PAUL MANN: We're at one of those crucial divides in history, in the history of civilization, in which we can exploit a fantastic opportunity to change our relationship with Russia, actually to transform the relationship between the West and Russia.

JOSEPH CIRINCIONE: We're getting a chance to walk into 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.

TATIANA SHAKLEINA: Look at the map, I always say. Look at the map and we will see that Russia is still a huge country.

MR. CIRINCIONE: You can't ignore Russia. You can't pretend that this country doesn't exist 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.

ADM EUGENE CARROLL (USN, Ret.): Hello, I'm Admiral Eugene Carroll.

Our subject today is Russia. This huge country is in real trouble. Its economy is in shambles. Its military is destitute. Its future is uncertain. But Russia still has thousands of nuclear weapons. What, if anything, can the United States do to help Russia in order to make ourselves safer? Listen to some very thoughtful people propose solutions to Russia's nuclear crisis.

"NEWS of the DAY" ANNOUNCER: "Berlin under cold siege in the Cold War. US armored cars patrolling the American sector."

"DR. STRANGELOVE" (from the 1964 film): "Deterrence is the art of producing in the mind of the enemy the fear to attack."

PRESIDENT RONALD REAGAN: "We must continue to resist actions by the Soviet Union that threaten our freedom and vital interests."

PENTAGON VIDEO (1989): "The most striking feature of the Soviet military power today is the momentum of its modernization of offensive nuclear forces."

NARRATOR: For decades our attention was riveted on the Soviet Union. It was the focus of our fears and our military strategy. It was our all-consuming enemy. Today, with the Cold War over and the Soviet Union gone, we are no longer consumed with Russia.

ADM INTERVIEWER: Do you think much about Russia these days?

WOMAN-on-the-Street: No, I don't think much about Russia these days, honestly.

NARRATOR: Not only have average citizens lost interest in Russia, so has the American government.

MR. CIRINCIONE: The dominant view is, "Who cares?"

NARRATOR: Joseph Cirincione is director of the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

MR. CIRINCIONE: They don't think about Russia. They're not worried about Russia. They're not favorable or unfavorable. It's just not a factor in their deliberations.

NARRATOR: Paul Mann tracks developments in Russia as senior editor at Aviation Week & Space Technology magazine.

MR. MANN: Here in the United States there's a certain complacency induced by our peace and prosperity post-Cold War. And so, there seems to be a lack of consciousness about the jam that Russia is in.

NARRATOR: What kind of jam is Russia in? The Russian economy has collapsed. Living conditions for most Russians have deteriorated substantially. Millions of people have not been paid for months.

Economic, political and social instability threaten the very survival of the country. Crime is widespread. And thousands of nuclear weapons are in the hands of a demoralized and underpaid military.

ALEXEI BWIKOV (through translator): The entire community surrounding the military. All the time, you hear about serious crimes in the military and the atmosphere is terrible. Every week we hear reports about how at one base, a tank ran over a soldier, or at another base, soldiers are shooting each other dead.

PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON (Feb. 26, 1999): For 50 years, we confronted the challenge of Russia's strength. Today, we must confront the risk of a Russia weakened by the legacy of communism and also by its inability at the moment to maintain prosperity at home or control the flow of its money, weapons and technology across its borders. The dimensions of this problem are truly enormous. Eight years after the Soviet collapse, the Russian people are hurting. The economy is shrinking, making the future uncertain.

NARRATOR: A nation of 150 million people, Russia has an economy about the size of the Netherlands, a nation with one-tenth the population. Russia's population is declining. The average life expectancy for men has dropped to 58 years.

PRESIDENT CLINTON (Feb. 26, 1999): We have as much of a stake today in Russia overcoming these challenges as we did in checking its expansion during the Cold War. This is not a time for complacency or self-fulfilling pessimism. Let's not forget that Russia's people have overcome enormous obstacles before.

NARRATOR: Russia has made some progress, progress easily overlooked in the current economic crisis.

PRESIDENT CLINTON (Feb. 26, 1999): Just this decade, with no living memory of democracy or freedom to guide them, they have built a country more open to the world than ever. A country with a free press and a robust, even raucous debate. A country that should see in the first year of the new millennium the first peaceful democratic transfer of power in its thousand-year history.

