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Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War, by Ethan B. Kapstein and Michael Mastanduno (eds.)
Mark Kramer
The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union ushered in a new era. The contours of the post-Cold War system have not yet congealed, but enough time has passed to allow for some preliminary judgments about the emerging international order and the effects it has had on state strategies. Although most specialists on international relations have welcomed the recent changes in world politics, a small number have been pessimistic from the outset, warning that the demise of bipolarity would increase the risk of war and spur many more countries to seek nuclear weapons. This pessimistic view, while not confined to any single group of scholars, has been especially pronounced among proponents of structural realism.
As early as 1990, John Mearsheimer warned that the emerging post-Cold War order would be far more dangerous than the old bipolar system. He predicted that the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) “will come under increasing stress in the post-Cold War World” because “the international system’s new architecture creates powerful incentives to [nuclear] proliferation.” 1 In particular, Mearsheimer believed that the buildup of a sizable nuclear force by Ukraine was “inevitable . . .regardless of what other states say and do.” 2 Mearsheimer also warned that Germany and, even more, “the minor powers of Eastern Europe would have strong incentives to acquire nuclear weapons” in the post-Cold War era:
Without nuclear weapons, these Eastern European states would be open to nuclear blackmail from the [former] Soviet Union and, if it acquired nuclear weapons, from Germany. No Eastern European state could match the conventional strength of Germany or the [former] Soviet Union, which gives these minor powers a powerful incentive to acquire a nuclear deterrent, even if the major powers had none. [Thus,] a continuation of the current pattern of ownership [of nuclear weapons] without proliferation seems unlikely. 3
Although Mearsheimer hedged this last prediction by stating that the East European countries might not actually begin building nuclear forces “until the outbreak of crisis,” he consistently emphasized that the end of the Cold War was bound to give a strong fillip to nuclear proliferation both in Europe and elsewhere.
Subsequent developments failed to bear out Mearsheimer’s expectations. Far from increasing, the number of nuclear weapons states initially decreased by one, when South Africa unilaterally dismantled its small arsenal. 4 That development was offset by the nuclear explosive capability that Pakistan displayed in 1998, but outside South Asia no new nuclear weapons states emerged. The two leading candidates for nuclear rivalry in Latin America—Argentina and Brazil—agreed in 1990–91 to cooperate in disbanding their nuclear weapons programs. 5 In 1994 Ukraine joined Belarus and Kazakhstan in signing the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state and agreed to transfer to Russia the nuclear missiles and warheads left on Ukrainian territory after the Soviet Union collapsed. More generally, the NPT was extended for an indefinite period in May 1995, something that would have been almost inconceivable if the Cold War had still been under way. 6
The disjuncture between this empirical evidence and Mearsheimer’s predictions raises important questions about the structural realist conception of international politics. In making his predictions, Mearsheimer explicitly adduced structural realist arguments—an approach also adopted by numerous other scholars who argued, on the basis of neorealist premises, that nuclear weapons would spread rapidly in the post-Cold War era. 7 One of the questions to be explored here is whether these arguments were truly consonant with structural realism and, if so, what that would imply. Is there a way of reconciling the theoretical claims with observed trends? What modifications, if any, are needed in the structural realist outlook? Are broader aspects of the paradigm thrown into doubt?
In answering these questions, this essay will proceed in four stages. The first section will consider why a structural realist approach might lead one to expect that nuclear proliferation would increase in the post-Cold War era. The second part will examine the security strategies of four East-Central European states—Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary, and Ukraine—to explain why all decided not to acquire their own nuclear weapons. The third section will consider how one might square the empirical evidence with hypotheses derived from the structural realist framework. The final section will offer conclusions about the relative merits and shortcomings of structural realism in explaining nuclear proliferation.
The chapter as a whole will seek to account for a system-level result (the lack of nuclear proliferation in Europe in the 1990s) by analyzing unit-level phenomena (the choices made by individual European states). At first glance, this may seem an odd way of evaluating structural realism, which originally was designed to explain systemic results, not foreign policy decisions. Most proponents of neorealism have moved away from (or at least modified) that premise, but a few still insist that the focus must be exclusively on systemic phenomena, which, they claim, can be understood only as the aggregate result of states’ actions. 8 In their view, the structures of international politics are analogous to market outcomes in oligopolistic sectors of an economy. Just as theories of oligopolistic competition do not specify what any particular firm will do, so too, the argument goes, a structural analysis of international relations cannot specify what any particular state’s foreign policy will be. The validity of this argument, however, is highly problematic. Neorealist theory does in fact make important predictions about state behavior and state goals, both explicitly and implicitly. These predictions, as shown below, yield a number of hypotheses about states’ foreign policies, including policies on nuclear weapons. The hypotheses can then be tested against the empirical record (i.e., the record of states’ foreign policy decisions) to help determine whether the underlying principles are accurate. An analysis of foreign policy decisions is especially crucial in understanding the systemic result discussed in this chapter—the lack of nuclear proliferation in Europe—which could have been fundamentally altered by the actions of a single state. Only by focusing on unit-level calculations will it be possible to explain why Mearsheimer and others went astray in predicting that non-nuclear states in Europe would seek nuclear weapons. 9
The four countries selected for scrutiny here were chosen for a number of reasons. All four are former European Communist states (or parts of states) that were left without formal security arrangements after Communism collapsed. In addition, all were mentioned by Mearsheimer as plausible candidates to acquire nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War world, and indeed they all (especially Ukraine) did consider that option before deciding to forgo nuclear arms. All four were temporarily left with Soviet nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles on their soil after 1989. (As discussed below, these were withdrawn in 1990 from Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, and by 1995 from Ukraine.) Finally, all four were technologically sophisticated enough to build at least a small number of nuclear weapons if they had so chosen, albeit at enormous cost. The question to be explored here is why none of the four proceeded with that option.
It is worth noting that this chapter makes no judgment about the merits (or lack thereof) of the policies of the four East-Central European countries. The question of whether the world will be better or worse off if more states acquire nuclear weapons has been the subject of heated debate in recent years. 10 Discussion of this matter long predates the end of the Cold War—indeed, it began almost as soon as the first bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki—but it has taken on a new edge in a world that is no longer bipolar. This chapter, however, will not seek to determine whether nuclear proliferation in East-Central Europe would be good or bad. Although normative questions about the spread of nuclear weapons are certainly important, there is no way to make any firm judgments without greater empirical evidence. If more states in the region deploy nuclear weapons (as one would expect from the neorealist paradigm), the experiences of these countries over time will provide data that can be used to resolve the normative debate. For now, the more interesting question is why, contrary to some forecasts, nuclear proliferation did not occur in the 1990s.
Realist Perspectives on Nuclear Proliferation
The analytical approach known as realism has a long and varied tradition among observers of international politics. Over the past two decades, most of the debate about realism has focused on the “structural” realist (or “neorealist”) framework first expounded at length in 1979 by Kenneth Waltz. 11 Waltz’s landmark book, Theory of International Politics, posits that state strategies are shaped primarily by structural features of the international system. Although Waltz and other structural realists do not deny the importance of unit-level behavior (i.e., domestic politics) in determining a particular state’s foreign policy, they argue that the units (i.e., states) are not operating in a vacuum. The choices facing state leaders, according to the neorealist paradigm, are always sharply constrained by structural factors, notably the anarchic ordering of the international system and the unequal distribution of capabilities. Waltz acknowledges that under conditions of anarchy, states “are free to do any fool thing they choose,” but he emphasizes that “they are likely to be rewarded for behavior that is responsive to structural pressures and punished for behavior that is not.” 12 Expectations of these costs and benefits should in the end, according to Waltz, cause states to heed structural pressures when deciding “to do some things and to refrain from doing others.”
The neorealist view has come under challenge from numerous quarters. One such challenge has been posed by the “constructivist” school, which rejects almost all the premises of neorealism. 13 A more formidable challenge has come from proponents of “neoliberal institutionalism,” who, unlike the constructivists, share many of the assumptions of neorealism. 14 The major difference between the neoliberal institutionalists and the neorealists is that the former believe that norms, international regimes, international organizations, and other institutions can moderate the structural effects of the international system. Institutionalists see ample grounds for cooperation among states on important issues, provided that institutions are in place to dispel or at least mitigate each side’s fears that the other side (or sides) will cheat. These institutions thereby reduce the transaction costs of cooperation and ensure that the benefits of cooperation greatly exceed the costs. By contrast, structural realists argue that inducements for cooperation and the facilitating role of institutions are usually outweighed by the systemic pressures that states encounter. (The main exceptions are when states form an alliance against a common threat or when a hegemonic state is able to induce cooperation through both positive and negative means.) Some neorealists do attach importance to international institutions, but most argue that institutions give little more than a “false promise” of lasting cooperation. 15
The contentious debate about Waltz’s book should not deflect attention from the broader realist enterprise, including several recent efforts to modify and improve on the structural paradigm. 16 Too often, critics of neorealism have resorted to straw men and caricatures. The aim in this article is quite different. Because structural realism has been so important and controversial in the field of international relations, the focus here is primarily on that brand of realism; but the discussion has been carefully tailored to ensure that structural realist propositions about nuclear proliferation are set forth and tested as fairly as possible. This section begins by laying out a structural realist framework for judging nuclear proliferation in the post-Cold War world. It then derives hypotheses from that framework, which can be tested against concrete evidence from East-Central Europe as presented in the following two sections.
Systemic Pressures
Structural realists broadly agree that the international system is anarchic and decentralized. Although diplomacy, international law, and international regimes provide elaborate “rules of the game,” no supranational government exists that can, if necessary, impose its will on a recalcitrant unit (or units) within the system to prevent or rectify a breach of the rules. The lack of a superordinate authority contrasts with the makeup of most states, whose governments are responsible for enforcing domestic rules and for helping to resolve conflicts among individuals or groups. 17
The anarchic structure of the system, according to the neorealist paradigm, ensures that most states at least occasionally will feel threatened by one or more other states. Even if these fears are unwarranted, government leaders must treat the perceived threats seriously. Some structural realists, such as John Mearsheimer and Robert Gilpin, contend that most of the perceived threats are indeed genuine. 18 They argue that states constantly strive to outdo their rivals and to amass power at their rivals’ expense. This view, commonly known as “offensive realism” (or “hyperrealism”) is not shared by some other neorealist scholars such as Kenneth Waltz and Joseph Grieco. 19 Waltz and Grieco maintain that states are chiefly interested in preserving their current position, rather than in constantly seeking to improve it. 20 This view is usually called “defensive realism.” The offensive-defensive split among neorealists has important theoretical implications, but the point to be emphasized here is that all structural realists, even those who subscribe to defensive realism, believe that conditions of anarchy necessarily spawn perceptions of threat.
Neorealists also agree that the prevalence of anarchy ensures that states will never be fully confident about the willingness of outsiders to come to their aid in an emergency. Hence, every state must operate in a self-help manner. Even when a state harbors expansionist or revisionist ambitions, that state (like all other states) will want to ensure its own survival first and foremost. Most neorealists argue that this imperative will induce states to pursue both internal and external “balancing” against existing and potential adversaries. 21 Internal balancing is the effort that a state makes to marshal its own resources (through defense spending, conscription, etc.) to counter perceived threats. Internal balancing minimizes reliance on outsiders and therefore is the preferable route of action, ceteris paribis. 22 For some states, however, external balancing—that is, the pursuit of alliances—is a crucial supplement to internal balancing. A relatively small state confronted by a much larger and hostile neighbor will have a particular incentive to seek allies. 23
Nevertheless, even for small states, external balancing is likely to be viewed as problematic. The neorealist paradigm suggests that allied states will remain suspicious and mistrustful of one another, fearing that today’s allies could be tomorrow’s enemies. Even when State A is willing to ally itself with State B against State Z, structural realists would expect State A to try to limit its cooperation, for fear that State B’s relative gains might one day be turned against State A. State A also will be constantly mindful that in an emergency State B might forsake its alliance obligations or be unable to fulfill them. 24 Hence, most neorealists would expect that State A will be reluctant to depend solely, or even predominantly, on external balancing, especially when it has viable alternatives.
If allied guarantees are viewed as inherently problematic from the neorealist standpoint, nuclear guarantees against a nuclear-armed adversary must be deemed especially problematic because they require the guarantor (State B) to risk nuclear destruction on behalf of another state (State A). Officials in State A will be aware that State B, like other states, places the highest premium on its own survival, and that if war breaks out State B will be loath to commit suicide merely to defend a distant ally. Thus, from the neorealist perspective, nuclear guarantees should have very little credibility with State A and other countries that are under State B’s nuclear umbrella. This point was emphasized by Robert Rothstein three decades ago in his discussion of alliances and small powers: “Nuclear guarantees do no more than increase the probability of future support; they do not make that support certain. Under the circumstances, if [State A] feels threatened, and if it has the technical means to do something about it, the guarantee can only have an interim significance until [State A] can build its own nuclear capability.” 25 Although neorealists acknowledge that less-than-credible nuclear guarantees may be enough to deter potential aggressors, they argue that those guarantees provide little or no reassurance to State A. 26
Hypotheses About Post-Cold War Europe
These various systemic constraints should, according to the neorealist paradigm, be even stronger in post-Cold War Europe. One of the central tenets of neorealism is that the distribution of power within the system determines how and when states cooperate on security issues. If that is so, the recent shift from bipolarity to multipolarized unipolarity—and perhaps eventually to full-fledged multipolarity—should further reduce the attractiveness of external balancing (i.e., reliance on allies) and bolster European states’ incentives to pursue internal balancing. 27 The reasons for this are threefold:
First, the post-Cold War order in Europe is likely, in the neorealists’ view, to be more war-prone (though not necessarily more unstable) than the old bipolar order. 28 This is so for two reasons. First, the demise of bipolarity and the disintegration of several multiethnic states (Yugoslavia, the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia) have produced a much greater number of potentially conflictual dyads in the region. 29 Second, the end of the bipolar nuclear standoff in Europe may reduce the inhibitions that some European states had during the Cold War about resorting to military force against one another. To the extent that European governments believe these two developments have increased the risk of war, they will be strongly inclined to ensure that their states can be defended against potential enemies.
Second, the end of bipolarity and the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, according to most neorealists, will cause future alliances in Europe to be more fluid and uncertain, raising doubts about the credibility of new allied guarantees. The threat posed by the Soviet Union provided a crucial rallying point for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and other U.S. alliances. From the neorealist perspective, the disappearance of that threat not only casts doubt on the raison d’etre of NATO, but also suggests that future alliances, if formed at all, will be relatively loose and ephemeral. The option of external balancing may therefore be deemed inadequate for European states that face serious military threats.
Third, the sharp cuts in U.S. strategic nuclear forces mandated by the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaties (START), as well as the general contraction of U.S. overseas commitments in the post-Cold War era, may further erode the credibility of U.S. nuclear guarantees. One of the reasons that the U.S. nuclear arsenal was so large during the Cold War was to provide flexibility and a margin of error for extended deterrence. 30 The elimination of thousands of U.S. strategic warheads is bound to have an impact on the perceived viability of extended deterrence. Although the United States has been willing, through its support for the expansion of NATO, to bring additional European states under its nuclear umbrella, the umbrella may well be viewed in the future with ever greater skepticism by those it is designed to protect. 31 That is why many neorealists expect that U.S. allies (or prospective allies) in the post-Cold War world will increasingly want “a hedge against . . .the inevitable risks of abandonment.” 32
In combination, these three factors can be seen, from the neorealist perspective, to create a strong inducement for vulnerable European states to emphasize internal balancing over external balancing. What is less clear is whether internal balancing in itself will be of much use. If a relatively small European state (State A) is confronted by a much stronger and potentially hostile neighbor (State Z), internal balancing may well be ineffective unless State A acquires nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons, unlike conventional arms, can give State A the capacity to inflict “unacceptable damage” on State Z, partly offsetting the disparity of power between the two sides. State Z will still be much stronger overall than State A, but the A-Z dyad will be far less war-prone if, as Kenneth Waltz has long argued, nuclear weapons enable “the weak to deter the strong.” 33 If a particular dyad is highly unequal and the two states in question are antagonistic (or potentially antagonistic), structural realists would expect the smaller state to seek (or at least be very interested in seeking) nuclear weapons. 34
In any given case, however, several factors might militate against a nuclear option. For example, even if State A faces a clear-cut military threat, it might believe that it has sufficient conventional strength to deter or, if necessary, to overcome that threat. In addition, State A might fear that an attempt to build nuclear arms would provoke alarm among rival states, perhaps causing them to seek nuclear weapons of their own (if they did not already have them) or to take other military steps (including a preemptive attack) that would offset State A’s action. This is the nuclear dimension of the more general “security dilemma.” 35 Alternatively, State A might forgo nuclear deployments if it has sufficient confidence in allied nuclear guarantees. The credibility of such guarantees, as noted above, has always been problematic, but they may be credible enough to induce State A to eschew the risks and costs of a nuclear program. 36
Whatever the precise circumstances, neorealists would argue that the paramount factor driving State A’s decision about nuclear weapons (assuming that State A has the capacity to produce such weapons) will be the magnitude of the external threats to State A’s security and the possibility of coping with those threats either through conventional forces or through alliances. Neorealists do not deny that other factors, such as a desire for prestige, may play some role in decisions about nuclear weapons, but they argue that these considerations are bound to be overshadowed by security concerns. This theme was highlighted by Kenneth Waltz in 1981 when he predicted that “nuclear weapons will spread from one country to another in the future for the same reasons they have spread in the past,” above all because of fears of external threats. 37 That point has been reaffirmed in the post-Cold War era by numerous other structural realist scholars. 38
On that basis, it is possible to formulate three sets of neorealist hypotheses about nuclear proliferation in post-Cold War Europe, taking as given that State A has ample technological prowess: 39
(H-1) If State A decides to build nuclear weapons, it will do so because of major external threats to its security. (This hypothesis is formulated from the standpoint of defensive realism. An offensive realist might reformulate it as: “If State A decides to build nuclear weapons, it will do so either to counter external threats or to intimidate and dominate rival states.”)
(H-2) The main alternatives to a nuclear weapons program for State A, especially the prospect of relying on outside nuclear guarantees against a nuclear-armed adversary, will be much less feasible in the post-Cold War era.
(H-3) If State A refrains from acquiring nuclear weapons, it will do so for one (or more) of six reasons, listed here in descending order of importance:
This third hypothesis, too, is couched in defensive realist terms. An offensive realist would add a seventh possible reason—“it does not harbor expansionist ambitions”—and place it at the top of the list. From the neorealist standpoint, only considerations (a) through (e) in (H-3) should have a decisive bearing on State A’s policy. Point (f) can do no more than reinforce a decision made on the basis of one or more of the other factors. Point (f) will not be sufficient in itself to determine the outcome. Or at least that is what one would conclude from the structural realist literature. Whether that is in fact the case will be explored in the next two sections.
Nuclear Weapons and East-Central European Strategies
This section turns first to the cases of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary, which are similar enough that they can be discussed together. It then shifts to the case of Ukraine, which for a variety of reasons needs to be treated separately. The aim here is not to provide an exhaustive analysis of each state’s security strategy. Instead, this section briefly considers the main external threats perceived by the four states, the role of nuclear weapons in dealing with those threats, and the reasons that non-nuclear options were chosen.
Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary
Poland, the Czech Republic (the main successor to Czechoslovakia), and Hungary have pursued broadly similar security strategies since 1989. To be sure, the three states have differed somewhat in their perceptions of threats and the ways of coping with them. For example, Hungary, unlike Poland and the Czech Republic, must be ready for conflicts with Romania, Serbia, and Slovakia. Similarly, Poland was concerned for a while (in late 1989 and the first half of 1990) that a reunified Germany might seek to redraw the border between the two countries. 40 Nevertheless, despite these variations, the three states generally have been concerned about the same major threat (a possible militant resurgence in the former Soviet Union) and have pursued roughly the same means of forestalling, or if necessary countering, that threat.
Perceptions of External Threats
The collapse of Communism in East-Central Europe in 1989, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in mid-1991, and the demise of the Soviet Union in December 1991 removed the security framework that had been imposed on East-Central Europe during the Cold War era. As auspicious as all those developments were, officials in the region perceived that their countries had been left in a “security vacuum,” a phrase used over and over in the early and mid-1990s to convey a sense of political-military unease and vulnerability. The end of Soviet hegemony in East-Central Europe eliminated the chief source of the region’s periodic crises in the postwar era, but other dangers soon emerged. The new East European governments found themselves having to contend with a number of serious threats without the benefit of a security framework to replace the one that had collapsed.
Initially, the most salient of the threats confronting the new governments was continued uncertainty about the political future of the Soviet Union. Even before the reformist trends in Moscow turned sour in late 1990 and early 1991, apprehension about Soviet political developments was readily apparent in all the East-Central European states. Hungarian foreign minister Geza Jeszensky consistently warned in 1990 that events could take a sharp turn for the worse in the Soviet Union, and that any such reversal would have ominous implications for the Warsaw Pact countries:
Only recently has the Soviet Union become a trustworthy partner in efforts to truly liberate the Hungarian people. . . .But there are different trends in Moscow and they are in conflict with one another. . . .Our major problem is that it is difficult to predict the direction of processes in the Soviet Union. 41
Polish officials had begun to speak in even gloomier terms by mid-1990 about “the threat of a conservative overthrow” in Moscow, which would cause “the USSR to disintegrate into parts that would not only be riven by internal conflicts, but would also be prone to unleash some sort of external conflict, if only to provide the population with easy victories and conquests. [We cannot] assume there will automatically be peace [with the Soviet Union] in the future.” 42
The concerns expressed by these East European officials took on a new sense of urgency after the abrupt resignation of Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze in December 1990, coupled with his warnings about “reactionary” elements who were pushing the Soviet Union toward a new “dictatorship.” 43 This sense of urgency was heightened still further by the violent crackdown in the Baltic republics in January 1991, which prompted all the East European governments to condemn the Soviet Union and to threaten to withdraw immediately from the Warsaw Pact. (The Pact was not due to be formally abolished until July 1991.) A top aide to the Polish president, Lech Walesa, warned at the time that the Polish government could “no longer rule out the possibility that Russian generals are thinking about regaining Eastern Europe.” 44 Although most East European officials assumed that the Soviet High Command had grudgingly come to accept the demise of the Warsaw Pact, many were still uneasy about what would happen if the Soviet armed forces acquired a larger political role or, worse yet, launched a coup. Even the then-foreign minister of Poland, Krzysztof Skubiszewski, who had tried to defuse the most extreme speculation about Soviet policy in the region, admitted to a few misgivings about “the Soviet Army’s Stalinist desire to win back territory, expand Soviet borders, and regain a military presence” in central Europe. 45
In addition to concerns about a hardline backlash in Moscow, other important external problems emerged after the collapse of the Warsaw Pact, notably the deepening war in Yugoslavia, the rise of ethnic assertiveness in some parts of Eastern Europe, and the general sense of “not knowing what is going to happen in our part of the world now that the straitjacket of the Soviet Army has been removed.” 46 These factors clearly induced all the East-Central European governments to look for new security arrangements. Still, the overriding long-term concern in Warsaw, Prague, and Budapest remained the future of Russia. When the Soviet Union disintegrated at the end of 1991, the urgency of the threat diminished sharply, but the fragility of democratic changes in Russia left many in East-Central Europe apprehensive.
