Kazakhstan’s Irreversible Disarmament

ABSTRACT

Kazakhstan presents an interesting and important real-life case of disarmament irreversibility. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Kazakhstan inherited the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world – more than a thousand nuclear warheads, dozens of heavy bombers, and more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles. The legal status of the Soviet weapons left in Kazakhstan was not formalized until March of 1994 when, under Kazakhstan-Russia agreements, the weapons were identified as the property of the Russian Federation temporarily located in Kazakhstan. In addition to weapons and delivery systems, Kazakhstan fully controlled tons of nuclear material and nuclear facilities, including the former Soviet nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk. Kazakhstan made a strategic decision to give up not only Soviet nuclear weapons but also nuclear material and weapons-related infrastructure. At the same time, Kazakhstan has been keen on developing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes: it is the world’s largest uranium producer, continues to advance its nuclear fuel cycle capability (except for uranium enrichment and fuel reprocessing), and plans to introduce nuclear power. Kazakhstan’s case lends itself well to an examination: What constitutes the irreversibility of nuclear disarmament of a given country? Why does the international community have confidence in Kazakhstan’s non-nuclear weapons credentials despite its advanced nuclear sector and a lack of detailed records on the Soviet nuclear inheritance?

KEYWORDS:

• Kazakhstan
• disarmament
• denuclearization

Introduction

Kazakhstan presents an interesting and important real-life case of disarmament irreversibility. When the Soviet Union collapsed, Kazakhstan inherited the fourth largest nuclear arsenal in the world – more than a thousand nuclear warheads, dozens of heavy bombers, and more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles. The legal status of the Soviet weapons left in Kazakhstan was not formalized until March of 1994 when, under Kazakhstan-Russia agreements, the weapons were identified as the property of the Russian Federation temporarily located in Kazakhstan. In addition to weapons and delivery systems, Kazakhstan fully controlled tons of nuclear material and nuclear facilities, including the former Soviet nuclear testing site at Semipalatinsk. Kazakhstan made a strategic decision to give up not only Soviet nuclear weapons but also nuclear material and weapons-related infrastructure. At the same time, Kazakhstan has been keen on developing nuclear technology for peaceful purposes: it is the world’s largest uranium producer, continues to advance its nuclear fuel cycle capability (except for uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing), and plans to introduce nuclear power. Kazakhstan’s case lends itself well to an examination: What constitutes the irreversibility of nuclear disarmament of a given country? Why does the international community have confidence in Kazakhstan’s non-nuclear weapons credentials despite its advanced nuclear sector and a lack of detailed records on the Soviet nuclear inheritance?

This paper starts by describing how Kazakhstan was integrated into the Soviet nuclear weapons complex. It then examines Kazakhstan’s decision to proceed with irreversible disarmament and describes the aspects of the implementation of that decision that emphasize irreversibility. The paper then reviews Kazakhstan’s policy of pursuing peaceful nuclear energy and explains why Kazakhstan’s ambitions in the civilian nuclear field do not raise proliferation suspicions.

Kazakhstan as Part of the Soviet Nuclear Weapons Complex

In order to examine how Kazakhstan’s approach to irreversible disarmament developed, we need to understand its unique position as part of the Soviet nuclear weapons complex. Kazakhstan played an integral part in the Soviet nuclear weapons complex. In 1947–1949, the Soviet military built sprawling nuclear testing in the eastern part of Kazakhstan near the major city of Semipalatinsk. Over the next forty years, the Soviet military conducted more than 450 nuclear tests at the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Testing Site. The Soviet government conducted nuclear tests in an atmosphere of secrecy and complete disregard for the local population with tragic consequences. Within a few years after the start of the Soviet nuclear experiments in Kazakhstan, locals in the villages, towns, and cities in Eastern Kazakhstan began suffering from serious health and mental issues: cancers, stillbirths, deformed newborns, and suicides.

