Freeman, Stephanie L. Dreams for a Decade: International Nuclear Abolitionism and the End of the Cold War. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.

Budjeryn, Mariana. Inheriting the BOMB: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023.

Relationships in the geopolitical arena are never trouble-free—even among allies and certainly not between adversaries. Nations and their leaders routinely deal with conflicting goals or aspirations that do not lend themselves to easy resolution. Such clearly was the case in the decade preceding the collapse of the Soviet Union and the decade immediately following—the subject matter of the two studies under review here. The authors of these books, while very intent on telling important stories, do not always consider the broader context of international affairs within which those stories occur.

For all but a few scientists, the nuclear age began with the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. The “arms race” officially began on August 29, 1949, when the Soviet Union completed its first successful test of a nuclear weapon at Semipalatinsk in present-day Kazakhstan. Shortly thereafter, in 1958, Bertrand Russell—the British philosopher and social critic—together with historian and Communist Party member E. P. Thompson and two Socialist members of Parliament—Tony Benn and Eric Heffer—founded the “Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament” (CND). As detailed by Stephanie Freeman in Dreams for a Decade, CND was the first of more than three dozen anti-war and anti-nuclear organizations to be created through the 1980s, many of which still exist today. These groups cover a broad spectrum of social and political orientations—from religious organizations such as the “Friends Committee on National Legislation” (FCNL, the Quakers) and the Dutch “Interchurch Peace Council” to non-partisan, educational entities such as “Ground Zero,” “Mayors for Peace,” and the “Union of Concerned Scientists” (UCS), to blatantly political bodies like the anti-communist “Freedom and Peace” and “Committee for Social Resistance” (both in Poland), the “Greens” in West Germany, and communist groups such as the “Institute for Workers’ Control” (England) and the “World Peace Council” (located officially in Finland, but obviously a propaganda outpost of the Soviet Union). In the United States the most prominent group was the Nuclear Freeze Movement, which advocated that no new deployments and no new weapon systems be allowed while nations worked to reduce their stocks of nuclear missiles and/or eliminate them altogether.

The social impact of these organizations has been felt worldwide. In fact, over the years, three of them have been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize: “International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War” (IPPNW) in 1985; the “Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs,” along with its founder Sir Joseph Rothblatt, in 1995; and the “International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons” (ICAN)—which was founded in 2007 and which absorbed the CND—in 2017.
Not only grassroots organizations, but also the nations of the world, have come to understand the dangers to mankind emanating from the possible onset of nuclear war. As a result, both the nuclear-weapon states (NWS) and the non-nuclear-weapon states (NNWS)—sometimes altruistically and sometimes obviously in a self-serving manner—have reached multiple arms control agreements. Among the earliest international agreements limiting the use of nuclear weapons were the “Antarctic Treaty” (entered into force 1961), the “Partial Test Ban Treaty” (entered into force 1963, which prohibited nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere), the “Outer Space Treaty” (entered into force 1967) and the “Seabed Arms Control Treaty” (entered into force 1972). Overall, more than a dozen major arms limitation or arms reduction treaties have been concluded since then, along with five treaties that created “nuclear-weapon-free zones” covering Latin America and the Caribbean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia.1

In 1968, the “Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons” (commonly known as the NPT, the Non-Proliferation Treaty) was negotiated under United Nations auspices. The treaty, which entered into force in 1970 with a termination date of 1995, defined nuclear-weapon states as those that had built and tested a nuclear device prior to January 1, 1967. There are five such nations: the U.S., the USSR, the United Kingdom, France, and China. All other nations that are signatory to the treaty are deemed to be non-nuclear-weapon states. These nations are prohibited from building, acquiring, or allowing nuclear weapons to transit through their territory. With obvious exceptions, nearly all nations in the world have signed on to this treaty.

Other major arms limitation or arms reduction treaties include the “Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty” (SALT/SALT I, in force 1972–1977), the “Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty” (ABM, in force 1972–2002, at which time the United States officially withdrew its support), the “Threshold Test Ban Treaty” (TTBT, signed 1974, entered into force only in 1990 when the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev dropped its objection to comprehensive verification procedures), the “Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty” (INF, signed 1987, entered into force 1988, terminated in 2019 when the United States officially withdrew, followed immediately by the Russian Federation), the first “Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty” (START I, signed 1991, entered into force 1994, expired 2009) and “New START” (entered into force 2011, extended in 2021 for an additional five years.2

The most recent agreement to be concluded is the “Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons” (TPNW, signed 2017, entered into force 2021), “the first legally binding international agreement to comprehensively prohibit nuclear weapons with the ultimate goal being their total elimination”— clearly the goal of the nuclear abolitionists who play such a prominent role in the anti-nuclear movement described in Dreams for a Decade.3 Although this treaty was developed under the auspices of the United Nations and approved by a vote of 122–1 (the Netherlands opposed), with one abstention (Singapore), sixty-nine nations refused to vote at all, including all of the nuclear-weapon states and all NATO members except the Netherlands.

Looking at the trajectory of arms limitation efforts over the past sixty years, it is clear that the apogee occurred on December 5, 1994, when Ukraine officially joined the NPT,4 which allowed the START I treaty to come into force. Once that happened, the Clinton administration succeeded in obtaining international approval at the 1995 NPT Review Conference to extend that treaty indefinitely. The controversy surrounding Ukraine’s accession to the NPT figures prominently in Mariana Budjeryn’s study Inheriting the BOMB.

Subsequently, George H. Bush withdrew from the ABM Treaty, citing the contention that Russia habitually violated its provisions. Vladimir Putin withdrew from START II only two years after Russia had ratified the agreement. And on November 22, 2020, in one of his last official acts as president, Donald Trump withdrew from the “Treaty on Open Skies” that had been signed by George H. W. Bush and Gorbachev in 1989, which prompted Russia to withdraw one year later. Accordingly, the only major arms agreement remaining in force is “New START.” However, since “each party can withdraw if it decides for itself that ‘extraordinary events related to the subject matter of this treaty have jeopardized its supreme interests,’” it seems certain that Putin, assuming he is around in 2026, will surely invoke this clause.5

Of course, the metaphor of a smooth arc is hardly appropriate: rather, the history of arms control is much more grounded—twists and turns, hills and valleys, roadblocks and dead ends. The time frame encompassed by the two studies under review—the 1980s and 1990s—began with just such a dead end. The Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (SALT) that was signed in 1972 had a five-year term; hence, it was expected to sunset in 1977, but just two years later President Gerald Ford and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev agreed to extend it further. The follow-on agreement, dubbed SALT II, was signed by Brezhnev and then President Jimmy Carter on June 18, 1979.

