#3
Wall Street Journal
July 25, 2002
Take the Cuffs Off Nunn-Lugar
By Al Hunt

It was a typical hot July day in Washington, but the breakfast yesterday in a Pennsylvania Avenue office building was chilling.

Sen. Richard Lugar (R. Ind.) and former Sen. Sam Nunn discussed their recent trip to Russia and the worrisome state of dismantling weapons of mass destruction in our former Cold War adversary. The threats from Saddam Hussein's Iraq look like a picnic next to the lethal arsenal lying around in Russia, much of it anything but secure.

The situation would be graver if not for the Nunn-Lugar legislation passed right after the collapse of the Soviet Union. It resulted in the destruction of thousands of nuclear and biological/chemical facilities and employment for thousands of out-of-work scientists who would be a treasure trove for terrorists. The roughly $5 billion in Nunn-Lugar funds expended since 1992 may be the greatest international investment since the Marshall Plan.

But further progress is being stymied by congressionally imposed conditions that are relics of the Cold War and which have blocked funding of any new contracts this year to dismantle weapons of mass destruction. Skeptics want to require better Russian accounting of weapons -- they're no doubt dissembling sometimes, but as Sen. Lugar notes, much of the time, "they just don't know" -- and compliance with human-rights measures.

The fear that the Russians could surreptitiously use Nunn-Lugar funds duplicitously to re-arm is far-fetched. The country is broke. The current Russian defense budget, including pensions, is an estimated $8 billion. By contrast, the U.S. defense budget is about $380 billion.

But Sens. Lugar and Nunn warn that while the Russian threat has dissipated, the danger of millions of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons ending up in the wrong hands has not.

Mr. Nunn, the former Georgia Democrat who now runs the Nuclear Threat Initiative, points out that it would be very difficult, for example, if a terrorist's tactical weapon was detonated in an American or Russian city, to be able to quickly determine its origin. And Russian President Putin today probably has less time to respond to any perceived attack than his counterparts did during the Cold War.

Mr. Nunn also cites an intelligence report late last year that a 10-kiloton nuclear weapon had been smuggled into New York City. The report proved false, but he observed, "No one said it was impossible; no one said it was implausible, and no one said it couldn't have come from the Russian inventory."

The threats seem very real when you look at the video from the recent Nunn-Lugar trip to Russia , accompanied by Reps. Chris Shays and John Spratt. The visit to the huge Shchuchye chemical facility in Siberia is a nightmare itself.

The delegation tours a dimly lit building with rows of shelves which, if not for their dilapidated condition, would resemble a Sonoma Valley winery. But instead of cabernet, the shells hold the nerve-gas sarin. Each contains enough to kill 100,000 people and there are almost two million at the Shchuchye plant, one of seven in Russia . (Working every day, it'd take six years to destroy the chemicals).

It's not hard to imagine a disgruntled ex-scientist, bribed by al Qaeda, substituting a few dummy shells and pilfering the real things, which would fit in a briefcase. Security at the facility is not overwhelming. Yet in addition to the other conditions imposed on Nunn-Lugar aid, Congress has insisted that Russia offer a more realistic inventory of their chemical weapons. The Russians have acknowledged 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons, but critics say it's a lot more.

It may be. The old Soviet dictators violated treaties and produced horrific agents of death. Some of this is embarrassing for their successors to acknowledge and some of the detailed information probably simply isn't known. But the more important point, Sens. Nunn and Lugar stress, is not what bad guys did decades ago, but the best way to protect and get rid of this stuff now.

This is true with the Russian nuclear inventory, too. Mr. Nunn estimates that with U.S. and Russian efforts, about 40% of the Russian nuclear material is now secure. That's the good news. That means that 60%, he adds, is "not up to the safeguards we deem essential."

Sen. Lugar lists other areas that deserve attention: the need to secure biological pathogens in Russia , shutting down plutonium-producing facilities, dismantling non-strategic submarines that can carry missiles and making reactors safer.

And it's still imperative to help those many Russian scientists who possess crucial knowledge. An example: the only two internationally-sanctioned repositories of smallpox are the Center for Disease Control in America and VECTOR, the state research center for virology and biotechnology in Siberia. The Americans were told about an Iranian delegation that recently came to see Russian bioscientists at VECTOR in the hopes of getting access to biological agents. They were rebuffed . . . this time.

The Bush administration has been schizophrenic on Nunn-Lugar. It has pushed for a permanent waiver of the conditions but hasn't been willing to spend much political capital to achieve it. The president, with considerable fanfare, signed a treaty with the Russians on the strategic offensive reductions, but seemed genuinely surprised a few weeks ago when Dick Lugar told him that with the restrictions on U.S. assistance, it will be difficult to implement this treaty.

The U.S. recently got a commitment from the other major industrialized nations to kick in $10 billion over the next decade to dismantle nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, principally in Russia . But the U.S. must make sure this commitment is realized and that our role in this vital venture is enhanced.

The focus, Sam Nunn declares, must be on catastrophic weapons of mass destruction and there has to be a global cooperative coalition: "We can't do it alone."

GOOD START

Partial list of Russian weapons of mass destruction eliminated by Nunn-Lugar Warheads 5970
Intercontinental Ballistic Missles 464
ICBM Silos 432
Bombers 97
Nuclear Air-to-Sea Missles 483
Sub-Launched Ballistic Missles 396
SLBM Launchers 322
Nuclear Powered Ballistic Missle Subs 24

Source: Nuclear Threat Initative, July 2002

BACK TO THE TOP    #216 CONTENTS    NEXT ARTICLE