Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar amendment, authorizing U.S. threat reduction assistance to the former Soviet Union, in Nov. 1991, after a failed coup in Moscow and the disintegration of the Soviet Union raised concerns about the safety and security of Soviet nuclear weapons. The annual program has grown from $400 million to over $1 billion/year across 3 agencies. It has also evolved from an emergency response to impending chaos in the Soviet Union, to a more comprehensive threat reduction and non-proliferation effort, to a broader program seeking to keep nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from leaking into the hands of rogue nations or terrorists. This report discusses issues related to U.S. non-proliferation and threat reduction assistance. Illus.

This Congressionally-mandated report identifies areas for further cooperation with Russia and other states of the former Soviet Union under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program of the Department of Defense in the specific area of prevention of proliferation of biological weapons. The report reviews relevant U.S. government programs, and particularly the CTR program, and identifies approaches for overcoming obstacles to cooperation and for increasing the long-term impact of the program. It recommends strong support for continuation of the CTR program.

The U.S. National Academies and the Russian Academy of Sciences convened a joint workshop to identify methods of overcoming impediments to cooperation between the United States and Russia on nonproliferation. The workshop emphasized approaches and techniques that have already been shown to work in U.S.-Russian programs and that might be applied in other areas. The workshop was intended to facilitate frank discussion between individuals in the United States and Russia who have some responsibility for cooperative nonproliferation programs in the hope of identifying both the impediments to cooperation and potential methods of addressing them. This report summarizes the discussions at the workshop.

Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar amendment, authorizing U.S. threat reduction assistance to the former Soviet Union, in November 1991, after a failed coup in Moscow and the disintegration of the Soviet Union raised concerns about the safety and security of Soviet nuclear weapons. The annual program has grown from $400 million in the DOD budget around $1.1 billion across three agencies DOD, DOE, and the State Department. It has also evolved from an emergency response to impending chaos in the Soviet Union, to a more comprehensive threat reduction and nonproliferation effort, to a broader program seeking to keep nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from leaking out of the former Soviet Union and into the hands of rogue nations or terrorist groups. The Department of Defense manages the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, which provides Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan with assistance in transporting, storing, and dismantling nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. U.S. assistance has helped these nations eliminate the delivery systems for nuclear weapons under the START I Treaty, secure weapons storage areas, construct a storage facility for nuclear materials removed from weapons, construct a destruction facility for chemical weapons, and secure biological weapons materials.

The government's first Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) programs were created in 1991 to eliminate the former Soviet Union's nuclear, chemical, and other weapons and prevent their proliferation. The programs have accomplished a great deal: deactivating thousands of nuclear warheads, neutralizing chemical weapons, converting weapons facilities for peaceful use, and redirecting the work of former weapons scientists and engineers, among other efforts. Originally designed to deal with immediate post-Cold War challenges, the programs must be expanded to other regions and fundamentally redesigned as an active tool of foreign policy that can address contemporary threats from groups that are that are agile, networked, and adaptable. As requested by Congress, Global Security Engagement proposes how this goal can best be achieved. To meet the magnitude of new security challenges, particularly at the nexus of weapons of mass destruction and terrorism, Global Security Engagement recommends a new, more flexible, and responsive model that will draw on a broader range of partners than current programs have. The White House, working across the Executive Branch and with Congress, must lead this effort.

Globalizing cooperative threat reduction : a survey of options / Sharon Squassoni -- Nunn-Lugar cooperative threat reduction programs / Amy F. Woolf -- Nuclear threat reduction measures for India and Pakistan / Sharon Squassoni -- Expanding threat reduction and nonproliferation programs / Amy F. Woolf