Serhii Plokhy and M. E. Sarotte
86 foreign affairs
who, exactly, would have both launch command and practical day-to-
day control over the weapons became an immediate priority of the
Bush administration.
U.S. Secretary of State James Baker provided a stark assessment of
the significance of these developments to Bush. Baker told Bush, “Stra-
tegically there is no other foreign issue more deserving of your atten-
tion or time” than the future of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in the wake
of the country’s breakup. “A Yugoslavia-type situation with 30,000
nuclear weapons presents an incredible
danger to the American people—and
they know it and will hold us account-
able if we don’t respond.”
Baker thought that there was no
value, and much risk, for the United
States in nuclear rivalries among former Soviet states. Only one nu-
clear power could be allowed to emerge out of the Soviet Union: Rus-
sia. In part, this preference was due to the fact that Washington had a
long history of dealing with Moscow on issues of arms control. Better
to stick with the devil you know, Baker believed, than deal with a whole
new set of nuclear powers. As a result, Washington’s and Moscow’s
interests suddenly became identical: both wanted all the nuclear weap-
ons of the former Soviet Union destroyed or relocated to Russia. The
Bush administration and its successor worked hard in cooperation with
Yeltsin to make that happen, using a series of inducements and diplo-
matic arm-twisting.
Scarred by the horrors of the Chernobyl nuclear catastrophe—
which irradiated sizable areas of Belarus, Ukraine, and other Euro-
pean countries—the Ukrainians initially seemed inclined to go along
with U.S. and Russian plans for Ukraine’s denuclearization. But the
ongoing imperial contest with Russia, particularly over the status of
Crimea, led to rethinking in Kyiv. In May 1992, Moscow and Kyiv
clashed over the fate of the Soviet Union’s Black Sea Fleet, which was
based in Sevastopol. A dispute over the division of the fleet and con-
trol of the port would drag on for the next five years. As tensions
flared, the Ukrainian parliament began making new demands in ex-
change for giving up the formerly Soviet missiles: financial compensa-
tion, formal recognition of Ukraine’s borders, and security guarantees.
At an international summit held in Budapest in December 1994,
more than 50 leaders were scheduled to create the Organization forOn independence, Ukraine
became the world’s third-
biggest nuclear power.