Kazakhstan’s abundant uranium resources were used to produce nuclear fuel. To process uranium and produce other sensitive material, such as beryllium and tantalum, the Soviet government built a large nuclear facility in Ust-Kamenogorsk, known as the Ulba Metallurgical Plant. A fast-breeder reactor on the Caspian Lake’s shore in Shevchenko (later renamed Aktau) fulfilled multiple purposes, from breeding plutonium to desalinizing water and producing electricity for the town. Kazakhstan hosted several nuclear research facilities and research reactors. It was also the site of the anti-missile testing ground Sary-Shagan and the space launching pad Baikonur. A substantial part of the Soviet nuclear arsenal was in Kazakhstan: intercontinental ballistic missiles, heavy bombers, and strategic nuclear warheads.

Because Kazakhstan played such an important part in the Soviet nuclear weapons complex, it found itself with a significant nuclear inheritance when the Soviet Union came undone in December of 1991. The most consequential components of that inheritance included more than a thousand nuclear warheads, more than a hundred intercontinental ballistic missiles, forty heavy bombers, tons of nuclear material, a nuclear testing site the size of Belgium, and several nuclear facilities.

Under legal provisions guiding the dissolution of the Soviet Union, property present on the territory of each Soviet republic at the time of collapse was the property of the republic. The legal status of Soviet nuclear weapons present in Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine was unclear, except for one fact: they could not be automatically defined as “Russian”. In fact, the legal status of Soviet nuclear weapons on Kazakhstan’s territory would become official only in March of 1994 (more on that later). At the same time, while the Soviet weapons could not be automatically considered Russian, in practice, Kazakhstan did not have physical control of the weapons. Moscow-controlled military continued to operate and guard the sites with nuclear weapons. Kazakhstan’s leadership did not have access to command and control of Soviet nuclear weapons, could not launch the weapons, and could not prevent them from being launched from its sovereign territory. There were practically no ethnic Kazakhs who served in the Soviet strategic rocket forces thanks to the Soviet institutionalized discrimination. Still, the fate of those weapons could not be decided without Kazakhstan.

The status of nuclear facilities and nuclear material was straightforward – they were under Kazakhstan’s control. In that sense, Kazakhstan’s decisions on the fate of nuclear material and nuclear infrastructure were equally, if not more, consequential for the future of the global nuclear nonproliferation regime and the irreversibility of Kazakhstan’s disarmament. If Kazakhstan’s leadership decided to pursue an indigenous latent nuclear capability, it had a solid foundation. In the process of producing a nuclear weapon, the production of nuclear material is the most technologically challenging part of the process. Kazakhstan possessed tons of nuclear material.

Irreversibility and the Kazakh Decision to Disarm

Policy advisors to Kazakhstan’s leadership evaluated three scenarios for Kazakhstan’s nuclear future post-independence: keeping the nuclear weapons; joint Kazakhstan-Russia or Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) control over weapons; and nuclear-free Kazakhstan.¹ While not immediately, still rather quickly after gaining independence, Kazakhstan’s leadership made a strategic decision to pursue a non-nuclear path.

A combination of security, economic, political, and diplomatic factors pushed Kazakhstan decisively and irreversibly toward a non-nuclear direction. Kazakhstan faced serious security risks, most notable among them were concerns about its immediate neighbors – two nuclear powers, Russia and China. Russian nationalist politicians refused to accept the reality – Kazakhstan, like all other newly independent states of the former Soviet Union, was a sovereign state. They aggressively pushed the narrative that parts of Kazakhstan, especially its northern part with a large ethnic Russian population, belonged to Russia. With China, Kazakhstan inherited Sino-Soviet border disputes. The presence of powerful neighbors next door increased Kazakhstan’s perception of vulnerability. In the assessment of the Kazakh leaders, nuclear weapons would not help Kazakhstan feel more secure. On the opposite, as Oumirserik Kassenov, a foreign policy advisor to the leadership of Kazakhstan, argued: “If drawn into a nuclear conflict of any sort, Kazakhstan faces a greater risk of being turned into ashes, being a nuclear state, than if it remains a non-nuclear one. There is absolutely no point in bringing the nuclear weapons into play even with purely defensive intentions in mind” (O. Kassenov 1992a, 1992b).

