Todd Jacobson
NS&D Monitor
4/11/2015
Responding to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) is planning to soon introduce a bill that would suspend all National Nuclear Security Administration work in Russia. The wide-ranging bill would prohibit the "contact, cooperation or transfer of technology" between the NNSA and the Russian Federal until Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz certifies that Russia is no longer occupying Crimea, violating the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, and is complying with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe.
In a statement, Turner said the Obama Administration’s response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine has been "defensive, unsure, and unable to change Putin’s course of action. Today, Congress is providing the Obama Administration with a to-do list. This legislation outlines specific measures that can be taken up immediately and that will signal a fundamental shift in U.S. strategy." The restrictions on nonproliferation work with Russia can be waived if the Energy Secretary certifies the work is in the national security interests of the United States.
At a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing this week, the NNSA said about $100 million is expected to be spent in Fiscal Year 2015 on Russian nuclear security upgrades, but acting Administrator Bruce Held emphasized that the agency was currently reviewing its plans for work with Moscow. A plan to provide laser-based protective force training equipment to Moscow has already been scrapped, he noted.
"We need to look at this in a very clear-eyed fashion," Held said, adding: "I would suggest that we’re in the business of U.S. national security, not in subsidizing the Russians one way or the other. Our responsibility … is U.S. national security. And so if that money is judged not to be serving those interests, then we shouldn’t pursue it."
NNSA Defends Work in Russia
Held suggested that nonproliferation and nuclear security work has often survived other tense periods in U.S. and Russian relations, and NNSA nonproliferation chief Anne Harrington said after the hearing that none of the agency’s work was with Russia’s military, focusing instead on customs and border security and activities with Russia’s nuclear agency, Rosatom.
"There is really little intersection there," she told NS&D Monitor. "And great intersection with our own U.S. national security interests in trying to keep [nuclear] material out of the hands of terrorists." She said agreements with Russia to continue threat reduction work after the expiration of the Cooperative Threat Reduction umbrella agreement expired last year were recently completed, potentially paving the way for more nuclear security work in Russia.
However, Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) raised concerns at the hearing that U.S. nonproliferation funds were subsidizing Russia’s nuclear modernization efforts. "Clearly, if Moscow has money to spend on its own nuclear forces, then it is quite capable of fulfilling its nonproliferation obligations without relying on the U.S. taxpayer," Bridenstine said. Bridenstine said he would press for heavy scrutiny of the nonproliferation money being spent in Russia in the subcommittee’s version of the Fiscal Year 2015 Defense Authorization Act.
"When we talk about basically subsidizing, if you will, Russian military modernization, especially nuclear modernization, ICBMs, strategic bombers, ballistic missile submarines; when we talk about what they’re doing within their nuclear modernization programs, including violating the INF [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty], and while they’re doing this, we’re in essence subsidizing the security of their current nuclear capabilities," he said. "At some point we as Americans have to make a decision that we are subsidizing their nuclear modernization program, and we got to stop spending it."
