ANALYSIS: Strategic nuclear weapons and Ukrainian national security
by Markian Bilynsky
PART I
The Ukrainian Parliament is quite correctly refusing to be rushed into ratifying the START I treaty. Ratification and implementation should only proceed at a pace and under circumstances that serve Ukrainian national interests. Despite the delay, however, it appears highly likely that the former Soviet intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) on Ukrainian territory slated for dismantling under START I will be removed. Moreover, statements by the highest ranking Ukrainian officials indicate that the residual ICBMs will eventually also go.
The official view is not universally popular. Although a clear majority in both the executive and legislative branches favors the abolition of nuclear weapons, its views are opposed by a vociferous and growing minority - consisting primarily of parliamentary deputies and some officers of the armed forces calling for Ukraine to maintain some kind of independent nuclear deterrent against potential Russian aggression.
(It is, of course, possible that both groups actually see a nuclear-free future for Ukraine, but differ over the conditions and means for achieving this goal. The latter school, for example, may be employing - in line with its generally more maximalist political philosophy - the threat of Ukraine's "going-it-alone" as a strategy for extracting greater economic concessions and security guarantees from the West.
However, in the absence of any unambiguous evidence to support such an interpretation, as well as the feeling that such a strategy would be at odds with the general tone of this group's views, their declarations will be taken at face value.)
The purpose of this article is to briefly examine some of the principal conceptual problems concerning the potential deterrent value of an independent Ukrainian ICBM force as well as to sketch an outline of some alternative arrangements for the military dimension of Ukrainian national security policy. The powerful symbolism of strategic nuclear weapons as synonyms for peace has shrouded them in a seductive aura that often distorts most discussions on the best means for defending Ukrainian national security from external threats. Consequently, the argument has rarely moved beyond a visceral assertion that Ukraine "should" or "shouldn't" have nuclear weapons.
Much has rightly been said and written about the economic, environmental, legal and even symbolic/psychological aspects of this question. Little attention, however, has been paid to the actual or potential military value of nuclear weapons as an instrument of national security. Yet this is a critical - perhaps the critical - issue. Nuclear weapons are, after all, designed to deter aggression. Other issues, it might therefore be argued, should be of secondary importance.
Although disputes over Ukraine's western and southern borders might prove to be a more immediate national security concern, Russia is generally identified as posing potentially the greatest long-term threat to Ukraine. Even after START II, Russia will continue to maintain a relatively large strategic nuclear arsenal for as long as the United States and China do - which will be for some time yet. More importantly, its conventional forces, despite large reductions, will still consist of a substantial 1.5 million of personnel. And, so the argument might continue, if nuclear weapons were widely perceived to have prevented war between the United States and, by extension, NATO, and the former Soviet Union might not, then, a Ukrainian strategic nuclear force similarly maintain the peace by deterring Ukraine's brooding, unpredictable northern neighbor?
The notion that Ukraine should have an independent strategic nuclear force is at best an unrealistic and at worst a dangerous one that should be dismissed. It is unrealistic because the structural imbalance of such a force would prevent it from being credibly wielded either as a means of deterring conventional and nuclear attack or as a means of punishing aggression once it had occurred. And it is dangerous because under critical circumstances such a force could conceivably provoke the very kind of attack it is supposed to deter.
The essential premise underlying nuclear deterrence is that it must be perceived to be a disincentive to potential aggression through the promise to inflict unacceptable punishment. A weapons system acquires a deterrent value only if a potential opponent is persuaded that the deterrer can and will credibly use it should he feel that his core values and assets are under imminent threat.
Obviously, no-one has been - or is - too keen to arrive at the point where theory has to be put into practice. In fact the superpower confrontation on the nuclear plane was characterized by a growing perception that actions intended to bolster the believability of deterrent threats could actually bring about the very disaster they were supposed to prevent. Hence the efforts to limit and later reduce the most destabilizing categories of nuclear weapons: the accurate yet highly vulnerable land-based, multi-warhead ICBMs. The START I and II agreements codify this American and Russian conceptual move away from ICBMs to the less vulnerable and therefore more stabilizing submarine-based missile systems (SLBMs).
Nevertheless, the fact is that nuclear deterrence remains grounded in the paradox that in order to avoid a potentially devastating conflict the impression has to be created that one is prepared to actually fight it. The concept is grounded as much in psychology as technology - if not more so. Deterrence is essentially in the eye of the beholder. Thus, in this game of bluff and counter-bluff the critical issue is one of credibility. A nuclear force consisting solely of ICBMs is not credible.