On the economic front, Kazakhstan faced even more immediate challenges. Kazakhstan’s economy collapsed after the disintegration of the Soviet Union. All intra-republic economic ties and supply chains were disrupted. Kazakhstan quite literally did not have any money in its coffers. To survive as a state, Kazakhstan had to start developing its rich natural resources as soon as possible, and for that, it needed access to foreign direct investment, foreign technology, and international markets. Kazakh decision-makers understood well that trying to “go nuclear” would preclude access to everything a new country needed to preserve its statehood.

Political factors aligned for a non-nuclear choice as well. Domestic groups that could promote a nuclear path were either weak or non-existent. Nationalist movements, relatively small in size, attempted to call on Kazakhstan to keep nuclear weapons, but they had limited political power and only negligible impact on the political discourse. Kazakh decision-makers understood too well that attempting to get physical control over the Soviet nuclear weapons was a non-starter. Other potentially pro-nuclear interest groups, such as the nuclear sector or military, simply did not exist in early 1992 when key deliberations on the fate of nuclear inheritance took place. Above all, it was the tragic experience with the Soviet nuclear tests that left both the government and the society deeply allergic to the concept of nuclear weapons.

The first sign of Kazakhstan’s anti-nuclear stance and reclaiming the agency over nuclear matters manifested when the Kazakh public and leaders pushed for the cessation of nuclear tests on its land in the late 1980s when Kazakhstan was still part of the Soviet Union. In 1989, a combination of social and political factors led to the birth of Kazakhstan’s massive anti-nuclear movement. At the level of the Soviet government, the arrival of a more reform-oriented Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, led to an opening for political dissent. Meanwhile, in Kazakhstan, a search for national identity resurged after Moscow’s decades of suppression of Kazakh culture and language. The final drop came in February of 1989. After one of the run-of-the-mill underground nuclear tests, radioactive contamination spread far beyond the testing grounds.

In the conditions of greater political freedom, the information became available to Semipalatinsk local authorities and Kazakhstan’s government. Kazakhstan’s famous writer and a member of the Soviet legislature, Olzhas Suleimenov, used the information to galvanize the people of Kazakhstan to protest Soviet nuclear tests. The anti-nuclear movement named Nevada-Semipalatinsk, to symbolize the global nature of the struggle against nuclear tests, rallied millions of people in Kazakhstan. Thousands participated in protests. International peace activities came to Kazakhstan to participate in international anti-nuclear rallies.

For two years, Kazakhstan’s anti-nuclear movement and government fought to stop Soviet nuclear tests on Kazakhstan’s territory. Finally, on 29 August 1991, 42 years to the day from the day of the first Soviet atomic test, Kazakhstan’s president signed the decree shutting down the Semipalatinsk Nuclear Testing Site. A few months later, the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight, and Kazakhstan faced a different type of nuclear dilemma. Kazakhstan viewed the Soviet collapse as an opportunity to reclaim the agency and decide what kind of country it wanted to become. Kazakhstan could enter the world on its own terms, and its identity and place in the world were no longer subject to rulers in Moscow. Kazakhstan wanted to be a respected new member of the international community.

