Mariana Budjeryn (CNSP) | Journal of Strategic Studies
April 28, 2026
ABSTRACT
By 1991, the USSR, one of the two Cold War nuclear superpowers, ceased to exist. Yet the resulting post-Cold War era did not fully reflect these tectonic shifts. The collapse of a nuclear state did not lead to nuclear proliferation to its successor states. Russia emerged as USSR’s only nuclear successor, preserved strategic parity with the United States, and took over Soviet international statuses under the Treaty on the Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) and in the UN Security Council. Why did such a major shift in geopolitical power result in such modest realignment in the international order? The article argues that part of the answer is in the existence of nuclear weapons and their continued preeminent role in the international system. Drawing on extensive archival research, the article looks at how the core institutions of the global nuclear order – the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the U.S.-Soviet arms control architecture – shaped the post-Cold War settlement in salient ways. The parameters of the global nuclear order, its terms, categories, and norms delineated the range of plausible and legitimate options, with which all Soviet nuclear inheritors had to contend and which also shaped U.S. policy response to the Soviet nuclear collapse.