Polish, Czech, and Hungarian concerns about Russia mounted in the first half of the 1990s as a result of the increasingly nationalist tone of Russian political discourse, the confrontation at the Russian parliament building in October 1993, the strong electoral showing of Vladimir Zhirinovsky’s quasi-fascist party in December 1993, the resurgence of the Russian Communist Party in 1995–96, and the vehement campaign that Russian leaders waged against East European efforts to join NATO. By early 1994 top Polish officials were warning of a “resurgence of imperialist thinking in Moscow,” a concern aggravated by Zhirinovsky’s proclaimed goal of retaking eastern Poland. 47 Czech president Vaclav Havel expressed similar concerns about the “chauvinistic, Great Russian, crypto-Communist, and crypto-totalitarian forces” that might someday regain ascendance in Moscow. 48 Although in public all the East-Central European governments continued to affirm that their countries “are not threatened at present,” they acknowledged that conditions in Russia “are far from stable” and that “the end of the Cold War has by no means eliminated the possible sources of military danger” in Moscow. 49 Widespread misgivings about Russia were also evident in opinion polls in the three East European states, particularly Poland and the Czech Republic. From 1994 through 1997, more than two-thirds of respondents in Poland said they believed there would be a “renewed imperial threat” from Russia “within the next five to ten years.” 50 Surveys in the Czech Republic in 1995 and 1996 showed that roughly three out of every five citizens believed “Russia will present a threat to our country in the future.” 51
Russia’s efforts to prevent the East European states from joining NATO evoked particular worries about Moscow’s long-term intentions. In early 1995 Havel expressed dismay that Russia was trying to “dictate to other countries which alliances they can belong to.” 52 Polish leaders, too, said they were “baffled” by the intensity of the Russian campaign, warning that Moscow was moving back to “the shadow of the Cold War.” 53 A highly publicized document released by top-ranking Polish government officials (and former officials) in October 1995 claimed that Russia was trying to “retain a belt of militarily, politically, and economically weak states around it and to increase its presence in these areas over time until its renewed strength will permit outright spheres of influence to be reestablished.” 54 The authors of the report left no doubt that if Russia persisted in its “aggressive stance,” it would soon pose a “real threat” and plunge Europe into a “cold peace.”
Anxiety in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic was further piqued by Russia’s growing propensity to rely on overt nuclear threats in its campaign against NATO expansion. These threats were linked with a new military doctrine approved by the Russian government in November 1993, which affirmed that “if an attack is launched against Russia by a country allied with a state that possesses nuclear weapons”—as all the NATO countries obviously are—“Russia retains the right to use nuclear weapons and to deliver a preemptive nuclear strike against the adversary.” 55 Shortly after this doctrine was adopted, General Gennadii Dmitriev warned that if the East-Central European countries “are dreaming about entering NATO, they should realize that by doing so, they will immediately be placed on the list of targets for Russian strategic nuclear forces, with all the consequences this entails.” 56 Subsequently, Polish commentators expressed concern that Russia was “stationing nuclear missiles in Kaliningrad and targeting them at Warsaw and Krakow.” 57 In the fall of 1995, a senior officer on the Russian General Staff asserted that if the Czech Republic and Poland were admitted into NATO, “the coordinates of targets located on Czech and Polish territory will be entered into the flight plans of Russian long-range nuclear missiles.” 58 This threat was echoed in early 1996 by a top official at Russia’s Atomic Energy Ministry, Georgii Kaurov, who warned that Russia would be “obliged to neutralize the danger” of NATO expansion by “targeting nuclear weapons at military sites in Eastern Europe.” 59
Ordinarily, these sorts of threats would have been regarded as mere bluster, but the “Zhirinovsky factor” in Russian politics changed the calculus, at least somewhat. On many occasions both before and after the December 1993 elections in Russia, Zhirinovsky was quoted as being eager to use nuclear weapons in pursuit of state interests. 60 Although Zhirinovsky’s political fortunes declined sharply after 1994, the reports of his loose talk about nuclear strikes—irrespective of the accuracy of some of those reports—left a distinct residue of unease in East-Central Europe.
This unease necessarily affected Polish, Czech, and Hungarian security strategies. Although the Polish defense minister acknowledged that it was “impossible to ignore the fact that Russia remains a huge country and a nuclear superpower,” he and other Polish officials expressed “outrage and condemnation” after the barrage of Russian threats in October 1995, which they characterized as “nuclear blackmail.” 61 Hungarian military experts also denounced the Russian statements, noting that “this is the first time in more than 30 years that nuclear weapons are being used not only as a deterrent, but as a threat.” 62 The same point was emphasized by Czech officials, who argued that “nuclear threats are inappropriate in the post-Cold War era,” and warned that the Czech government would “firmly resist any form of Russian nuclear blackmail.” 63
Quite apart from Russia’s nuclear arsenal, the conventional force imbalance in East-Central Europe also posed daunting problems for military planners in East-Central Europe. Under the limits originally set by the Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty in November 1990, the combined military strength of the Visegrad states (Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia) was meager compared to the Soviet armed forces. This disparity was mitigated somewhat by the dissolution of the Soviet Union in late 1991 (see table 11.1, p. 406), but even now the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian armies combined are dwarfed by the Russian army. The then-chief of the Polish General Staff, General Tadeusz Wilecki, warned in 1996 that “the huge asymmetry of military power in Central Europe” could leave Poland and other states in the region “vulnerable to a stronger army.” 64
The disproportion in Moscow’s favor is even greater than it may seem, because the Russian Army still has tens of thousands of heavy weapons deployed east of the Urals, which are not covered by CFE (see table 11.1, p. 406). Most of those weapons were initially relocated there by the Soviet government in 1990 to ensure that they would be exempt from the treaty’s limits. 65 This equipment generally has not been maintained in working order, but much of it could be rendered operational in an emergency, provided that enough lead time was available. If a severe crisis were to erupt in Europe, thousands of weapons could eventually be activated and shifted back to western Russia to augment Russian ground and air forces. The weaponry located east of the Urals thus could vastly magnify the force imbalance in East-Central Europe. Although the process of transporting such large amounts of hardware back to Europe would be very costly and might take as long as several months, the redeployments in 1990 showed that the task is eminently feasible. 66
Combined with the deep uncertainty about the future of Russian politics, the military equation in East-Central Europe was inevitably a source of unease in the Visegrad countries. Although all the governments in the region publicly averred that “no external danger currently exists,” the potential threat from Russia loomed just below the surface.
Nuclear Weapons Policies
Despite concerns about a possible backlash in Moscow, the Czech, Polish, and Hungarian governments all decided not to acquire nuclear weapons as a hedge. Each of the three governments seriously considered the nuclear option for at least a brief while; but the possibility of building nuclear weapons was never openly promoted—and was only rarely mentioned in public—by senior political or military figures. Instead, the main objective for Poland, Hungary, and the former Czechoslovakia after 1989 was to get all Soviet nuclear weapons removed from the region as soon as possible. That endeavor proved eminently successful.
By October 1990, less than a year after Communism collapsed, all Soviet tactical nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles had been pulled out of Hungary and Czechoslovakia. Withdrawals from Poland were completed the following year. By the end of 1990, the Czechoslovak government had reasserted full national control over facilities that had been designated as nuclear warhead dispensing areas (for Czechoslovakia’s weapons) under a secret bilateral agreement of February 1986. The Czechoslovak army also reclaimed the three military bases in western and southern Bohemia—Bilina, Bela pod Bezdezem, and Misov—that had been warhead storage sites for the Soviet Union’s own nuclear missiles under an agreement dating back to December 1965. 67 Similarly, the Hungarian army regained control of the former Soviet nuclear weapon depots near Dombovar, Baj, and Nagyvazsony in western Hungary. 68 In April 1991 the Polish army reclaimed the former nuclear munitions sites near Sypniewo when Soviet missile units finally pulled out. 69 The dismantling of all these facilities, combined with the withdrawal of Soviet theater nuclear weapons and the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact, made the whole region a de facto nuclear-free zone.
Even before the Soviet withdrawals were completed, the East European governments gave at least some consideration to the possibility of acquiring their own nuclear weapons. The acquisition of a viable nuclear force (as opposed to just one or two explosives) would have been extremely expensive for the three countries even if they had pursued the matter jointly; but it would have been possible. The industrial and technical capacity of the East European states was clearly sufficient to design and build nuclear explosives. 70 All three countries were long-standing members of the elite Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, and they had many well-trained nuclear scientists and advanced nuclear power facilities. Czechoslovakia had long provided uranium to the Soviet Union for weapons applications. 71 Moreover, all three countries had substantial numbers of nuclear-capable delivery vehicles, which could have been equipped with nuclear warheads. (Until 1989, in fact, that is precisely what would have happened if a crisis had arisen. Soviet nuclear warheads would have been installed on some of the East European missiles, which then would have been brought under direct Soviet command. 72 ). Czechoslovakia, in particular, had secretly obtained forty-eight SS-23 missiles and eight SS-23 launchers from the Soviet Union between 1986 and 1988, apparently because Soviet leaders wanted to circumvent limits imposed by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in December 1987. 73 Although nuclear warheads for the SS-23s had not been provided, the nuclear-capable missiles remained in service in the Czech Republic long after Communist rule ended.
In addition to having the capacity to acquire nuclear weapons, the East European countries had considerable motivation to do so, not least to deter the former Soviet Union. A U.S. Government survey in late 1991, based in part on reports from intelligence specialists, concluded that the acquisition of nuclear weapons by the East European states was “conceivable,” albeit “not very likely at the moment.” 74 The report described the circumstances that might prompt Hungary, Poland, or the Czech Republic to seek nuclear arms:
[I]t is conceivable that the Eastern Europeans could be driven toward the development of nuclear weapons if it appeared that the Soviet Union had irrevocable designs on them, if they gave up all hope that the West was prepared to extend a meaningful security guarantee, and if they feared that war was inevitable. Another theoretically possible set of conditions would involve the acquisition of nuclear weapons by one or more western Soviet republics as part of the breakup of the Union. This might trigger proliferation throughout the region, as one Eastern European state after another concluded that it could not go without nuclear weapons as long as its neighbors possessed them. . . .These states do face some very real threats, whether from the Soviet Union, from their neighbors, or from ethnic turmoil in the region; in extreme circumstances nuclear weapons may look to be attractive as the ultimate credential for independence, as an equalizer for an inferior position in a security relationship (especially with the Soviet Union), and as a cheap means of defense. Those circumstances do not seem to be very likely at the moment, but they cannot be definitively ruled out over the longer term. 75
This analysis is remarkably similar to what East European officials themselves argued during interviews in the early 1990s. They affirmed that, in extremis (i.e., if no alternatives were feasible), their governments would have to “take a serious look at the nuclear option.” 76 Polish and Czech concerns about this matter revolved largely around the former Soviet Union, whereas Hungarian concerns were somewhat broader. As early as July 1989, senior Hungarian officials expressed anxiety about Romania’s apparent attempt to build nuclear weapons. 77 Although some of the Hungarian claims may have been overstated, recent disclosures have confirmed that Romania had a nuclear weapons project, including plutonium extraction efforts, under way throughout the 1980s. 78 Hungarian leaders may therefore have had some justification for wanting to counter that threat.
In the end, however, all three East European governments decided against the nuclear option. With varying degrees of finality, they gradually announced that they would not seek to develop nuclear weapons of their own to fill the void left by the Soviet withdrawals. The tone was set in late 1990 by the Czechoslovak government’s declaration that Czechoslovakia “will not produce any nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction, and will never make the effort to produce them. Nor will it allow the deployment of such weapons on its territory.” 79 The Czechoslovak government also indicated that it would cease exports of uranium for military purposes to the Soviet Union. 80 In addition, the Czechoslovak authorities pledged that they would dismantle their SS-23 launchers and missiles, though they later refrained from doing so. In mid-1993 a senior officer on the Czech General Staff, General Jiri Divis, acknowledged that “the SS-23 complexes and missiles are still in service, and we will probably keep them for some time, particularly because it would be expensive to destroy them.” 81 He emphasized, however, that the missiles were equipped only with conventional “high-explosive fragmentation warheads,” adding that “our retention of the SS-23s does not alter or detract from our basic decision, after a careful review, to forgo the production of nuclear weapons.”
Poland and Hungary both followed Czechoslovakia’s lead. The Polish government barred the Soviet Union from “transporting nuclear weapons through Polish airspace or by Polish rail or road” either during or after the withdrawal of the Western Group of Soviet Forces from Germany. 82 All Soviet nuclear weapons in Germany had to be removed by sea. The Polish authorities also announced in March 1991 that they would unilaterally eliminate all their nuclear-capable missiles, “retrain the missiles’ crews, and provide the crews with new duties.” 83 This decision should have affected some 60 Frog-7 and 32 Scud-B launchers and missiles, but the Polish army ended up keeping roughly 40 of the Frog-7s. Senior Polish officials later indicated that they would rely on “self-defense,” including nuclear deterrence, as a last resort if no other options proved feasible, but they consistently emphasized their determination to seek more “advantageous” and “credible” alternatives. 84
The decision on nuclear weapons in Hungary was even firmer and more explicit, despite some initial wavering. In November 1990 the new Hungarian defense minister, Lajos Fur, pledged that Hungary would unilaterally dismantle all its nuclear-capable missiles and launchers, which amounted to some 24 Scud-B missiles, 9 Scud launchers, 107 Frog-7 missiles, and 18 Frog launchers. This action, according to Fur, was intended to “promote European peace and a good relationship with our neighbors” and to “inspire other countries to take similar steps.” 85 Subsequently, when the expense of scrapping the weapons became clear, Hungarian military officials said they would try to sell the Scuds and Frogs back to the Soviet Union (or some other country), rather than dismantling them. 86 That shift in approach, however, did not lessen Hungary’s commitment to get rid of all its nuclear-capable missiles and launchers. By February 1991, the last Hungarian missile unit had been disbanded; and shortly thereafter, Fur enunciated the “basic principle” that Hungary would “never again permit weapons of mass destruction to be stationed in the country.” 87
Thus, the trend in East-Central Europe after 1990 was decidedly against nuclear deployments. Even when apprehension in the region was piqued by instability in Russia and the growing strength of Russian nationalist forces, the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian governments gave few indications that they would change their minds about acquiring nuclear arms. Only in one respect did the non-nuclear commitment of the three states diminish, albeit it in a way fully compatible with their own non-nuclear status. In their bids to join NATO, the East-Central European governments pledged that they would be willing, if necessary, to have U.S. tactical nuclear weapons stationed on their soil, a practice long followed by some other non-nuclear member-states of NATO such as Germany, Italy, and Belgium. In the latter half of 1995 Polish leaders affirmed that “Poland would have nothing against” U.S. nuclear deployments on Polish territory “if the alliance deems them necessary”; and Czech president Havel declared that it would be “perfectly normal” and “reasonable” if NATO sought to deploy nuclear weapons on Czech soil “when the Czech Republic becomes a member of the alliance.” 88 Hungarian officials were far more discreet about the matter, but privately indicated that they, too, would consider permitting appropriate U.S. deployments. Moreover, all three of the East-Central European states flatly rejected a proposal by Ukraine to establish a nuclear-weapon-free zone in central Europe. 89
These declarations of willingness to accept U.S. nuclear deployments were issued even though NATO had never asked any of the East European governments to make such an offer. An official Study on NATO Enlargement, released in September 1995, explicitly indicated that states hoping to join the alliance would not be required to host nuclear munitions. Although the study averred that “new members should be eligible to join [NATO’s] Nuclear Planning Group and its subordinate bodies and to participate in nuclear consultation during exercises and crisis,” it emphasized that “there is no a priori requirement for the stationing of nuclear weapons on the territory of new members.” 90 This principle was strengthened in February 1997 when the NATO governments formally announced that “the Alliance has no intention, no plan, and no reason to deploy nuclear weapons on the territory of new members; nor does it foresee any future need to do so.” 91 That pledge was reaffirmed numerous times in 1997, most notably at the July summit in Madrid of the NATO heads-of-state.
Even if NATO had declined to rule out the hypothetical deployment of allied nuclear forces on Polish, Hungarian, and Czech territory, the fundamental decisions by the East-Central European governments to eschew their own nuclear weapons would not have changed. After an initial period of hesitation (when it was still unclear whether membership in NATO would be feasible), the Polish, Hungarian, and Czech authorities all determined that they should forsake any effort to build nuclear arms and instead meet their security needs through external balancing.
Alternatives to Nuclear Weapons (I): Sub-Regional Balancing
Initially, many officials in East-Central Europe hoped to contend with future security threats by relying mainly on a pan-European organization like the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE, now OSCE). 92 Those hopes, however, proved illusory, as it became clear that the use of CSCE for most security functions was impractical. The organization was too unwieldy in its decisionmaking, and it had no military forces at its disposal even for very limited missions. The governments in Prague, Warsaw, and Budapest soon realized that other arrangements would be needed to fill the “military vacuum” and “deep political void” created by the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact. As the Polish defense minister put it: “We are not a superpower; therefore, we must seek allies.” 93
Beginning in 1990, two schemes were proposed for the states of East-Central Europe to cooperate in balancing against external threats. The first idea, the so-called Visegrad Triangle (later renamed the Visegrad Group), did come to fruition, but it never took on the functions or appearance of a military alliance. The other proposal, for an alliance ranging from the Baltic to the Danube, never got off the ground. In both cases, the East-Central European states decided that other considerations (discussed below) were more important than the prospect of intra-regional balancing.
The Visegrad Group
Polish leaders took the initiative in 1990 in promoting a form of subregional security cooperation with Hungary and the former Czechoslovakia. Polish officials even spoke hopefully about the possible establishment of an “organized alliance” over the longer term. 94 In April 1990 the leaders of the three (later four) countries held preliminary discussions at Bratislava, but those discussions were almost entirely symbolic and had no specific agenda. Five months later, the deputy foreign and defense ministers from the three sides met near the Czechoslovak-Polish border, in Zakopane, to consider the idea of a trilateral security framework. That session was followed in November 1990 by a higher-level meeting in Budapest, and by another gathering of the deputy foreign ministers in Prague in late December 1990. A fifth session, involving the foreign ministers of the three countries, took place in Budapest in mid-January 1991; and a climactic sixth meeting, which brought together the presidents and prime ministers of the three states, was held in the Hungarian city of Visegrad the following month. 95 That session marked the true beginning of what came to be known as the “Visegrad Triangle” (and then the “Visegrad Group” after the split of Czechoslovakia).
Shortly before the Visegrad summit, Bulgarian and Romanian officials expressed interest in joining a subregional organization if the other three countries ended up forming one. 96 The Romanian overtures were promptly rebuffed by the Visegrad participants (led by Hungary), but the Bulgarian request encountered a somewhat more favorable response. Even so, Bulgarian leaders were too optimistic in concluding that “the ‘troika’ will eventually expand and become a ‘group of four.’ ” 97 The Visegrad participants were all well aware that trilateral cooperation on issues such as military strategy, defense planning, and weapons procurement would be difficult enough without bringing in other East European countries whose political stability and economic status were problematic at best.
Indeed, it soon became clear that even with the participation of just Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia, no multilateral security arrangement was going to emerge. Although Hungarian leaders acknowledged the desirability of “some kind of closer [military] cooperation among the three countries when some kind of identity of interests can be shown,” they were reluctant to undertake any major commitment, for fear that Poland would try to make the organization into an anti-German coalition. 98 To be sure, both Hungary and Czechoslovakia later displayed some interest in pursuing military cooperation with Poland, including joint air defense efforts and the possibility of a subregional military consultative group. 99 The appeal of such an arrangement increased as the domestic situation in the Soviet Union grew more turbulent. Moreover, the Hungarian and Czechoslovak governments signed a bilateral military treaty in January 1991, and both of them subsequently concluded similar bilateral treaties with Poland. 100 The three states also began joint air defense operations in early 1991 to make up for the integrated air-defense network they had formerly shared with the Soviet Union. 101
Nevertheless, the Polish government’s hopes of taking these arrangements much further by forming a full-fledged security organization went unfulfilled. The bilateral military agreements that the three states signed were limited in scope and contained no provisions for automatic assistance in the event of an attack. Moreover, at no point did either Hungary or Czechoslovakia express interest in merging the treaties into a broad, trilateral military agreement, much less a quadrilateral pact with both Poland and Bulgaria, or a pentagonal arrangement that included Romania as well. On the contrary, Czechoslovak and Hungarian leaders said explicitly at the time that they did not intend to form a “new alliance” or “bloc” at the subregional level. 102 Even Polish officials eventually conceded that it was premature to “conclude a military alliance,” though they still hoped to “formulate a common approach to questions of security and regional stability.” 103
A further obstacle to military cooperation among the Visegrad countries came, ironically enough, when the Soviet Union broke apart. This development seemed to eliminate, or at least mitigate, the most exigent threat to the East European states, and hence it removed the main incentive for pursuing joint military efforts in the first place. Most East European officials argued that it made far more sense, in those circumstances, to press for membership in NATO rather than trying to make the Visegrad framework into a quasi-alliance. 104 The efficacy of the Visegrad arrangement was also attenuated by the split of Czechoslovakia. Under the leadership of prime minister Vaclav Klaus, the Czech government initially was much warier of developing close security ties with the other Visegrad countries, for fear of being held back in its drive to obtain membership in the European Community (later renamed the European Union) and NATO. The Czech Republic’s shift toward a “go-it-alone” approach between 1992 and 1995 did not obviate the prospects of subregional military cooperation altogether, but it did mean that the Visegrad Group was largely dormant for nearly three years. Not until mid-1996, when the Czech government began consulting with Poland and Hungary to coordinate their efforts to join NATO, did the Visegrad structure revive; and even then its chief function was geared toward NATO, not toward the group itself. 105
Thus, even though officials in Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic were still concerned about the security vacuum in East-Central Europe, they all had concluded by 1994 that the only way to fill that vacuum was through an extension of NATO, not through the creation of a mini-alliance system. 106 This judgment was especially compelling in light of the military forces deployed by the Visegrad states. Even if the four governments had committed themselves wholeheartedly to a separate military alliance, their combined armies would have been unable to handle anything except relatively low-level threats (see table 11.1). So long as concerns persisted about the possible emergence of military dangers “to the east,” the Visegrad states had an incentive to look to the great powers, both inside and outside Europe, for protection.