Reclaiming agency, including on nuclear matters, was important for Kazakhstan’s re-emerging national identity. The hierarchy of ethnicities in the structure of the Soviet Union placed Russia and ethnic Russians at the top, with other Soviet republics and ethnicities in secondary positions. That hierarchy manifested itself even in the Soviet nuclear complex. Even if Soviet strategic nuclear forces were stationed in Kazakhstan, ethnic Kazakhs did not serve in the Soviet strategic rocket forces. Rank-and-file Kazakh soldiers served at the Semipalatinsk nuclear testing site in mundane support positions as part of their obligatory military service. Non-military nuclear facilities, like any other large industrial enterprises in the Soviet republics, as a rule, had ethnic Russians appointed as directors. This dynamic meant that, as mentioned earlier, there were almost no ethnic Kazakhs who directly dealt with Soviet nuclear weapons, and that fact fed into discussion of Kazakhstan’s nuclear options post-independence (Budjeryn and Kassenova 2020). While Kazakhstan’s resources were used and land abused for nuclear tests, Kazakhs did not have a say in nuclear decisions that directly affected their lives.

In addition to tangible technical and political drivers behind its non-nuclear choice, the intangible drivers were no less important. Kazakhstan’s decision-makers did not want their young country to be perceived as the “disruptor” of the international order. While Kazakh leadership saw the unfairness of the global nuclear order with its nuclear “haves” and “have nots”, it accepted the existing norms. If Kazakhstan were to go against the existing nonproliferation norm, it would destabilize an already fragile nonproliferation regime. There was a strong sense in Kazakhstan that it did not want to become a pariah state. Simply put, nuclear weapons did not fit Kazakhstan’s national identity.

With all the factors described above in mind, Kazakhstan made a strategic decision to give up a nuclear option. That decision applied not only to the Soviet nuclear weapons that had no military utility in Kazakhstan’s calculation and to which Kazakhstan did not have access but to the entire weapons infrastructure and nuclear material that Kazakhstan fully controlled. Kazakhstan’s decisions and actions on the infrastructure and material should be seen as a tangible confirmation of irreversible disarmament.

Aspects of Implementation That Emphasize Irreversibility

Once Kazakhstan made a strategic decision to irreversibly disarm, it was time for action. In implementing its decision to disarm, the Kazakh government built open and transparent international partnerships to ensure that denuclearization is achieved satisfactorily. This involved collaboration with both Russia and the United States. Once Kazakhstan dealt with the Soviet nuclear weapons legacy, it joined the Central Asian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone, committing itself to additional nonproliferation responsibilities, such as signing the IAEA Additional Protocol and prohibiting any activities related to nuclear weapons on its territory.

The Russian military removed Soviet nuclear weapons by 1995. The Russian military removed intercontinental ballistic missiles from Kazakhstan to Russia. It blew up missile silos to meet the required minimum on silo destruction under START provisions, leaving behind half-destroyed structures. Kazakhstan and the United States, with the help of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, worked to complete the full dismantlement of the missile silos (Harahan 2014, 200; O. T. Kassenov, Eleukenov, and Laumulin 1997, 196; Matzko 2000).

The largest and most consequential nuclear weapons-related facility in Kazakhstan was the Semipalatinsk Test Site. By the time of the Soviet dissolution in December of 1991, the Kazakh government banned the tests. Nonetheless, until 1993, well into Kazakhstan’s independence, the Russian military continued to exercise control over the testing site. Once Kazakhstan received full control of the site, it engaged international partners in the dismantlement of the weapons-related infrastructure, securing vulnerable nuclear material, and improving the radiological situation.

Kazakhstan’s government worried about two broad problems: radiological safety and nuclear security. The territory of the testing site, especially the area where the Soviet military conducted atmospheric nuclear tests, was contaminated. Once the Russian military abandoned the site, people and animals had easy access. In the severe economic crisis of the early 1990s, the former testing site, with all its abandoned equipment and infrastructure, appealed to locals for the promise of scrapped metal. Kazakh authorities rightly worried that people searching for metal could expose themselves to radiation. Local livestock roamed freely in search of grass to eat, creating potential health hazards for locals via contaminated meat and milk. The nuclear security concern stemmed from the realization that nuclear material remained at the former testing site as the result of nuclear experiments. Kazakh government didn’t want to become a source of nuclear material that could end up in a wanna-be nuclear state or with a terrorist organization. The international nonproliferation community shared Kazakhstan’s concern about nuclear security and, in addition, also worried that the weapon infrastructure at the Semipalatinsk Test Site could theoretically be used for testing again by Kazakhstan or Russia.

