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 Reducing the Risk of Transfers of WMD or WMD Material, Equipment, or Expertise
to Rogue States or Terrorist Organizations
Sensitive Exports. For the past 10 years, the Russian economy has
remained very weak. This weakness has led the Russian government to slash
spending on space-rocket and missile programs and on nuclear weapon and nuclear
power programs. To preserve jobs and expertise, Russian organizations in these
industries have increased sales of missiles and nuclear-related equipment
to other countries. The main customers for these Russian goods are countries
to which the United States and many other countries have banned missile and
nuclear exports. Some of these exports are made with the approval of the Russian
government, while others may involve smuggling that bypass Russian export
controls.
For the United States, the most disturbing Russian exports are to Iran. These
exports include sales of technology for the Shahab-3
intermediate-range missile. In addition, U.S. concerns have focused on Russia's
construction of a new nuclear power plant at Bushehr in Iran and on other
nuclear exports to Iran related to the production of material for nuclear
weapons.
Leakage of WMD Materials and Expertise. The end of the Soviet police
state undermined controls within Russia and the other newly independent states
over WMD materials. Most troubling are poor controls over more than 600
tons of weapons-grade fissile
material (plutonium
and highly enriched uranium)
- enough for many thousands of nuclear weapons. By comparison, the United
States believes that North Korea may have
enough plutonium for one or two nuclear devices - perhaps 8-16 kilograms (17.6-32.2
pounds). Thus, the leakage of even a small amount of fissile material from
Russia could give another country or a terrorist
organization the key to developing nuclear weapons.
U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) and other
nonproliferation programs to secure Russian WMD materials and expertise
have received good marks. In late 2000, however, a high-level review
panel found that the programs were not moving fast enough and recommended
tripling their total budget to $3 billion per year. While the Bush Administration has not
followed that recommendation thus far, the Administration has reaffirmed its
support for the CTR
and related programs and increased their budgets.
Options:
- Option 1: Cut Off All U.S. Assistance to and
Support for Russia Unless It Ends Sensitive Exports to Iran (Counterarguments)
- Option 2: Cut Off Some U.S. Economic Assistance
and Support for Russia Unless it Ends Sensitive Exports to Iran (Counterarguments)
- Option 3: Cut Off U.S. Assistance Only to Russian
Organizations Profiting from Missile- and WMD-related Exports to Iran
(Counterarguments)
- Option 4: Triple U.S. Budgets for Cooperative Threat
Reduction (CTR) and Nonproliferation Programs (Counterarguments)
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Further Reading:
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