Kassenova, Toghzan. “Kazakhstan’s Irreversible Disarmament”. Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament 7, no.1, 2024, 60-70. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/25751654.2024.2354951.
The author at the heart of this study highlights the exceptional nature — in several respects — of the nuclear disarmament process in post-Soviet Kazakhstan. Former UN advisor and specialist in disarmament issues, political science doctoral candidate Togzhan Kassenova sheds important light on the debates that began in 1991 regarding the future of the Soviet nuclear arsenal within the states emerging from the Balkanisation of the USSR. While the Kazakhstani case forms the core of her epistemological inquiry on nuclear policies, the author also examines other less-studied cases, such as Brazil.[1] Although a significant portion of the scholarly literature focuses on key cases such as Russia, Britain, the Soviet Union, the U.S., China and France, this article, especially if read against the backdrop of the war in Ukraine, explores less-known cases. Consequently, it can, in many respects, be understood as an extension of studies on the post-Soviet space and conflicts over military issues — which are of particular concern, among other things, to Russian-Baltic[2] relations — and nuclear matters, as exemplified by Ukraine. The paper focuses on the specificities of Kazakhstan’s disarmament process and furthermore, offers a thorough analysis of Central Asia’s geopolitical context and prompts reflection on the influence of external factors on internal decisions and vice versa. By asking: “What constitutes the irreversibility of nuclear disarmament of a given country?”[3] The author brings together assessments of the intertwining of domestic and foreign policy with the irreversibility of Astana’s break from its nuclear past, a legacy of the collapse of the USSR.
Framing irreversibility: Kazakhstan’s nuclear legacy
To begin with, Togzhan Kassenova draws a connection between Kazakhstan's nuclear disarmament and its limited financial resources at the time. Indeed, in the early days of its independence, Kazakhstan went through an economic haemorrhage, characterised by “the dismantling of traditional economic ties, the sharp decline in production across all sectors and branches of the economy, hyperinflation, and the erosion of household savings”[4], which played a significant part in denuclearisation. Furthermore, the well-being of citizens did not appear to be a priority subordinate to rearmament. To understand such dynamics, some ink deserves to be spilt on the theory highlighted by Graham Allison and Robert Jervis in international relations theory. The exclusive prominence of ethnic Russians among the personnel working within the nuclear infrastructure deprived the new elites in Astana of the knowledge necessary to manage the arsenal - willingly or not - inherited from the USSR. The first generation of policymakers did not, in fact, benefit from a truly Kazakh - or, more broadly, Kazakhstani[5] - technostructure to assess the potential of local facilities. Thus, Kazakhstan’s denuclearisation cannot be fully understood as the outcome of a single man’s decision. unitary rational actor model alone. It emerged rather from bureaucratic bargaining, elite socialisation, and strategic perception among post-Soviet political establishment, military actors and foreign interlocutors.[6] In Allisonian terms, denuclearisation resulted from organisational routines within a newly independent state apparatus; in Jervisian terms, it reflected perceptions of vulnerability, expectations of external guarantees, and the internalisation of non-proliferation norms. This group-centred perspective helps explain why nuclear inheritance was framed less as a strategic asset than as a political and economic burden.
Environmental Trauma and Social Rejection
The reader’s attention should also be drawn to the environmental concerns. Just as Fyodor Dostoevsky was wolfed by his inner demons in Semipalatinsk, the populations exposed to radiation from the same nuclear test site were confronted with a more tangible form of suffering, such as chronic illness, environmental devastation and a durable mistrust of nuclear technology, later reinforced by the broader Soviet nuclear trauma crystallised by the Chernobyl disaster which occurred in 1986. This legacy continues to fuel civil society resistance to any prospect of renewed nuclearisation. The author also highlights the growing burden that ecological and health concerns have come to represent for several countries in the 20th century. Thus, during the détente, before and after 1991, environmentalism became a gateway to a certain degree of politicisation, as illustrated by the emergence of the first global environmental concerns, including in France’s trajectory within that same détente.[7]
The interdependence between internal and external circumstances becomes immediately apparent. In an effort to secure all the essential elements for preserving the statehood of a (re)emerging state,[8] a hasty military buildup driven by the desire to “become a nuclear power”[9] would only serve to tarnish Kazakhstan’s nascent nation branding on the international stage. Readers should now situate this debate in the early days of the Second Nuclear Age, with an emphasis on the dividends of peace and détente. Furthermore, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) was signed in 1968 and remained the flagship of this peaceful de-escalation, while the concerted fight against horizontal and vertical proliferation was at its peak and yielding its best results everywhere. Consequently, by assessing relations with neighbouring countries as well as those with the international community, such a policy would, in a domino effect, have led to a darkening of the détente. These dynamics were tentatively taking shape in relations between nuclear-weapon states (NWS) which, ergo labelled as incompatible military nuclear power with Kazakhstan’s new identity,[10] thereby relegating to secondary importance the quest for power that a reborn state may be justified in pursuing. In addition, the author discusses the immediate diplomatic opening-up that resulted from the dismantling of the local nuclear ecosystem. Common to many other Soviet contexts, institutional discrimination against non-Russians made the knowledge necessary to properly dismantle the infrastructure and stockpiled arsenal inaccessible, hence allowing the reader to understand how essential external factors, such as foreign aid, proved essential in achieving denuclearisation and in developing some initial diplomatic relations in the strict sense. In fact, while the richly described bilateral cooperation with Washington commenced in 1995, Moscow’s inclusion established, mutatis mutandis, a triumvirate, as scientists from the recently concluded Soviet era possessed comprehensive expertise regarding the former Soviet infrastructure emerging in Kazakhstan. Moreover, while there is a tendency to downplay their role in today’s Russia, the author offers an analysis that is also illuminating for understanding the influence that Cartesian minds - of which every technostructure is composed - may have had on shaping this aspect of Russian foreign policy. More particularly, “in persuading their government that it was in Russia’s interests to return to the site and help with securing the remaining vulnerable material”[11], even as Russia itself was struggling to recover from a galloping economic downturn.