In 1993–1994, soon after the Russian military withdrew from the Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan welcomed the IAEA team, which conducted two preliminary radiological surveys (IAEA 1998, 1, 10). In November 1993, a joint team of Kazakh and US scientists conducted a radiological survey and shared their findings at a scientific conference in Kurchatov attended by scientists from Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States (Harahan 2014, 195).

In 1995, Kazakhstan and the United States signed an agreement “Concerning the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons Infrastructure”, yet another formal confirmation that Kazakhstan had no plans to preserve any infrastructure that could be useful for a latent nuclear program. Under the agreement, the United States committed to fund the sealing of tunnels and boreholes that were used for nuclear tests.

Over the next several years, Kazakh and US technical specialists worked together. In 1995–1996, specialists from Kazakhstan’s National Nuclear Center who received the custody of the Semipalatinsk Test Site surveyed the tunnels and boreholes and assessed their radioactive contamination. They discovered areas contaminated with radionuclides, including strontium-90, cesium-137 and plutonium (Nazarbayev et al. 2016, 39, 70).

Kazakhstan faced significant challenges. It lacked full information on what transpired at the Semipalatinsk Test Site during the Soviet period and what was left behind. Kazakhstan also lacked the technical expertise and financial resources. Kazakhstan built constructive relationships with two critical partners – Russia and the United States.

Kazakhstan relied on Russia for information about the testing site. That information trickled in gradually and to a large extent thanks to the role of scientists and technical experts. Russia was initially reluctant to get involved in any activities at the former testing site, partly out of concern that it would be held accountable for the negative impact of Soviet nuclear tests on Kazakhstan’s environment and people (Hecker 2016, 461–462). Russian scientists managed to play a positive role in persuading their government that it was in Russia’s interests to return to the site and help with securing the remaining vulnerable material. The nudge came from the conversations among the scientists and technical experts from Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States.

As it would transpire later, the Soviet military abandoned large containers with nuclear material from earlier nuclear experiments. One type of containers used for nuclear experiments was called Kolba in Russian [laboratory flask]. Kolbas were huge in size, with each Kolba weighing close to 30 tonnes. Determined non-state actors or state agents could appear at any point in search of nuclear material. In 1997, Kazakhstan signed an agreement with Russia On Kolbas.

For a while, Kazakhstan’s efforts to dismantle weapons infrastructure and secure nuclear material at the Semipalatinsk Test Site proceeded on parallel tracks – with the United States under the 1995 agreement and with Russia – under the 1997 agreement. Soon, those bilateral tracks merged into trilateral cooperation between Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States.

Over the next years, scientists and technical experts from three countries worked to seal all tunnels and boreholes used for nuclear tests. They also successfully secured several Kolbas. Cooperation on Kolbas was emblematic of trends identified above: difficulties Kazakhstan faced stemming from the lack of information and the positive role of scientists and technical experts in overcoming political and technical challenges. Kazakhstan’s authorities knew neither the number nor the location of Kolbas. Russia’s cooperation was key in obtaining this information. Russian scientists kept on persuading the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy to gradually release the information (Stepanyuk 2016, 495). At every step of the process, technical staff encountered unique difficulties – dealing with 30-tonne heavy containers (some underground) and filling them with a sand-cement mixture to secure any leftover nuclear material wasn’t easy. To the credit of the trilateral teams, they found ways to deal with each technical obstacle. The work on Kolbas was completed in 2005.

