James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies
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CNS Occasional Papers: #3

Nonproliferation Regimes At Risk

CHALLENGES POSED BY RUSSIA AND THE NIS TO EXISTING NONPROLIFERATION REGIMES

by Clay Moltz

The newly independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia, inherited the world’s largest stockpile of nuclear weapons, chemical weapons, fissile material, and weapons-related technology. However, their weak governments and ongoing financial problems have left them in a poor situation to deal with this inheritance. Newly privatized enterprises have also had significant financial incentives to subvert existing state export controls in search of hard currency and the external markets they need to survive. This combination of significant WMD capabilities and technologies and difficult economic circumstances in the NIS countries create some of the most dangerous threats to the viability of existing nonproliferation regimes. This situation has highlighted the unique set of problems raised by "declining" WMD powers: i.e., those that retain large quantities of WMD materials, technologies, and scientists, but possess greatly diminished capacities for maintaining control over them.

A related problem in the NIS is the difficulty faced by states that seek to join and implement international agreements for nonproliferation, but lack even the minimal financial resources necessary to do so. Several cash-poor governments have been unable even to become members of certain nonproliferation regimes due to the costs of membership (tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars per year). In other cases, such as Russia’s implementation of START I and the Chemical Weapons Convention, governments are unable to meet required deadlines without significant assistance from abroad.

Russia and the NIS pose challenges to regimes including the NPT, the MTCR, the CWC, and the BWC.

• NPT: Setting aside serious difficulties in the materials protection, control, and accountability (MPC&A) field in several of the NIS countries (which contribute to smuggling and proliferation but are not directly relevant to treaty commitments), the biggest threat to the NPT consists of state-sanctioned Russian sales of nuclear technology, know-how, and materials. The deals that raise particular concern are those with India and Iran. In the former case, despite Russia’s claims of legitimate "grandfathering" of the arrangement, the deal sets a precedent for possible future Russian attempts to subvert its NPT commitments not to transfer weapons-related technology and materials to states that lack full-scope nuclear safeguards. Russian negotiations with India over the possible sale of two nuclear submarines should be viewed as similar violations of existing Russian commitments, given the possible (albeit unlikely) Indian diversion of the fuel and technology to bomb uses. Russia’s cooperation with Iran is formally compliant with the NPT, but raises serious practical concerns given the claims by many analysts that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons. Other questions relate to Russia’s Article VI (disarmament) commitments and to the action by the Ukrainian Rada (not accepted by the current president) calling for Ukraine to withdraw from the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state in protest over US and NATO actions against Yugoslavia. Ukraine’s possible missile cooperation with China and North Korea raises other NPT concerns, since this technology could be used to deliver nuclear weapons.

Other NPT-related issues include the following:

(1) START I and START II—Russia continues to represent a challenge to these treaties due to its continued reluctance to ratify START II and to implement the reductions it entails. The Russian Duma continues to blame political events (NATO expansion, the Kosovo situation) for its "inability" to ratify the treaty. The failure to implement START II has serious implications for Russia’s progress towards realizing its Article VI NPT commitments.

(2) Tactical Nuclear Weapons—Russia has begun to hedge on its 1991 commitments to remove from service its large force of tactical nuclear weapons. A recent Russian Security Council document even raised the possibility of the development of new, low-yield tactical nuclear weapons. Furthermore, there have apparently been serious discussions regarding the possible redeployment of tactical nuclear weapons in certain former Soviet republics, including Belarus. Russia has recently cited NATO expansion and the bombing of Yugoslavia as justifications for renewed Russian reliance on these weapons. Redeployment would send very negative signals in regards to Russia’s Article VI commitments and would cloud the atmosphere for further strategic reductions in the US-Russian context.

(3) No-First-Use Doctrine—Russia has rejected its commitment to the no-first-use of nuclear weapons. This reversal occurred in large part due to the decline in Russia’s conventional military forces. NATO expansion has also been cited by some Russian authorities (post facto) as a justification for this policy. While this is consistent with the current US government stance, it sends mixed signals to the international community regarding Russia’s Article VI commitments.