“From the Baltic to the Danube”
In February 1993 President Leonid Kravchuk of Ukraine proposed the creation of a formal or semi-formal alliance “from the Baltic to the Danube,” comprising the three Baltic states (Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia), Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Austria, Belarus, and Ukraine. This idea went nowhere. 107 Even in Ukraine itself many experts regarded the proposal to be unwise or infeasible, and all the other states included under the proposal (with the partial exception of Belarus) were distinctly hostile to the idea. In Poland, for example, two senior officials argued that Ukraine merely “wants to carve out a hegemonic role for itself and to be the dominant power in a new military bloc in East-Central Europe. That would just be the Warsaw Pact all over again, with Ukraine in place of the Soviet Union.” 108 This sort of response to Kravchuk’s proposal, though deliberately overstated, was very much in accord with what neorealists would expect about the importance that states attach to relative gains. 109 Most of the Visegrad and Baltic countries were averse to forming any local alliance with Ukraine—even a potentially beneficial alliance—for fear that Ukraine would thereby gain undue military influence in Eastern Europe and possibly even develop into a subregional hegemon.
Critics of the “Baltic-to-Danube” proposal also maintained that Ukraine was hoping to exploit the other states in a bid to “surround” Russia. Although officials in most of the East-Central European countries were concerned about the possibility of a militant resurgence in Moscow over the longer term, they believed that the thinly disguised anti-Russian orientation of Kravchuk’s plan would merely increase the likelihood of a worst-case scenario. In that sense, the Ukrainian proposal fit in well with the kind of external balancing one would expect to find under the structural realist paradigm, whereas the desire of the other Central European states to avoid isolating Russia reflected a sensitivity to the security dilemma (vis-à-vis Russia) as well as concern about the relative gains Ukraine might derive.
Kravchuk’s proposal was further undermined by the inception of NATO’s Partnership for Peace in January 1994. Because this new entity was depicted as a vehicle for Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic (and other former Communist states) to gain eventual membership in the Western alliance, the East European governments were more determined than ever to avoid being entangled in subregional organizations that might impede their admission into NATO. Kravchuk’s stillborn proposal remained nominally under consideration during the first few months of 1994, but the idea was not taken up by the new Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma, when he assumed office in June 1994. Nor was any further mention made of it later on.
Throughout the region, then, the consensus by the mid-1990s was that intraregional groupings would play little or no role in East-Central European security in the future. The governments in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and other countries were convinced that the only viable way to fill the security vacuum in East-Central Europe was through an extension of NATO, not through the creation of a mini-alliance system. Only in Ukraine and to some extent Belarus (before the election of Aleksander Lukashenka) was there ever any sentiment for the establishment of local alliances and military groupings directed against Russia, and that sentiment quickly ebbed when other states displayed no interest.
Alternatives to Nuclear Weapons (II): Looking to NATO
Beginning in 1989, and particularly after the Soviet Union’s collapse, the East-Central European states looked increasingly to NATO, both implicitly and explicitly, to fill the vacuum left by the demise of the Warsaw Pact. Even before the Polish, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak/Czech governments started openly pursuing full membership in NATO, they set about establishing firm ties with the alliance and with individual member-states. By 1991, exchanges between top Polish, Hungarian, and Czechoslovak military-political officials and their Western counterparts had become so frequent and extensive that they rarely drew more than passing notice any longer. 110
In March 1991, Vaclav Havel became the first East European head of state to visit NATO’s headquarters; and a few weeks later, Lech Walesa became the second. During their visits the two presidents expressed strong interest in forging much closer ties with NATO, including the possibility of formal membership over the longer term if Western countries would agree. Havel emphasized that the alliance “should not be forever closed” to the East European states, and he expressed hope that Czechoslovakia would eventually become a “regular NATO member” even if it “cannot become one at the moment.” 111 The same view was expressed by Polish and Hungarian leaders.
Equally noteworthy was the expansion of direct military contacts between the East-Central European countries and the Western alliance. Even before the upheavals of 1989, Hungary tentatively began to establish military-diplomatic exchanges with NATO countries. 112 After 1989, those contacts rapidly multiplied and became much more wide-ranging not only for Hungary but for all the East-Central European states. By the fall of 1991 military-educational exchange programs were fully under way, bringing officers from the former Warsaw Pact countries to military academies in the West, and vice versa. 113 The East-Central European states also assigned permanent military representatives to NATO. Czechoslovak leaders proposed formal cooperation with NATO on anti-aircraft defense and civil defense when the chief of NATO’s Military Committee, General Vigleik Eide, visited their country in April 1991. 114 In addition, Czechoslovakia sought close bilateral military relations with some of the smaller NATO members, notably Spain, Belgium, and the Netherlands.
Furthermore, all three of the East-Central European governments began approaching the United States, Germany, Great Britain, and France about the possibility of obtaining weapons and support equipment in the future. By purchasing Western-made arms, they hoped to eliminate or at least reduce their logistical dependence on the former Soviet Union and establish greater commonality with NATO. As early as May 1990 the French government expressed tentative support for French-Polish military coproduction ventures, including joint development, engineering, and manufacturing arrangements, as well as exchanges of technical knowledge. Later that year the French government also indicated its readiness to “set up arms cooperation and sell military technology” to Hungary. 115 Polish and Hungarian officials received nearly as favorable a response when they visited the United States, from which Poland was particularly eager to obtain F-16 fighters. 116 Despite severe constraints imposed by shortages of hard currency and lingering export controls (which were not fully lifted until February 1995), the East-Central European states by early 1991 had made clear their desire to shift away from former Soviet arms manufacturers toward greater ties with the West.
Equally important, the Polish, Czechoslovak, and Hungarian governments sought to establish concrete military cooperation with NATO and to “side with the West” as much as possible on key international issues. 117 During the Persian Gulf war in early 1991, all the East-Central European states contributed military personnel and equipment to the American-led multinational force, in contrast to the Soviet Union, which refrained from taking part at all. 118 Czechoslovak, Hungarian, and Polish units were placed under direct American and British command (except for a few personnel who were primarily under Saudi command), and they served alongside American soldiers. In addition, the East-Central European countries provided use of their airspace and airfields to NATO for military purposes before, during, and after the war. Hungary and Czechoslovakia gave Germany permission to fly combat aircraft over their territory in early 1991, something that would have been inconceivable when the Warsaw Pact still functioned. Both countries also allowed the United States to send many hundreds of military transport and cargo flights through their airspace during the war itself. 119 In addition, Hungary permitted the American planes to land and refuel at Hungarian air bases.
Poland, for its part, offered crucial intelligence support for the war effort. Because Polish construction and engineering firms had done extensive work in Iraq for many years, Polish officials in 1990 were able to supply detailed information about Iraqi military facilities and precise maps of Baghdad to the United States. 120 Poland also turned over valuable technical data about Iraq’s air defense systems, tanks, fighter aircraft, and other weaponry, which had been bought mainly from Warsaw Pact countries. Most dramatically of all, Polish intelligence officials masterminded the escape of six key U.S. intelligence agents who had been inadvertently trapped behind Iraqi lines when the crisis broke. The success of this operation, as a senior Polish diplomat later exclaimed, “proved to the Americans that we [in Poland] are a reliable partner who can carry out sensitive, delicate missions on behalf of the American government.” 121
Following the Soviet Union’s collapse, the military links between NATO and the East-Central European states grew exponentially, both in number and in scope. All the Visegrad governments designed their new military doctrines and restructured their armed forces with an eye to facilitating eventual membership in NATO. Political and military cooperation between the alliance and the former Warsaw Pact states greatly increased, as evidenced by the joint operations in regions contiguous with the former Yugoslavia. Beginning in 1992, Hungary allowed NATO AWACS aircraft to use Hungarian airspace and bases while monitoring the conflict, and Hungarian MiG fighters were deployed as escorts for the AWACS to ward off any potential interference by Serbian planes. The Czech, Polish, and Hungarian governments also cooperated with NATO countries in peacekeeping efforts in Croatia, Kurdistan, Liberia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina, not only by contributing troops, but also by permitting the use of air bases, refueling facilities, and supply lines. The declared aim of this cooperation, for all three countries, was to show that “we are determined to join NATO, and nothing can change our minds.” 122 The East European states also expressed keen interest in taking part in other peacekeeping missions that NATO might organize in the central Eurasian region.
Furthermore, even before NATO established the Partnership for Peace (PfP) in January 1994, the Visegrad states had been taking a direct part in the alliance’s high-level military and political deliberations. In June 1993, Hungary became the first non-NATO country to host the alliance’s annual meeting on military security issues and crisis management. Hungary also was the first East European country to set up a bilateral military working group with the United States to deal with all aspects of security issues that might confront NATO. Poland and the Czech Republic quickly followed suit. In addition, the Czechs established secure, high-level communications links with Western countries in mid-1996, using encryption hardware purchased from the Motorola Corporation. 123 The system replaced the top-secret network that once connected all the Warsaw Pact countries.
By the mid-1990s, NATO’s military and political ties with Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic had become so close that it was almost possible to regard the three states as de facto members of the alliance. Although the de jure role of the Visegrad countries through 1997 was limited primarily to membership in the North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC) and the PfP, the de facto role that those countries assumed long before July 1997 (when they received formal invitations to join NATO) was more important than the contributions of at least a few existing members of the alliance.
Even so, the NATO governments initially were reluctant to consider any formal additions to their ranks. Until late 1994, the NATO countries generally tried to discourage the East-Central European states from seeking membership in the alliance. Several factors acccounted for this stance, chief among them concern about Moscow’s reaction. The East-Central European states were undeterred by the cool reception they initially encountered and continued to express their interest in joining NATO, but they clearly were uneasy about the West’s position. Indeed, the Czech and Polish governments were wary of joining NACC and the PfP, for fear that these organizations were little more than ploys by NATO to avoid offering genuine membership. In the end, all the former Warsaw Pact states did sign up for PfP, but they remained apprehensive about NATO’s seeming unwillingness to offer full-fledged membership. As the Russian campaign against NATO enlargement gathered pace, disquiet in East-Central Europe increased. Senior Polish, Hungarian, and Czech officials complained both publicly and privately that NATO was far too deferential to Russia’s objections, and at times they even spoke openly about a “betrayal” and a “second Yalta.” 124
At no time, however, did the three East-Central European states fundamentally alter their strategic priorities. Having geared their security strategies overwhelmingly toward the goal of NATO membership, they were determined to do whatever was necessary to achieve it. Although it took longer than expected to attain that goal, their efforts finally paid off.
Ukraine
Ukraine regained its independence in December 1991 after some seventy years under Soviet rule. The new Ukrainian state experienced many severe internal problems during its first seven years, including a catastrophic economic decline between 1992 and 1997, occasional ethnic unrest in Crimea, and a growing political divide between the eastern and western portions of the country. 125 These difficulties inevitably took their toll on Ukrainian security strategy. Although most Ukrainians acknowledged that the gravest threats to Ukraine’s survival as an independent state came from within, officials in Kiev were also constantly mindful of the country’s external situation, notably its proximity to Russia. Ukraine is contiguous with seven countries (Moldova, Romania, Hungary, Slovakia, Poland, Belarus, and Russia) at the crossroads between Europe and Asia, but the long border with Russia is by far the most important. 126 Ukraine’s continued dependence on Russia for vital energy supplies (which were sold at highly subsidized prices long after 1991), the extensive trade links between Russia and Ukraine, the presence of some 11.3 million ethnic Russians in Ukraine (out of a total population of 52 million), and the troubled history of Russian-Ukrainian relations affected all aspects of Ukrainian strategy in the 1990s, including decisions about nuclear weapons.
Perceptions of External Threats
From the moment the Soviet Union was dissolved, Ukraine’s relations with Russia were marked by periodic tensions and recriminations. Although most Ukrainian officials did not expect that Russia would try to re-conquer Ukraine through military force in the near future, they would not exclude the possibility of a large-scale conflict at some point down the road. Even in the near term, some Ukrainian officials were worried that a low-level military clash between the two former Soviet republics—perhaps over territorial issues—could escalate into something much larger than either side had anticipated. Such a conflict, if it had transpired, would undoubtedly have worked to Ukraine’s disadvantage. The Ukrainian army was one of the largest in Europe and was relatively well-equipped (primarily because sizable stocks of front-line weaponry were left on Ukrainian territory after the Soviet Union collapsed), but it would have been no match for the Russian army. Ukrainian officials were under no illusions that Ukraine’s conventional forces could have repulsed a full-scale Russian attack. 127 The key problem for Ukrainian military officials, therefore, was how to make a prospective attack so costly that Russian leaders would not want to pay the price of “victory.”
Initially, the chief points of contention between Ukraine and Russia were the division of the Black Sea Fleet (which both sides claimed), the status of Crimea (a peninsula in Ukraine inhabited mainly by ethnic Russians), and the deployment of nuclear weapons on Ukrainian territory. Although none of these disputes led to a military conflict, the series of disagreements reinforced Ukrainian leaders’ suspicion that the large majority of Russians, whether government officials, military officers, or ordinary citizens, had not yet fully accepted the fact of Ukrainian independence. 128 Ukrainian leaders often expressed concern that ultranationalist and imperial-minded forces in Russia might yet succeed in stirring up public sentiment in favor of an aggressive policy on behalf of the ethnic Russians living in the Crimea, Odessa, and the Donbass region. They feared that Russian hardliners and security force personnel could manipulate domestic politics in Ukraine to provoke civil conflict that would create an opportunity and pretext for Russia to undertake more overt military intervention. Although the rebuff of the hardline revolt in Moscow in October 1993 briefly eased those concerns, the strong electoral showing of Zhirinovsky’s ultranationalist forces in December 1993 caused many in Ukraine to fear that hardline elements in Moscow would eventually gain sway. 129
Apprehension in Kiev remained high in 1994 and 1995, as the tone of Russian politics veered in a more nationalist direction (symbolized by the war in Chechnya) and the Russian Communist party experienced a strong resurgence. Minatory statements by Russian military officers, including a remark about Ukraine’s place “on the list of targets for Russian strategic nuclear forces,” boosted tensions still further. 130 Nevertheless, Ukrainian relations with Russia began to improve after mid-1994 because of the election of Leonid Kuchma as president. Kuchma had made clear during the electoral campaign that he favored closer ties with Russia. His surprisingly wide victory in July 1994—by a 52 to 45 margin—over the incumbent, Leonid Kravchuk, provided the impetus for a more conciliatory policy toward Russia. This new approach was not so drastic that it led to a full-scale rapprochement between Russia and Ukraine; on the contrary, most Ukrainian leaders remained highly suspicious of Russia’s intentions, and bilateral disputes persisted over the Black Sea Fleet and other issues. Even so, the acrimonious and threatening atmosphere of 1992 and 1993 was at least partly alleviated. Ties between the two countries remained uneasy and tense after mid-1994, but the threat of armed conflict receded.
A sign of how much the relationship had improved came in mid-1995 when a vote of independence by the Crimean parliament provoked a crackdown by the Ukrainian government. Had such a step been taken in 1992 or 1993, Russia undoubtedly would have responded very harshly and perhaps made some effort to provide direct aid to the Crimean government; but Kuchma’s action provoked barely a murmur of protest from Moscow. 131
Relations between the two countries continued to improve after 1995, despite periodic glitches and disruption. At a summit in Kiev in late May 1997, Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Ukrainian Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko signed long-awaited agreements on the leasing of military facilities in Crimea and the division of the Black Sea Fleet. At that same meeting, Kuchma and Russian president Boris Yeltsin signed a historic “treaty on friendship, cooperation, and partnership,” which recast the bilateral relationship as a “strategic partnership.” 132 The treaty marked the first time that Russia unequivocally affirmed the “territorial integrity” of Ukraine and the “inviolability of [its] existing borders.”
Despite this general improvement of relations, most Ukrainian officials still harbored little doubt that the only serious external threat to Ukraine over the long term would come from Russia. Ukraine’s military planning and deployments remained geared toward deterrence of a Russian attack. 133 Ukrainian leaders realized that the limited detente between the two countries could easily be reversed, particularly if Communist and ultranationalist forces regained a dominant position in Russia.
At the same time, one key factor—the awareness, on both sides, of how disastrous a conflict would be even if no nuclear weapons were used—helped keep the relationship free of hostilities. Large-scale fighting would almost certainly have disrupted the flow of oil and natural gas through the pipelines extending from Russia to Ukraine and into Central Europe, causing vast economic upheaval throughout Europe. Hostilities between Russia and Ukraine might also have caused an accident at one of the five nuclear power stations in western and southern Ukraine, scattering highly radioactive debris all around the region on a scale far eclipsing even the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. 134 Because the potential consequences of a Russian-Ukrainian military confrontation would have been so inimical and long-lasting, it was hardly surprising that officials in both countries sought to avoid a direct clash.
Nevertheless, Ukrainian leaders were well aware that a militant backlash in Russia could have ominous consequences for their own country. Although they acknowledged that internal problems posed the greatest threat to Ukrainian security in the near term, they would not rule out the prospect of a serious external danger in the future.
Nuclear Weapons Policies
When the Soviet Union split apart in December 1991, Ukraine inherited some 46 SS-24 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), 130 SS-19 ICBMs, and 45 Bear-H and Blackjack heavy bombers equipped with roughly 600 nuclear-armed AS-15 air-launched cruise missiles (ALCMs). The Ukrainian government soon asserted “administrative” control over these weapons, and Ukrainian troops were sent to guard the bases. At no time, however, did Ukraine have operational command of any of the nuclear arms. Operational control remained exclusively in Moscow. 135 Moreover, Ukraine itself had relatively few technicians who could provide regular servicing and upkeep for the missile silos. As a result, that task had to be performed mainly by Russian specialists.
In October 1991, two months before the dissolution of the USSR, the Ukrainian parliament adopted a Proclamation for the Non-Nuclear Status of Ukraine, which included a pledge “not to accept, produce, or acquire nuclear arms.” 136 Soon thereafter, the new Ukrainian government promised to relinquish the nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles on its territory by the end of 1994 and sign the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. These statements and pledges reaffirmed the commitment to non-nuclear status adopted by the Ukrainian parliament in its original declaration of “sovereignty” in July 1990. 137 Before long, however, the Ukrainian government became increasingly hesitant about following through on its commitments. A lively debate emerged in Ukraine, with views divided roughly along three lines.
Some experts and officials argued that Ukraine should not insist on preconditions before relinquishing the nuclear weapons on its soil. They pointed out that the warheads were, and would remain, under Russia’s operational control and thus would contribute nothing to Ukrainian security. Indeed, the weapons, in their view, actually detracted from Ukraine’s security in six key ways: by posing an ecological threat to Ukrainian territory if they were inadequately maintained; by spurring other nuclear powers (notably the United States) to continue targeting the silos in Ukraine; by causing tensions in Ukraine’s relations with the United States and other Western countries; by giving Russia a pretext for a hostile relationship with Ukraine; by forcing Ukraine to renege on its international commitments; and by draining funds and resources that might otherwise be devoted to Ukraine’s non-nuclear armed forces. 138 Those who wanted to get rid of the SS-19s, SS-24s, and AS-15s also noted that Ukraine had to rely on Russian technical personnel to service and repair the weapons. This arrangement, they argued, meant that the missiles, far from symbolizing Ukrainian sovereignty and independence, were instead a sign of Ukraine’s dependence on Russia. Hence, in their view, the sooner Ukraine got rid of the warheads and missiles, the better.
For a brief while this position guided Ukrainian policy, but it was soon eclipsed by the views of those who favored a conditional relinquishment of the weapons on Ukrainian territory. Although the “conditionalists” were in favor of joining the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state and transferring the ICBM and ALCM warheads to Russia for dismantling, they insisted that Ukraine, in return, must be given adequate security guarantees and financial compensation. Some of the officials and legislators who subscribed to this position believed that the “security guarantees” could simply be a formal pledge by the permanent members of the United Nations (UN) Security Council, whereas others were determined to obtain much more far-reaching guarantees, including full membership in NATO and a mutual security treaty with the United States. 139
Views about what would constitute adequate “compensation” also varied widely. Some Ukrainian officials were willing to be reimbursed only for the costs of transferring the warheads and dismantling the missiles (citing figures of as much as $2.5 billion to $3.0 billion), whereas others insisted on additional payment for the fissile material removed from the warheads. Those in Ukraine who were skeptical about this latter demand argued that the United States would be unwilling to pay much for stocks of either plutonium, which would be difficult to adapt for civilian purposes, or highly enriched uranium, which would be expensive to convert into fuel for nuclear power plants when there was already a huge glut of nuclear fuel on the world market. The notion that the weapons must be “worth something” was simply an illusion, in their view.
In addition to those who were willing to give up the ICBMs and ALCMs either conditionally or unconditionally, a relatively small but vocal group of officials, legislators, and specialists in Ukraine, led by a former high-ranking military officer, General Volodymyr Tolubko, were in favor of retaining all the weapons. Initially, when Ukrainian elites and the Ukrainian public were committed to the goal of a non-nuclear Ukraine, the influence of the pro-nuclear activists was negligible. By early 1993, however, sentiment in Ukraine began shifting in a broadly pro-nuclear direction. The dominant reason for this shift was the growing anxiety among experts as well as the public about a potential threat posed by Russia. 140 No doubt, as Peter Lavoy’s analysis of “nuclear mythmakers” would suggest, the pro-nuclear lobby in Ukraine tended to exaggerate the urgency of the Russian threat. 141 Still, it is unlikely that their appeals would have made much headway if there had not been mounting unease about Russia within the Ukrainian population as a whole.
