Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD)
U.S. assistance to the New Independent States of the Former Soviet Union (FSU) in dismantling their weapons of mass destruction
Dr. Ashton B. Carter
assistant secretary of defense for nuclear security and counterproliferation,
House Foreign Affairs Committee
September 21, 1993
Mr. Chairman and Members of the Committee: I appreciate the opportunity to speak to you today about our assistance to the newly independent states of the former Soviet Union. My colleagues have described our aid efforts more broadly. I will focus on our programs for reducing the military danger to the United States by helping the former Soviet republics to dismantle their weapons of mass destruction. The Nunn-Lugar program, for which I have responsibility at the Defense Department, is the primary vehicle for our efforts, using funds from our defense budget.
The end of the Soviet Union has allowed us to move from the Cold War to growing cooperation with Russia, Ukraine, and the other newly independent states. But it has also brought new and urgent challenges. The START commitments of Ukraine, Belarus and Kazakhstan to rid their territories of all nuclear weapons, and of Russia to reduce its nuclear arsenal by about three-fourths, require those states over the next years to dismantle several hundreds of strategic offensive arms and perhaps over 18,000 nuclear warheads. Russia has also committed in the Chemical Weapons Convention to destroy entirely the huge chemical arsenal it inherited from the Soviet Union.
These would be monumental tasks even for states that were not experiencing massive economic, policy and military dislocations. The dissolution of the Soviet Union has greatly increased their technical and economic difficulty. Related dislocations have also greatly increased the risk that nuclear weapons could become the building blocks for new nuclear weapon states or fall prey to terrorist groups. The Cooperative Threat Reduction, or Nunn-Lugar, program is one of the key instruments we have to meet those challenges -- to reduce the current and future security threat to the United States, while simultaneously contributing to our broader goals of strengthening democracy and the transition to market economies in the newly independent states.
We have made real progress in achieving the safe destruction of the most dangerous weapons of the former Soviet Union. Not long ago, there was a perception on Capitol Hill and even among the public that the Nunn-Lugar program was moving too slowly; that the funds were not being spent; that the goal of dismantling weapons in the republics was not being accomplished.
The Nunn-Lugar program did get off to a slow start, for several reasons. Funding the destruction of weapons in the former Soviet Union from our defense budget was a revolutionary idea, and it took some time to organize ourselves effectively to pursue this novel approach.
But many of the roadblocks lay within the former Soviet republics themselves. The evolving relationships between the executive and legislative branches slowed progress on concluding agreements, particularly in Russia and Ukraine. The Kazakhstanis also have been slow in negotiating aid agreements with us, albeit for other reasons. Further our assistance program has been caught up in the greater political turmoil that surrounds the republics' decisions about how they will dispose of the nuclear and other military forces they inherited from the Soviet Union.
By reorganizing our handling of the Nunn-Lugar program, and through creative diplomacy, we are now meeting the obstacles that have slowed the progress of this important effort. Let me describe our successes in Russia, Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.
Just in the past few months, we have made breakthroughs with the republics of Belarus and Russia, signing agreements with these two countries for a total of $283.2 million in new aid for demilitarization and denuclearization. We are close to completing agreements for about an additional $200 million with Ukraine and Kazakhstan. And we have in train discussions that could lead to additional agreements. In fact, our negotiating delegation, led by Ambassador Goodby and my deputy Dr. Duffy, is arriving today in Kazakhstan.
RUSSIAN:
Three agreements concluded with Russia in August are directly related to the dismantling of their strategic nuclear weapons. Our aid is providing such equipment as cranes to help prepare missile silos for dismantlement, plasma cutters to slice up missile airframes, and hydraulic shears to cut up the hulls of nuclear-armed submarines. Each one of the nuclear missiles that is destroyed with this aid is a missile no longer targeted against the United States. We are also helping the Russians design and providing them with essential construction and operating equipment for a secure storage facility for the fissile material --especially plutonium--removed from nuclear warheads. Secure storage will make this nuclear explosive material inaccessible to unauthorized persons. And our assistance with methods to account for nuclear materials will also help the Russians to secure their plutonium and highly enriched uranium against diversion to dangerous purposes and to prevent proliferation of these dangerous substances.
BELARUS:
Our diplomacy with Belarus contributed to its taking the steps necessary to ratify START and accede to the NPT as a non-nuclear weapon state. In July, the US began providing $59 million to assist this small nation in making the transition to non-nuclear status. Recognizing Belarus has begun to send the mobile SS-25 missiles back to Russia, the US has started to assist Belarus to plan for the restoration and conversion of its Strategic Rocket Force bases to productive civilian uses. We are also helping it with conversion of defense industries to civilian manufacturing, especially those enterprises connected to their nuclear complex.