(4) MPC&A—The failure of Russia and other NIS countries to implement effective nuclear MPC&A measures raises a serious challenge to these states’ NPT commitments. Specifically, by allowing nuclear materials to remain vulnerable to theft, the NIS countries are failing to implement their pledges on preventing the transfer of these materials to non-nuclear weapon states. New measures are needed both to implement near-term improvements at a large number of facilities (particularly in Russia) and to ensure their long-term sustainability.

• MTCR: Russian and Ukrainian design and construction enterprises are engaged in a number of deals that clearly violate Category I export restrictions. In Ukraine, these involve suspected deals with China, Libya, Iraq, and possibly North Korea, even though it is difficult to assign specific responsibility for what, in some cases, appear to have been visits by individual scientists and technicians. In Russia’s case, suspected deals have involved Iraq, Iran, India, and China. In each of these cases, Russia has claimed that it has not sanctioned these contacts and therefore cannot be held responsible for the purportedly illegal acts of its companies.
• CWC: The greatest threat posed to this regime is the apparent inability of Russia to implement its dismantlement commitments, due to a lack of adequate funding. Russia possesses the world’s largest stockpile of chemical agents (some 40,000 tons), and thus its widely anticipated failure to meet the CWC’s deadlines for implementation represents a serious challenge to this new regime.
• BWC: Russia’s continued unwillingness to open its biological weapons facilities to international inspectors poses a continuing challenge to the BWC. Due to claims by defectors (such as Ken Alibek) that BW research may be continuing at several of these facilities, there are significant unresolved questions about Russia’s commitment to implement the treaty fully. Statements by Russian officials, including General Lebed, that Russia has a need for biological weapons are also grounds for serious concern. Given the fluidity of the political scene in Russia, there is at least an outside chance that supporters of renewed BW activities might assume power in Russia during the next few years.

POLICY OPTIONS

Given the range of problems outlined above, what new policy initiatives might be undertaken to help reduce the threat that current developments in the NIS pose to a number of nonproliferation regimes?

Arms Control Measures

1. The initiation of new, high-level discussions between the United States and Russia to facilitate near-term ratification of START II. Progress in moving the treaty ahead merits immediate attention, even at the expense of compromises in certain provisions of the treaty (complete de-MIRVing, silo destruction, etc.). Greater flexibility on national missile defense (NMD) and theater missile defense (TMD) systems should be incorporated into US policy.
2. Initiation of negotiations towards a START III-plus agreement, in cooperation with Britain, France, and China (and perhaps India, Pakistan, and Israel). One of the failures of the existing arms control process is its limitation to the two former superpowers. Bringing other nuclear powers into a post-START III negotiating process would be valuable to establish ceilings for their deployments of nuclear weapons. This would encourage the United States and Russia to move toward deeper cuts, while also drawing the other nuclear powers into an eventual multilateral arms reduction process, hopefully by around 2010.
3. Measures to improve transparency and to facilitate elimination of US and Russian tactical nuclear weapons. Such an initiative is needed because Russia has begun to back away from a number of commitments it made, in 1991 under Gorbachev and in 1992 under Yeltsin, to remove tactical nuclear weapons from its arsenal. To date, no hard figures have been released by either side regarding the process of tactical nuclear weapons dismantlement, much less the location of current systems and their operational status. Given recent statements about the possible reintroduction of tactical nuclear weapons into deployed Russian forces, greater transparency is needed to ensure that Russia is sincere in fulfilling its commitments. Given the much smaller number of weapons believed to be involved on the US side, efforts by Washington to lead this process should be undertaken immediately as a unilateral measure to jump-start progress in this area. Unilateral elimination of the small US stockpile in Europe should be a first step. The two sides should then move to delink the tactical nuclear arms reduction process from the START negotiations, where progress has been held back by other issues. A new forum is needed to encourage more rapid steps toward the elimination of tactical nuclear weapons as a class of weapons.

