JOHNSON: How would you describe current perceptions of Russia in Washington, a country that used to be our enemy and we had great hopes for and now a little uncertain exactly what's going on?

CIRINCIONE: Well, I think you have three basic views of Russia from Washington.  One is that it's a challenge to be handled with deft diplomacy and negotiations.  The other is that it's a threat to be feared, a resurgent Russia, either a new communist or a new fascist government could come and launch new Russian aggression against Europe.  And, the third, and probably the dominant view is, who cares?  They don't think about Russia, they're not worried about Russia, they're not favorable or unfavorable. It just does, it's not a factor in their deliberations.

JOHNSON: And, is this a reasonable view of Russia?  What kinds of dangers may be looming there for us that we're not paying attention to?

CIRINCIONE: Well, I mean, the who cares view may be the most dangerous of all.  Because, you can't ignore Russia.  You can't pretend that this country doesn't exist. You can't try to, think of it as isolated on the fringes of international diplomacy, or pretend that it isn't still the world's largest warehouse of nuclear weapons, materials, and expertise. Whatever crisis Russia is in is a crisis that affects the entire globe.

JOHNSON: Your view is that there is a significant issue of potential lose nuclear weapons or lose control over nuclear materials in Russia?

CIRINCIONE: There's always been an issue of lose nukes in the states, the former Soviet Union. And, it's intensified since the financial and political crisis of August, 1998. What worries many of us is that the traditional elements of control, guns and guards, over these nuclear materials, are weakening as the guards are not being paid.  As they may be, in some cases, selling their guns to buy food or using their guns for other purposes.  We have documented cases of guns deserting their posts around nuclear facilities to go scavenging for food.

We know that some of the electronic devices that the US has painstakingly deployed to secure some of these nuclear facilities, to bring them up to US standards, are not being used, not for lack of desire, but for lack of electricity. When the electricity gets cut off in a city, these nuclear electronic safeguards don't work anymore.  That's the kind of crisis we're in.  We're watching, potentially, the de-evolution of a nuclear state, something that the world has never seen before, and that could have catastrophic consequences.  You can't ignore something like this. 

JOHNSON: The US has been spending some funds to help in this area.  Have these programs been working out, and sort of what future improvements in American programs seem to be appropriate and being pursued?

CIRINCIONE: The US spends about $450 million a year on programs that are loosely called the Cooperative Threat Reduction programs in the Department of Defense, the State Department, and the Department of Energy. By and large, these have been very successful programs, and most independent analyses have indicated that these programs are working, they are helping to lock up the material, they are finding jobs for scientists and technicians, even if it's make-work jobs. They are destroying the nuclear delivery vehicles that carry these warheads.  These things are making concrete contributions to our national security. 

There are problems. There are problems with any defense program. There are problems with any program where you're dealing with a corrupt government, and that's what we're dealing with here.  You are going to have waste, you are going to have fraud. The question is: is it going to be good corruption or bad corruption?  That is, after you pay the bribe, after you pay the waste, do you still get something for it, or do you get absolutely nothing for it? 

Those are the kinds of problems we have to deal with when we're trying to deal with a collapsing country, a country where central authorities are loser than they've ever been in this century.  It is a real, real, challenge, and I think one that we're not spending enough attention on or devoting enough resources to.  We have no idea how long the window of opportunity is open for us to deal with this problem.  How long do we have to help Russia destroy or lock up its materials, to employ its scientists, before the crisis just files out of control, and there's hell to pay.

JOHNSON: The Washington Post had a headline about the problems of the early warning system in Russia.  What's the general shape of that issue?

CIRINCIONE: The early warning system is, like the other defense systems in Russia, collapsing.  It is deteriorating from wear and tear. Weapons don't last forever. Satellites don't last forever.  In this case, the satellites are literally falling out of the sky as they come to the end of their operational life, and the Russians do not have enough money to launch new satellites.  So, holes are opening up in their early warning satellites.  The satellites that would tell them, would warn them, of a missile launch from a potentially hostile nation. 

In addition, the collapse of the Soviet Union meant that some of the radars that used to be in the Soviet Union are now in independent countries, like Latvia, which has insisted that Russia dismantle its radar. They don't want it there. 

There are environmental hazards associated with radar facilities. These nations are shutting down the radar systems.  Russia has no alternative. So, holes are opening up in that way, as well.  And, finally, there are infrastructural problems within the existing facilities, adequate electricity, repair of the computer systems, a loss of technical hell from technicians who are not being paid. In some cases, we know of facilities that have been scavenged for their copper wire to be sold on the black market. This is a dangerous situation that is likely to get worse. 

