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The U.S. is struggling to find a lever to persuade Ukraine to give up the nuclear stockpile it inherited. A growing number of parliamentary deputies argue that Kiev should retain at least some of the 176 strategic missiles, 30 nuclear bombers and more than 1,600 warheads as a deterrent to any ultranationalist Russian government that might try to reimpose its rule on Ukraine. A more urgent fear is that Ukraine is close -- 12 to 18 months away -- to cracking the Russian computer codes that prevent Kiev from retargeting or firing the nuclear missiles itself. If the Ukrainians succeed, they will gain operational control of the world's third largest stockpile of nuclear weapons. Moscow has not explicitly told the U.S. that it might attack Ukraine to prevent Kiev from obtaining control, but they have hinted at very high levels that this could happen. U.S. officials take these hints seriously.
Last week Defense Secretary Les Aspin proposed removing the nuclear warheads from the Ukraine missiles and placing them under international control; later they would be taken to Russia and dismantled, and Washington would purchase the fissile material inside. The U.S. Department of Energy has agreed to buy between $8 billion and $13 billion worth of the highly enriched uranium, which could net Ukraine a share reaching $2 billion. That might prove a powerful incentive for the cash-strapped country.
The West has even less leverage to prevent the further breakdown of administration all across the former Soviet Union that could lead to smuggling and illegal sales of some of the 27,000 nuclear warheads now under guard by various military units. "I do not believe the reports that one or more may have been sold already," says Harald Muller of the Hesse Institute for the Study of Peace and Conflict in Frankfurt. "But as discipline deteriorates we have to be afraid that the custodians will become ineffective."
Western officials have been worrying about nuclear proliferation for decades, but it took the Gulf War to focus everyone's attention. It startled the West to learn just how close Saddam Hussein had come to secretly acquiring an atomic arsenal. That made everyone realize the slow and massive military buildup to Operation Desert Storm would probably have been impossible if Iraq had had nuclear weapons, even mounted on inaccurate Scuds. And the high-tech efficiency of the victorious American forces telegraphed to all Third World countries that they should forget about tangling with the U.S. unless they had acquired nuclear weapons.
The problem, though, extends beyond nuclear to chemical and biological bombs and the means to deliver them to far-off targets. Ballistic missiles, with flight times of only a few minutes and an ability to penetrate most defenses, are the most psychologically destabilizing. High-performance jet aircraft can easily deliver nuclear, chemical or biological warheads. "Most countries have not yet equipped their delivery systems to carry weapons of mass destruction," said Robert Gates, former Director of Central Intelligence. But he warned that over the next decade many of them will do so if international controls fail.