SALT II was based on the concept of “strategic parity.”6 It limited the number of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) equipped with multiple warheads (so-called MIRVs, multiple independently targeted reentry vehicles) that either side could have. Concurrently, on December 12, 1979, NATO promulgated a “dual-track strategy” in response to the Soviet deployment of missiles and bombers to the Warsaw Pact nations in Eastern Europe. The strategy called for negotiations with the USSR to limit the number of nuclear weapons in each bloc, while simultaneously deploying intermediate-range cruise missiles and enhanced Pershing II missiles to provide a response in the event of an attack against Western Europe.

The SALT II agreement was bitterly opposed by conservatives in the U.S. Congress, such that Senate ratification had a low probability of success. This soon became moot, however: on December 24, just two weeks after the NATO announcement, the Soviet Union sent troops into Afghanistan, beginning a war that would last a decade until Gorbachev ended it in February 1989. Carter immediately withdrew the treaty from consideration, imposed economic sanctions on the USSR, and, further, announced that the United States would boycott the 1980 Summer Olympics that were to be held in Moscow.

Such was the pessimistic tenor of the times as the decade of the 1980s—the decade of anti-war and anti-nuclear dreams—began in the United States and Western Europe.

The invasion of Afghanistan sent geopolitical shockwaves around the world. The attack destroyed any semblance of credibility that the USSR was a “defender of peace.” This was clearly understood in Moscow: Marshal Nikolai Ogarkov, Chief of the General Staff, had opposed the “reckless” intervention, and Anatoly Adamshin, a Soviet diplomat, called the invasion an “act of weakness” and a “squandering of Moscow’s moral authority in the world.”7 Lasting an entire decade, the war drained government coffers, further crippling an already declining economy.

In addition, the stream of body bags returning to Moscow and Leningrad—most of the personnel sent to fight the war were ethnic Slavs, as the military leadership did not trust Muslim soldiers to shoot at the mujahideen fighters—was met with quiet anger. Many observers believe that opposition to the war among the citizenry in European Russia engendered the first hint of unrest—certainly exacerbated later in the 1980s by the controversy surrounding the Korean Airliner shootdown and by public outrage at the government response to the Chernobyl disaster—that led to the development of a nascent civil society in the Soviet Union and, ultimately, to dissolution of the empire.8

The public response in the West to the war was almost immediate. The first sentence on page 1 in Dreams for a Decade reads as follows:

In April 1980, four American organizations published a four-page document that would spark a nationwide grassroots movement to end the nuclear arms race.

That document, The Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race,9 had a simple message: the U.S. and the USSR should adopt a verifiable mutual freeze on development and deployment of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles anywhere in the world while they negotiated the reduction and ultimate elimination of all such devices. Thus began the Freeze Movement in the United States.

Also in April 1980, E. P. Thompson, one of the founders of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament two decades earlier, took a major role in writing an “Appeal for European Nuclear Disarmament,” also known as the “END Appeal.” (Dreams, p. 24) The END organization would become the leading British advocacy group urging elimination of all nuclear weapons in Europe.

Accordingly, the Freeze Movement, the END organization, and the END Journal, which was primarily a vehicle for writing by Mary Kaldor—formerly an arms trade specialist at SIPRI, who took up a research position at the University of Sussex—serve as the touchstone for Freeman’s analysis of geopolitics in the 1980s and the interactions between Ronald Reagan and the various leaders of the Soviet Union during that period. As a result, Dreams provides a very detailed account of the anti-nuclear activities conducted in the United States and in Europe, predominantly through quotations from the END Journal.

These activities were remarkably successful through the first three years of the Reagan presidency. Grassroots projects in the United States produced great momentum, generating anti-war proposals in state and local referenda around the country, freeze proposals in Congress, and a disarmament plank in the 1984 Democratic Party platform. The high point occurred in June 1982 when around 750,000 Americans demonstrated in New York City “demanding nuclear disarmament.” (Dreams, p. 75) Remarkably, however, because Reagan wanted to build up American forces first, the Freeze Movement never considered him an ally, even when he actively sought significant arms reductions later on. (Dreams, p. 41)

In Europe, “millions took to the streets across Western Europe to demonstrate against the ‘Euromissiles’ in the early 1980s.” (Dreams, p. 2) In 1980, responding to the dual-track NATO policy, “peace activists issued an appeal urging the West German government to rescind its support for the planned U.S. intermediate-range nuclear force (INF) deployments in Western Europe.” (Dreams, p. 35) That document, dubbed the “Krefeld Appeal,” attracted more than four million signatures over the next three years. (Dreams, p. 36)

The Krefeld Appeal was part of massive international effort to prevent such deployments promulgated by Communist activists in West Germany10 as “part of a broader Soviet effort to mobilize West European anti-nuclear sentiment to derail [the plan] and undermine NATO.”11

Reagan came to the presidency by amassing an overwhelming 489 Electoral College votes. During the election campaign Carter had to deal with high inflation, high unemployment, and high gas prices. In addition, due in large part to Henry Kissinger illegally engaging in foreign diplomacy outside the government, Iran refused to release the 53 hostages it had taken on November 4, 1979, until, miraculously, inauguration day, January 20, 1981.

A screen actor, popular television host, and former governor in California, the new president had no foreign policy experience whatsoever.12 Accordingly, he surrounded himself with leading Washington DC Republicans, nearly all of whom were quite conservative in outlook. As a group, these hardliners were described sarcastically as the Neo-Cons. The list is quite imposing: Kenneth Adelman, Richard Allen, James Baker, Richard Burt, Frank Carlucci, William Casey, Lawrence Eagleburger, Alexander Haig, Kissinger, John Lenczowski, Edwin Meese, Oliver North, Richard Perle, John Poindexter, Eugene Rostow, and Caspar Weinberger.

