Kazakhstan and the Nuclear Ban Treaty: It’s Complicated

The Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the first legally binding international document that establishes a universal and comprehensive ban on nuclear weapons, was adopted in July 2017 with the support of 122 (out of 193) UN member states and opened for signature in September 2017. To enter into force, the treaty requires ratification by 50 states. To date, 79 states have signed and 33 have ratified the document.

Proponents of the TPNW regard it as a historic achievement that would lead toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons. At the same time, five de jure and four de facto nuclear-weapon states stand opposed to the treaty, as do the so-called umbrella states that rely on extended nuclear deterrence for protection, including such prominent advocates of nuclear disarmament as Australia, Canada, Japan, and Norway. Opponents of the treaty argue that it is unrealistic and undermines the long-standing nuclear nonproliferation regime. Some also claim that by delegitimizing nuclear deterrence, the TPNW would erode its credibility and push nuclear-reliant countries to acquire nuclear weapons of their own.

Kazakhstan, a country that once possessed nuclear weapons and voluntarily renounced them, signed the treaty in March 2018 and deposited the ratification instrument with the UN Secretariat in August 2019. To emphasize both the importance and symbolism of the event, the ceremony took place on August 29, the International Day against Nuclear Tests, which was officially commemorated for the 10th time this year. It was on that day in 1949 that the first Soviet atomic bomb was tested on Kazakh soil, at the Semipalatinsk nuclear test site; and on that day in 1991 Kazakhstan’s then-President Nursultan Nazarbayev signed the decree closing the test site. Thus, for Kazakhstan, approving the nuclear ban treaty was a natural choice; for the treaty’s adherents Kazakhstan’s participation serves to strengthen the validity of the TPNW. 

However, Kazakhstan’s commitment to banning nuclear weapons has been questioned by some who assert that its indirect involvement in nuclear weapon-related activities invalidates the nuclear ban treaty. This line of argument is based on two interrelated premises: First, Kazakhstan, as a member of the Moscow-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), relies on the Russian nuclear deterrent; second, by allowing its nuclear-armed ally, Russia, to carry out missile defense testing on its territory, Kazakhstan violates certain provisions of the TPNW.

Are these charges legitimate?

Kazakhstan is hailed by the international community as an unfailing leader in nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation efforts. When the Soviet Union disbanded in December 1991, Kazakhstan was in possession of the world’s fourth-largest nuclear weapons arsenal. Overnight, Kazakhstan inadvertently joined the world’s “nuclear club,” along with Belarus and Ukraine. The nuclear forces stationed on the country’s territory included 104 SS-18 intercontinental ballistic missiles armed with 1,040 nuclear warheads and 40 Tu-95M long range strategic bombers equipped with 320 air-launched cruise missiles, in addition to considerable nuclear weapons testing infrastructure.

After gaining independence, Kazakhstan found itself in a complicated geopolitical environment, surrounded by nuclear-armed neighbors, and was wary of possible territorial claims and separatist movements. Therefore, for a brief period of time, the country considered retaining the nuclear arsenal as a deterrent against potential security threats. Newly independent Kazakhstan balanced between an immediate renouncement of nuclear weapons and a nuclear club membership, even putting forward the concept of a “temporary nuclear state.”

However, under enormous pressure from major powers, especially the United States and Russia, the Kazakh leadership clearly understood that a refusal to give up nuclear weapons would make Kazakhstan a pariah state and lead to international sanctions or even intervention.

While nominally Kazakhstan had a decision-making role regarding the use of the nuclear weapons stationed on its territory in accordance with the agreements establishing the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) as part of the CIS joint strategic command, in reality operational control of the weapons was always in Russian hands. In addition, Kazakhstan lacked funds and qualified local personnel to maintain its nuclear weapons arsenal. According to Nazarbayev, he was secretly approached at the time by some Arab states urging him to keep nuclear weapons and become the “first Islamic nuclear state,” but he chose to reject their generous financial propositions.

The Kazakh leadership’s eventual decision to go non-nuclear was also influenced by strong domestic anti-nuclear sentiment in Kazakhstan, led by the Nevada-Semey mass movement that formed in 1989. A total of 456 Soviet atmospheric and underground nuclear-weapon tests conducted at the Semipalatinsk site caused enormous damage to human health and the environment. According to Kazakh authorities, some 1.6 million people in and around Semipalatinsk are estimated to have been affected by the radiation released during the 40 years of nuclear testing, but the exact number of people exposed to radiation is still unclear. The local population continues to suffer from the apparent lasting harmful impact of those tests as medical reports indicate higher rates of infant mortality, birth defects, and all types of cancer than in other parts of the country.

Consequently, Kazakhstan agreed to rid its territory of all nuclear weapons and acceded to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as a non-nuclear weapon state in February 1994. By May 1995, Kazakhstan repatriated all nuclear warheads to Russia for dismantlement. The nuclear weapon testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk was eliminated by July 2000. The renunciation of nuclear weapons by Kazakhstan was not, however, an altruistic exercise in pacifism. While committing to disarmament, Kazakhstan succeeded in obtaining assurances of its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity from all official nuclear powers. Mindful of its status as one of the Soviet Union’s successor states that contributed to its nuclear might, as well as of the need to address the devastating consequences of Soviet nuclear tests, the Kazakh leadership also pushed hard to receive compensation for the highly enriched uranium contained in the nuclear warheads, as well as for the strategic bombers and cruise missiles.

