famously, he called the Soviet Union the “evil empire.” But he was also, at heart, a nuclear abolitionist who struggled to reconcile hawkish and dovish impulses, which led him to an awkward compromise that he called “peace through strength.”Footnote ⁵ Reagan believed that in order to compel Moscow to negotiate arms reductions, America should first build up its own nuclear arsenal.

Reagan had a deeply flawed understanding of Soviet power. He believed Russia was on the rise, while America was in decline. Yes, their missiles in eastern Europe caused western leaders to lose sleep at night, as did the superiority of their ground troops vis-à-vis NATO, but the Soviet economy, never very strong, was already in deep trouble when Reagan first took office. When the Solidarity movement in Poland gained ascendance in 1981, Brezhnev chose not to use troops to quell the disturbances: with the Afghan war raging, he had neither the manpower nor the economic resources necessary. The US imposed sanctions in response, most notably on a planned Soviet natural gas pipeline, but western leaders in Europe who were looking forward to the supplies coming via the pipeline were not pleased. Although they supported the planned installation of NATO missiles, they were opposed to a tough economic response against Moscow. The debate over this issue was especially strident in West Germany, which found itself continually trying to reconcile its security relationship with the west and its desire for Ostpolitik.Footnote ⁶

The Krefeld Appeal and the mass demonstrations in their capital cities definitely worried western leaders, because public pressure was likely to cause parliaments to vote against missile deployments planned for late 1983.Footnote ⁷ Freeman discounts the fact that the Krefeld appeal resulted from communist activities directed from Moscow, but there seems to be no question that the inspiration for the document came from the World Peace Council.Footnote ⁸ It is likely that the intense public pressure in several western European nations would have stymied the American attempt to gain approval for the deployment of missiles on European soil. Then the Soviets changed this calculus completely: on August 31/September 1, 1983, they shot down the Korean airliner, KAL007. That single event put an end to the demonstrations and gave European leaders the political cover they needed to approve INF deployments. Immediately thereafter, in October, the US Senate rejected a freeze resolution and the Soviet delegation in Geneva walked out of arms control talks. In November, the first missiles were deployed to West Germany.Footnote ⁹ Freeman completely misunderstands the significance of KAL007. Not only does she claim that the Soviets shot down the airliner, “believing it to be an American reconnaissance plane,” (Freeman, 113) which is demonstrably incorrect,Footnote ¹⁰ she believes that the incident “prompted Reagan to think deeply about the consequences of nuclear war and reinforced his determination to prevent nuclear disaster” (Freeman, 113). Freeman provides no evidence in support of her claim.Footnote ¹¹ Reagan was, after all, an abolitionist at heart.

What Reagan did do, however, was send George Shultz to Moscow over the objections of his staff to see if progress on arms control could still be made, despite the month-long harangue over KAL. And that had an impact on Yuri Andropov, who faced the same level of Cold War sentiment from his military as the American president faced in Washington. Andropov thought that the rationale for reducing military expenditures was straightforward: roughly 40 percent of the national budget and as much as 15–20 percent of Soviet GDP was devoted to the military and the security establishment—leaving little room for measures to improve the lives of Soviet citizens.Footnote ¹² The Soviet economic situation only worsened as the years passed, such that Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and later Mikhail Gorbachev found their hands tied both domestically and internationally. The only way to reduce these expenditures was to reduce international tensions.

Gorbachev became General Secretary in March 1985. On top of the problems he inherited from Chernenko, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant blew up on April 26, 1986. Aside from the ecological devastation, medical consequences, societal upheaval, and the geopolitical damage to national prestige, there was the cost—upward of 10% of Russia’s GDP annually (on top of the military and security expenditures) devoted to the cleanup, environmental remediation, and supporting the lives and livelihoods of the 45,000 people who were evacuated from the radiation zone.

In her analysis Freeman almost completely ignores Chernobyl, one of the signal international events of the 1980s. In her view, the primary impact of the tragedy was that it “showed the Soviet leader the chaos and suffering that would result from a nuclear war” (Freeman, 175). Moreover, she claims Gorbachev’s “moral aversion to nuclear war” was strengthened by the accident (Freeman, 152).Footnote ¹³ She does, however, cite the completely false claim promulgated by Kate Brown that upwards of 150,000 people died as a result of the disaster (Freeman, 174).Footnote ¹⁴ Accordingly, in Freeman’s opinion, the main motivation behind Gorbachev’s actions was his belief in a “common European home,” an idea he first espoused in 1984 in London. The “central argument” of her study “is that nuclear abolitionists played a significant role in ending the Cold War” (Freeman, 4) because “European activists influenced Gorbachev’s concept of a ‘common European home’ and his budding support for the right of self-determination across Europe” (Freeman, 171).

