Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
12/5/2014
House and Senate authorizers are curtailing the Department of Defense’s Cooperative Threat Reduction program, withdrawing support for the program after Fiscal Year 2015, according to the compromise version of the FY 2015 National Defense Authorization Act released this week. The CTR program, created by Sens. Richard Lugar and Sam Nunn after the fall of the Soviet Union, for years has helped secure Russian nuclear facilities and dismantle and destroy Russian nuclear weapons and materials, but lawmakers have grown concerned about the future of the program as tensions between Washington and Moscow have increased in recent years.
A House-passed version of the defense bill limited CTR activities after FY 2015 until the U.S. could certify that Russia was respecting the sovereignty of Ukraine and complying with the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, but the compromise bill goes a step further—stopping the program altogether after FY 2015 even as it authorizes the Obama Administration’s $365 million FY 2015 budget request. “We support threat reduction programs and understand the importance of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, but we also believe that the traditional manner in which the program’s activities have been carried out in the Russian Federation is no longer necessary and no longer sustainable,” lawmakers wrote in a joint explanatory statement attached to the bill. “While there still may be areas of technical cooperation that are of mutual benefit, such as the successful cooperative effort to rid Syria of chemical weapons and materials, this work in the future should be focused on specific threats, and not just a continuation of effort.”
Relationship With Russia has ‘Changed Fundamentally’
In recent years, the scope of the CTR program has narrowed on its own, with Russia’s Ministry of Defense not included in an umbrella agreement covering U.S. work in Russia. That left Russian Ministry of Energy projects in the scope of the program, and a decreased U.S. presence in the country. In its joint explanatory statement, lawmakers suggested that the CTR program might not be the most effective venue for cooperation with Russia. “The United States relationship with Russia has changed fundamentally and the CTR work in the Russian Federation is concluding,” lawmakers wrote. “We believe that securing and destroying nuclear weapons and nuclear material is now a Russian responsibility and one that the United States should no longer fund without Russian cooperation. Any work proposed by the Department under CTR in the future with the Russian Federation will be carefully reviewed and subject to specific authorization.”
Most NNSA Work in Russia Directed to Wrap Up by FY 2018
The bill also would curtail other nonproliferation work in Russia, including work by the National Nuclear Security Administration’s nonproliferation program. Language in the bill prohibits the NNSA from using FY 2015 funds for any “contact, cooperation, or transfer of technology” between the U.S. and Russia as long as concerns over Ukraine, INF and the CFE treaty remain, and directs International Material Protection, Control and Accounting activities in Russia that are already nearing conclusion to wrap up by FY 2018—as NNSA has planned.
The bill excludes work under the Plutonium Management and Disposition agreement from the direction. “This does not rule out continued exchange of best practices in physical security in such areas as insider threat, developments in security technology, as well as other appropriate compensatory measures or other areas of mutual benefit in securing nuclear material,” lawmakers wrote. “If areas of concern emerge that require additional physical security work in Russia after fiscal year 2018, and that work is of benefit to the security interests of the United States, it can be part of an annual budget request which can be reviewed by the congressional defense committees.”
