I Assure You

March 16th, 2025

“What is an oath, but words we say to God?” - Thomas More

More than 30 years ago, in Budapest, the US, with several other countries, convinced Ukraine to give up roughly 1800 nuclear weapons in exchange for what might be called an oath, a “Security Assurance.”

The word is important. The dictionary defines “assurance” as “a guarantee or a pledge.” But when President Clinton first commented on the issue of security and Ukraine, he said that the US would “guarantee Ukrainian sovereignty.” In the text of the Memorandum the State Department changed the document’s title, after negotiations, to read “… security assurance.” Yet, it has been said that the word used in the Ukrainian version of the memorandum has a connotation much closer to “guarantee” than “assure.”

While this seems pedantic, I asked a guy from the State Department about that once and his wise-guy, but seemingly accurate, response was that a “guarantee” means we are going to do something, an assurance means “we promise to sit around and talk about doing something.”

A brief review: After the break-up of the USSR nuclear weapons were left in a number of countries, in particular, so called “strategic:” nuclear weapons,” that is, nuclear weapons mated to intercontinental ballistic missiles or matched with long range bombers. Such weapons were located in Kazakhstan, Belarus and Ukraine. (There were also thousands of “tactical” or battlefield nuclear weapons, to include more than 2,100 in Ukraine; these were addressed in 1992 by the Lisbon Protocol.)

Under the terms of the Budapest Memorandum, Ukraine turned over the nuclear force to Russia and received fuel rods for its reactors, and oil and gas debt forgiveness, and international good will.

The force consisted to 130 x SS-19s, 46 x SS-24s and 33 x bombers with a mixed load-out of nuclear bombs and nuclear cruise missiles. This would still be the third largest nuclear force in the world today, larger than China’s.

It should also be noted that the entire Russian nuclear force was in need of maintenance, both the rockets and the warheads, and sustainment of that force through to today would have been an expense that Ukraine could have not handled alone.

But the question at hand is the one of the US giving Ukraine an assurance.

Why does this matter? Two reasons.

The first is general in nature: If the US is to function in the world with any degree of authority different from simple raw fear of what a powerful country may do to a weaker one (like China threatening the Philippines), then it must have the trust of allies. If the US says "such and such is so,” then it needs to be so. Trust, and confidence in the US is, in that sense, in our vital national interest. Protecting our word, protecting our reputation as an honest broker, may well be in some cases as important as protecting our borders.

Which leads to the second reason, one that is very closely related to the Budapest memorandum, nuclear weapons and the US nuclear umbrella. Simply, in the case of nuclear deterrence, belief in the word of the US may be the most important asset we have.

Eisenhower’s nuclear guarantee - that other countries need not develop nuclear weapons because the US had them and would defend them from the threats of nuclear blackmail from the Soviet Union - was and is the cornerstone of the concept of nuclear non-proliferation. A long list of countries have decided they did not need nuclear weapons because the US had them and the US could be trusted. 

Now, after three decades of being mainly ignored Eisenhower’s “umbrella” is staring to look a bit frayed.

But the nuclear guarantee - the nuclear umbrella - must be credible in every sense  if it’s to function properly, if it’s to deter those, like China or North Korea (or Iran?), who might be otherwise tempted to to use their nuclear muscle to coerce nun-nuclear neighbors. The force must be able to work exactly as “advertised,” politically and technically, which means that force needs to be modernized and kept modern.

It’s worth noting that Eisenhower was a smart guy, and clearly one of the best planners to ever occupy the office (Washington, Grant, and Theodore Roosevelt being his only competition). Eisenhower commented repeatedly on the prohibitive cost of very large conventional forces, and yet understood the massive danger posed by nuclear weapons. He also recognized that the USSR, and later China, were never going to give up nuclear weapons. As Kissinger later noted: "Nuclear weapons cannot be un-invented."

As for President Clinton - who made the “assurance nee guarantee” - he has since regretted it. Eliminating nuclear weapons in Ukraine was an issue that has been said to be of great strategic worth, but was it? 1800 nuclear weapons were eliminated, but is the world any safer? Russia has 5,000+ weapons, the US 4,000, China is closing on 1,000; is the world appreciably safer with a non-nuclear Ukraine? One can make the argument that we’re in fact closer to a nuclear exchange with Russia now than we were then.

There are several lessons learned here that need to thought through, and that would take far more space than I have today. But, briefly:

First, strategic decisions all come with great costs; if a government - ours or any others - makes a strategic decision and hasn’t spent a good deal of time thinking about the implications before signing at the bottom of the page, then they are truly negligent. 

Did anyone in 1994 ask what forces would be needed, stationed where, trained how, if we were to actually protect Ukraine from Russia? Did anyone ask what the consequences of that action might be? Did anyone really war game out the possible responses Russia might make and whether those responses might move us closer to a nuclear exchange? Did anyone try to game out the problem over the following 30 to 50 years? Might they have said that the variables are too great, so the risk is, potentially, equally great?

Concerning “security assurances” and “security guarantees,” the simple truth was, and is, that, aside from a desire to honor a commitment, the US has no interests - besides the strictly humanitarian, in Ukraine. The development of natural resources may provide an interest. 

In fact, humanitarian interests are valid national interests as are economic interests and political stability, etc. But there are massive humanitarian problems elsewhere - the Congo. What is needed is to step back and look at what it is that we are trying to do.

Strategies - plans - are nothing more than the use of assets - whatever they may be - in a particular way in order to reach a certain goal.

Looked at that way, trust in the word of the US can be both an asset and a goal, depending on the situation.

And in every situation we should force ourselves to ask how much any given goal is worth. Some goals will be worth fighting to the death, others not so. It is essential that we understand what we are willing to pay to reach a certain goal.

It is again worth remember thing that in 1945 we did not continue to press eastward through Germany to liberate Poland - for whom the war began. Instead, we left Poland under the very iron thumb of the Soviet army. And so they would remain for another 4 decades.

The decision of the administration on 2014 to do essentially nothing when Russia occupied Crimea - whatever the lawyers at the State Department might have said, unraveled US assurances. 

When the President, in the months prior to the start of the full scale invasion in 2022 seemed to shrug off a war “if it was a minor incursion,” what was left of the US  assurance was erased.

Over the next 33 months the White House then attempted to remain on both sides of the fence, essentially endorsing Ukraine to engage in a war of attrition with a country more than 4 times its size, but at the same time failing to provide the tremendous resources that would be necessary to defeat Russia while engaged in such a war. 

These all seemed like good ideas to some folks in the respective administrations. In fact, these represented “strategic mistakes.” By the summer of 2023 Ukraine’s situation had devolved to a war it could not win without truly massive investments, investments that far outstrip the capability of the country and its allies - to include the US, without a sustained, several year long effort. 

Which leaves Ukraine in a spot with few options. It also leaves the US in a spot with few options. The US and NATO have made multiple strategic errors with regard to Ukraine over the past 30 years; they and we are now paying for these mistakes.

We have also made, over the course of the last 50 years, a series of mistakes with regard to our nuclear umbrella and our credibility. This may well be a more serious strategic mistake. 

I’ve no answers because I don’t know what the US interests really are - apart from the preamble to the Constitution - and I don’t know what the American people are willing to “pay” to secure those interests. That’s a debate that Congress and the White House need to take up. But I leave you with this:

"We have no eternal allies, and we have not perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow” - 3rd Viscount Palmerston, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, 1855 - 1858, and 1859 - 1865.

Said differently, and often, by de Gaulle, “Countries have no friends, only interests.”