What Strobe Talbott Won’t Tell the Senate Today: Insisting On A Nuclear-Free Ukraine Is Folly

(Washington, D.C.): This afternoon, Strobe Talbott — the Friend of Bill who is now U.S. Ambassador-at-large for aid to the former Soviet Union — is to testify before a Senate Foreign Relations subcommittee about the Clinton Administration’s efforts to induce Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons it inherited when the USSR collapsed. Amb. Talbott will reiterate the U.S. government’s idée fixe on the subject: Ukraine must become nuclear-free, the sooner, the better. While he may emphasize the United States’ recent change in tactics — from blunt coercion to more friendly, but no less insistent, pressure — the bottom line is unchanged.

The Center for Security Policy has long believed that it was inconsistent with America’s security interests in general and the goal of a stable, peaceful European continent to demand Ukraine’s nuclear disarmament. As the Center was denied an opportunity to present this position to Senator Biden’s subcommittee at today’s hearing, the powerful arguments in favor of a sea-change in U.S. policy toward a nuclear Ukraine may not be given due consideration.

In the interest of bringing such arguments forward, nonetheless, excerpts of an exceptionally important article from the Summer 1993 edition of Foreign Affairs magazine are attached herewith. This article, entitled "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent" by Dr. John F. Mearsheimer succinctly and thoughtfully challenges the assumptions underpinning the present U.S. policy toward Ukraine and offers an alternative approach with which the Center strongly agrees. In a nutshell, Dr. Mearsheimer’s view can be summarized by the following passage:

"The United States should have begun working immediately after the Soviet Union collapsed to quickly and smoothly make Ukraine a nuclear power. In fact, Washington rejected this approach and adopted the opposite policy, which remains firmly in place. Nevertheless, it is wrongheaded, and despite the sunk costs and the difficulty of reversing field in the policy world, the Clinton Administration should make a gradual but unmistakable about-face."

 

One World?

Interestingly, shortly after his appearance before the Committee, Amb. Talbott will receive the Norman Cousins Global Governance Award from the World Federalists Association. This award honors individuals who share the Association’s commitment to one-world government. Mr. Talbott’s commitment in this regard was on abundant display in an article entitled "The Birth of the Global Nation" which he wrote in his previous capacity as an editor at Time Magazine on 20 July 1992:

"…I’ll bet that within the next hundred years…nationhood will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century — ‘citizen of the world’ will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st."

 

The Center for Security Policy profoundly hopes that realism — rather than wishful thinking (like Amb. Talbott’s about world federalism) — will determine future U.S. policy toward Ukraine and its inherited nuclear arsenal. If so, the United States will endorse, rather than oppose, the retention of an effective Ukrainian nuclear deterrent in the context of a more balanced and visionary U.S. approach toward all the former Soviet states.