JOHNSON: And, the consequences could potentially be what?

CIRINCIONE: Well, the consequences of poor early warning is that Russia may launch a nuclear missile in response to what may or may not be a US attack.  The situation is this:  Right now, both nations maintain, both the US and -- sorry, let me start over again on that.  Stumbled over on that. 

The consequences are what?  Both the United States and Russia maintain a high percentage of their nuclear missiles on a high alert, ready to launch on warning, in case of a nuclear attack.  The problem is, with the degradation of Russia's early warning system, Russian decision makers, its military commanders, may feel that they have as little as five or six minutes to decide whether a blip on the radar screen really is an attack or not and whether they want to launch their missile.  In that kind of compressed timeframe, your, the possibility for accidents, for mis-interpretation, for launch on error, rise to a really unacceptable level.  I mean, that's why many people are saying it's time to take these missiles off their air trigger alert, bring them down to a state where you can use them, but only hours after hours or days of preparation to avoid that kind of error or accident.

JOHNSON: Incidentally, I guess there's going to be a Front Line program.  Is it later this week?

CIRINCIONE: Tonight.

JOHNSON: Oh, it's tonight.  The Russian ____ program.  Oh, okay, I have to see that.  What's your candid assessment of the prospects of the Congress being receptive to funding the programs that are needed here?

CIRINCIONE: Last year, the programs, Nunn-Lugar programs, Cooperative Threat Reduction programs, received a resounding Congressional voice of approval. They got almost full funding, the entire administration request. However, there are key elements of Republican leadership that have always been opposed to these programs.  They see it as aid, as aid to a potential enemy, and have nothing to do with legitimate defense interests. So, they seek to take these programs out of defense, to cut the funds, and move them over to the State Department where in fact they'd be more vulnerable to cuts. 

As the problems in Russia increase, problems with the program are likely to get more and more attention and may be used by opponents of the program to curtail these programs. I think it's going to be a rocky year for cooperative threat reduction.  I would expect there to be some attacks on the program, some efforts from leading Republicans to eliminate the programs altogether. 

The alternative that many people put up are programs like missile defense, that shouldn't be seen in juxtaposition to one another, but they often are.  Why aid Russia when we could be using that money to help build up US technological defenses against any possible accidental launch. 

JOHNSON: I think you mentioned some of the components of perhaps an accelerated cooperative threat reduction program with Russia, some of the things we should be doing, what would be the main things that we should be pursuing if we wanted to sort of cope more adequately with the crisis?

CIRINCIONE: We could easily double or triple the funds that we're devoting to this program.  One good example, the Russians are willing to sell us a good part of their stockpile of highly enriched uranium. It's delayed only by the US reluctance to buy enough per year of that bomb material.  We could accelerate the purchases of highly enriched uranium, store it in the United States, blend it down here.  We could be moving much more quickly to help the Russians destroy the systems that they're scheduled to destroy, and they're only delayed by lack of funds from destroying. I'm talking about submarines, bombers, and missiles scheduled for destruction.

The Russians have agreed to do it, they don't have sufficient funds to actually do the destruction.  We could help there.  There are storage facilities that we've been building.  There's a facility at Myac, for example. It's supposed to be a joint US-Russian venture. We've put up our half. It's under construction.  But, the Russians don't have their half anymore. We should be paying for their half.  The reality is, at this point, if we want cooperative threat reduction, the US is going to have to write the bill.  That's okay, in my book.  This is directly in our interests. Remember, we're getting a chance to walk in a former hostile country and destroy the very weapons that we spent decades fearing and billions of dollars defending against.  This is a golden opportunity. We should grab it. It is cheap at this price.

JOHNSON: I think that covers the issue.

Interviewer 2:  Do you want to say anything about that ___ report about the nuclear cities --

JOHNSON: Yeah, two things.  Uh, Start 2 treaty still languishes, probably unlikely to be ratified.  Where should we be going in this sort of arms control negotiation climate?   What's the next step here?