UKRAINE:
We are continuing to work with Ukraine in the development of a cooperative threat reduction program. This spring and summer, we made a concerted and creative attempt to demonstrate to the Ukrainians that keeping the nuclear weapons on their territory would be a setback for their own security interests, and for international security as well.
When I say our efforts have been concerted, I really mean this. The Defense Department, and the other agencies represented here, particularly Ambassador Talbott, have worked since the early spring to broaden our contacts in Ukraine. Secretary Aspin and I have each made trips to Ukraine, as has Ambassador Talbott. At DoD, we have hosted Ukrainian Defense Minister Morozov, and we have brought a key group of Rada deputies here to Washington for talks.
US policy towards Ukraine has evolved in ways that emphasize positive incentives for them to dismantle the nuclear forces which are on their territory. This spring, the US dropped its demand that Ukraine ratify START I and accede to the NPT before any Nunn-Lugar assistance would be made available. Our reasoning was that if the Ukrainian government began to deactivate nuclear weapons, we wanted to be able to assist, even if political discussion continued within Ukraine on the timing for START and NPT accession. While we still strongly support the treaties and encourage the Ukrainians to sign them, we believed that we should provide support to the practical elimination of the Ukrainian weapons, which also moves Ukraine closer to the goal of a non-nuclear Ukraine.
Currently, we are close to signing an umbrella agreement with Ukraine for Nunn-Lugar assistance, and implementing agreements for $175 million in aid. The core of this aid package is $135 million for dismantling the strategic nuclear delivery vehicles on Ukrainian territory. These agreements, negotiated at the end of August, are now undergoing interagency review in Kiev. While the road in dealing with Ukraine has been bumpy and further twists and turns may arise, our diplomacy appears to be producing results.
I should also assure you that we are firm in our insistence that the Ukrainians plan for the dismantling of all of the nuclear systems which are on their territory. They are now beginning to deactivate some SS-19 missiles, and we have presented them with ideas for disabling their SS-24 strategic missiles. We expect talks on the subject to continue in the near future.
KAZAKHSTAN:
I mentioned that our SSD negotiating delegation is arriving today in Kazakhstan. We have pressed the Kazakhstanis to meet with us since March, and they have now agreed to talk. Our negotiators intend to complete an umbrella agreement for aid to Kazakhstan, and will begin to discuss ways in which we can assist them with dismantling strategic launchers that are to be eliminated under the START Treaty. Even if the Kazakhstanis return the SS-18 missiles on their territory to Russia for destruction, the silo launchers in Kazakhstan for these weapons will need to be destroyed. Not only does the START Treaty and the letter from President Nazarbayev accompanying the Lisbon Protocol require the destruction of these silos, but if left intact they could once again be used to launch strategic missiles.
While we are just now beginning to discuss this issue with the Kazakhstanis. We expect to complete four other aid agreements in Almaty. These agreements will: 1) assist the Kazakhstanis in establishing a government-to-government communication link with us for exchanging START and INF notifications, 2) help them to develop an effective export control system to prevent the spread of nuclear technologies and materials outside their borders, 3) assist them in developing a system for accounting and control of civil nuclear materials, and 4) provide them with an emergency response capability to deal with any accidents that may arise during the transport of missiles to destruction facilities.
Kazakhstani leaders have also asked the US to help them repair the aftereffects of the Soviet nuclear testing program at the Semipalatinsk test site on their territory. We are looking into what we can-do to aid them in addressing the damage caused by decades of nuclear testing, and will be discussing that subject with them this week in Almaty.
The bottom line is that, after a slow start, the US has now committed roughly $700 million of the $800 million provided in FY 1992 and 1993 through the Nunn-Lugar program denuclearization and to demilitarization programs in the former Soviet republics.
Now that we have launched most of our 1992-93 initiatives, we are looking ahead to our priorities for 1994. Of course, one of our key concentrations in FY 1994 will be effectively implementing the programs we have already established with the republics. The political and economic turmoil in these new states means that the United States will have to be very persistent in carrying forward the cooperative Nunn-Lugar programs we have begun.