Reagan was a kindred spirit. A true “cold warrior” prior to his election as president, he had opposed every arms control agreement entered into by the United States and the Soviet Union. Most famously, he called the Soviet Union the “evil empire” in a 1983 speech to evangelicals. But he was also, at heart, a nuclear abolitionist. Reagan “struggled to reconcile hawkish and dovish impulses,” (Miles, p. 82) which led him to an awkward compromise that he called “peace through strength.”13 In order to compel Moscow to negotiate arms reductions, Reagan believed, America should first build up its own nuclear arsenal.

Republican conservatives did not seem to grasp this duality or, at least, did not take this impulse seriously. As Freeman notes, “The president’s trusting nature, detachment from the process of policy implementation, and dislike of confrontation enabled his aides to disregard his statements about the desirability of eliminating nuclear weapons.” (Dreams, p. 69) Nor did they have much respect for the new president, who had little interest in the minutiae of governance. “Reagan’s avoidance of conflict with his advisors likely led them to believe that they could ignore his statements about nuclear abolition without risking a confrontation with him.” (Dreams, p. 69) And the president, at least in his first years in office, “was stifled by domineering aides who did not want nuclear abolition.” (Dreams, p. 70)

This lack of respect did not change much throughout Reagan’s two terms in office, but was seen most clearly in 1983, when a Soviet fighter pilot shot down KAL 007, a passenger aircraft that had flown some 500 miles off course on its way from Anchorage to Tokyo, crossing the Kamchatka Peninsula, emerging over the Sea of Okhotsk, and then entering Soviet airspace again over Sakhalin Island near Japan. When the event was reported to the Pentagon, Casey, Eagleburger, and Perle took over, working through the night, orchestrating a press conference for Secretary of State George Shultz, and writing the statement he would read.14 They did not think it important to wake the president, who was vacationing in California, informing him of the tragedy only a half hour prior to Shultz announcing to the world what had happened.15 Apparently, the leader of the Free World need not be a factor in one of the most significant international controversies of the 1980s.

Reagan’s understanding of Soviet power was deeply flawed. He believed that Russia was on the rise, while America was in decline. Yes, their missiles in Eastern Europe caused Western leaders to lose sleep at night, as did the superiority of their ground troops vis-à-vis NATO, but the Soviet economy, never very strong, was already in deep trouble when Reagan first took office.16 When the Solidarity movement in Poland gained ascendance in 1981 and Polish prime minister General Wojciech Jaruzelski declared martial law, Brezhnev chose not to use troops to quell the disturbances: with the Afghan war raging, he had neither the manpower nor the economic resources it would take to do anything but watch from the sidelines. When the United States imposed various sanctions in response, most notably on a planned Soviet natural gas pipeline, this action did not please Western leaders in Europe. Having suffered through the repercussions of the Arab oil embargo, Europe was looking forward to the supplies coming via the pipeline. Thus, although Western leaders supported the planned installation of NATO missiles, they were opposed to a tough economic response against Moscow.

Their ambivalence was seen very clearly when the NATO proposal to deploy INF missiles was being discussed. “The debate over the INF issue was especially strident in West Germany.” This was due in large part to its “unenviable position in central Europe” where “it [found] itself continually trying to reconcile its security relationship with the West [and] its desire for Ostpolitik.”17

The Krefeld Appeal and the mass demonstrations in their capital cities definitely worried Western leaders, because public pressure was likely to cause parliaments to vote against the deployment of missiles planned for late 1983. Freeman discounts the fact that the Krefeld appeal resulted from communist activities directed from Moscow, which hoped that controversy over the INF missiles would splinter NATO,18 but there seems to be no question that the inspiration for the document came from the World Peace Council.19 According to Miles, the “Kremlin and its allies relied on assets within the Western European peace movement to agitate against INF. Soviet policy makers took pride in their ‘huge propaganda campaign,’ but as the KGB admitted, Europeans had yet to ‘get it into their heads’ that INF would make them ‘hostages.’”20

Social democrats in West Germany did understand, however, and only one month after publication of the Krefeld Appeal, the Social Democratic Party issued its own Bielefeld Appeal. Freeman writes that this document was “reminiscent” of the Krefeld Appeal, (Dreams, p. 48) but in fact the text repeated that document nearly verbatim. Social Democrats in Germany disseminated the Bielefeld Appeal in order to “distance themselves from charges that the peace movement had been infiltrated by Communists.”21

Nevertheless, it is likely that the intense public pressure in several Western European nations would have stymied the American attempt to get approval for the deployment of cruise and Pershing II missiles on European soil. Then the Soviets did something that changed this calculus completely: on August 31/September 01, 1983, they shot down the Korean airliner. That single event put an end to the demonstrations and gave European leaders the political cover they needed to approve INF deployments. Immediately thereafter, in October, the U.S. Senate rejected a freeze resolution and the Soviet delegation in Geneva walked out of arms control talks. In November, the first Pershing II missiles were deployed to West Germany.22

Freeman completely misunderstands the significance of KAL. Not only does she claim that the Soviets shot down the airliner, “believing it to be an American reconnaissance plane,” (Dreams, p. 113) which is demonstrably incorrect,23 she believes that the incident “prompted Reagan to think deeply about the consequences of nuclear war and reinforced his determination to prevent nuclear disaster.” (Dreams, 113) This is clearly speculative, and Freeman provides no evidence in support of her claim.24 Reagan was, after all, an abolitionist at heart.

What Reagan did do, however, was send George Shultz to Moscow over the objections of his staff to see if progress on arms control could still be made, despite the month-long anti-Soviet harangue that had been orchestrated in the United States and United Nations following the shootdown. And that did make an impact on Andropov, who faced the same level of Cold War sentiment from his military as the American president faced in Washington.

