Courtesy of Jodi Lieberman
Today is the twentieth anniversary of the enactment of one of the most important, far-reaching bipartisan initiatives of the twentieth and, thus far, the twenty-first century: the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, originally known as the Soviet Nuclear Threat Reduction Act. It was twenty years ago today that an initiative that began as an amendment to a DoD authorization bill spawned a full-fledged program that would assist in “controlling and protecting…nuclear weapons, weapons-usable materials, and delivery systems” as well as “to aid in the implementation of arms control agreements” by “assisting in the dismantling and destructiom of a number of nuclear weapons and their associated delivery systems.” On that day, a bipartisan initiative that would forever be linked to reducing the threat of “loose nukes” from the now-defunct Soviet Union was etched into U.S. law and began the long march toward securing them, an initiative which still continue today.
To gain a perspective on how much the CTR program has accomplished, the National Journal, in cooperation with the Nuclear Threat Initiative, the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at Georgia Tech, the Elliot School of International Affairs at The George Washington University, and the Center for Nonproliferation Studies convened a luncheon with Senator Richard Lugar and former Senator Sam Nunn to reminisce about the CTR program, its beginning, challenges that remain, and the work that each continues to do today. They were joined by former Senator Pete Domenici, whose less-heralded role in the formation and passage of the Nunn-Lugar bill was recalled.
Courtesy of Jodi Lieberman
Former Senator Nunn and Senator Lugar regaled the audience and the moderator, National Journal Senior Correspondent James Kitfield, with some behind-the-scenes stories which became part of the Nunn-Lugar lore. Nunn described the impact of the megatons for megawatts program in which highly enriched uranium (HEU) was removed from Soviet warheads and downblended for use in civilian nuclear reactor fuel in the U.S. He pointed to the lights on the ceiling of the room, saying that those lights were powered by electricity generated by nuclear power plants burning material that used to be in nuclear weapons that were pointed at the U.S.
In another anecdote, Mr. Nunn, upon hearing of the coup attempt which would ultimately signal the end of the Soviet Union, recounted asking Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev whether he had remained in control of the Soviet nuclear weapons arsenal. Tellingly, Gorbachev was quiet. It was then that Mr. Nunn, along with Senator Lugar and, less heralded third member Pete Domenici, began to formulate what would become the CTR program.
Speaking about today’s challenges given the ongoing existence of nuclear weapons in both Russia and the U.S., Senator Lugar noted that there continues to be a need for a new generation of scientists and others dedicated to nuclear threat reduction, as well as ongoing leadership from the U.S. national labs. Mr. Nunn underscored the need for work being done by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) such as NTI, which will release a nuke scorecard next month in cooperation with the Economist Intelligence Unit.
For me, the event was a somewhat sentimental one: I began my career in arms control and nuclear nonproliferation just as the Clinton Administration was organizing itself to implement the CTR program in 1992. I am therefore a child of the Nunn-Lugar era, professionally speaking. I have seen how Congress and the Administration can work together toward common goals and to create successes where there was doubt there could be any. A quick look at the Nunn-Lugar Scorecard puts them into high relief: 7601 Soviet-era warheads have been deactivated, 82% of the 2017 targets; 33 or 48 nuclear weapons carrying submarines destroyed, 674 of 936 submarine launched ballistic missiles eliminated, and 792 Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles destroyed.
When asked whether or not today’s political environment would allow for another CTR program, Senator Lugar was cautiously optimistic, while Mr. Nunn was less so. He opined that the failure of the debt committee did not bode well for the ability of both parties to come together over a common challenge, and referred to the U.S. financial woes as the single biggest threat to U.S. national security. However, he did say that the inability to get anything done in Washington has created a vacuum which he did not believe would last. The American people and the political system, he said, would not allow that to happen.
One can only shudder to think what could have happened if both parties in Congress were unable to come together to create the CTR program, if the current political environment was prevalent in 1991, when the collapse of the Soviet Union meant the potential theft of nuclear warheads, nuclear material. It just so happens that, around the time the CTR was established, a little-known organization called Al Qaeda was also organizing itself.