Despite the growing influence of the pro-nuclear camp, the conditionalists ended up carrying the day. In January 1994 Ukrainian president Leonid Kravchuk signed an agreement with his U.S. and Russian counterparts that laid the basis for Ukraine to give up its missiles and become a non-nuclear state in return for joint “security guarantees” and financial compensation. 142 This agreement, as well as other issues connected with Ukraine’s nuclear status, sparked controversy within the Ukrainian parliament in the leadup to Ukraine’s presidential elections in June and July 1994. 143 Following the election of Kuchma, however, the pro-nuclear lobby was put on the defensive. By mid-November 1994, Kuchma persuaded the parliament to approve Ukraine’s accession to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state and the dismantling of all remaining nuclear missiles on Ukrainian territory. The overwhelming vote in favor of these steps marked the climax of the nuclear debate in Ukraine. In a speech to parliament just before the vote, Kuchma outlined numerous factors that warranted a non-nuclear status for Ukraine, most of which were similar to the points raised by those who had been opposed all along to keeping or building nuclear weapons (see above). 144 In addition, Kuchma was able to stress that Ukraine had been granted its demands for security guarantees and financial compensation, demands that both Russia and the United States initially had opposed.
The Ukrainian parliament’s action paved the way for Kuchma’s formal ratification of the NPT at a summit in Budapest of the CSCE heads of state in early December 1994. 145 From that point on, Ukraine upheld its initial non-nuclear commitments. By the end of 1995, some 90 percent of the 1,900 strategic nuclear warheads once located in Ukraine had been transferred, well ahead of schedule, to Russia for disassembly. The remaining warheads were shipped to Russia from storage facilities near Pervomaisk in the spring of 1996. In early June 1996 the final batch of nuclear warheads were removed from Ukraine in a ceremony marking the country’s non-nuclear status. 146
Much the same occurred with Ukraine’s strategic delivery vehicles. As of November 1995, all 46 of the SS-24 ICBMs and 80 of the 130 SS-19 missiles in Ukraine had been dismantled, and work on the remaining weapons continued at a brisk pace in 1996 and 1997. Under bilateral agreements signed in Sochi in late 1995, Russia agreed to buy 32 of the remaining SS-19s from Ukraine as well as 19 Blackjack bombers, 25 Bear-H bombers, and 300 AS-15 cruise missiles. The two sides also agreed at Sochi that Russia would be given all equipment formerly used for the training and maintenance of tactical nuclear weapons and strategic bombers. 147 The Sochi deals sparked praise and satisfaction in both Moscow and Kiev. Although Russia had always maintained operational control of the nuclear weapons in Ukraine, it was ironic that, in the end, Ukraine’s grave economic problems spurred Ukrainian leaders to display “keen interest” in adding (if only marginally) to the nuclear potential of the very country with which Ukraine might someday again be bitterly at odds.
Alternatives to Nuclear Weapons: Potential Alliances
Even before Ukraine formally agreed to relinquish all the nuclear weapons left on its territory, Ukrainian leaders had begun to explore the possibility of external balancing (i.e., the creation of a new alliance or entry into an existing alliance). The situation was complicated somewhat because Ukraine’s declaration of sovereignty in July 1990 had indicated that the country would be “permanently neutral” (postiino neitral’na) and “would not participate in any military blocs.” 148 Ukrainian officials continued to emphasize those objectives after gaining independence in late 1991. The rationale for Ukrainian “neutrality,” however, was mainly to eschew any continuation of security ties with Russia, rather than a strict policy of nonalignment per se. This became evident in May 1992 when Russia invited the other members of the Commonwealth of Independent States (the loose coalition of former Soviet republics) to conclude a Treaty on Collective Security, which committed the signatories to provide “all necessary assistance, including military assistance,” to any member that came under attack. 149 Several former Soviet republics in Central Asia and the Caucasus agreed to sign the treaty, but Ukrainian officials refused to have anything to do with it and emphasized that Ukraine would not be joining any post-Soviet military alliances or blocs sponsored by Russia. Thus, to the extent that Ukraine did eventually consider the possibility of creating or joining a military alliance, the goal clearly was to balance against Russia.
One such effort, as mentioned earlier, occurred in 1993 when Ukrainian president Kravchuk broached the possibility of forming a Baltic-to-the-Danube constellation, which would have encompassed Ukraine, the three Baltic states, Poland, Belarus, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and Austria. 150 This proposal, first advanced in February 1993 and then elaborated a few months later in a document on “The Strengthening of Regional Stability and Security in Central and Eastern Europe,” met with a distinct lack of enthusiasm in the other countries, with the partial exception of Belarus. Czech, Polish, and Hungarian leaders were especially wary of embarking on any arrangement that might impede their entry into NATO and the European Union (EU). They also were uncertain about the future stability of Ukraine. When Polish president Lech Walesa traveled to Kiev in late May 1993, he informed Kravchuk that Poland (and, implicitly, the other East-Central European countries) would not pursue the Ukrainian leader’s idea because they wanted to rely on existing “Euroatlantic structures of security.” 151 In subsequent months, Kravchuk rarely mentioned the proposal again, and Kuchma abandoned it altogether.
As an alternative to a subregional alliance, Kuchma gradually bolstered Ukraine’s ties with NATO. He was cautious in pursuing the matter so that he would avoid antagonizing Russia, but in 1995, 1996, and especially 1997, Ukraine slowly but steadily drew closer to NATO. In February 1994, Ukraine became the first member of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) to join NATO’s Partnership for Peace, and signed a full-fledged agreement on partnership the following year. Over the next few years, Ukraine took an active part in many PfP military exercises (including exercises on Ukrainian territory) and countless other PfP activities, in contrast to Russia, which only belatedly and grudgingly joined the PfP and sharply limited its participation. 152 The Ukrainian government also sent a peacekeeping unit to help NATO’s efforts in the former Yugoslavia and even permitted the Ukrainian troops to serve under NATO command.
Although Ukraine formally retained its commitment to nonalignment, Ukrainian officials took some important steps to seek greater alignment with the West. The new Ukrainian constitution, adopted in 1996, made no mention of neutrality or nonalignment, and a landmark document on Ukrainian national security, issued in January 1997, explicitly endorsed “integration into international security structures.” 153 Increasingly, Ukrainian officials emphasized that they would pursue “cooperation with the CIS” but full-fledged “integration into Europe,” including NATO. 154 That approach underlay the accord that Ukraine signed with NATO in July 1997 during the Madrid summit of allied heads-of-state. 155 Although the “NATO-Ukrainian Charter on a Special Partnership” was not a binding agreement and offered Ukraine little that was not already covered by PfP and NACC, it vividly symbolized the growing ties between Kiev and the Western alliance. Ukrainian leaders did their best to allay any concerns Russia might have about Ukraine’s closer relationship with NATO (most notably by calling for a nuclear-weapon-free zone in East-Central Europe), but there was little doubt that the trend sparked unease in Moscow, especially when senior Ukrainian officials began intimating that Ukraine might seek outright membership in the alliance in the early twenty-first century. One of the reasons that Russian leaders were so eager to establish a “strategic partnership” with Ukraine in the bilateral agreement they signed in May 1997 was to slow down Ukraine’s rapprochement with NATO.
In the absence of a militant, hardline backlash in Moscow, Ukrainian leaders were disinclined to seek formal admission into NATO, not only because of the likely repercussions in Russia, but also because of the wrenching internal changes that would have been required in Ukraine itself. Occasional statements by Ukrainian officials about the prospect of eventual membership in the alliance did not necessarily adumbrate a realistic effort to join. Moreover, even if the political situation in Russia had taken a disastrous turn, and even if Ukraine had adopted far-reaching political and economic reforms, it is questionable whether the NATO countries themselves would have been willing to consider granting membership to Ukraine. The closer ties between Ukraine and NATO were important for symbolic reasons, but they did not automatically afford Ukraine any greater protection than it had before.
Alternatives to Nuclear Weapons: Security Guarantees
If a state is unable to become a full-fledged member of an alliance, it might still pursue another form of external balancing, namely, security guarantees. That is precisely what Ukrainian leaders sought when they promised to gain parliamentary approval of their decisions to eliminate the nuclear weapons based on Ukrainian soil and to sign the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. In return, Ukraine ultimately received security pledges from the United States, Great Britain, and Russia. 156 Through these pledges, as formally enunciated in the January 1994 trilateral agreement and at the CSCE/OSCE summit in December 1994, the three guarantors offered general assurances of respect for Ukraine’s independence and sovereignty, promised to “refrain from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence” of Ukraine, promised to assist Ukraine via the UN Security Council “if Ukraine falls victim to aggression or is subject to threats of aggression with nuclear weapons,” and reaffirmed the principle in the CSCE Final Act that “changes of borders can be carried out only through peaceful means and by mutual agreement.” 157 The guarantors also promised to “refrain from economic coercion” against Ukraine, an assurance that the Ukrainian authorities had avidly sought because of Russia’s periodic threats to halt oil and natural gas shipments to Ukraine unless prices were increased to world levels and payment arrears were resolved.
At first glance, these security pledges might seem far-reaching and expansive, but in fact they went no further than the commitments undertaken by the United States, Britain, and the Soviet Union many years earlier in the NPT, the Helsinki Final Act, and the UN Charter. Even the provision about “economic coercion” was merely a word-for-word restatement of a pledge in the Helsinki Final Act. Initially, Ukrainian leaders had demanded much more ambitious military, political, and economic guarantees—even Kuchma had spoken at one point about the need for an explicit U.S. nuclear guarantee—but the commitments they ended up accepting were surprisingly modest. Still, the very fact that Ukraine received guarantees at all (as well as financial compensation) was itself, as Kuchma emphasized to the parliament, a symbolic victory for the “national interests, prestige, and security of the Ukrainian state.” 158
Assessment and Implications of Strategic Choices
Structural realism would lead one to believe that one or more of the four states covered in this essay, especially Ukraine, should have sought their own nuclear arsenals. Under anarchy, with states forced to rely primarily on self-help in maintaining their security and ultimately their survival, the nuclear option should be attractive if highly reliable alternatives are not available. 159 In the cases examined here, all four states were potentially threatened by a formidable nuclear and conventional power, Russia, whose future political complexion and foreign policy seemed uncertain at best. Russian military officials explicitly raised the possibility of targeting nuclear weapons against all four of these countries, particularly Ukraine (see above). Until the mid-1990s, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic had no assurance that they would ever become members of NATO. Indeed, for at least a few years, Polish, Czech, and Hungarian leaders feared that their countries would be left permanently outside the alliance. Even when the Visegrad states finally were invited to join NATO—a status that would provide them with U.S. (and British/French) nuclear guarantees—the reliability of those future guarantees was problematic from the neorealist perspective. 160 The security guarantees that the United States extended to Ukraine in January and December 1994 were even less credible, in part because of the reaction that followed. Although the guarantees did not go beyond existing pledges, a few prominent members of the U.S. Congress expressed concern about the nature of U.S. commitments vis-à-vis Ukraine. 161 Reservations also were voiced in Congress during hearings in 1997 and 1998 on the proposed admission of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into NATO. 162 Because the Ukrainian and Central European governments were well aware that the United States was reluctant to extend full-fledged security guarantees to them, one might have expected them to be doubtful about the “protection” they were being offered. After all, a commitment provided with extreme reluctance would not normally be deemed highly reliable.
Nevertheless, despite these many uncertainties, none of the four states in question pursued a nuclear weapons capability. All four had the physical capacity to build nuclear warheads (at enormous expense), and they also had substantial numbers of nuclear-capable delivery vehicles left over from the Communist era. Even so, they chose not to realize their nuclear potential. In Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, the decision to forgo the production of nuclear weapons stirred very little public controversy. In Ukraine, the debate was more protracted and emotional than expected, but the Ukrainian government and parliament eventually agreed to relinquish the nuclear missiles and warheads on Ukrainian territory and to accept a permanent non-nuclear status under the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Afterward, Ukrainian officials made no effort to build nuclear weapons of their own, despite being confronted by a nuclear-armed Russia.
This outcome runs counter not only to the logic of structural realism, but also to explicit predictions made by Waltz, Mearsheimer, and other neorealist scholars, including those cited above. In 1981 Waltz listed a number of factors that could prompt states to seek nuclear weapons. 163 Most of these were pertinent to Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic in the first half of the 1990s: the absence of any allied nuclear guarantees; a desire to deter an enemy possessing a much stronger conventional army; and a desire to deter an enemy at an acceptable cost. Although Waltz proposed these factors while the Cold War was still on, the relevance of them seems, if anything, even greater in the post-Cold War era. Yet none of the factors spurred the East-Central European states to press ahead with a full-fledged nuclear weapons program.
The neorealist paradigm would lead one to expect that if states perceive themselves in a “security vacuum” and are confronted by a much larger, potentially hostile, and seemingly volatile state, they will seek to balance against that state as soon as possible. The reality in East-Central Europe in the early to mid-1990s was far more complex. All four states, including Ukraine, refrained from pursuing the most potent form of internal balancing—the acquisition of nuclear weapons. Moreover, except for Ukraine, they were unwilling to engage in external balancing with one another against the most likely threat. The Visegrad Group never took on the functions of a genuine military alliance, despite early hopes to that effect in Poland. Although the Visegrad states agreed in March 1993 to coordinate certain aspects of their national security policies, very little coordination of military affairs actually occurred. The Ukrainian government broached the possibility of a regional alliance “from the Baltic to the Danube” in early 1993, but that proposal was summarily rejected by the other governments involved, and the new leaders in Ukraine soon abandoned the idea themselves.
Explanations of the outcomes in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic do not pose any insurmountable difficulties for the neorealist perspective, but the case of Ukraine does raise important questions. Hence, as before, the two will be considered here separately.
Poland, Hungary, Czech Republic
Rather than pursuing either internal balancing (i.e., the deployment of nuclear weapons) or intraregional external balancing, the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian governments pinned their hopes entirely on the United States and NATO. This approach yielded contradictory results. On the one hand, Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic sought to avoid the impression that they (and other former Warsaw Pact states) were “ganging up” against Russia; this was one of the factors that caused them to reject Ukraine’s proposal for a “Baltic to the Danube” constellation. On the other hand, the three countries sought security guarantees from, and full membership in, NATO. In effect, they were trying to redefine their subregion to make it come formally under NATO’s auspices. (For this reason, the three states repeatedly drew a distinction between “Central Europe” and “Eastern Europe.”) Hopes of gaining membership in NATO were more than enough to dispel any notion that the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian governments might have had of seeking nuclear weapons. Even though there was still a risk that events in Russia would take a disastrous turn (a development that might have given sufficient motivation for the East-Central European states to acquire nuclear arms), the prospect of NATO membership was seen as a vastly preferable alternative to internal balancing.
The willingness of the East-Central European states to place such a high premium on NATO, despite the alliance’s initial reluctance to take on new commitments, underscores the continued credibility of allied security guarantees, including nuclear guarantees. Indeed, the very reluctance of NATO to accept new members increased the appeal to nonmembers of the prospect of membership in the alliance. Polish, Czech, and Hungarian officials claimed that “if NATO takes its commitments so seriously, those are the kinds of guarantees we want to have.” 164 The views of the East-Central European states on this matter make an interesting contrast with the neorealist contention that “the end of bipolarity means that superpower guarantees . . .will be reduced and weakened. . . .The accelerated proliferation of weapons of mass destruction will be an early and noticeable consequence of this change.” 165 Far from losing faith in U.S. guarantees, the East-Central European states wanted those guarantees more than ever, and they were willing to forgo other key options.
The deep cuts projected in U.S. strategic nuclear forces under START (see table 11.2, p. 433) were large in percentage terms, but they still left—and will leave—the United States with a vast, highly accurate, and flexible arsenal with which to underwrite its nuclear guarantees for many years to come. Beyond a certain minimum level, the absolute size of U.S. strategic forces mattered far less than the perceived willingness of the United States to uphold its commitments. The link between arms reductions and nuclear proliferation is by no means artificial, but the notion that reductions implemented during the 1990s (and the cuts envisaged for later years) were large enough to undermine extended deterrence is problematic. The chief question in the 1990s was whether foreign governments still believed the United States would fulfill its treaty guarantees to allies. Developments in East-Central Europe suggested that they did.
The reorientation of the East-Central European states toward NATO also belied oft-heard predictions of NATO’s demise. Alliances can have greater staying power than most neorealists anticipated. Although the Warsaw Pact collapsed very quickly, it never was a genuine alliance. A voluntary and cohesive entity like NATO can take on a life of its own. NATO’s main original goal—the deterrence of Soviet expansion—was no longer relevant after 1991, but the alliance by then had evolved into a key organ for the “pluralistic security community” of democratic industrialized states. 166 As such, it was able to survive in a strategic environment very different from the one in which it was founded. With the gradual entrenchment of democracy in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, those countries became informal members of the pluralistic security community. The enlargement of NATO merely formalized that status.
This development sheds intriguing light on one of the main points of contention in neorealist discussions, namely, the proper way to conceive of “balancing” and “bandwagoning.” Some neorealist scholars, including Kenneth Waltz, have argued that states tend to balance against the strongest state in the system, forming an overall balance of power. 167 Waltz concedes that certain states may be inclined to bandwagon (i.e., align themselves) with the strongest state, but he believes that this action (which he sees as the opposite of balancing) ultimately will not keep the remaining states from preserving or restoring the system’s balance. Other analysts, notably Stephen Walt, have contended that when states decide whether to balance or bandwagon, they focus not on the strongest state in the system, but on the state they perceive as most threatening. 168 Although the most threatening state may also be the strongest, that need not always be the case. Walt’s “balance-of-threat” approach thus differs from Waltz’s “balance of power,” but the two approaches are similar in treating balancing and bandwagoning as opposite behaviors. A third group of neorealist scholars, especially Randall Schweller, have argued that both Waltz and Walt draw too much of a contrast between balancing and bandwagoning. 169 Schweller maintains that aggression, not bandwagoning, is the real opposite of balancing, and that bandwagoning is far more common than either Waltz or Walt suggests.
The integration of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic into the West’s pluralistic security community may not conclusively resolve this debate, but three key points are worth highlighting:
First, what occurred with Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic was both balancing and bandwagoning. The three states were seeking to balance against Russia (to gain a hedge against untoward developments rather than against an existing threat), yet they were also bandwagoning with the dominant group of states (i.e., the Western pluralistic security community, of which NATO was the chief organ). This outcome supports Schweller’s contention that balancing and bandwagoning should not be seen as inherently opposite activities. Although in some cases states will choose either to balance or to bandwagon, in this case the two forms of behavior went hand in hand.
Second, the determination of the East-Central European states to join NATO highlights the nonmilitary dimension of bandwagoning. Although scholars have differed over what they see as the motivations for bandwagoning—some view it as driven primarily by “defensive” concerns, while others believe it is more often a form of scavenging or predation—they have tended to define it as a purely military activity. 170 However, the bandwagoning of the East-Central European states with NATO was only partly spurred on by military concerns. Equally important was the desire of the East-Central European countries to join the Western community of democratic states. They saw membership in NATO and the European Union as crucial steps toward, and symbols of, that goal. Indeed, throughout the 1990s, East European officials consistently emphasized the nonmilitary benefits of joining NATO. They cited the important role that NATO played in bolstering democratic polities in Spain, Portugal, and Greece after those countries emerged from many years of dictatorship, and they argued that the alliance could serve as an equally effective stabilizer for the democratic changes and sweeping economic reforms underway in their own societies. 171
Third, the bandwagoning of the East-Central European states with NATO bears out a simple definition of bandwagoning as “joining the stronger coalition,” rather than the definition proposed by Walt as “aligning with the source of danger.” 172 Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic perceived no danger at all from NATO; quite the contrary. Nor were their efforts to join NATO coerced in any way by the alliance. Far from pressuring the East-Central European states to seek membership in the alliance, as Walt’s theory would suggest, the NATO governments initially did their best to discourage the former Warsaw Pact countries from applying. Yet even the cool reception that the East-Central European states experienced did little to dampen their eagerness to bandwagon with NATO. 173
One final point about Polish, Hungarian, and Czech security strategies is worth noting. So great was the desire of the three states to be admitted into NATO that the mere prospect of qualifying for membership constrained their foreign and domestic policies in important ways. As noted earlier, their bids to join NATO caused them to refrain from forming a subregional alliance and to forgo any pursuit of nuclear weapons. The prospect of NATO membership also had a direct impact on the internal complexion of the East-Central European states, all of which knew that they must be genuine democracies and must foster strong civilian control of their militaries if they were to have any chance of getting into the alliance. 174 Those requirements, and others laid out in NATO’s September 1995 report, influenced key legislation in all three countries and helped guide the formulation of numerous provisions in Poland’s new constitution, adopted in 1997. The constitution placed the Polish army and general staff directly under the command of civilian leaders, thus eliminating earlier ambiguities in Poland’s civil-military relations. 175
The requirement that prospective members of NATO undergo far-reaching internal democratization was viewed by East-Central European leaders themselves as a salutary influence for the whole region. In their view, the alliance’s democratizing effect would continue long after, as well as precede, the actual expansion of NATO. In part for this reason, Hungarian officials supported allied membership not only for Hungary, but for Hungary’s traditional rival, Romania:
Hungarian-Romanian relations and the question of joining NATO are of fundamental importance from the standpoint of regional security. . . .If a country wants to become a member of NATO, it will have to ensure that all its policies conform with European norms. These European norms do not permit the use of the army to solve internal ethnic problems. That is why Romania’s rapprochement with NATO and the European Union must be supported. 176
The same view was expressed by leaders of the Hungarian community in Romania, who vigorously endorsed “Romania’s membership in NATO [because it] would be a guarantee that the army would never be used against the civilian population.” 177 They acknowledged that democracy alone would not remove ethnic tensions, but they claimed it would greatly increase the likelihood that all sides would confront their differences peacefully. This outcome, in turn, they argued, would effectively eliminate the risk of an armed conflict between Hungary and Romania and the potential for a spillover. In that sense, the prospect of NATO membership was seen as a powerful force for regional peace and stability.