Andropov thought that the rationale for reducing military expenditures was straight forward: roughly 40 percent of the national budget and as much as 15–20 percent of Soviet GDP was devoted to the military and the security establishment—“at least four times the U.S. level,”25 leaving little room for measures intended to improve the lives of ordinary Soviet citizens. The Soviet economic situation only worsened as the years passed, such that Andropov, Konstantin Chernenko, and later Gorbachev found their hands tied both domestically and internationally. The only way to reduce these expenditures was to reduce international tensions.

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

In her analysis Freeman almost completely ignores Chernobyl, one of the signal international events of the 1980s. In her view, the primary impact of the tragedy was that it “heightened Gorbachev’s desire for an agreement that would eliminate nuclear weapons” and that it “showed the Soviet leader the chaos and suffering that would result from a nuclear war.” (Dreams, p. 175) Moreover, she claims, Gorbachev’s “moral aversion to nuclear war” was strengthened by the accident. (Dreams, p. 152)26 She does, however, cite the completely false claim promulgated by Kate Brown that upwards of 150,000 people died as a result of the accident.27 (Dreams, p. 174)

Accordingly, in Freeman’s opinion, the main motivation behind Gorbachev’s actions during the latter half of the 1980s—up to and beyond the Fall of the Wall—was his belief in a “common European home,” an idea he first espoused in a 1984 visit to London, “foreshadowing his famous … 1989 address … to the Council of Europe.” (Dreams, p. 169) Moreover, the “central argument” of her study “is that nuclear abolitionists played a significant role in ending the Cold War” (Dreams, p. 4) because “European activists influenced Gorbachev’s concept of a ‘common European home’ and his budding support for the right of self-determination across Europe.” (Dreams, p. 171)28

It was this impulse, Freeman believes, that “prevented the Soviet leader from intervening to stop the 1989 East European revolutions” (Dreams, p. 5)—for instance, in Prague in November when approximately 500,000 protesters gathered and the entire Communist Party leadership resigned: “How could Gorbachev use force against an opposition group that shared his goal of creating a ‘common European home.’” (Dreams, p. 235)29

Political scientists have long discussed the tension between ideational and materialist motivations for leaders. That is: are leaders inspired by a grand idea (as Mao was, for instance) or are their actions hamstrung by economic considerations? This topic is covered in depth by Brooks & Wohlforth in their long article, as well as in the literature they cite.

Freeman clearly takes the ideational position in her study. That seems patently correct for Ronald Reagan, but less so for Mikhail Gorbachev, who was clearly constrained by the failing Soviet economy throughout his tenure as General Secretary. Would Gorbachev have gone to Reykjavik were he not so constrained? Almost certainly: the value of summitry exists in all geopolitical circumstances. Would he have agreed to elimination of all intermediate-range nuclear missiles? Probably, but with less certainty; his military advisers would need to have provided their counsel, and it is not clear that they would have agreed [Reagan’s advisers were much less disposed to the idea than was the president himself].

Finally, would he have passively accepted the disintegration of the Warsaw Pact had the resources at his disposal—both in manpower and economic strength—been adequate to allow another course of action? Personally, I doubt it. Gorbachev was first and foremost a Soviet patriot; he certainly never intended for the processes that he set in motion at the XXVII Party Congress in 1986 to lead to the dissolution of the empire. Sending the OMON into Latvia and Lithuania in January 1991 was an act of desperation that demonstrated the continuing influence of conservative forces in Russia’s domestic politics. Unfortunately for the General Secretary, his reactionary stance came too late to save either his personal situation or the fate of the nation.

This is not to denigrate Gorbachev, nor Reagan for that matter. Each in his own way was a visionary. Each struggled against a military leadership that strongly disagreed with his goals and had the wherewithal to impede progress toward those goals. But in the end the visionaries prevailed and the soldiers did not.

What Gorbachev and Reagan almost achieved in Reykjavik, Iceland, in 1986 was almost historic—agreeing to eliminate all American and Soviet nuclear weapons and delivery systems. Almost. Except for one minor detail, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), facetiously dubbed “Star Wars” by its opponents.

In July 1982, Edward Teller, “the father of the hydrogen bomb,” wrote to Reagan from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory “extolling the recent advances in directed energy weapons,30 which he argued could be used to destroy incoming nuclear missiles.” (Dreams, p. 89) In addition to being a distinguished scientist, Teller was an extremely entrepreneurial and self-serving individual. The only American physicist to oppose Robert Oppenheimer’s security clearance, because the latter opposed him regarding the H-bomb, Teller was always on the lookout for the next major research project for the lab. This was exactly what Reagan was looking for, as well, and he latched on to the concept with the fervor of a religious convert, directing millions of defense department appropriations toward development of the technology.31

SDI was a myth, but a myth in which Reagan believed fervently. Instead of Armageddon, he saw a chance for Salvation. From the Soviet side, Gorbachev and his military planners had to assume the myth was real: failure to do so would have been the height of malfeasance in the realm of national security.

Unfortunately, it turned out that the two presidents were in a no-win situation. Reagan would not give up SDI, failing to understand that 90% of a loaf was better than nothing.32 For his part, had Gorbachev returned to Moscow empty-handed, with the prospect of funding another expensive defense research project the nation could hardly afford, the attempted coup that occurred in August 1991 might have happened five years earlier with quite different results and consequences.

Under the circumstances, therefore, the fact that one year later the United States and the Soviet Union managed to sign and ratify the INF Treaty is remarkable. With the assistance of the few like-minded individuals in his administration—most notably William Clark, Jack Matlock, Robert “Bud” McFarlane, Paul Nitze, and of course George Shultz—Reagan outmaneuvered the Neo-Cons and achieved the unthinkable, the elimination of an entire class of nuclear weapons.

Not that everyone was pleased, however, particularly not in the Pentagon. The disarmament negotiators, in their zeal, had also eliminated all delivery vehicles capable of firing at an enemy from a distance of 300 kilometers or more. Real wars are fought with conventional weapons, and professional soldiers knew that the INF limitations meant military personnel would necessarily, but needlessly, be placed within range of enemy fire.