For each program, our technical experts travel to these new states to discuss with the appropriate officials the specific assistance they require. For instance, a technical team implementing our agreement for defense industry conversion returned just last week from Belarus, where they visited defense plants and met with government officials. They found interesting possibilities for conversion of defense industries to peaceful, civilian activities, which may present opportunities for business collaboration with US companies. A team is scheduled to visit Russia in early October, to consult with the Russians about the equipment we are providing to dismantle ballistic missiles. Such consultations continue through the life of our programs. They ensure that we get maximum input from the republics on the assistance that will benefit them the most, and that our funds are spent effectively.
Beyond implementing the existing agreements, we will be concentrating in several areas, some of them new to our program in 1994. We will continue to promote nuclear dismantlement in Ukraine, Russia, and Kazakhstan. In this regard, we will seek to pursue defense conversion programs that serve to move industries and capabilities from weapons of mass destruction programs to civilian programs. We are initiating negotiations on chemical demilitarization in Russia. And we will attempt to convince the Russians to stop producing and separating weapons grade plutonium, offering them technical and possibly financial assistance in moving away from generating new plutonium.
Obviously, our first priority will be to conclude our initiatives with Ukraine and Kazakhstan. Our strongest efforts will go into completing the agreements for strategic weapons dismantling with these two countries, and to expanding them -- as required -- to meet their assistance needs in this area. Our aid program and the agreements which underlie it are an important vehicle for the US to promote these republics' adherence to the terms of the START Treaty and the Lisbon Protocol.
In addition, we expect to increase our assistance to Russia for strategic weapons dismantlement; Russian requirements in this area exceed the agreement already reached, and do not take into account the additional and significant START II dismantlement requirements. Further, additional assistance could be required to help build a safe, secure and environmentally sound storage facility for fissile material from dismantled nuclear weapons.
A closely-related priority for the year ahead is defense conversion. We have a narrow window of time in which to encourage the denuclearization of the former Soviet republics and to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction or the material and technology to build them. In the face of competing economic pressures in these new states, part of this effort necessarily must focus on the conversion of the supporting defense industry to peaceful civilian industries. Especially in Russia, the pressure is strong to export weapons to earn hard currency, rather than meeting the difficult challenge of downsizing the defense industry. Russian arms exports go to markets of great concern to the US -- Iran, Syria, and other states which often threaten both their neighbors and international security.
Following the conclusion of the three agreements with Russia in August, we are already engaged in discussions on how we might assist Russia in conversion of its defense industry, concentrating on the weapons of mass destruction which are the focus of the Nunn-Lugar program. We are seeking to stimulate US companies to form alliances with Russian firms that are moving from production of defense goods to civilian production, as the potentially most effective way to foster long-term economic growth and a significant down-sizing of the industries that have fed the Russian military machine.
We have also just established a joint Defense Diversification Commission with Russia, led on our side by Deputy Secretary of Defense William Perry. The Commission will promote defense conversion in Russia and identify opportunities for US firms to participate.
Another priority is destroying the thousands of tons of chemical weapons which remain in Russia. Since it is clear that Russia will have extreme difficulty complying with the terms of the Chemical Weapons Convention without financial help in destroying its CW stocks, we are negotiating an agreement to provide them with a laboratory to test methods of disposal for chemical weapons. We may also provide the Russians with a model plant for incinerating chemical agents, and with other assistance in this area.
Another objective we plan to pursue is eliminating plutonium production in Russia. As you know, Congressman Markey has been concerned about this issue, as I also have been for some time. In August, our representative on the SSD delegation raised the issue with high-level officials of the Ministry of Atomic Energy (Minatom) in Moscow. As a result of this meeting, Minatom has agreed to begin technical discussions with us on alternatives for shutting down plutonium production and separation at Tomsk and Krasnoyarsk. We hope these talks will begin at the end of this month, when Minatom officials visit Washington.
Taking steps to eliminate potential threats before they actually challenge our security is an unusual opportunity for the United States. Every dollar we spend on the Nunn-Lugar program reduces the number of weapons of mass destruction that confront us, helps these governments reduce the bloated defense establishment of the former Soviet Union, and prevents nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of outlaw states or terrorists. Progress toward these ends will ultimately reduce the need to spend money on weapons to guarantee our security.
Nations rarely have the opportunity to take such preventive steps to improve their own safety. It is a tribute to members of Congress that they have had the prudence to create legislation taking advantage of this unique possibility. We at DoD are pouring every effort into using the program to help the republics demilitarize and denuclearize, in the narrow window of time we have to accomplish that purpose. We are grateful to you for your support, and will be looking to you to ensure that we receive the additional $400 million allocation for 1994 that will enable us to continue this essential work.
Thank you, and I would be pleased to take your questions. (End text) NNNN
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