Equally important was the fact that in exchange for disarmament Kazakhstan received much-needed large-scale foreign investment, primarily from the United States, as well as financial and technical assistance to help remove the nuclear weapons and dismantle military nuclear facilities, under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. According to current U.S. Ambassador to Kazakhstan William Moser, the United States spent over $840 million in the country on nuclear nonproliferation issues. One of the more thrilling episodes of that history was Project Sapphire, a covert 1994 U.S.-Kazakh operation to remove about 600 kg of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium from the Ulba Metallurgical Plant to the United States.

At present, it has become a commonplace suggestion that Kazakhstan’s disarmament experience may be applied as a possible model for efforts to denuclearize North Korea. In fact, given the differing contexts and conditions of the two countries’ nuclear dilemmas, Kazakhstan’s experience cannot serve as directly applicable practical guidance for North Korea’s denuclearization, although it may offer some useful lessons on how to achieve an acceptable trade-off between nuclear disarmament and desirable security, political, economic, and other rewards. Using its de facto nuclear-weapon state status as a bargaining chip, Kazakhstan tried to maximize its strategic gains and, for the most part, managed to succeed.

In the years that followed, Kazakhstan has made a number of important practical contributions to global efforts to build a world free of nuclear weapons. These include joint work with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency to reduce a potentially significant proliferation risk presented by the former Semipalatinsk test site; the establishment, jointly with other regional states, of a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central Asia; the launch of the Atom Project to facilitate the entry into force of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty; the hosting of the IAEA low enriched uranium bank; contribution to the multilateral negotiation process on Iran’s nuclear program; and a number of other important initiatives.

Nazarbayev has played a key role in making nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament an indispensable part of Kazakhstan’s national discourse and a central theme in the country’s foreign policy. In his words, nuclear disarmament has become the core of Kazakhstan’s statehood and national idea. It was Nazarbayev who put forward the somewhat paradoxical slogan “From National Tragedy to National Pride,” referring to the fact that Kazakhstan, despite its tragic nuclear legacy, managed to gain international recognition as a responsible member of the global community through its proactive anti-nuclear efforts. Kazakhstan was also able to use the nuclear infrastructure inherited from the Soviet Union to develop its national nuclear industry and become the world’s leading uranium producer. Although there were some controversial proposals by Nazarbayev that raised eyebrows within the nonproliferation community, such as backing up the “asymmetric” NPT with a new universal treaty on comprehensive horizontal and vertical nonproliferation of nuclear weapons, or legitimizing the new format of the “nuclear club” by including de facto nuclear weapons states, overall, his personal contribution to the cause of achieving a nuclear weapon-free world is widely recognized. While criticized in other regards for his authoritarian rule, in the realm of nuclear nonproliferation and disarmament Kazakhstan’s former president will be remembered as a progressive leader.

Given all the above, there was no other alternative for Kazakhstan than to support the nuclear ban treaty, even though no other post-Soviet country has followed suit. Part of the criticism regarding Kazakhstan’s supposedly insufficient commitment to the TPNW is not new, but it fails to take into account the geopolitical realities. The transfer of nuclear weapons to Russia did not mean that Kazakhstan’s security links with its northern neighbor ceased to exist. On the contrary, Kazakhstan has remained closely integrated with Russia in political, military, and economic terms via a set of mutual arrangements and a network of regional organizations, including the CSTO.

It is worth noting that the collective security link, which is now used to doubt Kazakhstan’s nonproliferation and disarmament credentials, was evoked earlier, when the Central Asian nuclear weapon-free zone (CANWFZ) was created. Initially, out of the Nuclear Five only Russia and China expressed support for the Treaty of Semipalatinsk establishing the zone, while the three other nuclear powers (the United States, the United Kingdom, and France) expressed disagreement with some provisions of the document and refused to sign the protocol on negative security assurances to the treaty.

The main objection of the three nuclear powers was related to Article 12 of the treaty, stipulating that it does not affect the rights and obligations of the parties under other international treaties that they may have concluded prior to the date of entry into force of the CANWFZ treaty. According to Western diplomats, such wording gave Russia an opportunity to bypass the restrictions of the nuclear weapon-free zone through the application of the 1992 Collective Security Treaty (the Treaty of Tashkent), to which most of the Central Asian states are parties, along with Russia. Under Article 4 of the Treaty of Tashkent, aggression against any participant of the treaty would be considered as aggression against all of its state parties. In this case, the CSTO allies undertake to promptly provide the attacked country with necessary assistance through military and other available means in exercise of their right to collective defense. Thus, in the opinion of the three nuclear powers noted above, apart from implying extended nuclear deterrence, Article 12 of the Treaty of Semipalatinsk could be interpreted as enabling Russia to deploy its nuclear weapons on the territory of CANWFZ members that are part of the CSTO, including Kazakhstan. This claim was also substantiated by the text of the Russian military doctrine, which can be interpreted to suggest that Moscow’s nuclear umbrella is extended to its allies. Eventually, however, the Central Asian countries and the nuclear weapon states managed to reconcile their differences, and all five nuclear powers signed the protocol in May 2014. Most likely, it was the Russian annexation of Crimea that served as a catalyst for the process, as the three Western nuclear powers considered it a direct violation of the Budapest Memorandum that provided security guarantees to Ukraine, as well as Belarus and Kazakhstan.