On the other hand, the Pentagon was extremely pleased that Reykjavik turned out to be a bust. In a world without nuclear weapons, NATO would have been forced to spend many billions of dollars to upgrade its conventional forces in Europe in order to match Soviet capabilities. Surprisingly, perhaps, Western political leaders were equally relieved, not only because any European land war would be fought on their soil, but also because an American-Soviet rapprochement might have led both countries to disregard the needs and wishes of Europe’s people. From their standpoint, a little bit of arms control was a good thing, but a lot was not. Realistically, the best chance to avoid devastation at home was the likelihood that Moscow would also suffer devastation from ICBMs and the Euromissiles, thereby deterring any aggressive action from the East.

Thus, on Christmas Day 1991 in the West, the world as the Soviets knew it came to an end, and the West rejoiced. The huge, wicked bear was dead, replaced by one large bear, a few medium-sized bears and several feisty cubs. And Ukraine entered a strange and frightening existence as an independent nation. As did the Russian Federation.

All other issues aside, the crux of the matter was money. In his book The Eagle and the Trident,33 Steven Pifer describes the Ukrainian economy as “fragile”—certainly a generous appraisal from an experienced diplomat. The facts, however, are more distressing: Russia was “dead broke," and Ukraine was, if anything, “deader broke.” In the first year of Boris Yeltsin’s presidency, the official inflation rate was 2,539 percent,34 and only once in the 1990s did the nation experience actual GDP growth. Not to be outdone, between 1991 and 1999 Ukraine’s economy shrunk by more than 60 percent,35 and at one point the inflation rate was an astounding 10,000 percent!36

To get a better sense of the depth of the problem, consider the following two real-life stories.

STORY № 1 – In 1992, nuclear power provided nearly 50% of all electricity generated in Ukraine, and the Zaporozhe plant in Energodar generated half of that amount. In one of the more spiteful actions by Russia after the Soviet Union dissolved, the Duma passed a law prohibiting nuclear power plants in the “Near Abroad” (Ukraine and Lithuania) from sending spent fuel back to Russia for processing, despite the fact that all fresh fuel still came from Russia and spent fuel had always been returned there. With limited onsite storage capacity, Zaporozhe faced a potential shutdown as a result of the new restrictions, the societal consequences of which would be devastating. Based on an existing relationship with Duke Power in Charlotte, North Carolina, the power plant signed a contract for its own dry storage facility to avert the crisis. The value of the contract: $11 million dollars USD, probably just a rounding error for most national economies, but one which Ukraine could not afford. Half of the cost was covered by the United States as foreign aid, but the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act required a substantial contribution from the power plant. The creative solution: an aluminum plant, one of the Zaporozhe customers that also could not pay its bills, shipped a boatload of ingots to Alcoa Aluminum in the States, and Alcoa paid Duke.

STORY № 2 – Russian scientists, particularly nuclear physicists, lived pretty well—all things considered—on the Soviet economy. But this had changed. Prices skyrocketed, and even though the Russian government raised salaries as much as it could, nothing could fully compensate. Everyone was worse off, but exactly how much was difficult to determine with precision, particularly since ruble-to-dollar exchange rates fluctuated dramatically over time. Nevertheless, in a 1995 interview, one Kurchatov research professor shared a unique metric based on the price of butter. In pre-inflation days, the physicist said, his monthly salary would buy 300 kg of butter, if that were all he bought. But in March 1995, when this interview was conducted, his salary (if he was paid at all, which wasn’t guaranteed) would buy only 30 kg—a 90% decrease. [Another physicist said he had not bought a book in six months, and a third, who happened to be an experienced bricklayer, could earn half a month’s salary on a Saturday working at the construction site for some oligarch’s new home.]37

Such was the state of the world during the time period, from the Chernobyl accident (when she was a young girl in Lvov) through 1994, that is the main focus of Mariana Budjeryn in her book, Inheriting the BOMB: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine. But, of course, given the events of 2014 and 2022, the salience of this work has never been greater. Of necessity, Budjeryn covers some of the same ground as does Stephanie Freeman, but from a different vantage point.

Her story begins with Chernobyl and the devastating impact it had on life in the Ukrainian SSR. Ironically, in one of the first manifestations of relaxed tension between the superpowers, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and its Soviet counterpart, Gosatomnadzor, had agreed in January 1986 that a delegation of nuclear engineers and ministry bureaucrats would travel to the United States for operating safety meetings in June. Needless to say, the accident delayed that event for over a year.

If there was any silver lining to the disaster, it arose in the form of growing trust between mid-level personnel in the two countries. When it comes to negotiating treaties and other international agreements, trust among the participants in the process—both as individuals and as representatives of their respective nations—is crucial. An excellent example occurred during the summer of 1986 while cleanup activities at Chernobyl were in full swing. Following a number of entreaties to her superiors at the State Department, Carol Eberhard succeeded in gaining permission to bring to the United States for urgent medical treatment one of the helicopter pilots who became critically ill making multiple flights over the destroyed reactor building to drop materials Soviet scientists hoped would dampen the release of radiation from the charred ruins of the power plant. The life of the pilot could not be saved, but as a result of her actions Ms. Eberhard earned the gratitude and respect of the people struggling to deal with the aftermath of the accident. In 1987, when the Soviet delegation finally arrived in the United States, they were pleased to find her among the officials greeting them. And nearly a decade later, when an American delegation arrived in Kiev to negotiate closure of the power plant, her presence helped soften an otherwise fractious official encounter.