Some of the reasons bearing on the non-credibility of an independent Ukrainian strategic force as a potential deterrent to Russian threats are familiar and require only a brief recapitulation. First, the economic cost of operationally maintaining an ICBM system, including an adequate command, control and communications system, is an extremely expensive proposition which is beyond the capacity of Ukraine's basket-care economy to sustain - even should economic performance confound the wildest estimates. (It is, incidentally, worth mentioning here that some early American strategists actually favored the development of nuclear over conventional forces citing their economic efficiency in providing "more bang per buck." But this emphasis was abandoned in the 1950s when its operational shortcomings became apparent.)
Second, there is the very real problem that Ukraine, in the opinion of many Western experts, does not even have physical launch control over the missiles themselves. If this is the case, the ICBMs are useless as a military instrument of Ukrainian national security policy and therefore lack any deterrent value. This is obvious if the ICBMs are under the full control of the CIS command structure. However, even if the ICBMs fall nominally under Ukrainian "control" because the elite troops in charge of them have sworn an oath of allegiance to Ukraine the technical aspects of launch control - or lack thereof - would remain unchanged. Recent rumors that Ukraine is on the verge of developing independent launch codes may have been circulated by Ukrainian officials to strengthen the political bargaining leverage that the prospect of a truly operational independent Ukrainian nuclear arsenal would create. (Alternatively, the rumors could have originated from those quarters where there is a desire for the West, especially the United States, to exert still greater pressure on Ukraine to unconditionally comply with START.)
But even if true, such a development would not be militarily very significant. A major reason for this is that ICBMs are by definition configured for a strategic role. To alter their range and function would require a comprehensive and expensive construction of intermediate-range missile platforms - the kind that have just been eliminated under the terms of the 1987 INF Treaty.
Thirdly, the argument that Ukraine should maintain a strategic arsenal simply because the U.S. (and probably China, France and Great Britain) have their strategic arsenals targetted on Ukraine misses the point that weapons deployments are supposed to reflect political reality and not vice-versa. Such a strategy could actually be massively counter-productive.
True, since the demise of the Soviet Union, Russia and the U.S. have made numerous declarations in which they have stressed that there is no longer any enmity between Moscow and Washington, but they continue to target each other (albeit supposedly now the missiles are deployed in a counterforce not countervalue mode. The question of whether targeting missile silos instead of cities would somehow make the real world more habitable after a strategic nuclear exchange has not been publicly broached.) Yet this is less a sign of insincerity or hypocrisy than it is an indication of the great psychological and conceptual difficulties of breaking out of the Cold War confrontational posture that nuclear weapons did so much to institutionalize.
The new Ukrainian state has no historical or strategic conflict of interest with the Western nuclear powers whose assistance is crucial to Ukraine's full integration into the international community. Nor should it risk developing one in the expectation that an independent strategic force will immediately confer a measure of respectability or bargaining leverage. In fact, the West has clearly stated that this kind of posturing is not and will not be to Ukraine's advantage. Indeed, Ukrainian manipulation of the ICBM issue may be misconstrued as a move by Ukraine to actually acquire an independent ICBM force. Nuclear weapons are not instruments conducive to the development of international comity. Ukraine's prestige and respectability can be much more effectively cultivated through an aggressive and competent diplomatic campaign to address the lingering Western misperceptions regarding Ukraine's nuclear policy.
Last but not least, the Chornobyl aftermath not only implanted a deep anti-nuclear sentiment in the Ukrainian psyche, but also revealed in the starkest terms imaginable that the consequences of a nuclear catastrophe do not respect political borders. As neighbors, neither Russia nor Ukraine would be able to shield themselves from the incalculably more catastrophic results of a nuclear exchange, regardless of its extent and immediate military outcome. Ultimately, both sides would end up as losers.
In the real world, these are not merely inconveniences but significant obstacles to the creation of an independent Ukrainian nuclear force. However, even if Ukraine were somehow able to overcome them, this would not mean that a strategic arsenal would then automatically constitute a credible deterrent because the problem of how to wield it credibly in times of crisis would remain unresolved.
Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, January 31, 1993, No. 5, Vol. LXI
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