MS. SHAKLEINA: I think nobody wants to go back.

NARRATOR: Tatiana Shakleina is a senior research analyst at Moscow's Institute for the USA and Canada. She sees little popular support for a return to the Soviet era.

MS. SHAKLEINA: We have more freedom. Not only freedom of the press, but a kind of personal freedom. We have more initiative. We can try different professions, different maybe businesses, so we can do whatever we want. We may fail, we may succeed, but it's our decision.

NARRATOR: President Boris Yeltsin has been Russia's leader since 1991. The United States has been a major financial and political supporter of Yeltsin. Bill and Boris developed a close relationship. But now that the Yeltsin era seems to be coming to an end with President Yeltsin in poor health and the Russian economy on the rocks, the US Government is struggling to adjust to another collapse, the collapse of its Russian policy

Many Russians blame the United States for the catastrophe that has befallen them and they fear that the US is not only happy with their economic plight, but is deliberately taking advantage of it.

Alexei Arbatov is a leading member of the Russian Parliament and deputy head of its Defense Committee.

ALEXEI ARBATOV: Russia feels very vulnerable, humiliated, not treated in a fair way, ignored when major decisions are taken either in Washington or in NATO Headquarters in Brussels. The agenda for national security policy, as it's seen from Moscow and from Washington, looks very, very different.

NARRATOR: The list of Russian concerns about US policy toward it is long: The expansion of the NATO military alliance to Russia's borders. Attempts to deprive Russia of the potentially lucrative Caspian Sea oil business. Efforts to stop Russian export of its technology and weapons. US military attacks on Iraq and elsewhere without consultation with either Russia or the UN Security Council. Imposition of strict, hard-to-meet conditions on international economic assistance. And now the US is threatening to abandon its treaty with Russia that limits anti-ballistic missile defenses.

Paul Mann agrees that the US is alienating Russia.

MR. MANN: Our decision to say we might pull out of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, coming on the heels of NATO expansion, is sending all the wrong messages to Russia. We're not giving the Russians a sense of inclusion. And I think that is the most key issue at the moment because the Russians feel we're really doing everything we can to isolate them.

NARRATOR: These suspicions make it more difficult to resolve problems between the two countries. Joseph Cirincione, in his work on non-proliferation, has frequent contact with Russians.

MR. CIRINCIONE: The more nationalist Russians believe that there really is a plot. First, the US took apart the Warsaw Pact. Then it helped disassemble 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.

NARRATOR: Russia is weak and poor, and a less important force in international relations. So, why should Americans care about Russia these days?

MR. CIRINCIONE: The "who cares" view may be the most dangerous of all because you can't ignore Russia or pretend that it isn't still the world's largest warehouse of nuclear weapons, materials and expertise.

NARRATOR: US intelligence agencies continue to monitor developments in Russia. George Tenet is director of the CIA.

GEORGE TENET, CIA Director:

"Russia's deteriorating economy elevates the uncertainty quotient in a number of very important areas. Politically, Russia is increasingly unpredictable and the worsening economy situation affects all aspects of the Russian scene, as the desperate search for revenue streams is exacerbating a number of very serious problems. For example, it has magnified the proliferation threat across the board as growing financial pressures raise incentives to transfer sensitive technologies, especially to Iran." (Before Senate Armed Services Committee, Feb. 2, 1999.)

NARRATOR: The director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, Lieutenant General Patrick Hughes, also finds reasons for the United States to worry about Russia's worsening economic situation.

LG PATRICK HUGHES, DIA Director:

"The number of Russian strategic nuclear warheads will continue to decline, but Moscow will retain a potent strategic arsenal and will increasingly rely on strategic forces to offset its diminished conventional military capability." (Before Senate Armed Services Committee, Feb. 2, 1999.)

NARRATOR: The Russian military has been dramatically diminished both in size and capability since the days of the Soviet Union. The humiliating defeat in the 1995 war with Chechnya, a tiny breakaway republic, demonstrated Russia's military weakness

Nowadays, Russia's armed forces are better known for horrendous living conditions than for military might.

Russian soldiers, once feared as "ten feet tall" by the West, now look considerably shorter. A visit with these raw recruits shows just how far they are from "combat ready."