1. Greater support by the nuclear weapon states for the Central Asian nuclear-weapon-free zone initiative. To date, the nuclear weapon states have offered at best tepid support to the NWFZ initiative in Central Asia, due to narrow, self-interested concerns and their fear of setting precedents for other zone treaties (including over nuclear transit rights through NWFZs). Russia has also sought to maintain its "right" to redeploy nuclear weapons into Kazakhstan, while the United States has mentioned its fear of a NWFZ "domino effect" into areas of the NIS that might eventually become part of NATO. The weapon states must reevaluate the merits of these arguments in the broader context of global nonproliferation efforts. A concerted effort to help support the treaty’s signature by the time of the 2000 NPT Review Conference would mark an important step toward strengthening the global nonproliferation norm, while helping to reduce the chance of a major split between the nuclear weapon states and the non-nuclear weapon states at this important review conference.
2. Establishment of a regime to prevent Russian exports of nuclear submarine technology and related materials. Russia appears to be entering the market for the export of nuclear submarine reactors and associated technologies. Given the threat these systems pose as a back-door route to the acquisition of weapons-grade materials, this trade should be halted before it starts. There are only five states that currently possess this technology, making the chances of negotiating such a supplier regime much easier than in other fields.
3. Higher-level political commitment, both in Russia and the United States, regarding the importance of nonproliferation policy. There is a tendency in the United States and Russia to mention nonproliferation objectives only when it is in the self-interest of the great powers, such as when the NPT was up for review in 1995 or immediately after the South Asian tests. Then, the issue falls by the wayside until the next crisis. Given the serious existing threats to global nonproliferation efforts and the possibility of defections from the NPT, a more consistent and higher-level emphasis is needed on nonproliferation policy—both unilaterally and bilaterally—to ensure that international attention remains focused on these problems. Greater US-Russian cooperation for nonproliferation policy would greatly facilitate these efforts.
4. Enhanced enforcement of export controls by NIS countries. Ample evidence exists that various states in the NIS are subverting their own export control laws (and international commitments) through lax enforcement. In Ukraine and Russia, there is solid evidence of government collusion in this process. In Russia, cases against proven illegal exporters of gyroscopes to Iraq have been dropped on spurious legal technicalities. Better enforcement is required if the international community is going to be convinced of the sincerity of NIS nonproliferation intentions.

1. New initiatives for converting or closing the former Soviet Union’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and missile enterprises. The US "Nuclear Cities Initiative" is one such effort, but it is likely to fall far short of its goals unless additional support is provided. Other nuclear cities and other types of facilities (including biological, chemical, and especially missile) must be included. Additional G-7 countries must be called upon to provide financial support. New programs for retraining current workers should be adopted in order to move weapons personnel into new careers. Missile enterprises have attracted the least attention (as they have largely been privatized), and yet this industry poses perhaps the greatest threat of the near-term proliferation of know-how and technology to rogue states. Given funding, Western universities and NGOs could support other retraining efforts by helping to reform curricula in Russian "feeder" institutes to emphasize commercial fields (such as in business administration, ecology, or computer programming) and such subjects as material safeguards, export controls, and nonproliferation. On its part, Russia must cooperate by enacting new measures to open its closed military facilities to direct foreign investment and to downsize these facilities to a level that is realistically sustainable over the long term. Those enterprises with no meaningful chance of survival must be closed and funds provided for the movement, retraining, or retirement of workers. Western efforts to assist in environmental remediation could provide a useful first step for building needed trust for new programs.
2. Enhanced sustainability of MPC&A measures at Russian nuclear facilities. The provision of foreign equipment and the construction of new facilities has done little to address the all-important "human element" in MPC&A work, which is crucial to the overall effectiveness of these efforts in the NIS. That is, monitors must be turned on, systems must be operated and maintained, and continued training of personnel must be conducted. A new focus in US assistance programs needs to be developed to address these specific problems, even at the expense of slowing down progress on such desired goals as material consolidation and the completion of material inventories.