It was this impulse, Freeman believes, that “prevented the Soviet leader from intervening to stop the 1989 East European revolutions” (Freeman, 5)—for instance, in Prague in November when approximately 500,000 protesters gathered, and the entire Communist Party leadership resigned: “How could Gorbachev use force against an opposition group that shared his goal of creating a ‘common European home?’”Footnote ¹⁵ (Freeman, 235). Political scientists have long discussed the tension between ideational and materialist motivations for leaders: are leaders inspired by a grand idea or are their actions hamstrung by economic considerations? Freeman clearly adopts the ideational position. That seems patently correct for Ronald Reagan, but less so for Mikhail Gorbachev, who was constrained by the failing Soviet economy throughout his tenure as General Secretary. Would Gorbachev have passively accepted the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact had the resources at his disposal—both in manpower and economic strength—been adequate to allow another course of action? Personally, I doubt it. Gorbachev was first and foremost a Soviet patriot; he certainly never intended for the processes he set in motion at the XXVII Party Congress in 1986 to lead to dissolution of the empire. This is not to denigrate Gorbachev, nor Reagan for that matter. Each in his own way was a visionary. Each struggled against a military leadership that strongly disagreed with his goals and had the wherewithal to impede progress toward those goals. But in the end the visionaries prevailed, and the soldiers did not.

What Gorbachev and Reagan almost achieved in Reykjavik in 1986 was almost historic—agreeing to eliminate all American and Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Almost. Except for one minor detail: the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), facetiously dubbed “Star Wars” by its opponents. In 1982 Edward Teller, “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” wrote to Reagan “extolling the recent advances in directed energy weapons,Footnote ¹⁶ which he argued could be used to destroy incoming nuclear missiles” (Freeman, 89). This was exactly what Reagan was looking for, and he latched on to the concept with fervor, directing millions in appropriations toward development of the technology.Footnote ¹⁷ SDI was a myth, but a myth Reagan believed. Instead of Armageddon, he saw a chance for Salvation. From the Soviet side, Gorbachev and his military planners had to assume the myth was real: failure to do so would have been the height of malfeasance in the realm of national security.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the two presidents were in a no-win situation. Reagan would not give up SDI, failing to understand that 90% of a loaf was better than nothing. For his part, if Gorbachev had returned to Moscow empty-handed, with the prospect of funding another expensive defense research project the nation could hardly afford, the attempted coup of August 1991 might have happened five years earlier with quite different results and consequences. Under the circumstances, therefore, the fact that one year later the US and the Soviet Union managed to sign and ratify the INF Treaty is remarkable. With the assistance of the few like-minded individuals in his administration, Reagan outmaneuvered the Neo-Cons and achieved the unthinkable, the elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons.

Not everyone was pleased, however, particularly not at the Pentagon. The disarmament negotiators had also eliminated all delivery vehicles capable of firing at an enemy from 300 kilometers or more. Real wars are fought with conventional weapons, and professional soldiers knew that the INF limitations meant military personnel would necessarily, but needlessly, be placed within range of enemy fire. On the other hand, the Pentagon was extremely pleased that Reykjavik turned out to be a bust. In a world without nuclear weapons, NATO would have been forced to spend many billions of dollars to upgrade its conventional forces in Europe to match Soviet capabilities. European political leaders were equally relieved, not only because any European war would be fought on their soil, but also because an American-Soviet rapprochement might have led both countries to disregard the needs and wishes of Europe’s people. From their standpoint, a little bit of arms control was a good thing, but a lot was not.

On Christmas Day 1991 in the west, the Soviet Union came to an end, and the west rejoiced. Ukraine and the Russian Federation entered a strange and frightening existence as independent nations. All other issues aside, the crux of the matter was money. Russia was “dead broke,”Footnote ¹⁸ and Ukraine was, if anything, “deader broke.”Footnote ¹⁹ In the first year of Boris El´tsin’s presidency, the official inflation rate was 2,539 percent, and only once in the 1990s did the nation experience actual GDP growth.Footnote ²⁰ Even worse, between 1991 and 1999 Ukraine’s economy shrunk by more than 60 percent,Footnote ²¹ and at one point the inflation rate was 10,000 percent!Footnote ²² Such was the state of the world during the period that is Mariana Budjeryn’s focus in her book, Inheriting the BOMB. Given the events of 2014 and 2022, the salience of this work has never been greater.

Her story begins with Chernobyl and the devastating impact it had on life in the Ukrainian SSR. Early interactions between security specialists had led the US Congress to fund nuclear safety and security activities throughout the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations even before the official dissolution of the USSR. As Budjeryn explains (47–48), Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar managed to pass the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act (CTR) that appropriated $400 million annually from the Department of Defense budget.Footnote ²³ In addition, one of the first things America did after the breakup of the Soviet Union was to send plane loads of food stuffs, medicines, medical supplies, and medical equipment—worth more than $1 billion dollars—to Kharkov (Kharkiv), closed cities in Siberia, and Alma-Ata (Almaty). CTR became the primary vehicle “aimed at providing safe and secure storage, handling, and transportation of nuclear weapons and materials”Footnote ²⁴ (Budjeryn, 62). In Ukraine, most of this funding went to dismantlement of missiles targeted at the US.