CIRINCIONE: The Start II treaty is really a tragic, tragic story.  George Bush signed this treaty in January 1993, one of the last acts as President, signed it with Mikal Gorbachev.  And, it languished first in the US Senate when the Clinton administration took its sweet time about ratifying it, and then it languished in the Duma as one political or budgetary crisis after another derailed it.  We almost had it signed in December, 1998, and then the US bombed Iraq, and the Duma, in spite, pulled the treaty from its docket.  It was back on the docket in January when Secretary of Cohen announced a national missile defense plan.  Again, it's delayed. 

I would say that Start II is dead.  I think it's very unlikely that we're going to sign the Start, the Duma's going to ratify the Start II treaty. I think we very well may be seeing the end of this historic period of negotiated strategic arms reductions. And, in some ways, maybe it should pass.  I mean, what is Russia now?  Is it an adversary that we have to negotiate with, or is it more like a France or Britain that has a certain level of missile forces that it determines are necessary for its national security, and we have our level that we determine are necessary. 

What's to stop us from reducing regardless of what Russia is doing?  Why can't we mutually, but independently, be reducing our nuclear forces down to a level that we think is what we need?  And, I would say many experts agree with me, I think, that we're talking about a thousand warheads deployed, several hundred warheads deployed. That is, ten years from now, we should be looking at warhead levels of all five nuclear states of being roughly the same, a few hundred warheads each.  We could do that.  We could move that way. 

What's the likelihood that we've move that way? What's the likelihood that we'll get the kind of political leadership? I would say that arms reduction policy is a hostage of domestic political politics. President Clinton has been very reluctant to take the kind of bold leadership that President Bush took in 1991 when he unilaterally withdrew tactical nuclear weapons from most of Europe, when he unilaterally disarmed the Army of nuclear weapons and then took all nuclear weapons off Navy surface ships.  There was no treaty for that, there was no negotiations for that.  Bush just did it.  There was no opposition to that.  But, President Clinton has not shown that kind of vision or leadership, and he's unlikely to in the build-up to the 2000 election.

I would say our arms control and non-proliferation policies now are in a state of deep paralysis.  And, I would not expect, as much as I'd like to see it, any breakthrough in this front until after the presidential elections of 2000.  And, it pains me to say that, but I think that's the reality.

JOHNSON: You've had quite a bit of contact with Russians on these security issues.  How would you characterize what they're bringing to this, what they're hoping for, what their attitude is towards the US in kind of solving these issues?  What are they, what's their kind of perception of what we're doing?

CIRINCIONE: Well, I think, there are two sort of basic Russian reactions.  One of them continues to be hopeful, that there will be a break, that we can work this out, there can be a new grand bargain or a grand partnership.  It's not too late. 

And, the other reaction, I would say, the dominant reaction, is deeply suspicious.  They look at the United States and they say what are they up to, why are they doing this?  Why do they maintain giant stockpiles of nuclear weapons?  They know that our Russian stockpiles are declining. We can't afford to keep these anymore. And, yet they keep theirs high.  Why are they now talking about a missile defense shield?  What's up with this?

They say it's about North Korea, but don't they know that it affects our nuclear deterrent.  Why are they proliferating cruise missiles? Don't they know that NATO conventional forces with these precision guided munitions can knock out about seventy percent of the Russian strategic forces.  What is going on here? 

And, the most deeply suspicious of that, the more nationalist Russians, believe that there really is a plot.  First, the US took apart the Warsaw pact.  Then it helped dis-assemble the Soviet Union.  And, now it's coming after mother Russia. And, you see that, you hear it, you read it. There are people who really believe that there's a western plot to crush Russia. 

That kind of mistrust permeates the dialogue at this point and drowns out the more hopeful voices.  It's a deep, deep problem.  And, the kind of attention that the United States administration is devoting to it isn't sufficient to overcome that mis-trust.  All we want them to do is agree to this or that change in a treaty that we negotiated with them in years past, and now we want altered for our own reasons, for our own purposes.  It's not a good situation.

JOHNSON: Are we fated to have new Cold War then, with this sort of dynamic?

CIRINCIONE: Well, I wish it was as organized as a new Cold War. I mean, I think we're in a period of profound nuclear uncertainty.  It's not the nuclear uncertainty of the seventies or eighties where the fate of the earth was at state, where we might fear a massive Soviet thermonuclear exchange with the United States.  It's nuclear uncertainty of where are these missiles going to go to?  When is this material going to leak to Iraq or Iran?  When are Russian scientists going to start popping up in warmer climates?  When is there going to be an accident, either an explosion in the Soviet Union or an accidental launch? I mean, that's the kind of nuclear uncertainty we're faced it. It will be a nuclear incident or a series of nuclear incidents that will have tremendous catastrophic consequences, but be, you know, affecting a city or a region rather than the Earth as a whole.  Let me think if there's anything else I think about this.

