The Era of U.S.-Russian Nuclear Counter-Proliferation Cooperation Has Come to an End

Jack Caravelli

November 17, 2014

U.S.-Russia Nuclear Cooperation Drawing to a Close

An era of unprecedented nuclear cooperation between the Cold War rivals is drawing to a close. Early this month Sergey Kirienko, who runs Russia’s state nuclear company, announced that in 2015 no new nuclear projects involving U.S. participation are “envisioned.”

What transpired between the United States and Russia in the years between the end of the Cold War and the moment of this decision is the stuff of spy novels. In the aftermath of the 1991 breakup of the Soviet Union and the ensuing political chaos, the outgoing George H.W. Bush administration and incoming Clinton administration shared grave concerns about the security of Russia’s nuclear weapons and fissile materials.

Their concerns were well placed. During that period I was serving at the Central Intelligence Agency, leading a group with responsibility for monitoring dire developments in Russian nuclear security. Security lapses we were able to document included gaping holes in perimeter fences around nuclear facilities, guards who refused to patrol due to lack of adequate winter clothing, and “trusted” insiders who sought to steal or divert nuclear materials for financial gain.

Several succeeded in smuggling small amounts of fissile material across Russian borders and into Europe.

Former Sens. Sam Nunn (D., Ga.) and Richard Lugar (R., Ind.), in a spirit of bipartisanship, sponsored landmark legislation that created what is often referred to as the Nunn Lugar program. This initiative resulted in the Department of Defense (DOD) and then the Department of Energy (DOE) establishing parallel programs to work with Russian counterparts in securing nuclear warheads and vast amounts of at-risk nuclear materials.

I left a posting at the White House National Security Council in 2000 to manage the program at the DOE, overseeing its nuclear material security work as well as companion programs aimed at enhancing the security of Russian borders from nuclear smuggling and secure radioactive materials which could be used to make radioactive dispersal devices or “dirty bombs.”

Doing so presented myriad challenges. In what must have been a painful acknowledgement, some Russian officials admitted—mostly in private—that they needed U.S. assistance. We complied by providing security upgrades such as alarms, sensors, and improved fences in addition to training Russian personnel to assume responsibility for maintaining better than in the past their nuclear security programs.

Other Russians, notably intelligence officers assigned to work with Russian nuclear institutes, refused to let go of the Cold War. They often viewed the assistance—and the visits required to monitor the progress—as little more than a camouflaged U.S. effort to gain access to sensitive facilities to gather secrets, referring to the U.S. programs as nuclear tourism.

That assessment was off the mark, as DOE policy was to instruct those visiting Russian sites never to engage in any provocative behavior that would raise security concerns. But that did not prevent Russian counterintelligence personnel from applying extensive surveillance to team members. This included monitoring the teams during site visits as well as during their personal time in restaurants, while traveling in cities and even within their hotel rooms.

There also were occasional forms of harassment against visiting U.S. experts, including several attacks on subways and at nightclubs, incidents that also were familiar to U.S. embassy personnel. It was impossible to know if those were random events or directed by Russian security personnel.

The most worrisome security nightmare was the development of inappropriate personal relations between team members and Russian counterparts. The United States was sending dozens of often young and inexperienced officers to conduct work at facilities seldom visited by outsiders. In the Cold War era, as one officer told me, the United States would have paid a million dollars for that access.

U.S. personnel were mostly meticulous in following security protocols, but one woman from a U.S. national laboratory carried on a clandestine romantic relationship with a Russian scientist that went on for at least a year before it was discovered. The Russian was a senior member of the laboratory whose security upgrades she was funding.

Just as challenging was managing this work within the confines of the U.S. bureaucracy, where some parts of the CIA and many of the uniformed military at the Department of Defense, viewed the programs. Congress in time cooled in its support for providing funds to programs benefiting Russia.

At the DOE, many in the program performed with high competence and dedication. Other employees in the program, as well as some senior management, viewed the programs as little more than make-work projects that generated revenue and guaranteed job security. Incompetence and mismanagement plagued the program during its later years.

These hurdles notwithstanding, during the peak of the program the United States secured an estimated 400 metric tons of fissile material, enough to make several thousand nuclear weapons.

There is no reason to lament the recent Russian decision to wind down this cooperation. Today’s Russia is far more stable and financially secure than it was in the 1990s and much of the past decade. Its nuclear materials are much more secure, and thousands of weapons have been destroyed. In an age of terrorism, nuclear security breaches will remain possible not only in Russia but also in places like Pakistan.

The threat reduction programs achieved their main goal of securing at-risk nuclear materials and warheads. Both Russia and the United States—and perhaps other nations as well—are safer for that.