About That Pesky Budapest Memorandum...

You know, I saw the buzz about the 1994 Budapest Memorandum a couple of days ago, at London's Daily Mail and especially at Telegraph UK, "Ukraine pleads for Britain and US to come to its rescue as Russia accused of 'invasion'":

Ukraine has called for Britain and the United States to intervene in its rapidly-escalating conflict, as the interior minister accuses Russian forces of staging an "armed invasion" in Crimea.

Deeply worried politicians inside Ukraine's parliament have pleaded with Britain and the United States to come to their rescue, after Russia was accused of launching a series of raids in the Crimea region.

The two Western powers signed an agreement with Ukraine in 1994, which Kiev's parliament wants enforcing now. The Budapest Memorandum, signed by Bill Clinton, John Major, Boris Yeltsin and Leonid Kuchma – the then-rulers of the USA, UK, Russia and Ukraine – promises to uphold the territorial integrity of Ukraine, in return for Ukraine giving up its nuclear weapons.

Article one reads: "The United States of America, the Russian Federation, and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, reaffirm their commitment to Ukraine ... to respect the Independence and Sovereignty and the existing borders of Ukraine."

And Kiev is now claiming that their country's borders are not being respected.

Oleksandr Turchynov, the interim president, also told agitated MPs on Friday morning that he was convening the country's security and defence chiefs for an emergency meeting over the unfolding crisis.

Arsen Avakov, who was named interior minister on Thursday, said that the international airport in Sebastopol had been blocked by Russian forces. Sebastopol has for the past 230 years been home to Russia's Black Sea fleet – a key strategic hub for Moscow, as ships and submarines based there are just north of Turkey and can reach the Mediterranean to influence the Middle East and the Balkans.

Mr Avakov said Russia's actions amounted to "a military invasion and occupation".

He wrote on Facebook: "It is a direct provocation of armed bloodshed in the territory of a sovereign State."

And now? Well, the key thing there is how Ukraine gave up its nukes for a Western security guarantee. It's not a difficult answer to consider what would be more valuable today. Putin understands raw power.

Back in the summer of 1993 Professor of Political Science John Mearsheimer (yes that John Mearsheimer) argued that Ukraine should keep its nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against Russian power and likely revanchism. See, "The Case for a Ukrainian Nuclear Deterrent":

Ukraine cannot defend itself against a nuclear-armed Russia with conventional weapons, and no state, including the United States, is going to extend to it a meaningful security guarantee. Ukrainian nuclear weapons are the only reliable deterrent to Russian aggression. If the U.S. aim is to enhance stability in Europe, the case against a nuclear-armed Ukraine is unpersuasive.

Well, it's interesting to see how the simple logic of political realism seems so compelling today. But back then, shortly after the end of the cold war, the demobilization mindset of Western elites was much too powerful for the cold calculations of realpolitik‎.

I think Mearsheimer's a pretty vile individual, actually. But there's something to be said for the parsimony and predictive power of the realist paradigm from which he develops his theoretical expectations.