JOHNSON: Right. 

CIRINCIONE: You know, just one other thought that I have, if you don't mind.  You know, I think one of the reasons the national missile defense issue has taken off again is it really promises to be a technological fix to this nuclear uncertainty. I mean, it really is the epitome of American technological hope, that we can fix this problem technologically.  We can find a shield that can protect us, when the reality is we have tens of thousands of warheads out there in Russia, thousands of tons of fissile material, tens of thousands of scientists, and it's like grabbing at jello. It is really hard to get a fix on that, we and we're not sure we know how to do it, and so this technological fix becomes even more attractive, you know.  It's an illusion, it's a fool's game, but it's an illusion that the Congress, at least, and the now the administration seems to be buying into, at our peril.

JOHNSON: Okay. 

CIRINCIONE: ____ report?

JOHNSON: I, there's this major new program of helping Russian scientists in the former closed cities.  There's been some effort to help Russian scientists, and now we have some controversy about the effectiveness of this program.  I think you already indicated that there's some inevitability of problems. These programs to help Russian scientists, basically a plus, I assume.

CIRINCIONE: Yes, this is an excellent idea. You have ten closed cities in Russia, nuclear cities, where scientists and technicians for, literally, generations, have built and perfected nuclear weapons, have the expertise in their head, and have the fissile material, the bomb making material, close at hand.  The unemployment rate in Russia is estimated to be about twenty percent.  Inside the nuclear cities, it's estimated to be sixty percent.  Many of these technicians and scientists haven't bee paid in months and may never get paid.  And, when they start to believe that they're never going to get paid, they're going to move.  They're going to have to go someplace else. And, that's what you want to prevent. And, that's why these job programs are so important. You want to give these scientists and their families some hope that they stay in Russia, that there might be a future for them. 

And, these programs began at a time when we hoped that the work could become commercially viable, that we could start off a silicon valley type of operation. Some people talk about this.  A silicon Siberia. Because many of these cities are located there.  And, of course, there's computer technology, many of the same sort of skills that spawned the prosperity around Route 128 and silicon valley are there in these cities. 

Unfortunately, the collapse of August 1998 has dashed any near-term investment hopes.  And, so many of the jobs that started off as sort of prime the pump jobs are running out of steam, and we face the question of whether we continue to try to do this, which I think we should.  Let's just keep these people doing something, for God's sake. Or, whether we should pull the plug, as some advocate. 

The problem's compounded by the archaic laws and regulations of Russia itself that taxes foreign aid, for example.  That makes it difficult for businesses to get into the closed cities.  That is very suspicious of western penetration of its markets.  It's a very complicated situation.  And, the people that are trying to implement this should be applauded. I mean, these are people on the front lines on the battle to stop the spread of weapons on mass destruction. We should be rushing reinforcements to this front line, not pulling the plug on these programs.

JOHNSON: ____ statement that most of the aid goes to Americans? You know, this is characteristic of all these aid programs and --

CIRINCIONE: The Congress insisted on it. They're the ones who insisted on it. 

JOHNSON: Absolutely, right, so, I wouldn't be surprised if --

CIRINCIONE: -- we're shocked.

JOHNSON: No, no. I wouldn't be surprised if more Russians are actually getting money out of this one than out of most of them.  Because, almost all the aid programs are for the employment of consultants and American companies and American products and, you know, it's across the board like that.  US News had a very good article about this in Russia a couple of years ago. I mean, you know, apart from the military security thing, it's even more the case that we're funding Americans in our aid programs.  So, it's --

CIRINCIONE: No, that's what the Marshall plan did.  You know, we had the Marshall plan, we had to buy American.  We put in lots of food, lots of equipment over there, it was all American.

JOHNSON: ___ the __ taxes, so why not tax ___.

CIRINCIONE: You know, it is scandalous, what was the figure in the GAO report, about thirty-seven percent, thirty-seven cents on the dollar actually gets down to a Russian scientist.  Well, that is a problem.  I mean, that is a problem.  We do have to work on that.  We do have to try and correct it.  And, you know, people like Ken Luongo have been hitting at the Russians from the beginning. They have to change these laws, that we can't do business this way.  You know, beyond me why we haven't done it.