Should Ukraine Have Gotten Rid of Its Cold War Nukes?
With Russian troops now occupying Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula, Kiev’s beleagered interim leaders may be thinking twice about their nation’s 1994 decision to abandon nuclear weapons.
The East European country actually held the world’s third-largest nuclear arsenal after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. But Kiev in 1994 agreed to transfer all its atomic arms to Russia for elimination, shortly thereafter joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty as a non-nuclear nation, and within two years was weapons-free.
At the time, John Mearsheimer was one of very few who saw it as an unwise move.
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