One of the lingering legacies of the Cold War was the enormous nuclear arsenals amassed by the two superpowers. When one of them, the Soviet Union, disintegrated in 1991, its nearly 30,000 nuclear weapons were located on the territory of not one but four newly sovereign states: Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Russian Federation, and Ukraine. Although command-and-control of Soviet strategic missiles was centralized in Moscow, the specter of the single largest wave of horizontal nuclear proliferation loomed after 1991. By 1994, however, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine had decided to join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) as non-nuclear weapons states and to give up the missiles on their soil. Drawing on previously untapped archival records, this article reconstructs the divergent paths of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine toward relinquishing their armaments. A combination of domestic and international political factors contributed to the resolution of the problem. Among the various contributing factors, the NPT stands out as a salient force that provided normative framing and guided deliberations on post-Soviet nuclear disarmament.

冷战挥之不去的遗产之一是两个超级大国积累的庞大核武库。当其中之一苏联于 1991 年解体时，其近 30,000 枚核武器位于不是一个而是四个新主权国家的领土上：白俄罗斯、哈萨克斯坦、俄罗斯联邦和乌克兰。尽管苏联战略导弹的指挥和控制集中在莫斯科，但 1991 年之后，单次最大水平核扩散浪潮的幽灵隐约可见。然而，到 1994 年，白俄罗斯、哈萨克斯坦和乌克兰已决定加入核不扩散条约。条约（NPT）作为非核武器国家并放弃在其领土上的导弹。本文借鉴以前未开发的档案记录，重构了白俄罗斯、哈萨克斯坦、和乌克兰放弃他们的军备。国内和国际政治因素的结合促成了问题的解决。在众多促成因素中，《不扩散核武器条约》作为一股突出的力量脱颖而出，为后苏联核裁军提供了规范框架和指导审议。