In other ways as well, the criteria set forth by NATO promoted conciliatory external policies in East-Central Europe, notably by requiring that prospective members not be embroiled in territorial disputes with their neighbors. Hungarian officials realized early on that they had to try to resolve long-standing tensions with Slovakia and Romania, lest these disputes thwart Hungary’s chances vis-à-vis NATO. As the Hungarian defense minister noted in late 1994:
We should not only establish cooperation with NATO members and evince our determination to do so, but should also demonstrate this intention in our relations with neighboring countries. For I am convinced that NATO would not admit countries between whom there is a conflict situation or lack of understanding, or between whom the level of military trust is not high enough to permit them to be admitted into a joint military organization. 178
Hungary’s efforts in this regard paid off dramatically in 1996 and 1997. In September 1996, Hungarian leaders signed a momentous treaty with Romania regarding Transylvania and the status of ethnic Hungarians in Romania. The agreement helped bring a swift improvement in the treatment of Romania’s Hungarian community. 179 Subsequently, Hungary concluded similar treaties with Slovakia and Ukraine. Although the deteriorating political situation in Slovakia under Vladimir Meciar prevented a full abatement of bilateral tensions, Hungary’s efforts to ease frictions with its neighbors won strong approval from NATO. 180 The same was true of Poland’s successful bid to sign major bilateral agreements with Lithuania and Ukraine, which forestalled any possible tensions concerning borders or the status of ethnic Polish minorities in those countries. Even the Czech Republic finally proved willing in early 1997 to sign a bilateral declaration with Germany regarding the status of Sudeten Germans, an issue that had divided the two countries for more than fifty years. 181 The document required significant concessions by both sides. Had the prospect of NATO membership not loomed, the Czech government would have had very little incentive to resolve the matter.
The willingness of the Hungarian, Czech, and Polish governments to pursue these crucial domestic and foreign issues in accordance with NATO’s norms and expectations—well before they could even be certain of membership in the alliance—was a sign of the far-reaching impact of the alliance on East-Central European state strategies. Developments in Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic after 1990 lend considerable weight to the notion that regimes and institutions can have a strong effect on crucial aspects of state behavior. 182 In that sense, it is not surprising that the drive for NATO membership precluded any effort by the East-Central European states to reverse their earlier decisions not to acquire nuclear weapons.
Ukraine
Ukraine’s willingness to forgo nuclear weapons casts doubt on some basic tenets of structural realism. To be sure, it might be possible for neorealists to discount Ukraine’s decision to give up the ICBMs, ALCMs, and warheads on its soil. After all, the Ukrainian government had no operational command of those weapons, and it would have been dangerous for Ukrainian scientists to try to salvage any of the fissile material from the warheads.
The only people who can safely dismantle nuclear warheads are those who helped design them, and the ex-Soviet design laboratories are all located in Russia. 183 Thus, despite John Mearsheimer’s prediction in 1993 that Ukraine’s retention of ICBMs and ALCMs was “inevitable,” one can make a strong case from a neorealist perspective that giving up the weapons actually made sense.
What is not so easy to explain is Ukraine’s decision to sign the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state. One might be tempted to dismiss this step as purely cosmetic, noting that countries like Iraq and North Korea secretly developed nuclear weapons in recent years despite being signatories of the NPT. In Ukraine’s case, however, the decision to sign the NPT was of much greater importance, bringing an end to many months of impassioned debate about how best to ensure the country’s security. Top-ranking Ukrainian military officials underscored the adjustments that would be necessary:
We must now consider how to prepare our armed forces to fight a war using only conventional weapons. . . .It is clear that if a state (like Ukraine) forgoes an entire class of arms—nuclear, which can serve as a deterrent—it must develop an alternative of some sort. The alternative must be a type of weapon that would successfully deter an aggressor under the new circumstances. High-precision weaponry can perform that function. 184
The evidence that Ukraine’s accession to the NPT marked a genuine turning point in Ukrainian security strategy creates particular difficulties for the structural realist paradigm. Most neorealists would agree that vulnerable states usually seek to balance, either internally or externally, against powerful enemies. Although some Ukrainian officials might have hoped that high-technology weapons could provide Ukraine with a satisfactory alternative to nuclear arms for the purpose of balancing against Russia, it is far from clear that this is the case. Precision-guided munitions and other sophisticated weapons tend to be very expensive, and Ukraine’s defense budget was, and has remained, insufficient to finance a massive procurement program. 185 Even if greater funding had been available, it is highly unlikely that Ukraine could have fielded a conventional army capable of thwarting a full-scale Russian attack. Furthermore, as Mearsheimer noted, even if Ukraine could somehow have acquired an overpowering conventional deterrent, “a nuclear-free Ukraine would still be vulnerable to Russian nuclear blackmail.” 186
Nor did Ukraine have many options for external balancing. Despite the close ties that Ukrainian officials sought with NATO, there was little chance that Ukraine would be formally admitted into the alliance, if only because of the severe complications such a step would have created vis-à-vis Russia. Early on, a few Ukrainian officials expressed interest in joining NATO, but when their overtures met with a lukewarm response, they abandoned the idea and returned to their earlier pledge that Ukraine would remain “nonaligned.” 187 This policy of nonalignment did not prevent Ukraine from establishing much closer ties with NATO in the latter half of the 1990s, but the prospect of full-fledged membership for Ukraine still seemed remote. Similarly, Ukraine’s hopes of forging an intraregional alliance, as proposed by Kravchuk in early 1993, were dashed, and no other subregional military alliances involving Ukraine seemed practical or efficacious. The security guarantees that Ukraine received in January and December 1994 were a form of external balancing, but, as noted above, those pledges added nothing to existing great-power commitments in the NPT, Helsinki Final Act, and UN Charter. Pro-nuclear officials and opposition members in Ukraine, including Kravchuk, denounced the guarantees as a mere “illusion.” 188 Even Kuchma acknowledged that the statements were “above all a political document.” 189 Skepticism about the value of such pledges was evident in the West as well. In mid-1993 a neorealist analysis of nuclear proliferation emphasized that states generally “want a hedge against the potential unreliability of alliance guarantees” and that “such worries will likely be even stronger” for a new state such as Ukraine:
Those who believe that international commitments to Ukrainian security can substitute for [Ukraine’s] possession of a nuclear capability must explain why Ukrainians will comfortably conclude that their international patrons would run grave risks, perhaps facing off against the Russians, to ensure Ukrainian interests. 190
This assessment, made less than a year before the Ukrainian government took its first big step toward renouncing nuclear weapons, is a faithful summary of what most structural realists would have expected at the time. 191 It is not easy, on the basis of neorealist principles, to explain why those expectations went unfulfilled.
Despite the doubts expressed both inside and outside Ukraine, the government in Kiev ultimately was willing to accept a very limited set of commitments rather than the explicit U.S. nuclear guarantees that Kuchma had once declared were necessary. Part of the reason for this change of heart was undoubtedly the economic benefits that Ukraine stood to gain by forswearing nuclear status. Under an agreement with Russia, Ukraine was able to secure stable supplies for its nuclear power reactors (a crucial part of Ukraine’s energy sources) as compensation for recycled fissile material. 192 Russia also promised to continue selling vitally needed oil and natural gas to Ukraine. The United States provided Ukraine with hundreds of millions of dollars to dismantle the SS-19s and SS-24s and to transfer the warheads to Russia, and also extended a huge amount of economic and technical assistance to Kiev, which had been held up earlier when the nuclear issue was still unresolved. The European Union contributed additional economic and technical aid. 193 By the mid-1990s, Ukraine was the single largest recipient of Western financial aid in the former Communist world, a status due primarily to Kiev’s decision to forswear nuclear weapons. In light of the drastic problems that the Ukrainian economy was suffering, this Western (and Russian) assistance was of no small importance, especially at a time when serious economic reforms were finally being considered (though not ultimately adopted).
Ukraine’s decision to renounce nuclear weapons was also strongly affected by questions of international credibility. From 1990 to 1992, the Ukrainian government repeatedly pledged to adopt a non-nuclear status. Later on, amidst growing tensions with Russia and the vigorous lobbying of pro-nuclear groups in Ukraine, Ukrainian leaders came under pressure to renege on their earlier commitments. The implications of such a move, however, would have been so grave that Kravchuk and Kuchma were able to fend off the lobbyists’ pressure. Despite growing tensions with Russia, the vast majority of Ukrainian officials did not want their country to be branded a pariah. Even many of the pro-nuclear advocates said that Ukraine should keep its nuclear weapons only on a “temporary basis.” 194 Kravchuk never disavowed the earlier non-nuclear pledges, and Kuchma was determined to uphold them in deeds as well as words.
These inhibitions on Ukrainian policy suggested that the non-nuclear norm embodied in the NPT (and in the broader nuclear nonproliferation regime) had taken on a life of its own. 195 The stigma attached in recent years to aspiring nuclear states like Iraq, North Korea, and Iran was indicative of the growing weight of the non-nuclear norm. Had the NPT never existed, it is doubtful that Ukrainian officials would have felt the need to offer a non-nuclear pledge in the first place. It is also doubtful that, in the absence of the NPT and the nonproliferation regime, Ukrainian leaders would have been so loath to renege on their country’s non-nuclear promises, or that U.S. pressure on Ukraine could have been applied so effectively. Realists have tended to downplay or even dismiss the role of norms in shaping state behavior, but the importance of the non-nuclear norm in the Ukrainian case indicates that a reassessment is in order. Ukrainian leaders, even those who were wary of adopting a non-nuclear posture, were cognizant of the benefits they could gain by acting in accordance with the norm of nonproliferation.
Despite the concrete economic and political advantages that Ukraine derived from its renunciation of nuclear weapons, the decision still seems difficult to square with the neorealist paradigm. Most neorealists would agree that “insecurity is the driving force behind national security policy, and [that] highly insecure states are the most likely to acquire nuclear weapons.” 196
Ukraine seemed to qualify as such a state, yet it chose not to pursue nuclear weapons despite the lack of satisfactory military alternatives. A unit-level explanation of this outcome might cite the shift from Kravchuk to Kuchma, which clearly made an important difference in Ukraine’s foreign policy, especially policy toward Russia. That factor alone, however, was hardly sufficient. After all, important steps in the denuclearization of Ukraine had begun under Kravchuk with the relinquishment of all tactical nuclear weapons as of May 1992, an agreement on the transfer of strategic warheads to Russia in 1993, and the trilateral agreement of January 1994. 197
To a certain extent, the case of Ukraine may simply be an example of “hiding” (to use Paul Schroeder’s term), whereby Ukraine “assumed a purely defensive position in the hope that the storm [would] blow over.” 198 Prominent neorealists, including Waltz, have argued that “hiding” is an option only for small states, not for a large state like Ukraine. When a large state is confronted by a more powerful rival, the risks of “hiding” are thought to be too great. 199 For Ukraine, however, the alternatives to “hiding” either were infeasible or would have posed serious risks of their own. So long as the political situation in Moscow did not take a disastrous turn, Ukrainian leaders had ample reason to hope that the “storm” would indeed blow over. If the external environment had been far more adverse, Ukrainian officials might well have reconsidered their whole stance on nuclear weapons. Although the transaction costs of a policy reversal would have been huge, Ukraine eventually could have built a nuclear force (at great expense) if circumstances had so warranted. But in the absence of a grave setback in Moscow, Ukrainian leaders viewed non-nuclear “hiding” as the most viable route to pursue while they sought, with only partial success, to build up Ukraine’s internal strength and cohesion.
One final point is worth noting about the implications of the Ukrainian case for nuclear proliferation in general. Neorealist analyses have often suggested that the demise of bipolarity would encourage the spread of nuclear weapons, but the experience with Ukraine shows that, in some instances, the end of the Cold War actually facilitated efforts to prevent nuclear proliferation. During the Cold War the extent of U.S. and Soviet cooperation to stem the spread of nuclear weapons was inherently limited. 200 The end of the fierce bipolar rivalry permitted much greater cooperation in extending security guarantees and other side-payments to potential proliferators to steer them away from the nuclear option. That is precisely what happened with Ukraine. Efforts of this sort in any part of the world, much less in East-Central Europe, would have been impossible during the Cold War. Admittedly, this example is not enough to invalidate the view that more states will eventually acquire nuclear arms in the post-Cold War world, but it does show that, contrary to many forecasts, the effects of moving away from bipolarity were by no means uniformly conducive to nuclear proliferation.
Implications for the Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate
Four broad conclusions pertaining to international relations theory can be drawn from this essay.
First, structural realism is no more useful than neoliberal institutionalism in explaining the state strategies of Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary. At the very least, structural realist analyses of these states’ policies are in need of important qualifications. In particular, many neorealists tended to underestimate the continuing appeal of nuclear guarantees in the post-Cold War era. 201 Despite longstanding doubts about the credibility of extended deterrence, nuclear guarantees remained a highly attractive option in the 1990s, even when other means of balancing were available. The Czech, Polish, and Hungarian cases also demonstrate that some states will pursue membership in military alliances (i.e., external balancing) for nonmilitary as well as military purposes. For these three states, external balancing was congruent with, and inseparable from, a form of nonpredatory bandwagoning. Until recently, most neorealists had treated balancing and bandwagoning as opposite behaviors, but the findings here suggest that the relationship between the two can be far more complicated. 202
Second, although the nuclear weapons policies and broader security strategies of Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic can be understood for the most part through either a neorealist or a neoliberal institutionalist prism, developments in those three countries in the 1990s clearly buttressed one of the key tenets of the institutionalist literature, namely, that institutions can place sharp constraints on state behavior, both formally and informally. The mere prospect of gaining membership in NATO helped ensure that Poland, the Czech Republic, and Hungary made no effort to build nuclear weapons. In many other ways as well, the prospect of allied membership had a far-reaching impact on these states’ external policies and even their internal complexion, as discussed above. The extent of NATO’s influence on the East-Central European states—years before they were actually invited to join the alliance—bears out the prediction made by Jack Snyder in early 1990 that Western institutions like NATO and the European Union could have a highly beneficial effect in the former Warsaw Pact countries. 203
By moderating the East European states’ behavior, the prospect of NATO membership largely undercut one of the main phenomena that neorealists expected to see in East-Central Europe: a highly competitive struggle for security. Most proponents of neorealism argue that, in a self-help world, states never regard their own security and well-being to be positively linked with the security and well-being of their rivals. 204 Developments in East-Central Europe in the 1990s raised doubts about that premise. Hungary strongly supported NATO membership for its chief rivals, Romania and Slovakia, in the hope that the alliance’s criteria would help solidify democratic changes in Romania and Slovakia, which in turn would eliminate the risk of a future conflict with Hungary. At least implicitly, Hungary’s approach was based on the notion that established democracies never (or almost never) go to war with one another. 205 Similarly, Poland championed the interests of two potential rivals, Lithuania and Ukraine, in their bids to be integrated into NATO. Polish leaders consistently stressed that Polish security and well-being could not be assured unless Poland sought to bolster the security and well-being of its neighbors. The Czech Republic initially was less inclined to engage in “other-help” (the alternative to self-help) than Hungary and Poland were, but by 1995–96 the Czech government, too, increasingly emphasized the need for a coordinated approach. 206 To the extent that this shift toward other-help was fostered by NATO either directly or indirectly, it went beyond the far-reaching cooperation that Charles Glaser has shown can result purely from each state’s pursuit of self-help. 207
Third, structural realism is much less useful than neoliberal institutionalism in explaining the case of Ukraine. Ukraine hesitated before agreeing to relinquish the nuclear arms on its territory and before signing the NPT as a non-nuclear weapons state; but by December 1994 it had consented to both steps. Despite the continued possibility of a future confrontation with Russia, the Ukrainian government was willing to forswear the most potent means available of deterring Russian aggression. The only security benefit Ukraine got in return was a rather tenuous set of great-power pledges—pledges that, from the neorealist perspective, should have had little concrete influence on Ukrainian policy. Although it is possible from an institutionalist perspective to explain why a Ukrainian nuclear deterrent proved not to be “inevitable” (to use Mearsheimer’s phrase), this explanation is not compatible with the underlying precepts of structural realism.
Fourth, overall, then, neoliberal institutionalism fares better than structural realism in explaining why the East-Central European states refrained from seeking to acquire nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era. Neoliberal institutionalists give due weight to the norms and institutional constraints that were salient in East-Central Europe in the 1990s. This by no means implies that international institutionalism is always—or even often—of greater explanatory value than neorealism, but at least in this one important case the institutionalist approach is superior.
| Country | Tanks | ACVsa | Artillery | Aircraft | Helicopters | Troops |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Russiab | ||||||
| Total | 19,000 | 34,820 | 20,650 | 4,300 | 2,600 | 1,520,000 |
| European | 6,400 | 11,480 | 6,240 | 3,280 | 870 | 998,800 |
| Ukraine | 4,080 | 5,050 | 3,400 | 1,090 | 270 | 450,000 |
| Czech Rep. | 957 | 1,367 | 767 | 215 | 36 | 67,000 |
| Hungary | 835 | 1,600 | 840 | 170 | 39 | 70,000 |
| Poland | 1,730 | 1,590 | 1,610 | 412 | 80 | 234,000 |
|
a Armored Combat Vehicles Source: International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Military Balance, 1995-96 (London: IISS/Oxford University Press, October 1995), pp. 75-120. |
||||||
Table 11.2: Projected Effects of Start I and Start II on U.S. Strategic Forces
| Number at End of Cold War (1990) | Number Under START I | Number Under START II | |
|---|---|---|---|
| total strategic warheads/bombs | 12,646 | 8,556 | 3,500 |
| of which: | |||
| ICBM warheadsa | 2,450 | 1,400 | 500 |
| SLBM warheads | 2,450 | 3,456 | 1,728 |
| on D-5sb | 768 | 1,920 | 960 |
| bomber/ACLSMS | 4,436 | 3,700 | 1,272 |
| on B-2sc | 0 | 320 | 272 |
|
a ICBM = Intercontinental Ballistic Missile; SLBM = Submarine-Launched Ballistic Missile; ALCM = Air Launched Cruise Missile |
|||
Endnotes
Note 1: John J. Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” Foreign Affairs 72 (3) (Summer 1993): 61. Back.
Note 3: John J. Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future: Instability in Europe After the Cold War,” International Security 15 (1) (Summer 1990): 36. Back.
Note 4: “South Africa Is First to Dismantle All of Its Covert Nuclear Weapons,” The Chicago Tribune, 20 August 1994, 15. For a useful overview of the South African program and the decision to eliminate it, see David Albright, “South Africa’s Secret Nuclear Weapons,” ISIS Report 1 (4) (May 1994): 1–19. Back.
Note 5: Tom Zamora Collina and Fernando de Souza Barros, “Transplanting Brazil’s and Argentina’s Success,” ISIS Report, 2 (2) (February 1995): 1–11. This episode as well as the South African case is also covered in Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition: Why Countries Constrain Their Nuclear Capabilities (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center Press, 1995), 7–43 and 45–87. Back.
Note 6: The indefinite extension of the NPT would have been extremely unlikely had there not been far-reaching reductions underway in the U.S. and ex-Soviet nuclear arsenals. Those reductions were made possible by the end of the Cold War. If the U.S. and former Soviet nuclear forces had still been at the same levels that they were in the mid-1980s and if U.S. and Soviet nuclear test programs had still been active, numerous Third World signatories of the NPT would have used that as a pretext to renounce or at least weaken the treaty. Back.
Note 7: See, for example, Benjamin Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow: Systemic Incentives and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,” Security Studies 2 (3/4) (Spring/Summer 1993), 37–78; Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security 18 (2) (Fall 1993): 66–67; and Bradley A. Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation and the Utility of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” Security Studies 4 (3) (Spring 1995): 463–519. Back.
Note 8: The original formulation was laid out in Kenneth N. Waltz, Theory of International Politics (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1979), 110 ff. Waltz has reiterated his view in many subsequent writings, including “Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics,” in Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), 322–45, esp. 326–27. For a recent exchange on the question of unit-level versus system-level analysis, see Colin Elman, “Horses for Courses: Why Not Neorealist Theories of Foreign Policy?” Security Studies 6 (1) (Autumn 1996): 7–51, with a response by Waltz, “International Politics Is Not Foreign Policy,” ibid.: 54–57, and a rejoinder by Elman, “Cause, Effect, and Consistency: A Response to Kenneth Waltz,” ibid.: 58–61. Back.
Note 9: This point is reinforced by an intriguing article which shows that a particular unit-level phenomenon (the domestic influence of a nuclear weapons “lobby”) has made a critical difference in potential nuclear-weapons states. See Peter R. Lavoy, “Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation,” Security Studies 2 (3/4) (Spring/Summer 1993): 192–212. Although Lavoy’s argument presupposes that state leaders perceive external security threats, the article demonstrates that the magnitude of these threats is often exaggerated by “nuclear mythmakers.” According to Lavoy, this unit-level phenomenon (i.e., the exaggerated perceptions) ultimately can drive the whole policy. That notion is of relevance to the cases discussed here, especially Ukraine. Back.
Note 10: See, for example, Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (New York: Norton, 1995) and the exchanges it inspired in “The Kenneth Waltz-Scott Sagan Debate—The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: Good or Bad?” Security Studies 4 (4) (Summer 1995): 695–810; the exchange between Jordan Seng, “Command and Control Advantages of Minor Nuclear States,” and Peter D. Feaver, “Neooptimists and the Enduring Problem of Nuclear Proliferation,” with Seng’s response, “Optimism in the Balance: A Response to Peter Feaver,” all in Security Studies 6 (4) (Summer 1997): 48–92, 93–125, and 126–36, respectively; David J. Karl, “Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers,” International Security 21 (3) (Winter 1996/1997): 87–119, and the ensuing exchange involving Karl, Peter D. Feaver, and Scott D. Sagan under the same title in International Security 22 (2) (Fall 1997): 185–200; Martin van Creveld, Nuclear Proliferation and the Future of Conflict (New York: The Free Press, 1993); Peter D. Feaver, “Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations,” International Security 17 (3) (Winter 1992/93): 160–87; Peter D. Feaver, “Proliferation Optimism and Theories of Nuclear Operations,” Security Studies 2 (3/4) (Spring/Summer 1993): 159–91; Benjamin Frankel, ed., Opaque Nuclear Proliferation: Methodological and Political Implications (London: Frank Cass, 1991). Back.
