Details about the agreement ...
Memorandum Language and Assurances: Binding or Not?
One of the valuable insights about the Budapest Memorandum’s security assurances that we gleaned from the event was that, as former U.S. diplomats explained,
Washington was simply not prepared in the early 1990s to accept a legally binding document with provisions akin to NATO’s Article 5. In contrast, Ukrainian officials had hoped for security guarantees, rather than mere assurances, and many of them have been deeply disappointed that the memorandum’s Western signatories have not done more to protect Ukraine, especially in the wake of Russia’s annexation of Crimea, according to the Ukrainian diplomats in attendance.
James Timbie, part of the State Department negotiating team who readied the memorandum for signing, remembers “vividly” that then-Secretary of State James Baker was “adamant” that the U.S. would not provide Ukraine with security guarantees—one of the three things Kyiv had wanted, along with assistance in dismantling its nuclear-weapons complex and compensation for the enriched uranium and plutonium on its territory. For the U.S., a top priority after the Soviet break-up was to have only one nuclear state succeed the USSR; Washington wouldn’t agree to a legally binding document on Ukraine’s security, Timbie said. What Baker did agree to eventually was to reaffirm earlier U.S. commitments made in documents like the
Helsinki Final Act, the U.N. Charter and the
Charter of Paris.
This is why, Timbie explained, the Budapest Memorandum says its signatories “reaffirm” various commitments and obligations, rather than agreeing to new ones. There was a lot of checking with lawyers on language, he added.
Steven Pifer, a former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine who also took part in the memorandum negotiations, expanded on Timbie’s point, highlighting that the document offers “assurances” not “guarantees”—a meaningful distinction in American legalese.
www.ifw-kiel.de