A similar example is provided by Laurin Dodd, now retired but in 1995 an employee at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in Richland, WA. At the request of officials at Kurchatov and GAN, Dodd led a delegation of security specialists to a plutonium processing plant in Seversk, near Tomsk (known by its “mailing address” Tomsk-7), and to the Mining and Chemical Complex in Krasnoyarsk (K-26). These were the first such visits by Americans to nuclear facilities in closed cities. K-26 was not only decrepit; it also completely lacked any computerization that supported Western operations in similar environments. And then there were the toilets. The Russians who met with the Americans were pleased (and surprised) at the seriousness of the visitors and the fact that they did not have the condescending attitude their hosts had expected.38 This positive experience among professionals went a long way toward easing the task faced by future delegations,39 notwithstanding the fact that the security personnel were horrified that Americans had been allowed “inside the gate.”40

Years later, trust clearly paid dividends at the Zaporozhe nuclear power plant once Russia initiated the full-scale war against Ukraine. Although it took two or three years of interactions with American trainers in the 1990s for regulators and reactor room operators to develop a close working relationship, Ukraine ultimately instituted symptom-based emergency procedures at all of its reactor units (as opposed to Russia, where they were approved for only one reactor unit at one power plant). Thus, when Russian troops occupied the plant in Energodar and greatly restricted the activities and the movement of personnel there, the ability to react to changes in plant operating conditions that people saw on their control room gauges and computer screens without physically inspecting plant equipment almost surely lessened the danger that a serious accident might occur.

The early interactions led the United States Congress to fund nuclear safety and security activities throughout the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact nations even before the official dissolution of the USSR—but not without a fierce struggle. As Budjeryn explains, (Inheriting the Bomb, pp. 47–48) a proposal by Democratic congressman Les Aspin to provide $2 billion in assistance was voted down in the House of Representatives. However, Democratic Senator Sam Nunn and Republican Senator Richard Lugar managed to pass the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act that appropriated $400 million annually from the Department of Defense budget. But only after a fierce fight on the Senate floor, and only after an “America First” amendment was adopted, requiring that most of the defense-related funding be directed to support of U.S. personnel at DOE facilities and private companies.

In addition, one of the first things America did after the breakup of the Soviet Union was to send plane loads of food stuffs, medicines, medical supplies, and medical equipment—worth more than $1 billion dollars—to Kharkov, closed cities in Siberia, and Alma-Ata.

CTR became the primary vehicle “aimed at providing safe and secure storage, handling, and transportation of nuclear weapons and materials, as well as support for nuclear scientists.” (Inheriting the Bomb, p. 62) In Ukraine, much of this funding went to dismantlement of missiles targeted at the United States, a feat achieved in less time than anyone thought possible.

From the date CTR funds started flowing (always a frustrating bureaucratic dance) through 2014, when Vladimir Putin terminated nearly all the programs directed at Russia, the United States devoted approximately $25 billion dollars for multiple projects across the entire region. Through the mid-2000s, approximately $500 million went to Ukraine, along with $350 million in economic aid and another $150 million in support for small and medium enterprises there in an attempt to foster economic reform. (Inheriting the Bomb, p. 62) In addition, the United States and the G-7 arranged for funding from international banks and G-7 assistance programs to make up for the generating capacity lost when Chernobyl was (finally) shut down for good in 2000.

Over and above the funds dedicated to Chernobyl, the United States provided well more than $1 billion dollars to promote disarmament, economic reform, and the development of civil society in Ukraine—with little in the way of results to show for that money, except disarmament. (Pifer, Eagle & Trident, p. 112 et passim)

In coordination with the U.S. and the other G-7 countries, Europe also took an active role. A European Economic Community program named TACIS (Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States) funded safety and security projects throughout the region, dozens of which supported activities in Ukraine.41 Moreover, the EBRD (European Bank for Reconstruction and Development) spent over 2 billion Euros—funds donated by nearly thirty countries, including the G-7 nations—to replace the Soviet sarcophagus at Chernobyl that was badly in need of repair. That project was not completed until 2016.

On July 16, 1990, the Ukrainian parliament—the Verkhovna Rada—joined “a parade of sovereignties” (Inheriting the BOMB, p. 85) as the ninth Soviet Socialist Republic to declare that within its territory its laws would supersede Soviet law, simultaneously announcing its intention to become an unaligned nation and to give up its nuclear weapons. Nevertheless, “[I]n a plebiscite conducted at Gorbachev’s initiative on March 17, 1991, some 76 percent of all Soviet citizens voted in favor of preserving the Soviet Union as a ‘renewed federation of equal sovereign republics.’” The population in all four republics that housed nuclear missiles voted overwhelmingly in favor of preserving the Union: Ukraine 70%; Russia 71%; Belarus 83%; Kazakhstan 94%. (Inheriting the BOMB, p. 31)

However, following the failure of the coup—August 24, 1991—the Rada overwhelmingly passed the “Act of Independence of Ukraine.” This “marked the birth of Ukraine’s statehood.” (Inheriting the BOMB, p. 129) In a referendum held just days before the actual dissolution of the Soviet Union, 90% of Ukrainians voted for independence,42 with 80% participation nationwide. Even a slight majority in Crimea voted in favor.

Once Ukraine became an independent nation, United States policy focused on making certain that it did, indeed, give up its nuclear arsenal and join the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state. After all, the ICBMs were targeted against American cities, as were all of the Soviet Union’s long-range missiles. The administration of George H. W. Bush gave Kiev pretty much everything it wanted except for “security guarantees” that would include a legally binding commitment to come to the country’s defense if it were attacked, presumably by Russia—something it was not willing to grant to any non-NATO member. In particular, Secretary of State James Baker was adamantly opposed to such a commitment. Nor did that policy change when Bill Clinton became president in 1993.

But Ukraine balked, faced as it was by increasingly hostile actions on the part of Russia, including: Moscow’s support for separatists in Crimea; its intransigence in negotiations regarding the border between the two countries in the Sea of Azov and the Kerch Strait; a 1992 Duma resolution “reversing” Nikita Khrushchev’s 1954 decision to put Crimea under Ukrainian jurisdiction and claiming that the peninsula was instead a constituent oblast′ of the Russian Federation—a claim it would implement some twenty years later; and a 1993 irredentist declaration that Sevastopol, home of the Black Sea Fleet, was a “Russian” city. (Inheriting the BOMB, pp. 196–197) Some members of the Rada and the Kiev administration felt it had to hold on to the three dozen nuclear missiles and nearly two thousand warheads in its possession, in part as a deterrence to Russian aggression and in part for leverage in its negotiations with the United States.