Note 11: Waltz, Theory of International Politics. The terms “structural realism” and “neorealism” are used here interchangeably. The literature about structural realism, both pro and con, is so vast by now that a thick book would be needed to catalog it all. For recent overviews of, and contributions to, the debate, see Michael E. Brown, Sean M. Lynn-Jones, and Steven E. Miller, eds., The Perils of Anarchy: Contemporary Realism and International Security (Cambridge: The MIT Press, 1995); the two-volume collection edited by Benjamin Frankel, Roots of Realism and Realism: Restatements and Renewal (London: Frank Cass, 1996); Ethan B. Kapstein, “Is Realism Dead? The Domestic Sources of International Politics,” International Organization 49 (4) (Autumn 1995): 751–74; Charles W. Kegley, Jr., ed., Controversies in International Relations: Realism and the Neoliberal Challenge (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995); David A. Baldwin, ed, Neorealism and Neoliberalism: The Contemporary Debate (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); Barry Buzan, Charles Jones, and Richard Little, The Logic of Anarchy: From Neorealism to Structural Realism (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993); the special issue on “Theorien der Internationalen Beziehungen” of Osterreichische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft (Vienna) 22 (2) (1993); Robert Powell, “Anarchy in International Relations Theory: The Neorealist-Neoliberal Debate,” International Organization 48 (2) (Spring 1994): 313–44; Kenneth N. Waltz, “Realist Thought and Neorealist Theory,” Journal of International Affairs 44 (1) (Spring/Summer 1990): 21–37; and Robert O. Keohane, ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986). An article by John A. Vasquez, “The Realist Paradigm and Degenerative versus Progressive Research Programs: An Appraisal of Neotraditional Research on Waltz’s Balancing Proposition,” American Political Science Review 91 (4) (December 1997): 899–912, provoked spirited responses in the same issue from Kenneth N. Waltz, Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, Colin Elman and Miriam Fendius Elman, Randall L. Schweller, and Stephen M. Walt. The responses are especially useful in elucidating different neorealist approaches. Back.
Note 12: Kenneth N. Waltz, “Evaluating Theories,” American Political Science Review 91 (4) (December 1997), 915. Back.
Note 13: For a good sample of this literature, see three articles by Alexander Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics,” International Organization 46 (2) (Spring 1992): 391–425; “Collective Identity Formation and the International State,” American Political Science Review 88 (2) (June 1994): 384–96; and “The Agent-Structure Problem in International Relations,” International Organization 41 (3) (Summer 1987): 335–70. See also Richard K. Ashley, “The Geopolitics of Geopolitical Space: Toward a Critical Social Theory of International Politics,” Alternatives 12 (4) (October 1987): 403–34; John G. Ruggie, “Territoriality and Beyond: Problematizing Modernity in International Relations,” International Organization 47 (1) (Winter 1993): 139–74; Christian Reus-Smit, “The Constitutional Structure of International Society and the Nature of Fundamental Institutions,” International Organization 51 (4) (Autumn 1997): 555–89; Robert W. Cox, “Social Forces, States, and World Orders: Beyond International Relations Theory,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 10 (2) (Summer 1981): 126–55; Richard K. Ashley, “Untying the Sovereign State: A Double Reading of the Anarchy Problematic,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 17 (2) (Summer 1988): 227–62; Richard K. Ashley, “The Poverty of Neorealism,” International Organization 38 (2) (Spring 1984): 225–86; Cynthia Weber, Simulating Sovereignty: Intervention, the State, and Symbolic Exchange (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995); and selected essays in Peter Katzenstein, The Culture of National Security: Norms and Identity in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1996). Back.
Note 14: For important statements of this view, see the neorealist-versus-neoliberal collections adduced in note 11 supra. For additional presentations of the neoliberal institutionalist argument, see Andrew Moravcsik, “A Liberal Theory of International Politics,” International Organization 51 (4) (Autumn 1997): 513–53; Robert O. Keohane, International Institutions and State Power (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1989); numerous essays in Robert O. Keohane, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., and Stanley Hoffmann, eds., After the Cold War: International Institutions and State Strategies in Europe, 1989–1991 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993); Arthur A. Stein, Why Nations Cooperate: Circumstance and Choice in International Relations (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990); Robert O. Keohane, “International Institutions: Two Approaches,” International Studies Quarterly 32 (4) (December 1988): 380–94; Lisa L. Martin, Coercive Cooperation: Explaining Multilateral Economic Sanctions (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992); Robert O. Keohane and Joseph S. Nye, Power and Interdependence: World Politics in Transition, 2nd ed. (Boston: Little, Brown, 1989); Kenneth A. Oye, ed., Cooperation Under Anarchy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986); Judith Goldstein and Robert O. Keohane, eds., Ideas and Foreign Policy: Beliefs, Institutions, and Political Change (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993); and Robert O. Keohane, After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984). For a critique, see John J. Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security 19 (3) (Winter 1994/95): 5–49. See also the responses to Mearsheimer’s article (particularly the one by Martin and Keohane) as well as Mearsheimer’s rejoinder in the forum “Promises, Promises: Can Institutions Deliver?” International Security 20 (1) (Summer 1995): 39–93. Back.
Note 15: Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” 5–49. Among those who highlight the importance of institutions are Stephen D. Krasner, “Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier,” World Politics 43 (3) (April 1991): 336–66; Stephen D. Krasner, “Sovereignty: An Institutional Perspective,” in James A. Caporaso, ed., The Elusive State: International and Comparative Perspectives (Newbury Park: Sage Publications, 1989), 69–96; and Joseph M. Grieco, “State Interests and Institutional Rule Trajectories: A Neorealist Interpretation of the Maastricht Treaty and European Economic and Monetary Union,” in Frankel, ed., Realism: Restatements and Renewal: 261–306. For a critical view, see Wayne Sandholtz, “Institutions and Collective Action: The New Telecommunications Movement,” World Politics 45 (2) (January 1993), 45–67. Back.
Note 16: These include recent works by Stephen M. Walt, Joseph M. Grieco, Randall L. Schweller, Michael Mastanduno, Ethan B. Kapstein, Charles L. Glaser, and numerous other scholars cited here. Back.
Note 17: The statement here is deliberately qualified (referring to “most” states rather than all states) to take account of a criticism made of Waltz’s theory. The complexion of some states—particularly “failed” states (or “quasi-states”) and states undergoing civil wars—is such that they, too, might be described as anarchic. In some Latin American and African countries, in Lebanon, in Cambodia, in Afghanistan, and in some of the former Soviet republics, private groups and even individuals are able to operate in flagrant breach of domestic law with impunity. These types of states, however, are the exception rather than the rule, and their existence does not necessarily undercut the contrast usually drawn between state structures and the structure of the international system. For further comments on variance in state structures, see Robert H. Jackson, Quasi-States: Sovereignty, International Relations, and the Third World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990); I. William Zartman, ed., Collapsed States (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 1995); Joel S. Migdal, Strong Societies and Weak States (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988); Charles Tilly, Coercion, Capital, and European States, AD 990–1990 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Gideon Gottlieb, Nation Against State: A New Approach to Ethnic Conflicts and the Decline of Sovereignty (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993); and John W. Meyer, “The World Polity and the Authority of the Nation-State,” in Albert Bergesen, ed., Studies in the Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1980), 109–37. Back.
Note 18: Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” 5–49; Robert G. Gilpin, War and Change in World Politics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Robert G. Gilpin, “No One Loves a Political Realist,” in Frankel, ed., Realism: Restatements and Renewal: 3–26; and Eric J. Labs, “Beyond Victory: Offensive Realism and the Expansion of War Aims,” Security Studies 6 (4) (Summer 1997): 1–49. Back.
Note 19: On the offensive-defensive realist divide, see Fareed Zakaria, “Realism and Domestic Politics: A Review Essay,” International Security 17 (1) (Summer 1992): 190–96; Randall L. Schweller, “Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias: What Security Dilemma?” in Frankel, ed., Realism: Restatements and Renewal: 90–121; Benjamin Frankel, “Restating the Realist Case: An Introduction,” ibid., esp. xiv-xviii; Randall L. Schweller and David Priess, “A Tale of Two Realisms: Expanding the Institutions Debate,” Mershon International Studies Review 41 (1) (April 1997): 1–32; Jack Snyder, The Myths of Empire: Domestic Politics and International Ambition (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 9–13; and Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” 9–12. Back.
Note 20: Waltz, Theory of International Politics: 91–93; and Joseph M. Grieco, “Understanding the Problem of International Cooperation: The Limits of Neoliberal Institutionalism and the Future of Realist Theory,” in Baldwin, ed., Neorealism and Neoliberalism: 301–38, esp. 303. See also Joseph M. Grieco, Cooperation Among Nations: Europe, America, and Non-Tariff Barriers to Trade (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 37–40; Charles L. Glaser, “Realists as Optimists: Cooperation as Self-Help,” in Frankel, ed., Realism: Restatements and Renewal: 122–63; and Stephen M. Walt, The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca: Cornell Univeristy Press, 1987). Back.
Note 21: Whether this expectation is well-founded—especially for states that are not faced with important external threats (or potential threats)—is a different matter. Randall Schweller has averred that “in the absence of a reasonable external threat, states need not, and typically do not, engage in balancing.” See Randall L. Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit: Bringing the Revisionist State Back In,” International Security 19 (1) (Summer 1994), 105. Paul Schroeder goes still further in arguing that “in the majority of instances” between 1648 and 1945 balancing “just did not happen. In each major period in these three centuries, most unit actors tried if they possibly could to protect their vital interests in other ways.” Balancing, Schroeder adds, was “relatively rare, and often a fallback policy or last resort.” See Paul Schroeder, “Historical Reality vs. Neo-Realist Theory,” International Security 19 (1) (Summer 1994): 116, 118. Back.
Note 22: Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 168–70. See also James D. Morrow, “Arms Versus Allies: Trade-Offs in the Search for Security,” International Organization 47 (2) (Spring 1993): 207–33. Back.
Note 23: On the particular problems facing small states, see Robert L. Rothstein, Alliances and Small Powers (New York: Columbia University Press, 1968); Michael Handel, Weak States in the International System, 2nd ed. (London: Frank Cass, 1990); Miriam Fendius Elman, “The Foreign Policies of Small States: Challenging Neorealism in Its Own Backyard,” British Journal of Political Science 29 (2) (April 1995): 101–19; and Annette Baker Fox, “The Small States in the International System, 1919–1969,” International Journal 24 (4) (Autumn 1969): 751–64. Back.
Note 24: Thomas J. Christensen and Jack Snyder, “Chain Gangs and Passed Bucks: Predicting Alliance Patterns in Multipolarity,” International Organization 44 (2) (Spring 1990): 137–68. Back.
Note 25: Rothstein, Alliances and Small Powers, 316. Back.
Note 26: On what is needed to deter a potential aggressor versus what is needed to reassure State A, see Robert Jervis, The Meaning of the Nuclear Revolution: Statecraft and the Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), esp. 78–99. For a classic discussion of this nexus, see Michael Howard, “Deterrence and Reassurance,” Foreign Affairs 61 (2) (Winter 1992/93): 309–324 Back.
Note 27: The term “multipolarized unipolarity” is an inversion of the “unipolarized multipolarity” discussed in Barry Buzan, “New Patterns of Global Security in the Twenty-First Century,” International Affairs 67 (3) (July 1991): 437. The extent of U.S. preeminence in the post-Cold War system warrants the emphasis on a unipolar structure, with some elements of multipolarity now visible. Contrary to the declinist literature of the 1980s, unipolarity has, if anything, increased in the 1990s. Over time, a multipolar system may well emerge, but movement in that direction has been slower than forecast in Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security 17 (2) (Spring 1993): 5–51. For a pointed critique of the historical claims in Layne’s article, see Schroeder, “Historical Reality vs. Neo-Realist Theory,” 130–48. Back.
Note 28: For many years Kenneth Waltz argued that bipolar systems are inherently more stable than multipolar systems. See, for example, Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Stability of a Bipolar World,” Daedalus 93 (3) (Summer 1964): 881–909; Waltz, Theory of International Politics: 163–76; and Kenneth N. Waltz, “War in Neorealist Theory,” in Robert I. Rotberg and Theodore K. Raab, eds., The Origins and Prevention of Major Wars (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 44–48. But in 1993 Waltz said that he had been “mistaken” in “conflating peace and stability.” He averred that rather than being more stable, bipolar systems are merely less war-prone than multipolar systems. See Kenneth N. Waltz, “The Emerging Structure of International Politics,” International Security 18 (2) (Fall 1993): 45. Waltz’s retraction has gained relatively little attention, however. Almost all recent discussions of multipolarity versus bipolarity have still focused on questions of stability rather than war-proneness. Back.
Note 29: See Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future,” 14–15. For analyses that question this view, see Bruce Bueno de Mesquita, “Risk, Power Distributions, and the Likelihood of War,” International Studies Quarterly 25 (4) (December 1981): 541–68; Charles W. Ostrom, Jr. and John H. Aldrich, “The Relationship Between Size and Stability in the Major Power International System,” American Journal of Political Science 22 (2) (1978): 743–71; and Frank Wayman, “Bipolarity, Multipolarity, and the Threat of War,” in Alan Ned Sabrosky, ed., Polarity and War (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985), 115–44. Back.
Note 30: Paul K. Huth, Extended Deterrence and the Prevention of War (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988). Back.
Note 31: Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow,” 37–78; Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation and the Utility of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” esp. 503–5; George H. Quester and Victor A. Utgoff, “U.S. Arms Reductions and Nuclear Proliferation: The Counterproductive Possibilities,” The Washington Quarterly 16 (1) (Winter 1993): 129–40. Back.
Note 32: Avery Goldstein, “Understanding Nuclear Proliferation: Theoretical Explanation and China’s National Experience,” Security Studies 2 (3/4) (Spring/Summer 1993): 215. Back.
Note 33: Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, Adelphi Papers No. 171 (London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Autumn 1981), esp. 13–19, 26–28. Back.
Note 34: Some neorealists contend that small states are more likely than large states to engage in “hiding” (i.e., remaining on the sidelines in the hope that existing threats will dissipate) rather than balancing. But that was not the case with the three smallest states examined here (Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland), whereas it may well apply to the largest (Ukraine), as discussed below. Back.
Note 35: Among numerous sources on the security dilemma, see Robert Jervis, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (2) (January 1978): 167–214; Glenn H. Snyder, “The Security Dilemma in Alliance Politics,” World Politics 36 (4) (July 1984): 461–95; and Robert Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976), 58–113. For an illuminating critique of the defensive realist assumptions that underlie these discussions, see Schweller, “Neorealism’s Status-Quo Bias,” 90–121. Back.
Note 36: For a pessimistic view of this matter, see Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow,” 37–78. See also Quester and Utgoff, “U.S. Arms Reductions and Nuclear Proliferation,” 129–40. Back.
Note 37: The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More May Be Better, 8. Waltz offers similar arguments in his recently published exchange with Scott Sagan, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (cited in footnote 12 supra). Back.
Note 38: See, for example, Goldstein, “Understanding Nuclear Proliferation,” 213–55; Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation and the Utility of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” 463–519; Avner Cohen and Benjamin Frankel, “Opaque Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Strategic Studies 13 (3) (September 1990): 14–44; and Robert D. Blackwill and Albert Carnesale, eds., New Nuclear Nations: Consequences for U.S. Policy (New York: Council on Foreign Relations Press, 1993). Back.
Note 39: This assumption is warranted because all four states covered here could, at very great cost, have built nuclear forces if they had so decided, a point discussed further below. Back.
Note 40: See, for example, “Mazowiecki: Bez dwuznacznosci w sprawie granic,” Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), February 22, 1990, 1; Janusz Reitter, “Po co te wojska,” Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), February 14, 1990, 1; Valerii Masterov, “’Proshchanie slavyanki’ k zapadu ot Buga,” Moskovskie novosti No. 23 (June 10, 1990): 12; Maria Wagrowska, “Bron i polityka,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), May 9, 1990, 7; and Valentin Volkov, “Pol’sha-Germaniya: Trevogi i nadezhdy,” Literaturnaya gazeta No. 15 (April 11, 1990): 11. Back.
Note 41: Interview in “Magyarorszag az uj Europaban,” Magyar Nemzet (Budapest), October 13, 1990, 7. Back.
Note 42: “Zmierzch blokow,” Zolnierz rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw), September 6, 1990, 3 (emphasis in original). Back.
Note 43: See, for example, Waldemar Gontarski, “Odejscie Eduarda Szewardnadze: Sprzeciw wobec dyktatury,” and Jadwiga Butejkis, “Moze za wczesnie spiewac requiem?” both in Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), 21 December 1990, 1, 7. See also the interview with Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiri Dientsbier in “Vstupujeme do dramatickeho obdobi,” Lidove noviny (Prague), January 4, 1991, 7. Back.
Note 44: Statement by Andrzej Drzycimski, cited in Kazimierz Groblewski, “OKP u prezydenta: Wybory parlamentarne jesienia?” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), January 18, 1991, 1. On this same point, see “Prezydent Havel nie odwiedzi republik baltyckich,” Slowo powszechne (Warsaw), January 29, 1991, 2. Back.
Note 45: “Nic o Polsce bez Polski: Rozmowa z ministrem spraw zagranicznych prof. Krzysztofem Skubiszewskim,” Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), January 24, 1991, p. 1. Back.
Note 46: Comments of then-Polish deputy defense minister Janusz Onyszkiewicz, cited in Ruth Graber, “Poland Revises Defense Strategy,” The Christian Science Monitor, June 26, 1990, 3. Back.
Note 47: “Brak wizji Europy budzi demony: Udzielone w ostatnim tygodniu wywiady prezydenta Lecha Walesy na temat polityki zagranicznej,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), 8–9 January 1994, 20; “Prezydent i rzad o NATO: Zbyt krotki krok we wlasciwym kierunku,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), January 11, 1994, 1; and “Bez alternatywy: Kontrowersje wokol amerykanskej propozycji,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), January 12, 1994, 23. Back.
Note 48: “Chci Evropu evropskou, Evropu vsech jejich narodu a statu,” Hospodarske noviny (Prague), December 2, 1994, 1, 23. Back.
Note 49: Interview with Polish defense minister Zbigniew Okonski in “Silna armia—bezpieczne panstwo,” Polska zbrojna (Warsaw), October 26, 1995, 6; and interview with Colonel Zygmond Temesvari, Hungarian military attache in Moscow, “Sotrudnichestvo—vygodno nashim stranam,” Nezavisimoe voennoe obozrenie (Moscow) No. 9 (May 16, 1996): 1. Back.
Note 50: Centrum Badania Opinii Spolecznej, “Czy Rosja nam zagraza” (N = 1,117), June 1993, June 1994, December 1994, February 1995, April 1995, July 1995, December 1995, April 1996, July 1996, December 1996, April 1997, and June 1997. Back.
Note 51: “Verejne mineni a hrozba Ruska,” Respekt (Prague), No. 26 (June 24–30, 1996): 10. Back.
Note 52: Interview in “Gefahr eines neuen Jalta,” Der Spiegel (Hamburg), No. 7 (February 13, 1995): 136–38. Back.
Note 53: Comments of Witold Waszczykowski, cited in Bernard Osser and Laure Mandeville, “L’Europe centrale inquiete mais resolue: A Varsovie, Prague et Budapest, les atermoiements des Occidentaux, tres a l’ecoute de la Russie, ont cree un malaise,” Le Figaro (Paris), November 4–5, 1995, 2. Back.
Note 54: The report, “Polska-NATO,” was jointly authored by Andrzej Ananicz, Przemyslaw Grudzinski, Andrzej Olechowski, Janusz Onyszkiewicz, Krzysztof Skubiszewski, and Henryk Szlajfer. Back.
Note 55: “Osnovnye polozheniya voennoi doktriny Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” Rossiiskie vesti (Moscow), November 18, 1993, 2–3. The doctrine was approved by the Russian Security Council on November 2, 1993 and enacted that same day by Directive No. 1883 of President Boris Yeltsin. Back.
Note 56: Cited in Aleksandr Zhilin, “Voennaya politika i voina politikov,” Moskovskie novosti (Moscow), No. 47, (November 21, 1993): C10. Back.
Note 57: Osser and Mandeville, “L’Europe centrale inquiete mais resolue,” 2. Back.
Note 58: Igor’ Korotchenko and Mikhail Karpov, “Rossiiskye yadernye rakety budut perenatseleny na Chekhiyu i Pol’shu: Takoe predlozhenie gotovit General’nyi shtab Vooruzhenykh sil RF na sluchai real’nogo rasshireniya NATO na vostok,” Nezavisimaya gazeta (Moscow), October 7, 1995, 1. Back.
Note 59: “Nevernyi perevod slov,” Nezavisimaya gazeta (Moscow), February 20, 1996, 1. Back.
Note 60: It is often difficult to pin down some of the more lurid quotations attributed to Zhirinovsky. In some cases his “remarks” may have been embellished before appearing in Russian or Western newspapers. See the careful discussion of this matter in Vladimir Kartsev with Todd Bludeau, Zhirinovsky! (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 157–65, esp. 160–61. Even so, it is clear that on occasion Zhirinovsky has been willing to speak about the possible use of nuclear weapons. Moreover, the universal perception in East-Central Europe is that Zhirinovsky is a potentially reckless and aggressive figure. Back.
Note 61: “Silna armia—bezpieczne panstwo,” 6; Andrzej Lomanowski, “Sprawa stacjonowania w Polsce broni atomowej: Moskwa nie krzyczy,” Gazeta Wyborcza (Warsaw), October 6, 1995, 6; and comments by Eugeniusz Mleczak, representing the Polish defense ministry, as cited in Oskar Filipowicz, “Jadrowy szantaz,” Trybuna Slaska (Katowice), October 10, 1995, 1–2. Back.
Note 62: Interview with Peter Deak and Laszlo Magyar in “Politika es realitas hatalom,” Nepszava (Budapest), October 11, 1995, 1, 9. Back.
Note 63: Interview by the author with Jan Kohout, head of security affairs in the Czech foreign ministry, in Prague, December 17, 1995. Back.
Note 64: Interview in “Wojsko ma prawo sie bronic,” Polityka (Warsaw), September 9, 1996, 3. Back.