In 1998, Russia's military budget was barely $5 billion, due to the greatly weakened ruble. In 1999, it may shrink to just one percent of the $267 billion the US spends on its military

In 1998 alone, the Russian military reduced its strength by 400,000 troops. Its forces stand at 1.2 million today. But even that force is much larger than the economy can sustain and according to reports in the Russian press, an additional cut of 600,000 troops may be needed

At "Tank Day," a family holiday for Russia's tank divisions, these weapons may be seeing their final action.

The collapse of Russian military forces is highlighted by Pavel Felgenhauer, Russia's leading military correspondent.

PAVEL FELGENHAUER: There were no big maneuvers for already almost at least eight years and there -- the commanding generals and (inaudible) are mostly working as, you know, administrators, trying to feed the troops and trying to keep their units together. But when it comes to battle, they're not ready.

NARRATOR: Today, the mission of these soldiers is to harvest cabbages to make sure they have something to eat tonight. These are the troops both we and the Russians rely on to man and safeguard a still-mammoth nuclear arsenal.

CORPORAL ALEXEI GUSHIN, Sertolova Tank Division (through translator): To make ends meet, we have to work side jobs, such an unloading railway cars at night. Sometimes we get by with the help of relatives, but generally we have to look for money elsewhere because we're certainly not getting it from the military.

NARRATOR: When soldiers are worried about feeding their families, nuclear safety drops precipitously on the list of priorities. At home, Corporal Gushin's wife reflects the view of many Russian military families.

ELVIRA GUSHINA (through translator): The military simply should not be neglected as they are today. We are left at the mercy of fate. We have to look after ourselves in almost every way because the military is certainly not doing it.

MR. CIRINCIONE: 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 guards deserting their posts around nuclear facilities to go scavenging for food.

NARRATOR: Russia's military has become alienated from a government that fails to provide even basic support and from a society that no longer respects and honors it.

A recent State Department report to Congress detailed Russia's military crisis. Russia today maintains 6,000 nuclear warheads poised for long-distance delivery. It has more than 20,000 nuclear weapons of all types. There's plenty to worry about.

MR. CIRINCIONE: 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.

MAN-on-the-Street: My biggest concern with the Soviet Union is nuclear technology getting out to the wrong hands. Not just the technology, but the actual weapons themselves. In an economy that's in trouble like that, it's entirely possible.

MR. MANN: The more immediate danger in nuclear terms might be control over tactical nuclear weapons rather than a breach of strategic command. Because tactical nukes -- there are tens of thousands of them, literally, and they're spread among about 50 storage depots. And that very dispersion is cause for concern. And in some instances, we know that security is not good.

NARRATOR: In the early days of the honeymoon between a new Russia and an America most Russians admired, the United States initiated a program to help Russia with its nuclear problems. When the Soviet Union collapsed, nuclear weapons were deployed in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine. In 1991, the US Congress, recognizing the increased dangers, created and funded the bipartisan Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, also known as Nunn-Lugar for its original Senate sponsors, Senators Sam Nunn and Richard Lugar.

Since then, the US has spent about $3 billion on programs to help dismantle and secure nuclear weapons and materials. The effort is still far from complete, but it stands out as a rare success in cooperative US-Russian relations.

MR. CIRINCIONE: 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.

NARRATOR: Senator Lugar visited Russia in November, 1998 to inspect the results of his initiative. The US Department of Energy is initiating a program to help Russia's large cadre of unemployed nuclear scientists and technicians. This is the Nuclear Cities Program.

MR. CIRINCIONE: You have ten closed cities in Russia, nuclear cities, where scientists and technicians for literally generations have built and perfected nuclear weapons. The unemployment rate in Russia is estimated to be about 20 percent. Inside the nuclear cities, it's estimated to be 60 percent. Many of these technicians and scientists haven't been paid in months and may never get paid. You want to give these scientists and their families some hope that if they stay in Russia, that there might be a future for them.

NARRATOR: But there is a real danger. With the declining concern about Russia in the United States, funding for the Cooperative Threat Reduction programs could also decline, and this could happen just as new dangers emerge.