A similar process was used to secure a different type of containers – so-called end-boxes. Those were even less secure than Kolbas, containing almost 100 kilograms of plutonium. Like the work on Kolbas, Russia gradually released information thanks to Russian scientists, and trilateral teams worked diligently to secure end-boxes. As before, technical specialists had to work in challenging circumstances. For example, cutting through rock formations encased in ice (Nazarbayev et al. 2016, 170, 184).

In addition to the Semipalatinsk Test Site, Kazakhstan worked with international partners to secure or remove nuclear material from other locations. In a secret operation worthy of a Hollywood screen, Kazakhstan and the United States airlifted almost 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium from the Ulba Metallurgical Plant in Ust-Kamenogorsk to a secure location in the United States. Highly enriched uranium was part of more than 2 tonnes of fuel elements at Ulba from the Soviet submarine project. Kazakhstan’s government was keen to remove HEU as fast as possible as it didn’t want to become source material for a nuclear device of a third country or non-state actor (National Security Archive, 2014).

The Mangyshlak Atomic Energy Combine (MAEK) in Aktau, the Institute of Atomic Energy in Kurchatov, and the Institute of Nuclear Physics in Almaty all had varying degrees of nuclear material. At all facilities, Kazakhstan welcomed assistance with improving material accounting and control and material minimization efforts – downblending HEU to LEU or removing material altogether. For example, MAEK – a site of a shutdown fast breeder reactor BN-350 - stored spent fuel containing three tonnes of “ivory-grade” plutonium (plutonium in which the amount of less desirable isotopes is extremely low, making it attractive for weapon use). Kazakhstan worked with the United States to move spent fuel to a secure remote location at the Semipalatinsk Test Site (Monterey Institute of International Studies and the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1998, 38–42).

Denuclearization and Peaceful Nuclear Program

The concept of denuclearization should not be conflated with the abandonment of civil nuclear power plans. From the start, Kazakhstan’s government expressed interest in developing civilian nuclear infrastructure and eventually introducing nuclear power. Kazakhstan’s interest in peaceful nuclear technology was among the motivating factors for carrying out denuclearization in a transparent way. Kazakhstan’s government understood that good standing with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) was a prerequisite for access to peaceful nuclear technology.

The nuclear sector was in crisis in the early years of Kazakhstan’s independence. Soviet-period supply chains and production links collapsed. For example, Kazakhstan’s flagship nuclear fuel facility – the Ulba Metallurgical Plant – went from being one of the key suppliers of nuclear fuel elements during the Soviet period to insolvency in the early 1990s. The Ulba Metallurgical Plant and the rest of Kazakhstan’s civilian nuclear sector had an impressive turnaround. Kazakhstan became the world’s largest uranium producer. The state nuclear company KazAtomProm became a leading global nuclear market force.

Deliberate decisions on the civilian nuclear front add further confirmation of Kazakhstan’s priorities – it wants to have an advanced peaceful nuclear program, but it is not interested in a latent nuclear capability. Among the stages of a nuclear fuel cycle – uranium mining and milling, conversion, enrichment, production of fuel pellets, combining pellets into fuel assemblies, and spent fuel reprocessing – Kazakhstan inherited several stages from the Soviet nuclear program, including uranium mining and milling, conversion, and fuel pellet production.

While investing efforts into developing a more robust nuclear fuel cycle, Kazakhstan never expressed interest in sensitive technologies – uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing. Kazakhstan secured access to enrichment services by participating in a Russia-Kazakhstan joint venture, Uranium Enrichment Center JSC. Under the joint venture provisions, KazAtomProm has access to Russia’s uranium enrichment services in the amount of up to 2.5 million SWU (separative work unit – a measure of the effort required to separate isotopes of uranium (U₂₃₅ and U₂₃₈) during an enrichment process) per year until 2043 (KazAtomProm., n.d.). Kazakhstan calls this setup, which notably works for Kazakhstan and the global nonproliferation regime, “enrichment under a Kazakh flag”. In 2021, KazAtomProm began operating a fuel assembly plant (KazAtomProm 2021). Kazakhstan wants to increase its capacity to produce value product – fuel elements. In achieving this goal, it is driven by economic efficiency rather than a desire to have an indigenous full fuel cycle. Kazakhstan does not have plans to introduce spent fuel reprocessing technology.