Note 65: Army-General V. N. Lobov, “Puti realizatsii kontseptsii dostatochnosti dlya oborony,” Voennaya mysl’ (Moscow), No. 2, February 1991, 16. See also the interview with the military economist V. Litov in “Nasha bezopasnost’ i parizhskii dogovor,” Sovetskaya Rossiya (Moscow), January 9, 1991, 5; the interview with then-Soviet foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze in “Edouard Chevardnadze: ‘Notre probleme, le votre, c’est de reussir la perestroika . . .’,” Le Figaro (Paris), 22–23 December 1990, esp. 4; the interview with Col.-General Nikolai Chervov, deputy chief of the Soviet General Staff, in “Kam sa podeli tanky?” Verejnost (Bratislava), January 8, 1991, 4; Joseph Harahan and John C. Kuhn, III, On-Site Inspections Under the CFE Treaty: A History of the On-Site Inspection Agency and CFE Treaty Implementation, 1990–1996 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Defense/On-Site Inspection Agency, 1996), 200–201; and the interview with Army-General Mikhail Moiseev, chief of the Soviet General Staff, in “Oborona: Korni i krona,” Pravitel’stvennyi vestnik (Moscow), No. 9, (February 1991: 10–11. Back.
Note 66: The swift redeployment of some 57,000 heavy weapons in 1990 was an extremely impressive logistical feat, but it absorbed so much of the USSR’s rolling stock during the harvest season that it was one of the main factors behind the near-breakdown of Soviet food distribution in 1990–91. See “Nasha bezopasnost’ i parizhskii dogovor,” 5. Back.
Note 67: Jan Brabec, “Jaderne hlavice pod Bezdezem,” Respekt (Prague), No. 13, 25–31 March 1991, 6; “Tajne smlouvy s otaznikem: Stanovisko Generalni prokuratury,” Lidove noviny (Prague), June 14, 1991, 2; and “Ustava nebyla porusena: Jaderne zbrane umisteny legalne,” Obcansky denik, June 14, 1991, 2. Back.
Note 68: “Antall, Nemeth on Presence of Nuclear Weapons,” Hungarian News Agency (MTI), April 23, 1991. Back.
Note 69: Maria Wagrowska, “Bron atomowa byla w naszym kraju,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), April 9, 1991, 1, 7. Back.
Note 70: See, for example, Ian Anthony, “Restructuring the Defence Industry” and “International Dimensions of Industrial Restructuring,” in Ian Anthony, ed., The Future of the Defence Industries in Central and Eastern Europe, SIPRI Research Report No. 7 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 58–90 and 91–106, respectively. Back.
Note 71: Karel Kaplan and Vladimir Pacl, Tajny prostor Jachymov (Ceske Budejovice: K Klub/ACTYS, 1993). Back.
Note 72: This was specified in top-secret agreements signed by the Soviet Union and Czechoslovakia on December 15, 1965 (“Dohoda mezi vladou CSSR a vladou SSSR o opatrenich ke zvyseni bojove pohotovosti raketovych vojsk”) and February 21, 1986 (“Dohoda mezi vladou CSSR a vladou SSSR o rozmisteni zakladen s jadernymi naboji na uzemi CSSR”). The Soviet Union concluded similar agreements with Poland on February 25, 1967 (“Uklad o przedsiewzieciu majacym na celu podwyzszenie gotowsci bojowej wojska”) and Hungary in mid-1965. The same arrangements were in place for East Germany under a series of agreements signed in the early 1960s. Back.
Note 73: “Jak je to s raketami,” Lidova demokracie (Prague), March 29, 1990, 1; and “Nase armadu v novem duchu,” Lidova demokracie (Prague), April 12, 1990, 1. The secret transfer of these missiles (and of other SS-23s sent to East Germany and Bulgaria) was discovered fortuitously in March 1990, when West German officials happened to notice the East German SS-23s in a training exercise. See “Kein Geheimnis, um Raketen der NVA: Sprecher des Veteidigungsministeriums,” Neues Deutschland (East Berlin), 8 March 1990, 3; and Rainer Funke, “Die NVA rustet Raketen ab—wann folgt die Bundeswehr?” Neues Deutschland (East Berlin), March 16, 1990, 1. Following the disclosure of the East German missiles, Czechoslovak and Bulgarian officials acknowledged that their countries, too, had secretly received SS-23s from the Soviet Union at around the time the INF Treaty was signed in December 1987. See also Captain Sergei Sidorov, “Novyi doklad—na zaigrannyi lad,” Krasnaya zvezda (Moscow), March 20, 1991, 5. On the relationship between the transfers and Soviet compliance with the INF Treaty, see U.S. Government, The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Annual Report on Soviet Noncompliance with Arms Control Agreements, February 15, 1991, esp. 11–13. Back.
Note 74: Jeffrey A. Larsen and Patrick J. Garrity, The Future of Nuclear Weapons in Europe: Workshop Summary, Report No. 12 (Los Alamos: Center for National Security Studies/Los Alamos National Laboratory, December 1991), 4. Back.
Note 76: Interview with Maciej Kozlowski, department chief in the Polish foreign ministry, in Cambridge, MA, November 30, 1995. Very similar remarks were made in interviews by the author with several dozen high-ranking military and political officials in the three countries, including General Anton Slimak, then-chief of the Czechoslovak General Staff, in Prague, July 3, 1990 (and a follow-up interview with Slimak in Bratislava, July 6, 1993); Ambassador Ivan Busniak, head of European affairs in the Czechoslovak/Czech Foreign Ministry, in Prague, June 27, 1990 and June 24, 1993; General Antal Annus, deputy chief of the Hungarian General Staff, in Budapest, July 8, 1990; Geza Jeszensky, Hungarian foreign minister from 1990 to 1994, in Cambridge, MA, January 30, 1998; Colonel Tibor Koszegvari, director of the Hungarian Defense Ministry’s Institute for Strategic and Defense Studies, in Budapest, July 8, 1990, July 7, 1991, and July 4, 1993; Laszlo Szendrei, Hungarian state secretary of defense, in Budapest, July 3, 1993; General Jiri Divis, head of the Foreign Relations Directorate of the Czechoslovak/Czech General Staff, in Prague, July 17, 1991 and June 25, 1993; Tomas Pstross, deputy foreign policy adviser to Czech president Vaclav Havel, in Prague, June 26, 1993; Bronislaw Komorowski, Polish deputy national defense minister, in Warsaw, June 20, 1990; and Janusz Onyszkiewicz, then-Polish deputy national defense minister (later minister), in Warsaw, June 21, 1990. Back.
Note 77: See the interview with then-foreign minister Gyula Horn in La Repubblica (Rome), July 16–17, 1989, 15. Back.
Note 78: “Romania Planned Atom Bomb,” Rompress (Romanian State News Agency), May 26, 1993, based on a lengthy account in the Bucharest daily Evenimentul Zilei. The Romanian nuclear weapons program was centered in the Institute of Nuclear Power Reactors in Pitesti. Back.
Note 79: “Vojenska doktrina Ceske a Slovenske Federativni Republiky,” Report (Prague), April 11, 1991, 7. For a virtually identical statement earlier on, see “Armadu jen k obrane: L. Dobrovsky zduvodnil vojenskou doktrinu,” Lidova demokracie (Prague), November 9, 1990, 7. Back.
Note 80: “Melo to prijit driv,” Lidova demokracie (Prague), October 23, 1990, 2. Back.
Note 81: Interview by the author, in Prague, June 25, 1993. Back.
Note 82: Dariusz Fedor, “Wielki rodwrot za wielpie piemiadze,” Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), December 12, 1990, 7. Back.
Note 83: Statement by defense minister Piotr Kolodziejczyk, in “Wojsko na mniej tajemnic,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), April 18, 1991, 2. Back.
Note 84: See, for example, Andrzej Karkoszka, “A View from Poland,” in Jeffrey Simon, ed., NATO Enlargement: Opinions and Options (Washington, D.C.: National Defense University Press, 1995), 75–85, esp. 78–80. Karkoszka was a top official in the Polish national defense ministry. Back.
Note 85: “Spokesman on Dismantling Missiles, Pact Summit,” Budapest Domestic Service, November 16, 1990; “Defense Minister’s Announcement on Arms Reduction” and “Spokesman on Foreign Military, Economic Relations,” MTI, November 16, 1990; and interview with Colonel Gyorgy Keleti, Hungarian defense ministry press secretary, on Budapest Domestic Service, November 16, 1990. See also the interview with General Gyorgy Szentesi, head of the department for international relations and security policy at the Hungarian defense ministry, in “Negyszemkozt Szentesi Gyorggyei,” Nepszabadsag (Budapest), November 24, 1990, 1, 4; and “Military Rocket Unit To Be Dismantled,” Budapest Domestic Service, December 5, 1990. Back.
Note 86: “USSR To Be Asked To Buy Back Scuds, Frogs,” Hungarian News Agency, 4 February 1991. Back.
Note 87: On the elimination of the missile units, see “Independent Missile Unit Disbands 1 Feb,” MTI, February 1, 1991, and the interview with Hungarian deputy defense minister Mihaly Boti, Budapest Domestic Service, February 2, 1991. On the pledge by Fur, see “Defense Minister Outlines New Defense Principles,” MTI, March 22, 1991. Back.
Note 88: See, for example, Pawel Wronski, “Niebezpieczne deklaracje: Reakcja na ‘atomowe’ wystapienie Okonskiego,” Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), October 2, 1995, 3; and Jerzy Jachowicz and Pawel Wronski, “Ulubione wojsko prezydenta,” Gazeta wyborcza. (Warsaw), 10 August 1995, 3. On Havel’s statement, see “Pristi rok se bude jednot o vstupu republiky do NATO, tvrdi Havel,” Mlada fronta dnes (Prague), October 5, 1995, 2 Back.
Note 89: “Zayava Prezydenta Ukrainy,” Uryadovyi kur’er (Kiev), 6 June 1996, 3. See also “Vystup Prezydenta Ukrainy L. Kuchmy u Seimi Respubliky Pol’shcha,” Polityka i chas, No. 7 (July 1996): 82–85. Back.
Note 90: North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Study on NATO Enlargement, Brussels, September 1995, 20 (emphasis added). Back.
Note 91: U.S. Department of State and Department of Defense, Report to the Congress on the Enlargement of NATO: Rationale, Benefits, Costs, and Implications, Washington, D.C., February 1997, 13–14. Back.
Note 92: In December 1994 the CSCE was renamed the “Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe,” or OSCE. Back.
Note 93: Interview with then-defense minister Zbigniew Okonski in “Silna armia—bezpieczne panstwo,” Polska Zbrojna (Warsaw), October 26, 1995, 1, 6. Back.
Note 94: See, for example, the comments of Janusz Onyszkiewicz in Dariusz Fedor, “Nowa armia,” Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), November 16, 1990, 1. See also Miroslaw Cielemecki, “Manewry pod giewontem: Byc moze wojskowym udalo sie to, co do tej pory nie wyszlo politykom,” Przeglad tygodniowy (Warsaw), No. 40 (October 7, 1990): 6. Back.
Note 95: Kazimierz Woycicki, “Szansa dla Europy Srodkowej: Zblizenie polsko-czechoslowacko-wegierskie,” Zycie Warszawy (Warsaw), February 16–17, 1991, 1, 4; Jan Kunc, “Tristranny summit ve Visegradu,” Obcansky denik (Prague), February 15, 1991, 1; “Wojsko—to sprawa nas wszystkich,” 1–2; Cielemecki, “Manewry pod giewontem,” 6; and Yu. Gatselyuk, “Bez uchastiya SSSR,” Izvestiya (Moscow), September 21, 1990, 3. Back.
Note 96: See “Prezidentite Zhelyu Zhelev i Vatslav Khavel razgovaryakha v Praga,” Duma (Sofia), February 5, 1991, 1. See also the interview with Bulgarian foreign minister Viktor Vulkov in “Varshavskiyat dogovor ostana bez mundir i pagoni: Iztochna likvidira blokovata kolektivna sigurnost,” Otechestven vestnik (Sofia), February 26, 1991, 1. Back.
Note 97: Interview with Bulgarian president Zhelyu Zhelev in “Sudurzhatelno sutrudnichestvo,” Zemedelsko zname (Sofia), No. 29, April 19, 1991, 1, 4. Back.
Note 98: “Keznyujtas es Kezfogas,” Nepszabadsag (Budapest), June 24, 1994, 1. Back.
Note 99: Interview with Czechoslovak foreign minister Jiri Dientsbier in “Tato cesta nie je na preteky,” Narodna obroda (Bratislava), January 23, 1991, 5. Back.
Note 100: On the Czechoslovak-Hungarian military agreement, see “Smlouva mezi armadami: Vojenske vztahy s Madarskem,” Lidove noviny (Prague), January 22, 1991, 2. See also “Schuzka ministru v Budapesti,” Obcansky denik (Prague), January 22, 1991, 1, 7; and the interview with Czechoslovak defense minister Lubos Dobrovsky in “Nova vojenska doktrina statu,” Verejnost (Bratislava), January 29, 1991, 6. On the Polish-Hungarian agreement, see “Minister obrony narodowej zakonczyl oficjalna wizyte na Wegrzech,” Polska zbrojna (Warsaw), March 21, 1991, 1. On the Polish-Czechoslovak agreement, see “Minister obrony CSRF z rabocza wizyta,” Polska zbrojna (Warsaw), February 28, 1991, 1–2. Back.
Note 101: Interview with Polish defense minister Piotr Kolodziejczyk in “Wojsko ma mniej tajemnic,” 2. On the demise of the Warsaw Pact’s Unified Air Defense System, see Rolf Berger, “The Rise and Fall of the WTO’s Unified Air Defence System,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 4 (7) (July 1992): 291–94. Berger was the final commander of the air and air-defense forces of the East German Nationale Volksarmee. Back.
Note 102: Interview with Hungarian foreign ministry state secretary Tamas Katona in “Katona Tamas: Csak eg, csak eg,” Nepszava (Budapest), March 15, 1991, 9. Back.
Note 103: “Warszawa-Praga-Budapeszt: Jestesmy dopiero u progu wspolpracy,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), April 18, 1991, 7. Back.
Note 104: See, for example, “Rozhovory s NATO,” Pravda (Bratislava), September 30, 1993, 2. Back.
Note 105: “Zeme se o vstupu do NATO dozvedi koncem roku,” Mlada fronta dnes (Prague), July 24, 1996, 2. Back.
Note 106: Barbara Sierzula, “Grupa Wyszehradzka nie istnieje,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), 15–16 January 1994, 23; “Vaclav Havel: Doba velkych spolecnych gest pominula,” Mlada fronta dnes (Prague), November 3, 1994, 7; “Cesko, Polsko a Mad’arsko jsou na stejne urovni,” Lidove noviny (Prague), December 2, 1994, 7; “Imrich Andrejcak: Zapadni orientace Slovenska je nezpochybnitelna,” Hospodarske noviny (Prague), November 20, 1994, 4; and the interview with Hungarian foreign minister Laszlo Kovacs in “Kovacs Laszlo: Amerikanak fontos a NATO-igen,” Magyar Nemzet (Budapest), December 10, 1994, 7. Back.
Note 107: “Bezpecnostna politika Ukrainy a Stredna Europa,” Medzinarodne otazky (Bratislava) 2 (3) (1993): 3–17. Back.
Note 108: Interview by the author with Jan Kuriata, Polish deputy national defense minister, and with Colonel Adam Marcinkowski of the Polish General Staff, in Warsaw, July 1, 1993. See also Stephen R. Burant, “International Relations in a Regional Context: Poland and Its Eastern Neighbors—Lithuania, Belarus, Ukraine,” Europe-Asia Studies 45 (3) (1993): 395–418. Back.
Note 109: For various perspectives on the relative gains problem, see Joseph M. Grieco, “Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism,” International Organization 42 (3) (Summer 1988): 485–507; Michael Mastanduno, “Do Relative Gains Matter? America’s Response to Japanese Industrial Policy,” International Security 16 (1) (Summer 1991): 73–113; Duncan Snidal, “Relative Gains and the Pattern of International Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 85 (3) (September 1991): 701–26; Robert Powell, “Absolute and Relative Gains in International Relations Theory,” American Political Science Review 85 (4) (December 1991): 1303–1320; plus other essays in Baldwin, ed., Neorealism and Neoliberalism. See also the lively interchange among Grieco, Powell, and Snidal in “The Relative-Gains Problem for International Cooperation,” American Political Science Review 87 (3) (September 1993): 729–43. Back.
Note 110: For a more detailed assessment of these activities, see Mark Kramer, “NATO, Russia, and East European Security,” in Kate Martin, ed., Russia: A Return to Imperialism? (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1995), 105–61. Back.
Note 111: “Nas prezident byl prvni” and “Prijimame podanou ruku: Z projevu prezidenta CSFR Vaclava Havla v bruselskem sidle NATO,” both in Obcansky denik (Prague), March 22, 1991, 1–2. Back.
Note 112: Zolton D. Barany, “The Western Contacts of the Hungarian Army,” RAD Background Report No. 231 (East-West Relations), Radio Free Europe Research, December 29, 1989. Back.
Note 113: Interview with Hungarian defense minister Lajos Fur in “Negyszemkozt honvedelmi miniszterrel,” Nepszabadsag (Budapest), September 10, 1990, 5; interview with Hungarian deputy defense minister Erno Raffay in “Pozegnania,” Przeglad tygodniowy (Warsaw), No. 42 (October 21, 1990): 8; “Droga ku bezpieczenstwu,” Zolnierz rzeczypospolitej (Warsaw), September 12, 1990, 3; “Sprzet z ZSRR, wiedza z Ameryki,” Gazeta wyborcza (Warsaw), April 9, 1991, 2; “Delegacja MON zakonczyla oficjalna wizyte w RFN: Wracamy z precyzyjnym planem dalszego dzialania,” Polska zbrojna (Warsaw), November 30–December 2, 1990, 1–2; and “Aus der Bundeswehr: Studium,” Wehrtechnik (Bonn) 23 (1), January 1991, 69. Back.
Note 114: “Hoste z NATO v Brne: Nova bezpecnost,” Lidove noviny (Prague), April 25, 1991, 2. Back.
Note 115: Interview with General Laszlo Borsits, chief of the Hungarian General Staff, in Nepszabadsag (Budapest), December 17, 1990, 1, 5. Back.
Note 116: “Bialo-czerwone F-16—jesz nie teraz” and “Format krotkiej wizyty: Temat na dzis,” both in Polska zbrojna (Warsaw), December 6, 1990, 2 and 1, respectively. Back.
Note 117: Interview with Hungarian deputy foreign minister Tamas Katona in “NATO es valtozas,” Nepszabadsag (Budapest), January 10, 1991, 1. Back.
Note 118: Hungary sent a military medical unit of 37 people to Saudi Arabia; Poland contributed two military vessels with a total of 150 people, plus another 150 medical specialists for two military hospitals in Saudi Arabia; and Czechoslovakia sent a regiment of nearly 200 anti-chemical warfare specialists. Back.
Note 119: “Bez munice nad CSFR,” Zemedelske noviny (Prague), February 14, 1991, 2; and “Popov, Mutafchiev i Danov otgovaryat na deputatski vuprosi,” Duma (Sofia), February 22, 1991, 1. Back.
Note 120: Witold Beres, Gliniarz z “Tygodnika”: Rozmowy z bylym ministrem spraw wewnetrznych Krzysztofem Kozlowskim (Warsaw: BGW, 1991), esp. 73–78. Back.
Note 121: Cited in John Pomfret, “Escape from Iraq,” The Washington Post, January 17, 1995, p. A-27. Back.
Note 122: Cited in Jane Perlez, “Bosnia: Proving Ground for NATO Contenders,” The New York Times, December 9, 1995, 6. For further background on East European states’ cooperation with NATO countries in recent peacekeeping missions, see Stephane Lefebvre, “Hungarian Participation in IFOR,” Jane’s Intelligence Review 8 (2) (February 1996), 57; A. L. Zaccor, Polish Peacekeepers and Their Training (Fort Leavenworth: Foreign Military Studies Office, August 1993); and Jaromir Novotny, “The Czech Republic—an Active Partner with NATO,” NATO Review 42 (3) (June 1994): 12–15. Back.
Note 123: “Tajne vladni telefonni spojeni povede na zapad: Vlastni zprava,” Pravo (Prague), June 19, 1996, 1. Back.
Note 124: See, for example, “Rzeczywistosci i sposobnosci Polski,” 1–2; and “Stapanie po kruchym lodzie: Sekretarz generalny NATO uda sie do Moskwy,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), March 11, 1996, 5. Back.
Note 125: On political and economic developments in independent Ukraine, see Taras Kuzio, Ukraine Under Kuchma: Political Reform, Economic Transformation, and Security Policy (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997); Adrian Karatnycky, “Ukraine at the Crossroads,” Journal of Democracy 6 (1) (January 1995): 117–30; Peter Hole et al., Ukraine, IMF Economic Review Series (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, November 1995); Gerhard Simon, “Probleme der ukrainischen Staatsbildung,” Aussenpolitik, No. 1 (1994): 67–78; V. S. Nebozhenko, Sotsial’na napruzhenist’ i konflikty v Ukrainskomu suspil’stvi (Kiev: Abrys, 1994); Oleksandr Kovalenko, Ukraina: Sotsial’na sfera u perekhidnyi period (Kiev: Osnovy, 1994); Chrystyna Lapychak, “Ukraine’s Troubled Rebirth,” Current History 92 (10) (October 1993): 337–41; Alexander Duleba, “Povolebna Ukrajina: Najdiskutovanejsie otazky vnutropolitickeho vyvoja a zahranicna politika,” Medzinarodne otazky (Bratislava) 3 (4) (1994): 69–80; Ilya Prizel, “Ukraine Between Proto-Democracy and ‘Soft’ Authoritarianism,” in Karen Dawisha and Bruce Parrott, eds., Democratic Changes and Authoritarian Reactions in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 330–69; Roman Solchanyk, “The Politics of State-Building: Centre-Periphery Relations in Post-Soviet Ukraine,” Europe-Asia Studies 46 (1) (January 1994): 47–68; and “A Survey of Ukraine,” 18-page supplement to The Economist, May 7, 1994. Back.
Note 126: For two brief but very useful assessments of Ukraine’s strategic situation, see Sherman W. Garnett, Keystone in the Arch: Ukraine in the Emerging Security Environment of Central and Eastern Europe (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1997); and Taras Kuzio, Ukrainian Security Policy, Washington Paper No. 167 (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1996). Ukraine had latent disputes with Moldova and Romania over the status of northern Bukovina and southern Odessa oblast, but these differences remained submerged and were greatly overshadowed by the frictions with Russia. Ukraine and Romania signed an agreement in early June 1997 that largely resolved their remaining territorial differences. Back.
Note 127: See, for example, “Vystup Ministra oborony Ukrainy generala armii Ukrainy V. G. Radetskogo,” Narodna armiya (Kiev), December 6, 1993, 1–2. Back.