Ultimately, the US devoted nearly $25 billion for multiple projects across the entire region.Footnote ²⁵ Through the mid-2000s, approximately $500 million went to Ukraine, along with $350 million in economic aid and another $150 million in support for small and medium enterprises to foster economic reform (Budjeryn, 62). In addition, the west funded activities to make up for the generating capacity lost when Chernobyl was (finally) shut down for good in 2000. Over and above the funds dedicated to Chernobyl, the US provided well more than $1 billion to promote disarmament, economic reform, and the development of civil society in Ukraine—with little in the way of results, except disarmament.Footnote ²⁶ Europe also took an active role. An EEC program funded safety and security projects throughout the region.Footnote ²⁷ Moreover, the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development spent over €2 billion to replace the Soviet sarcophagus at Chernobyl that was badly in need of repair. That project was not completed until 2016.

On July 16, 1990, the Ukrainian parliament—the Verkhovna Rada—joined “a parade of sovereignties” (Budjeryn, 85) to declare that within its territory its laws would supersede Soviet law, simultaneously announcing its intention to become an unaligned nation and to give up its nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, “[I]n a plebiscite conducted at Gorbachev’s initiative on March 17, 1991, some 76 percent of all Soviet citizens voted in favor of preserving the Soviet Union as a ‘renewed federation of equal sovereign republics.’” The population in all four republics that housed nuclear missiles voted in favor of preserving the Union: Ukraine 70%; Russia 71%; Belarus 83%; Kazakhstan 94% (Budjeryn, 31). Following the failure of the coup attempt in August 1991, however, the Rada overwhelmingly passed the “Act of Independence of Ukraine” marking “the birth of Ukraine’s statehood” (Budjeryn, 129). In a referendum held just days before the actual dissolution of the Soviet Union, 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence, with 80% participation nationwide. Even a slight majority in Crimea voted in favor.

Once Ukraine became an independent nation, US policy focused on making certain that it did, indeed, give up its nuclear arsenal and join the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state. After all, the ICBMs were targeted against American cities. George H. W. Bush gave Kyiv everything it wanted except for “security guarantees” that would include a legally binding commitment to come to the country’s defense if it were attacked (presumably by Russia), something the US was not willing to grant to any non-NATO member. Nor did that policy change when Bill Clinton became president in 1993. But Ukraine balked, faced by increasingly hostile actions on the part of Russia, including Moscow’s support for separatists in Crimea and a 1992 Duma resolution “reversing” the 1954 decision to put Crimea under Ukrainian jurisdiction—a claim it would implement in 2014 (Budjeryn, 196–97). Some Rada members felt Ukraine had to retain the three dozen nuclear missiles and nearly two thousand warheads in its possession, in part as a deterrence to Russian aggression and in part for leverage in its negotiations with the US.

The bulk of Budjeryn’s study details the trials and tribulations in these negotiations, which ultimately led to a document called the Tripartite Agreement among Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, which in turn became the basis for an agreement between those nations and United Kingdom, known as the Budapest Memorandum. Under that Memorandum, Ukraine finally acceded to the NPT. Ukraine’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the United States had no legal basis and was doomed to failure. The NPT recognized only two categories: the five declared weapon states and every other signatory. Kyiv wanted international recognition of Ukraine as a “possessor” of the nuclear weapons on its territory, but also as a “non-nuclear-weapon state” because it was willing to give those weapons up in return for strong security guarantees. But there was no middle ground, no third category. At stake, from the standpoint of the US and Russia, was that the START treaty would not come into force unless Ukraine (also Belarus and Kazakhstan) acceded to the NPT.Footnote ²⁸ At stake for Ukraine was any chance to join the “civilized nations” in the west.

Not that failure to relinquish its ICBMs would have provided any deterrence against Russia: ICBMs are long-range weapons (intercontinental, indeed), and while Ukraine might destroy Vladivostok or New York, the weapons that would actually pose a threat to European Russia had been banned by the 1997 INF Treaty, the same weapons whose elimination had caused so much heartburn at the Pentagon. Ultimately, Ukraine did sign the Budapest Memorandum, but it never gave the document much credence in its decision making. In 2003, when Russia’s naval forces occupied Tuzla Island in the Kerch Strait, Kyiv might have invoked the agreement in public, which would have forced Britain and the US to confront Russia, but it did not. Similarly, in 2014, when Russia annexed Crimea and provided military support to Donbas separatists, the US and Britain might have invoked the agreement, but President Barack Obama did not. Obama was constrained by a greater diplomatic priority: negotiating the Iran nuclear deal. The US needed Russia’s cooperation in that endeavor, since only Moscow had any leverage in Tehran. Had America forced the issue of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, doing so might have negated any chance for Iran to sign the nuclear deal.

