Republics Want Their Share From ‘Union’ : Treaties: Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan are willing to become non-nuclear, but we must offer security guarantees.

Arms-control experts in Washington will tell you that we have to take advantage of this window of opportunity to get Russia and the three other nuclear republics, Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan, to ratify the recent nuclear treaties. They say we must promptly codify these historic gains at the negotiating table, in case there is a counterrevolution in Russia and hard-line forces return to power.

The United States has banked everything on this worst-case assumption. However, there is no guarantee that any hard-line Russian government would honor an arms-control agreement signed by Boris Yeltsin and his liberal forces. Indeed, if hard-liners were to come to power, they might do so as a reaction precisely to what they call “Yeltsin’s one-sided concessions” in the START II Treaty.

The real issue is whether the haste and the pressure the United States has applied have further destabilized the regional situation. The treaty, widely interpreted in Russia as inequitable, could undermine Yeltsin’s support before a crucial referendum in April. Similarly counterproductive could be the excessive pressure applied on the newly born states, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine, to quickly become non-nuclear. To achieve such a seemingly noble goal, the United States, without reference to political realities in these republics, threatened to cut off economic assistance if they don’t immediately ratify the START I and Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaties.

Perhaps moderate/conservative opposition in Russia to the treaty was inevitable. But alienating the three nuclear non-Russian republics wasn’t. This has been the result of heavy-handed U.S. diplomacy, as well as our ignorance or indifference to the larger legal issues at stake.

Ukraine and the other nuclear republics see the nuclear weapons question from a completely different perspective than we do. One of the major problems concerns “ownership.” It is precisely over this issue that the last meeting of the Commonwealth of Independent States Nuclear Policy Planning Committee failed to reach agreement. Deep divisions on this point spring from a larger disagreement over the split of former Soviet assets. The United States has, without question, supported the notion that Russia is the sole legal successor to the weapons. But the non-Russian republics argue that such an interpretation dismisses the fact that nuclear weapons were built, housed and paid for with non-Russian participation and the help of non-Russian taxpayers. This is even without considering the role of the Kazakh test site near Semipalatinsk or the Ukrainian industry in producing SS-18 and SS-24 ICBMs.

Ukraine and the others worry that the United States’ support of Russia’s sole-inheritor concept helps give Russia a precedent to point to when it comes time to settle up the other former all-union assets such as embassy property, cultural treasures, technological facilities and even, maybe, military and territorial holdings.

The United States, in its hurry to ratify these treaties, has taken sides in what amounts to a messy divorce. We have effectively backed one spouse, Russia, who has claimed most of the family’s valuable assets, while we have ignored the concerns of the other spouse, who sacrificed a great deal during the “marriage” and will be left with nothing but problems to show for the longstanding “union”. The Ukrainians in this analogy have simply said, with regard to U.S./Russian demands on these weapons, “I am not leaving the house until I have a proper separation agreement. Or at least until there is compensation for the assets I would be relinquishing.”

Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan have reiterated their willingness to become non-nuclear states, which is in itself a remarkable thing. Their declarations make them the first nuclear countries willing to voluntarily give up all claim to nuclear capability. But their deep misgivings about the unstable situation in neighboring Russia also prompts them to hold out for non-Russian security guarantees. These are legitimate concerns that should be respectfully considered.

President Clinton has the opportunity now to bring a different diplomatic approach to these questions, and unless he does, it is likely that U.S. relations with these three republics will deteriorate further. No stable or sound agreement can be reached by using coercion or threats. Nor is it in our interest to turn one-time friends into longtime adversaries.