The bulk of Budjeryn’s study details the trials and tribulations in these negotiations, which ultimately led to a document called the Tripartite Agreement among Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, which became the basis for an agreement between those three nations and Great Britian known as the Budapest Memorandum. Under that Memorandum, Ukraine finally acceded to the NPT. The U.S. had hoped that Ukraine and Russia could work out their differences in a bilateral agreement, but after waiting more than a year it decided that would never happen, stepping in to negotiate a workable agreement.

Ukraine’s negotiating position vis-à-vis the United States throughout this period had no legal basis and was doomed to failure. The Nonproliferation Treaty recognized only two categories: the five declared weapon states and every other signatory. There was no middle ground, no third category. Kiev wanted international recognition of Ukraine as a “possessor” of the nuclear weapons on its territory, but also as a “non-nuclear-weapon state” because it was willing to give those weapons up in return for strong security guarantees.

The only way Ukraine could “possess” these weapons would be outside the NPT framework, which would place the country in the same category as India, Pakistan, and a few “rogue” nations. At stake, from the standpoint of the United States and Russia, was that the START treaty would not come into force unless Ukraine (also Belarus and Kazakhstan, although that was not a diplomatic issue on the same level of difficulty) agreed to accede to the NPT.43 At stake for Ukraine, should it not relent, was any chance to join the “civilized nations” in the West.

Not that failure to relinquish its ICBMs would actually have provided the deterrence against Russia that Ukraine was seeking, since the missiles were useless as a threat to Moscow. In the first place, as everyone except a few Rada members realized, Russia retained operational command and control of the rockets, so Ukraine could not have used them in war, should that ever come to pass. Moreover, even if Kiev could have launched its missiles, Moscow proper would never have been in any danger whatsoever: ICBMs are long-range weapons (intercontinental, indeed), and while Ukraine could destroy Vladivostok, for instance, or New York, the weapons that would actually pose a threat to European Russia had been banned by the 1997 INF Treaty, the same weapons whose elimination had caused so much heartburn at the Pentagon. Even had Ukraine defied the United States and insisted on retaining its missiles, Russia’s vast superiority in numbers would have been fatal to Ukraine in the event of war; Russia would simply target all the missile silos first (they surely had coordinates for every one) and then proceed to wipe out the rest of the country.

Ultimately, Ukraine did sign the Budapest Memorandum, but it never gave the document much credence in its decision making. In 2003, when Russia’s naval forces occupied tiny Tuzla Island in the Kerch Strait, Kiev might have invoked the agreement in public, which would have forced Great Britain and the United States to confront Russia, but it did not. Instead, it brought the Memorandum up in private discussions with Moscow but was ignored by the Kremlin.

Similarly, in 2014, when Russia did annex Crimea and embark on military support of Donbas separatists, the U.S. and Britain might have invoked the agreement. Which President Barack Obama did not. Obama was constrained, it turned out, by another diplomatic priority—negotiating an agreement with Iran for that nation to cease any attempt to develop its own nuclear weapon capabilities. This effort was much more significant in terms of peace and international security than anything taking place in Ukraine. As it happened, the U.S. needed Russia’s cooperation in that endeavor, since among the nations involved in the negotiations only Moscow had any leverage with the leadership in Tehran. Had America forced the issue of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine, doing so might have negated any chance for Iran to sign the JCPOA (Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action).

As it turned out, Ukraine never undertook the actions that would have allowed it to come closer to the West as a democratic state with a civil society undergirded by the rule of law. Although it did relinquish its nuclear arsenal in 1994, it never made any serious attempt at economic reform. In that regard, it was a failed state by Western standards. Corruption, which penetrated the highest levels of government, was never addressed. All U.S. attempts to institute change were met with indifference or, worse, obstruction.

For example, on numerous occasions throughout the 1990s the United States advocated on Ukraine’s behalf for the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank to extend low-interest credits to Kiev. The IMF had stringent terms—called “conditionalities”—that a nation must meet in order to qualify. Ukraine consistently failed to meet those terms and, when the United States would urge them to do so, instead complained that the IMF was too rigid and that the U.S. should convince it to relax its requirements.44 Kiev never took the necessary “concrete steps towards meaningful reform,” nor did it make a “commitment to the rule of law, democracy, and human rights” expected of a nation committed to Western ideals. (Pifer, Eagle & Trident, p. 211)

Moreover, with regard to NATO, in an age when every former Warsaw Pact nation was moving forward to meet the requirements for membership in that organization—actions that would have provided Ukraine the security “guarantees” it claimed to want so desperately—it failed to take the steps necessary to do so. Which was not surprising, since until Russia actually did attack, the vast majority of Ukrainian citizens were opposed to NATO membership. Even now, had full-scale war not broken out in 2022, Ukraine would not have been able to qualify for NATO membership or for membership in the European Union. That chance disappeared when Viktor Yanukovich refused to sign the Association Agreement it had been offered in 2013.45

Budjeryn, however, blames the United States for Ukraine’s dilemma. To her mind, the NPT was “an inherently discriminatory regime” (Inheriting the BOMB, p. 12) that “allows nuclear possession to five states while denying it to all the rest.” (Inheriting the BOMB, p. 230) She clearly believes the White House should have abrogated an international treaty of twenty-five years duration to create a special category that would accommodate Kiev. Rather, she would have us believe that Clinton was so intent on extending the NPT he rode roughshod over Kiev’s security concerns. Methinks the lady doth protest too much.