As it turned out, Ukraine never undertook the actions required to come closer to the west as a democratic state with a civil society undergirded by the rule of law. Although it did relinquish its nuclear arsenal in 1994, it never made any serious attempt at economic reform. Corruption, which penetrated the highest levels of government, was never addressed. All US attempts to institute change were met with indifference or obstruction. For example, throughout the 1990s the US advocated for the International Monetary Fund and World Bank to extend low-interest credits to Kyiv. The IMF has stringent terms—“conditionalities”—that any nation must meet to qualify. Ukraine consistently failed to meet those terms and—whenever the US urged them to do so—instead complained that the IMF was too rigid and the US should convince it to relax its requirements. Kyiv never took any steps toward meaningful reform, nor did it make a commitment to the rule of law, democracy, and human rights expected of a nation committed to western ideals.Footnote ²⁹

Budjeryn, however, blames the US for Ukraine’s dilemma. To her mind, the NPT was “an inherently discriminatory regime” (Budjeryn, 12) that “allows nuclear possession to five states while denying it to all the rest” (Budjeryn, 230). She clearly believes the White House should have abrogated a longstanding international treaty to create a special category that would accommodate Kyiv. Rather, she would have us believe that Clinton was so intent on extending the NPT he rode roughshod over Kyiv’s security concerns.

It is true that the US and Russia, for completely different reasons, wanted Ukraine to denuclearize. That does not mean, however, Washington and Moscow “were in collusion on the necessity of getting … Ukraine to disarm” (Budjeryn, 230). Instead, Budjeryn believes, “much of the strife” that Ukraine endured “could have been ameliorated … if what we call the Great Powers were less arrogant” (Budjeryn, 235). Perhaps, I would suggest, the arrogant party was Kyiv, which expected Washington to ignore corruption in the country and overlook Leonid Kuchma distorting the 1999 election procedures—or the abduction and beheading of an opposition journalistFootnote ³⁰ —because otherwise his communist opponent might be victorious.Footnote ³¹

Given the situation in Ukrainian society at the time, its chances of ever developing a democratic, civil society were minimal for a very simple reason: despite its fear and distrust of Russia, the government and the people were too much like the Russians. Ukraine never replaced its Soviet-era leaders with young blood, and never took the painful steps necessary in order to set the nation on a different trajectory. Only those central and eastern European nations that committed themselves to lustration had a chance at successful transformation from an autocratic society to one founded on democratic principles. Russia did not, nor did Ukraine.Footnote ³² Ukraine was caught in a classic dilemma: it would not do what was required to initiate change. The problem it faced is known as value complexity: “the presence of competing values and interests imbedded in a single issue.”Footnote ³³ As it turned out, virtually every important actor in this twenty-year international drama, whether a nation or a political leader, faced the same dilemma:

• • The Freeze Movement was so fixated on its message that it failed to support Ronald Reagan’s dramatic steps toward disarmament

• • The END organization was concerned only with the abolition of nuclear weapons in Europe and failed to understand that activists in eastern Europe were more concerned with human rights and freedom from communist repression

• • Ronald Reagan sacrificed his place in world history by insisting that SDI take precedence over the actual abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide

• • Mikhail Gorbachev tarnished his place in world history by not understanding that the only way to save the country he loved was to renounce its nuclear arsenal

• • Western Europe’s political leaders were clearly interested in peace and security, but not at the expense of their investments in the Soviet Union—an attitude that manifested itself again in 2014 and 2022

• • The Conservatives in Washington could not see that a world at peace was within reach, but insisted on mutually assured destruction instead

• • Bill Clinton was so focused on supporting El′tsin that he overlooked El′tsin’s autocratic impulses while trying to support reform in central and eastern Europe without alienating RussiaFootnote ³⁴

• • Viktor Yanukovich had to choose between the west and the east, making a fatal choice against the wishes of the Ukrainian people

• • Barack Obama, needing Russia’s assistance in securing the Iran nuclear deal, would not confront Moscow on Crimea despite the obvious illegality of the annexation

Had even some of these choices been made differently, the world we live in today would be much safer.

In sum, both Dreams for a Decade and Inheriting the BOMB tell fascinating stories about important international controversies; they are informative and well worth reading by anyone who studies the period and the issues they address. Their authors—clearly passionate about their subjects—have produced massively annotated works devoted to events that have received surprisingly little attention from scholars in the past. However, each account would have benefited from research that appeared in the interim between completion of these studies as dissertations and their publication as independent books.