One danger is the potential failure of the Russian early warning system. Another is the risk coming from the Year 2000 computer problem. And yet another is that over 100 mothballed nuclear submarines are rusting in Russia's Arctic ports, threatening to leak radioactive waste because officials can't afford to unload their spent nuclear fuel

Russia has already experienced several false warnings of missile attacks. When the Soviet Union broke up in 1991, important radar facilities located in other republics were no longer available to Russia. And the Russian military doesn't even have the money to maintain the satellites and radars is still has.

MR. 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 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.

NARRATOR: Both the United States and Russia continue to maintain a large percentage of their nuclear missiles on high alert, ready to be launched in moments.

MR. CIRINCIONE: Many people are saying it's time to take these missiles off their hair-trigger alert.

MR. MANN: The best thing we could do of an immediate nature is greatly to increase the Nunn-Lugar funding that helps Russia with its de-nuclearization. In fact, it might be wise at this point to go one big step further and just simply say to the Russians, let's buy every single nuclear device, every part of their nuclear inventory that they're willing to sell, and presumably, they'd be willing to sell almost all of it because they're broke.

I mean, we would save so many tens of billions of dollars in future defense expenditures if we would just simply buy all of Russia's nuclear stuff. We need a master stroke. We need a dramatic action.

MAN-on-the-Street: I think we should make every effort to help Russia's economy. My information is that folks in Russia, at least in some parts of Russia outside of the Moscow area, are concerned about whether or not they have enough potatoes to survive through the winter.

NARRATOR: While we have focussed on the security of Russia's nuclear arsenal, the root of the problem is Russia's economic crisis and the failure of the so-called reform program carried out by President Yeltsin with considerable American collaboration.

MR. ARBATOV: The collapse of Russian economic reforms that culminated in August of last year was a collapse of our joint venture. The reform was implemented since 1992 with unprecedented involvement of Western advisors, observers, with massive credits to support and sustain that reform for six years.

NARRATOR: Alexei Arbatov finds economic issues in the forefront of US-Russia relations today. He wants the United States and the West to be more helpful to Russia in getting its economy moving again.

MR. ARBATOV: Ninety percent of Russian-American relations may be connected or associated in one or the other way with this huge problem of Russian financial dependence on the West. Since our joint venture collapsed, we have to jointly resolve this question.

NARRATOR: Arbatov and other Russian officials are seeking a renegotiation of the enormous international debt that Russia is saddled with, much of it coming from Soviet days. And they would also like the United States to be more understanding of the need for the Russian government to try to stimulate production, in part by increasing their money supply.

MR. ARBATOV: This policy may even trigger economic growth and finally getting out of this crisis. That was what the New Deal was about in the United States in 1933. However, the United States was lucky not to have this huge foreign debt. We are not that lucky.

WOMAN-on-the-Street: I view Russia as a friend and I think that the only way to really get a country on your side is to be friendly and help them out in times of trouble. It's not too soon after the Cold War. It should have ended a long time ago and it just came at a good time. And we're in a position to help, so we should.

MS. SHAKLEINA: The best help might be tolerance, in general, to Russia and its policy and understanding that Russia makes mistakes in its policy and its decision, but it is not the kind of evil policy, just negative against any country, including the United States. So, I think the best help is to continue dialogue, discussion, being together and cooperative. Even if we have disagreements on certain points, not to make something really very bad out of these maybe disagreements, but to continue this dialogue and cooperation.

MAN-on-the-Street: If they are not our friends and if we don't know more about the Russian people and the Russian government, then we fill in those blanks generally with ignorance. And when that occurs, we have a lot of biases that are unfounded and they become not our friends, but our enemies.

ADM CARROLL: Could America and Russia become enemies again? It's unlikely, but if we don't pay more attention to Russia's problems and concerns, we might find ourselves drifting back to old antagonisms. It's not just Russia's nuclear weapons that should compel out attention, Russia is undergoing an unprecedented transition from one way of life to another. This is an historic drama unfolding before our eyes and it will have profound effects on the entire world.

We Americans may be tempted to take advantage of Russia's temporary weakness or we can play a positive role in Russia's transformation. It's clearly in our interests to do everything we can to build a constructive relationship with Russia. Getting rid of the huge nuclear stockpiles left over from the Cold War is a good place to start

Until the next time, for "America's Defense Monitor," I'm Eugene Carroll.