Since the mid-1990s, Kazakhstan’s government has tried to introduce nuclear power. On that front, the views of the government and the nuclear sector on the one side and the general public on the other diverge. Kazakhstan’s government believes the country should add nuclear power to its energy mix for energy security reasons. The general population and civil society are opposed to nuclear power as a concept mainly because of the trauma inflicted by the Soviet nuclear testing program. In 2024, Kazakhstan appeared to be determined to build a nuclear power plant, although no decision had been made on the partner country to help with that.

Whether or not Kazakhstan’s government succeeds in introducing nuclear power domestically, its civilian nuclear program will not raise nonproliferation suspicions thanks to Kazakhstan’s deliberate disarmament and nonproliferation policy and decision to forego sensitive stages of the nuclear fuel cycle.

Conclusion

Kazakhstan made a strategic decision to irreversibly give up nuclear weapons, weapons infrastructure, and nuclear material. Fundamentally, attempts to enter the nuclear club were not commensurate with Kazakhstan’s strategic interests and national identity. Confidence in the irreversibility of Kazakhstan’s disarmament stems from several factors. Kazakhstan does not have visible drivers for a nuclear option. Kazakhstan’s actions on the weapons and infrastructure confirmed its strategic decision not to pursue a nuclear option and earned the country trust in the international arena. Despite unique complications, such as the lack of complete information on what transpired on its territory during the Soviet period, challenges with securing nuclear material at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and others, Kazakhstan found ways, in cooperation with international partners. Throughout the entire process and beyond, Kazakhstan maintained a policy of transparency and welcomed international presence at its facilities.

Kazakhstan faced informational, technical, financial, and political challenges as it navigated the denuclearization process. Kazakhstan’s government successfully built close cooperation with Russia and the United States, two partners it needed the most to deal with the nuclear legacy. Kazakhstan needed Russia to understand what was left at the Semipalatinsk Test Site, and it needed the United States’ support with technical and financial resources. Trilateral (Kazakhstan, Russia, and the United States) cooperation at the Semipalatinsk Test Site is an important lesson of cooperation on sensitive nuclear issues between a non-nuclear-weapon state and nuclear-weapon states.

The implementation of Kazakhstan’s strategic decision to eschew a nuclear path was possible thanks to a combination of factors. Kazakhstan balanced cooperation with the United States and Russia, two key partners. The international community, especially the United States, offered technical and financial assistance. Scientists, technical experts, and project managers from Kazakhstan, the United States, and Russia built trust, pushing their governments towards closer cooperation and finding solutions to intricate technical challenges.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Togzhan Kassenova

Togzhan Kassenova is a Washington, DC-based senior fellow with the Center for Policy Research (University at Albany). She is an expert on nuclear politics, WMD nonproliferation, and financial crime prevention. She currently works on issues related to proliferation financing controls, exploring ways to minimize access of proliferators to the global financial system. She holds a Ph.D. in Politics from the University of Leeds. From 2011 to 2015, she served on the UN Secretary General’s Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters. She is the author of award-winning Atomic Steppe: How Kazakhstan Gave Up the Bomb (2022), From Antagonism to Partnership: The Uneasy Path of the U.S.-Russian Cooperative Threat Reduction (2007), and Brazil’s Nuclear Kaleidoscope: An Evolving Identity (2014). Her latest publications include “Countering the Challenges of Proliferation Financing,” “Kazakhstan’s Nuclear History: Lessons for the Future of Disarmament,” and “Prospects for Nuclear Governance in Brazil.”

Notes

¹ For a discussion of pros and cons of each scenario, see Kassenova (2022, 141–144), Kassenov 1992a; 1992b).