La controversa eredità del Memorandum di Budapest (5 dicembre 1994)

• Autores: Giorgio Cella
• Localización: Nuova rivista storica, ISSN 0029-6236, Vol. 104, Nº. 2, 2020, págs. 753-770
• Idioma: italiano
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • Throughout the Ukrainian crisis, since 2014, the international community witnessed multiple breaches of the liberal international Western-led order. One of the most blatant regarded an agreement signed by the parties involved in the conflict over two decades earlier in Budapest. The paper analyzes the nature, the content and the uchronic sides of the agreements signed in the Hungarian capital which have had substantial implications on the dynamics of the ongoing Ukrainian conflict as well as the evolution (involution?) of Kiev’s security. As a matter of fact, one of the first international agreements largely disregarded during the Ukrainian crisis was indeed the Budapest Memorandum. What was it about? It is commonly unknown that during three years since its independence, Ukraine was the third largest nuclear power in the world, holding approximately 4000 nuclear weapons.

    In 1994, at the edge of the Budapest Summit Conference on Security and Cooperation within European Countries, the three depositary states for the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (TNP) – namely the United States, the Russian Federation and Great Britain – agreed to (supposedly) guarantee for the security and territorial integrity of Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus in exchange for the surrender of their entire nuclear arsenals to the Russian Federation, sole heir to the Soviet Union.

    In view of the current military confrontation between Kiev and Moscow, the essay will look into how this decision taken more than twenty years ago, would have direct effects on one of the most relevant geopolitical crisis of the 21st century.