By explaining the crucial role of foreign nuclear expertise, the author helps one understand the indispensable nature of nuclear power in establishing new relations with the former colonial power and once-hated enemy. The plethora of details the author provides on Washington’s very direct involvement remains a key factor that gives this article its unique value. While the denuclearisation of the former Soviet republics may appear to some readers as an exclusively Russian endeavour, the author demonstrates that it is carried out with American participation, thereby getting rid of blinders of a casual observer might have perceived in the Russian-American agreements on this subject. The reader then might come to question the value of the START agreements by grasping their complexity, while also understanding their multilevel implementation, which extends beyond mere Russian-American meetings.
Finally, the stages described in the account of the dismantling provide the reader with additional factual knowledge about Central Asia’s geography. The reader forms a mental map of the military-nuclear facilities in a region that may be geographically unfamiliar, while also noting the scattered distribution of sites between the shores of the Caspian Sea and the steppes of the eastern regions. Cities such as Ust-Kamenogorsk, Aktau, Kurchatov, and Almaty are now added to the reader’s prior geographical knowledge, while making them aware of the vastness of Kazakhstan’s territory: it is indeed surprising to learn that the area designated for nuclear testing was roughly the size of present-day Belgium (sic).[12]
The Three Pillars of Denuclearisation
All in all, to shed light on the complexity of Kazakhstan’s nuclear situation, the author breaks down the irreversible nature of its denuclearisation into four dimensions. First, a highly material aspect involving the transfer of some 600kg of depleted uranium from the Ulba site to the U.S. to prevent dangerous diversions as part of the secret Sapphire project, marking the transformation of a former ideological antagonism into a pragmatic partnership.[13] Second, the logistical aspect revolves around the dismantling of the infrastructure ecosystem to neutralise a former testing site and prevent any temptation to revive it.[14] A third and latter dimension, legal results in an institutional lock on the transfer of the entire arsenal to the Russian Federation to seal the complete alienation of Kazakhstan’s position and an identity-based dimension aimed at dispelling any attribution of pariah status.[15] Finally, after examining the reasons behind Kazakhstan’s abandonment of its military nuclear program, the author cautions against confusing this denuclearisation process with the country’s civilian nuclear ambitions. Toghzan Kassenova devotes a section of her article to programs that are free of military components. In her view, Astana’s determination to move up the value chain by relying on foreign entities for enrichment is decisive; this curbs any military ambitions in favour of economic growth, while highlighting another aspect of the irreversibility of Kazakhstan’s nuclear abandonment: the relinquishment of nuclear status is therefore not a matter of a meticulously weighed discretionary choice but rather a geopolitical imperative.
These final remarks make it clear that the irreversibility accepted within Kazakhstan’s corridors of power revolves instead around a choice of civilian specialisation embedded in a doctrine of non-proliferation.
A Critical Assessment
Despite its brevity, this article presents several limitations that would have strengthened its contribution. From a formal standpoint, the accessibility to readers less accustomed to nuclear literature would have benefited from more extensive introductory notes explaining certain abbreviations, as might have been the case for the acronym for highly enriched uranium (HEU). Substantively, readers might have appreciated more information on the economic projects benefiting from the development of the civilian nuclear sector — one might ask, for instance, whether the energy generated by Kazakhstan's new infrastructure supports an agricultural sector still considered underdeveloped in 2022. More critically, these few pages fail to address the long-term geopolitical implications of the transfer of nuclear weapons of post-Soviet denuclearisation, a topic whose treatment would not have resulted in unpleasant verbosity but would, on the contrary, have provided the readership with essential epistemological reference points. This would have required the author to draw more deeply from her well of knowledge to produce a comprehensive overview encompassing the first governments of independent Belarus and Ukraine. Finally, the indirect insights Togzhan Kassenova offers into group dynamics would have warranted a closer look at the internal discourse within Kazakhstan's first interministerial cabinets, thereby helping understand whether there were any tensions surrounding such a complex and delicate decision-making process.
Conclusion
The significance of the Kazakhstani case highlights a shift in the issue, where guarantees based solely on declarations are eroded in the face of more tangible guarantees worthy of the name. Such a strategy was also intended to prevent nuclear weapons from falling, among other things, into the hands of local parastatal or terroristic groups that could use them to threaten regional and international security. This article offers a useful introduction to the topic and invites readers to turn to the author's more comprehensive study, Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb, to satisfy their curiosity and dispel any doubts that may remain after reading this condensed overview. Togzhan Kassenova's work demonstrates that denuclearisation cannot be reduced to a mere agreement providing for the transfer of warheads. In this regard, a comparison with the Ukrainian would be pertinent : the transfer of Ukraine’s nuclear arsenal to the Russian Federation under the Budapest Memorandum has, in light of subsequent Russian aggression, revived scholars’ debates over the strategic costs of denuclearisation[16]. It is, potius, a far more complex issue. In this regard, the author makes a significant contribution that enriches and broadens the reflections of specialists in regional studies - whether Russian, Slavic, post-Soviet, or Central Asian -, in foreign policy and international relations to explore essential political and geographical contexts and, given the constraints of the current era, allows to grasp another facet of the controversies driving research on nuclear issues within the post-Soviet space, even more so in light of new emerging geopolitical reconfigurations.