At the same time, while refraining from official statements on the matter, Kazakh diplomats always insisted during the CANWFZ negotiations and at other relevant international venues that Kazakhstan was not reliant on Russia’s nuclear umbrella and would refrain from any action that would undermine the spirit and letter of the Treaty of Semipalatinsk. Based on the second paragraph of Article 12, which effectively denies any pre-existing right to permit the deployment of nuclear weapons on the CANWFZ territory by stating that the parties “shall take all necessary measures for effective implementation of the purposes and objectives” of the treaty, they emphasize that Kazakhstan’s principled position is based on the primacy of its international nonproliferation and disarmament obligations.

The second complaint raised in connection with Kazakhstan’s accession to the TPNW is Russia’s anti-ballistic missile defense testing on Kazakh territory. Before independence, apart from the nuclear test site, Kazakhstan was home to a number of major Soviet test ranges that played a significant role in the Soviet Union’s military programs, such as the Baikonur space launch facility and the Sary Shagan site used for flight testing of ballistic missiles and air defense systems. After the breakup of the Soviet Union, the Kazakh government signed bilateral agreements with Russia to lease some of those sites, including Sary Shagan and the Kazakh part of Russia’s Kapustin Yar. While Kazakhstan has benefited economically from leasing these sites, it seems that it did not have much choice at the time. Given geographic, historic, demographic, cultural, economic, and other factors, there was no alternative for Kazakhstan beyond maintaining close or even allied relations with Russia. Therefore, in its post-independence policy toward Russia, Kazakhstan has always tried to emphasize common interests and avoid conflicts.

Russian missile tests usually involve launching ballistic missiles from the Russian part of Kapustin Yar that target missile defense installations located at Sary Shagan in Kazakhstan. Arguing that the site is used to test not only interceptors, but also new nuclear-capable missiles and nuclear warheads, critics maintain that Kazakhstan’s hosting of Russian missile tests at Sary Shagan is not in compliance with the TPNW’s Article 1.1 (e), which stipulates a prohibition on assisting any activity prohibited under the treaty. Some also argue that Kazakhstan’s indirect involvement in Russia’s missile testing activities through the test ranges located on its territory contributes to Moscow’s nuclear deterrent, thereby violating the TPNW’s Article 4 (2) that requires “each State Party that owns, possesses or controls nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices” to immediately remove them from operational status and destroy them as soon as possible, “including the elimination or irreversible conversion of all nuclear weapons-related facilities.” Based on these claims, they assert that to comply with the TPNW stipulations Kazakhstan has to stop Russian missile testing at its test sites.

In response to these accusations, Kazakhstan may refer to the fact that under its lease agreement, the profile of Sary Shagan is clearly stated as an anti-ballistic missile test range. Any violation of the agreement’s scope is the sole responsibility of Russia, and Kazakhstan cannot be accused of wittingly disregarding the TPNW’s Article 1.1 (e) prohibition and assisting Russia’s nuclear-weapon activities. As for Article 4 (2), that provision of the TPNW is not related to Kazakhstan as it explicitly refers to state parties that have nuclear weapons.

More importantly, the treaty has yet to enter into force, given that only 33 of the necessary 50 signatories have ratified the document. To accuse Kazakhstan of not complying with the still inactive treaty is a preemptive stretch, if not a blunder. Once the TPNW is in force, state parties will have to clarify at their technical implementation meetings the scope of the treaty, including what constitutes “assisting nuclear weapon activities” and whether hosting facilities such as Sary Shagan runs counter to the treaty provisions.

One may have the impression that the criticism of Kazakhstan at this early juncture comes from parties that remain outside of the TPNW to justify their idle position regarding the treaty.

Notwithstanding the above considerations, it is quite likely that Kazakhstan, in the end, will welcome the idea of closing all testing sites on its territory. In recent years, in response to frequent incidents with Proton-type Russian space rockets launched from Baikonur and stray missiles fired from Kapustin Yar, Kazakh civil activists and prominent public figures have protested on several occasions against the continued use of the country’s territory by Russia for space exploration and military purposes, as well as against leasing new lands to foreign interests. While protesters are mainly concerned about the contamination of territories by highly toxic rocket fuels, they also connect the issue with Kazakhstan’s sovereignty and national interests. Partially in response to these concerns, Kazakh authorities have renegotiated some lease agreements with Russia to return unused lands from amid the military test ranges back to Kazakhstan. In this context, it could be popular protests, as with the Nevada-Semey movement, and not the TPNW noncompliance charges brought against Kazakhstan, that would effectively cease the missile testing at Sary Shagan.