Note 128: Nikolai Churilov and Tatyana Koshechkina, “Public Attitudes in Ukraine,” and Leonid Kistersky and Serhii Pirozhkov, “Ukraine: Policy Analysis and Options,” both in Richard Smoke, ed., Perceptions of Security: Public Opinion and Expert Assessments in Europe’s New Democracies (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), esp. 192–94 and 216–18, respectively. See also Roman Solchanyk, “Russia, Ukraine, and the Imperial Legacy,” Post-Soviet Affairs 9 (4) (October–December 1993): 358–62; and Jeremy Lester, “Russian Political Attitudes to Ukrainian Independence,” Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics 10 (3) (June 1994): 193–233. Back.
Note 129: “Perspektyvy Ukrainy pisla vyborov u Rosii,” Holos Ukrainy (Kiev), December 28, 1993, 2. Back.
Note 130: Comment by General Gennadii Dmitriev, cited in Zhilin, “Voennaya politika i voina politikov,” 10. Back.
Note 131: Chrystyna Lapychak, “Crackdown on Crimean Separatism,” Transition 1 (8) (May 26, 1995): 2–5. Moscow’s restraint may have been partly intended to reciprocate for Kuchma’s low-key and muted statements about Russia’s intervention in Chechnya earlier in the year, but the chief reasons for Russia’s discretion were the general improvement in bilateral relations and a recognition in Moscow that the Crimean leader, Yurii Meshkov, had lost almost all of his popularity. Back.
Note 132: “Dogovor o druzhbe, sotrudnichestve i partnerstve mezhdu Rossiiskoi Federatsiei i Ukrainoi,” May 31, 1997, in Diplomaticheskii vestnik (Moscow), No. 7 (July 1997): 35–41. For the various agreements on Crimea and the Black Sea Fleet signed by Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Ukrainian prime minister Pavlo Lazarenko, see “Rossiya-Ukraina: Dokumenty o rossiisko-ukrainskom sotrudnichestve,” Diplomaticheskii vestnik (Moscow), No. 8 (August 1997): 29–41. Back.
Note 133: Ustina Markus, “Recent Defense Developments in Ukraine,” RFE/RL Research Report 3 (4) (January 28, 1994): 26–32. The assessment here is also based on four lengthy interviews by the author with General Konstyantin Morozov, the former Ukrainian defense minister, in Cambridge, MA, May-June 1994. Back.
Note 134: A. Kachinsky, Kontseptsiya riziku u svitli ekologichnoi bezpeky Ukrainy, Working Paper No. 14 (Kiev: Ukrainian National Institute for Strategic Studies, November 1993), esp. 21–25. Back.
Note 135: See the comments by Colonel Oleksandr Serdyuk, central administrative head of the Ukrainian Strategic Nuclear Forces, reported in “Yaderni rakety u derzhavnoi strategii Ukrainy,” Narodna armiya (Kiev), October 31, 1995, 1; and the comments by the Ukrainian presidential adviser and chief weapons scientist, Viktor Baryakhtar, “Problemy likvidatsii yaderno-raketnogo oruzhiya dislotsiruyushchego na territorii Ukrainy,” Vooruzhenie, Politika, Konversiya (Moscow), No. 2 (November 1994): 48–51. See also Bruce G. Blair, “Russian Control of Nuclear Weapons,” in George Quester, ed., The Nuclear Challenge in Russia and the New States of Eurasia (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 1995), 65–69. Back.
Note 136: “Prohloshennya ‘Pro bez”yadernyi status Ukrainy’,” Molod’ Ukrainy (Kiev), October 25, 1991, 1. Back.
Note 137: “Deklaratsiya pro derzhavnyi suverenitet Ukrainy vid 16 lipnya 1990 roku,” in Ukraina na mizhnarodnii areni (Kiev: Zbirnyk dokumentiv, 1993), 10. Back.
Note 138: See, for example, Serhii Pirozhkov and Volodymyr Selivanov, “Natsionalna bezpeka Ukrainy: Suchasne rozuminnya,” Visnyk Akademii Nauk Ukrainy (Kiev), No. 3 (September 1992): 11–25. Back.
Note 139: Sergei Zgurets, “Ukraine nuzhna ne yadernaya bulava, nuzhny garantii,” Narodna armiya (Kiev), December 21, 1993, 3. Back.
Note 140: On the reasons for the shift in Ukrainian opinion, see Franz-Josef Meiers, Die Denuklearisierung der Ukraine: Wunsch oder Wirklichkeit, Report No. 5 (Bonn: Forschungsinstitut der Deutschen Gesellschaft fur Auswartige Politik, April 1994), esp. 5–11. Back.
Note 141: On the concept of “nuclear myths,” see Lavoy, “Nuclear Myths and the Causes of Nuclear Proliferation,” 192–212. Back.
Note 142: For the text, see “Trekhstoronnee zayavlenie prezidentov Rossii, SShA, i Ukrainy,” Diplomaticheskii vestnik (Moscow), Nos. 3–4 (February 1994): 18–20. Back.
Note 143: See the coverage in Cherhova sesiya Verkhovnoi rady Ukrainy: Byuleten’ (Kiev), Nos. 13–14 (1994), esp. 124–27. Back.
Note 144: “Vystup Prezidenta Ukrainy Leonida Kuchmy na sessii Verkhovnoi Rady Ukrainy 16 listopada 1994 r.,” Uryadovyi kur’er (Kiev), November 17, 1994, 1. Back.
Note 145: “Uspikh planovanii i vystrazhdanii,” Holos Ukrainy (Kiev), December 7, 1994, 1–2. Back.
Note 146: “Vyvoz yadernykh boepripasov s territorii Ukrainy zavershen,” Segodnya (Moscow), June 4, 1996, 1. Ukraine thus joined Kazakhstan and Belarus, which had relinquished all nuclear warheads on their territory as of mid-1995. The only warheads still outside Russia after mid-1996 were in Belarus, where a few warheads on SS-25 mobile missiles were not transferred to Russia until November 1996. Back.
Note 147: “Vitcyznany rakety emitsnyuyut’ rosiis’ku yadernu potuzhnist’,” Holos Ukrainy (Kiev), November 28, 1995, 1. Back.
Note 148: “Deklaratsiya pro derzhavnyi suverenitet Ukrainy vid 16 lipnya 1990 roku,” 10. Back.
Note 149: “Dogovor o kollektivnoi bezopasnosti,” Krasnaya zvezda (Moscow), May 23, 1992, 1. Back.
Note 150: “Bezpecnostna politika Ukrainy a Stredna Europa,” 4–5. Back.
Note 151: Maja Narbutt, “Polska, Ukraina i ta trzecia: Lech Walesa w Kijowie,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), May 26, 1993, 1, 23; and Maja Narbutt, “NATO-bis w odwrocie? Prezydent Walesa nie poparl ukrainskiej inicjatywy utworzenia strefy bezpieczenstwa,” Rzeczpospolita (Warsaw), May 25, 1993, 1. Back.
Note 152: “Vzaemodiya pid praporom NATO,” Holos Ukrainy (Kiev), September 4, 1997, 3. Back.
Note 153: “Kontseptsiya natsional’noi bezpeky Ukrainy,” Uryadovyi kur’er (Kiev), January 6, 1997, 3. Back.
Note 154: Oleksandr Kupchyshyn, “Spivrobitnytstvo—z SND, integratsiya—z evropoyu,” Polityka i chas (Kiev), No. 7 (July 1996): 13. One of the most explicit statements about Ukraine’s desire to be integrated into NATO came during the visit by Foreign Minister Hennadyi Udovenko to NATO headquarters in April 1997; see “Vystup ministra H. Udovenko na zasidanni NATO,” Uryadovyi kur’er, April 17, 1997, 3. Back.
Note 155: “Khartiya pro osoblyve partnerstvo mizh Ukrainoyu ta Orhanizatsieyu Pivnichnoatlantychnoho dohovoru,” Holos Ukrainy (Kiev), July 11, 1997, 1–2. Back.
Note 156: Separately, France and China indicated that they, too, would abide by these commitments, thus giving them the imprimatur of all five permanent members of the UN Security Council. Back.
Note 157: “Trekhstoronnee zayavlenie prezidentov Rossii, SShA, i Ukrainy,” 18–19. Back.
Note 158: “Vystup Prezidenta Ukrainy Leonida Kuchmy na sessii Verkhovnoi Rady Ukrainy 16 listopada 1994 r.,” 2. Back.
Note 159: See Goldstein, “Understanding Nuclear Proliferation,” 213–55. Back.
Note 160: Top-ranking Polish officials emphasized that their chief objective was to come “under the nuclear umbrella of the United States. . . .The interesting proposals put forward recently by France regarding a [French] nuclear umbrella cannot be regarded as an effective substitute. The same holds true of the British nuclear arsenal.” See Ananicz et al., “Polska-NATO,” 3. Back.
Note 161: “Lawmakers Question Foreign Obligations,” The New York Times, December 12, 1994, A-12. Back.
Note 162: U.S. Congress, Senate, Committee on Foreign Relations, Hearings on The Enlargement of NATO, 105th Cong., 1st Sess., September-October 1997, 45, 49, 76–79. Back.
Note 163: Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons, 8. Back.
Note 164: Interviews by the author with Maciej Kozlowski, department chief in the Polish foreign ministry, in Cambridge, Mass., November 30, 1995, and with Geza Jeszensky, Hungarian foreign minister from 1990 to 1994, in Cambridge, Mass., January 30, 1998. Back.
Note 165: Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow,” 37. Back.
Note 166: The concept of a “pluralistic security community” is explored at length in Karl W. Deutsch et al., Political Community and the North Atlantic Area: International Organization in the Light of Historical Experience (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1957). See also Karl W. Deutsch, “Security Communities,” in James N. Rosenau, ed., International Politics and Foreign Policy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960), 98–105. Essentially, it refers to a group of interacting sovereign states that no longer prepare for, or have any expectation of ever fighting, a war with one another. All their interactions are peaceful, and the prospect of violent conflict among them is all but inconceivable. Back.
Note 167: Waltz, Theory of International Politics, esp. 116–28. Back.
Note 168: Walt, The Origin of Alliances, passim; Stephen M. Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” International Security 9 (4) (Spring 1985): 3–43; Stephen M. Walt, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation: The Case of Southwest Asia,” International Organization 43 (2) (Spring 1988): 275–316; and Walt’s contribution to a three-article forum on “Balancing vs. Bandwagoning: A Debate,” Security Studies 1 (3) (Spring 1992): 383–482. In this last article (“Alliances, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy: A Reply to Kaufman and Labs,” 448–82), Waltz acknowledged that his earlier discussions of bandwagoning were “ambiguous” and had led to “misunderstandings” ( 471). Back.
Note 169: Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit,” 72–107. Back.
Note 170: See ibid.; Walt, The Origins of Alliances; Robert Jervis and Jack Snyder, eds., Dominoes and Bandwagons: Strategic Beliefs and Great Power Competition in the Eurasian Rimland (New York: Oxford University Press, 1991); Walt, “Alliance Formation and the Balance of World Power,” 3–43; Walt, “Testing Theories of Alliance Formation,” 275–316; and the three-article forum on “Balancing vs. Bandwagoning: A Debate” cited above. 1, No. 3 (Spring 1992): 383–482. Back.
Note 171: See, for example, the interview with the then-national defense minister of the Czech Republic, Antonin Baudys, in “Cim driv budeme v NATO, tim lepe,” Lidove noviny (Prague), October 12, 1993, 8; and Andrzej Olechowski, “Lepsza historia kontynentu: Europa wedlug ministra spraw zagranicznych,” Polityka (Warsaw), No. 50 (December 10, 1994): 1, 13. Back.
Note 172: Walt, The Origins of Alliances, 17, as well as Walt’s clarifications in “Alliances, Threats, and U.S. Grand Strategy,” 472–73. For a perceptive critique, see Schweller, “Bandwagoning for Profit,” esp. 80–82. Back.
Note 173: By 1995, however, there was much evidence of growing impatience; see, for example, the interview with Polish deputy prime minister Aleksander Luczak in “Rzeczywistosc i sposobnosci Polski,” Polska zbrojna (Warsaw), October 6–8, 1995, 1–2. Back.
Note 174: Detailed criteria for new members were laid out in NATO, Study on NATO Enlargement, esp. 23–24. Not surprisingly, this report was very closely studied by East-Central European officials; see, for example, “Rzeczywistosc i sposobnosci Polski,” 2. It is worth emphasizing that that the criteria apply only to new members, not existing members. Some existing NATO countries, especially Turkey, would have trouble in meeting the criteria. For country-by-country analyses of how well the East-Central European states fulfilled NATO’s requirements, see U.S. Congress, Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Report on Human Rights and the Process of NATO Enlargement, Washington, D.C., June 1997. Back.
Note 175: This point is covered in greater depth in Mark Kramer, Soldier and State in Poland: Civil-Military Relations and Institutional Change After Communism (Boulder, CO: Rowman Littlefield, 1998). Back.
Note 176: Interview with Imre Mecs, chairman of the Hungarian parliament’s defense committee, on Duna Television, Budapest, November 20, 1994. Back.
Note 177: Comments by Csaba Takacs, national executive chairman of the Hungarian Democratic Union of Romania, ibid. Back.
Note 178: Interview with Gyorgy Keleti, ibid. See also “Negyszemkozt Keleti Gyorgy,” Magyar Nemzet (Budapest), December 12, 1994, 3. Similarly, in late 1994 the acting Slovak defense minister, Imrich Andrejcak, emphasized that “a prerequisite for NATO membership will be the dependability, security, and neighborly cooperation of the applicants.” See “Zapadni orientace Slovenska je nezpochybnitelna,” 4 (emphasis added). Back.
Note 179: Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, Report on Human Rights and the Process of NATO Enlargement, 30, 63–64, 75–76. Back.
Note 180: See, for example, “Horn: A kormany kesz azonnal targyalni Szlovakiaval Bosrol,” Nepszabadsag (Budapest), September 30, 1997, 1; and “Ketezerot utan mar hivatasos hadseregunk lehet,” Magyar Hirlap (Budapest), October 4, 1997, 9. Back.
Note 181: “Deutsch-Tschechische Erklarung uber die gegenseitigen Beziehungen und deren kunftige Entwicklung,” January 21, 1997, in Presse- und Informationsamt der Bundesregierung Bulletin (Bonn), No. 7 (February 2, 1997), 111–15. In the Czech Republic, the most controversial part of the declaration was Article III, which affirmed that the Czech side “regrets that the forcible expulsion and forced resettlement of Sudeten Germans [in 1945–46] . . .inflicted great suffering and injustice on innocent people, and that guilt was attributed collectively. It particularly regrets the excesses that were contrary to basic humanitarian principles . . .“ Back.
Note 182: In “The False Promise of International Institutions,” John Mearsheimer treats regimes and institutions as synonyms. The relationship of the East-Central European states to NATO is one of many examples that could be cited to warrant keeping the terms distinct. Back.
Note 183: V. Mikhailov et al., “Minatom Rossii i obespechenie bezopasnosti yadernogo oruzhiya Rossiiskoi Federatsii,” Mezhdunarodnaya zhizn’ (Moscow), No. 6 (June 1996): 35–64; Batyakhar, “Problemy likvidatsii yaderno-raketnogo oruzhiya dislotsiruyushchego na territorii Ukrainy,” 48–51; Ivan Sutyagin, “Problemy bezopasnosti rossiiskogo yadernogo oruzhiya,” Voennyi vestnik (Moscow), No. 7 (1993): 62–76; and Office of Technology Assessment, Dismantling the Bomb and Managing the Nuclear Materials, OTA-O-572 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, November 1993), 137–47. Back.
Note 184: Interview with General Vadym Hrechaninov, Ukrainian deputy defense minister, in “Reformuvati armiyu vazhche, nizh buduvati ii zanovo,” Kievs’ki vidimosti (Kiev), December 2, 1994, 4. Back.
Note 185: Oleksandr Honcharenko et al., “Kontseptsiya natsional’noi bezpeky Ukrainy: Problemy i perspektyvy rozbudovy,” Viis’ko Ukrainy (Kiev) No. 5 (March 1993): 9. On recent trends in Ukrainian defense spending and the effect on military capabilities, see A. Moshes, “Voennye reformy: Rossiya, Ukraina, Belorussiya,” Mirovaya ekonomika i mezhdunarodnye otnosheniya (Moscow), No. 1 (January 1995): 142–51. Back.
Note 186: Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” 56. Back.
Note 187: Vladimir Skachko, “Iz mira vrazhdy—v mir problem: Kuchma v Budapeshte popytaetsya razblokirovat’ pomoshch’ Zapada Kievu,” Nezavisimaya gazeta (Moscow), December 6, 1994, 3. Back.
Note 188: Cited in Nadiya Derkach, “Kholodnym mirom Evropu ne zlyakati: Vchora u Budapeshti zavershilas’ zustrich glav derzhav-uchasnits’ NBSE,” Za vilnu Ukrainu (L’viv), December 7, 1994, 1. Back.
Note 189: “P’yat’ derzhav garantuvali bezpeku Ukrainy,” Holos Ukrainy (Kiev), December 8, 1994, 1. Back.
Note 190: Cohen, “Understanding Nuclear Proliferation,” 254–55. Back.
Note 191: See, for example, Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” 50–51: “Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons, and no state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression.” Back.
Note 192: “Prilozhenie k trekhstoronnemu zayavleniyu prezidentov Rossii, SShA i Ukrainy ot 14 yanvarya 1994 goda,” Diplomaticheskii vestnik (Moscow), Nos. 3–4 (February 1994), 20. Back.
Note 193: Kuchma cited the EU’s contribution of 85 million ecus during a press conference after his return from the CSCE summit; see “Ukraina mae stati mostom mizh Skhodom i zakhodom,” Holos Ukrainy (Kiev), December 9, 1994, 2. Back.
Note 194: For a detailed survey of the twists in the debate, see Bohdan Nahaylo, “The Shaping of Ukrainian Attitudes Toward Nuclear Arms,” RFE/RL Research Report 2 (8) (February 19, 1993): 21–45. Back.
Note 195: On the non-proliferation norm, see Roger K. Smith, “Explaining the Non-Proliferation Regime: Anomalies for Contemporary International Relations Theory,” International Organization 41 (2) (Spring 1987): 252–81; Steven Lee, “Nuclear Proliferation and Nuclear Entitlement,” Ethics International Affairs9 (1995): 101–31, esp. 123–31; and John Simpson, “Nuclear Non-Proliferation in the Post-Cold War Era,” International Affairs 70 (1) (January 1994): 17–39, esp. 18, 36. For more general discussions of norms in world politics, see the essays in Volker Rittberger, ed., Regime Theory and International Relations (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). Back.
Note 196: Mearsheimer, “The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent,” 60. Back.
Note 197: For an overview, see the special section on “Ukrainian Security Issues” in RFE/RL Research Report 3 (4) (January 28, 1994): 1–32, esp. John W. R. Lepingwell, “Negotiations Over Nuclear Weapons: Past as Prologue?” 1–11. Back.
Note 198: Schroeder, “Historical Reality vs. Neo-Realist Theory,” 117. Back.
Note 199: Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 72–74, 184–85. For a classic statement of this view, see Rothstein, Alliances and Small Powers, 26–27, 233–34. Back.
Note 200: Cooperation on this matter was greater than often realized, however. See Joseph S. Nye, Jr., “U.S.-Soviet Cooperation in a Nonproliferation Regime,” in Alexander L. George, Philip J. Farley, and Alexander Dallin, eds., U.S.-Soviet Security Cooperation: Achievements, Failures, Lessons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 336–52; William Potter, “Nuclear Proliferation: U.S.-Soviet Cooperation,” The Washington Quarterly 8 (1) (Winter 1985): 37–49; and Peter R. Lavoy, “Learning and the Evolution of Cooperation in U.S. and Soviet Nuclear Nonproliferation Activities,” in George W. Breslauer and Philip E. Tetlock, eds., Learning in U.S. and Soviet Foreign Policy (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1991), 735–83. Back.
Note 201: See, for example, Frankel, “The Brooding Shadow,” 37–78; Thayer, “The Causes of Nuclear Proliferation and the Utility of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” esp. 503–05; and Quester and Utgoff, “U.S. Arms Reductions and Nuclear Proliferation,” 129–40. Back.
Note 202: Randall Schweller, as noted earlier, has convincingly argued that aggression, not bandwagoning, is the real opposite of balancing (“Bandwagoning for Profit,” 72–107). The point here is somewhat different from Schweller’s argument, which emphasizes the use of military bandwagoning by revisionist states, whether predators or scavengers. The point here is that bandwagoning can also be seen as a non-military activity. Back.
Note 203: Jack Snyder, “Averting Anarchy in the New Europe,” International Security 14 (4) (Spring 1990): 5–41. It should be noted, however, that in Slovakia the impact of Western institutions was much less effective. Back.
Note 204: Waltz, Theory of International Politics, 105–12; Christopher Layne, “The Unipolar Illusion: Why New Great Powers Will Rise,” International Security 17 (4) (Spring 1993): 10–11; Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” 10–11; and Mearsheimer, “Back to the Future,” 12–13. For a critique, see Wendt, “Anarchy Is What States Make of It,” 391–426. Back.
Note 205: It should be emphasized that the notion of a “democratic peace,” to the extent it is well-founded, applies predominantly to established democracies. One recent study has suggested that for newly democratizing states, the risk of going to war may actually increase. See Edward D. Mansfield and Jack Snyder, “Democratization and the Danger of War,” International Security 20 (1) (Summer 1995): 5–38. This view is not universally accepted, however. See, for example, William R. Thompson and Richard M. Tucker, ‘’A Tale of Two Democratic Peace Critiques,’’ Journal of Conflict Resolution 41 (2) (June 1997): 428–51; Michael D. Ward and Kristian S. Gleditsch, ‘’Democratizing for Peace,’’ American Political Science Review 92 (1) (March 1998): 51–61; and Andrew J. Enterline, ‘’Driving While Democratizing: Correspondence,’’ International Security 20 (1) (Summer 1996): 183–96. Back.
Note 206: The term “other-help” is used in Jonathan Mercer, “Anarchy and Identity,” International Organization 49 (2) (Spring 1995): 229–52. Back.
Note 207: Glaser, “Realists as Optimists,” 122–63. Back.
Unipolar Politics: Realism and State Strategies After the Cold War
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