It is true that the United States and Russia, for completely different reasons, wanted Ukraine to denuclearize. That does not mean, however, Washington and Moscow “were in collusion on the necessity of getting Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine to disarm and join the NPT.” (Inheriting the BOMB, p. 230) Instead, Budjeryn believes, “much of the strife” that Ukraine endured “could have been ameliorated … if what we call the Great Powers were less arrogant.” (Inheriting the BOMB, p. 235)

Perhaps, I would suggest, the arrogant party was Kiev, which assumed the United States could and would direct the IMF and World Bank to accommodate Ukraine’s unwillingness to conform to international standards applicable to the rest of the world, (Pifer, Eagle & Trident, p. 191) just as it expected Washington to ignore the omnipresent corruption in the country and to overlook president Leonid Kuchma distorting the 1999 presidential election procedures—or the abduction and beheading of an opposition journalist46—because otherwise his communist opponent might be victorious. (Pifer, Eagle & Trident, p. 165)

In the final analysis, given the political situation in Ukrainian society at the time, its chances of ever developing a democratic, civil society were minimal, for a very simple reason: despite its fear and distrust of Russia, the government and the people were too much like the Russians. Unlike Poland, Hungary, Romania, and Czechoslovakia, but just like the Russians, Ukraine never “kicked the bums out”—never forced Soviet-style bureaucrats out of power, never replaced the leaders of the economy and the government with young blood, and never “bit the bullet” on the painful steps necessary to set the nation on a different trajectory.

As explained convincingly by Maria Snegovaya, only those central and eastern European nations that committed themselves to lustration—the removal of public officials and judges who were associated with the former political regime—had a chance at successful transformation from an autocratic society to one founded on democratic principles.47 Russia did not, nor did Ukraine.

Ukraine was caught in a classic dilemma: it wanted to change, but it would not or could not do what was required to initiate change. The problem it faced is known as “value complexity”—“the presence of multiple, competing values and interests that are imbedded in a single issue.”48

As it turned out, virtually every important actor that had a part in this twenty-year international drama, whether a nation or a political leader, was faced with the same dilemma:

♦    The Freeze Movement in the United States that was so fixated on its message that it failed to support Ronald Reagan’s dramatic steps toward disarmament because they did not first involve maintaining the status quo—and simply faded away to oblivion;
♦    The END organization that was concerned only with the abolition of nuclear weapons in Europe and failed to understand that activists in Eastern Europe were more concerned with human rights and freedom from communist repression than disarmament—hence failed to adapt its message until much too late;
♦    Ronald Reagan, who sacrificed an indelible place in world history by insisting that the myth of SDI take precedence over the actual abolition of nuclear weapons worldwide;
♦    Mikhail Gorbachev, who also sacrificed an indelible place in world history by not understanding that the only way to save the country he loved was to accept the need to renounce its nuclear arsenal, whatever the political cost, in order to rescue its economy;
♦    Western Europe’s political leaders, who were clearly interested in peace and security, but not at the expense of trade with the Soviet Union—an attitude that manifested itself again in 2014 and, at least initially, after Russia began its full-scale war against Ukraine;
♦    The Neo-Cons in the White House and the Pentagon, who could not see that a world at peace was within its reach, but insisted on mutually assured destruction instead;
♦    Boris Yeltsin, who was a democrat at heart, but an autocrat in practice;
♦    Bill Clinton, who was so focused on supporting Yeltsin against Gennady Zyuganov and the Communists that he overlooked Yeltsin’s autocratic impulses, risked alienating Russia in order draw East European nations closer to the West, and faced a “trade-off between wanting to support reform in central and eastern Europe as well as reform in Russia”;49
♦    Viktor Yanukovich, who had to choose between the West and the East, making a fatal choice against the wishes of the Ukrainian people;
♦    Barack Obama, who—needing Russia’s assistance in securing the Iran nuclear deal—would not confront Moscow on Crimea despite the obvious illegality of the annexation.

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

In sum, then, what is one to make of the two volumes under review? Both Dreams for a Decade and Inheriting the BOMB tell fascinating stories about important international controversies; they are informative and well worth reading by anyone who studies the time period they address. Their authors—clearly passionate about their subjects—have produced massively annotated works devoted to important events that have received surprisingly little attention from scholars in the past. Like all good dissertations, those that formed the basis of the books under review are narrowly focused on their subject matter.

That said, there is much information—particularly regarding Western assistance efforts prior to and following the collapse of the Soviet Union—that the authors could not know. Further, each account would have benefited from research that appeared in the interim between completion of these studies as dissertations and their publication as independent books.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am pleased to acknowledge Debra Cagan and Steven Pifer for graciously agreeing to long telephone interviews in which each answered a printed list of questions, as well as Svitlana Kalinska Jaroszynski, who arranged for these interviews to be transcribed.

I also am pleased to thank the following individuals for providing documents and/or additional information pertinent to this analysis: Joyce Connery, Laurin Dodd, Bob Einhorn, Kent Faris, Carol Eberhard Kessler, Dave Marcelli, James “J. R.” Russell, and one person who requested anonymity.

Laurin, Carol, and J. R. read earlier versions of this manuscript, correcting errors of fact, judgment, and syntax before those could appear, embarrassingly, in print. Any remaining errors are mine and mine alone.

BN-350	350-megawatt fast neutron (breeder) reactor
CND	Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament
DOE	Department of Energy
DOS	Department of State
EBRD	European Bank for Reconstruction and Development
END	European Nuclear Disarmament
FCNL	Friends Committee on National Legislation
GAN	Gosatomnadzor (the Soviet nuclear regulatory agency)
ICAN	International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
ICBM	intercontinental ballistic missile
IMF	International Monetary Fund
INF	Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
IPPNW	International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War
JCPOA	Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action
MIRV	multiple independently targeted reentry vehicle
MPC&A	nuclear material protection, control and accounting
NATO	North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NMMSS	Nuclear Material Management and Safeguards System
NNWS	non-nuclear-weapon state
NPT	Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [Non-Proliferation Treaty]
NWS	nuclear-weapon state
SALT	Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty
SDI	Strategic Defense Initiative
SIPRI	Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
SLBM	submarine-launched ballistic missile
START I	Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty
TACIS	Technical Assistance to the Commonwealth of Independent States
TPNW	Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons
TTBT	Threshold Test Ban Treaty
UCS	Union of Concerned Scientists
WANO	World Association of Nuclear Operators

Michael K. Launer is Professor Emeritus of Russian at Florida State University. In 1987 he interpreted for the first group of Soviet scientists visiting the United States following the Chernobyl nuclear accident. A State Department certified technical interpreter, he supported Nuclear Regulatory Commission and Department of Energy assistance programs through 2012. *** A condensed version of this essay was published in Slavic Review (Spring 2025 [84:1], 138-147).

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