Repairing the Regime

Preventing the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction

Joseph Cirincione

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780415925952
• eBook ISBN: 9781135284398
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) poses the single greatest threat to the national security of the United States. As Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has noted, The greatest threat to our society at the moment are the weapons of mass destruction. Those are the weapons that know no boundaries. Yet efforts to stem the spread of these weapons suffered serious setbacks during the past year. Every week brought news of Iranian and North Korean missile tests; of the possible terrorist use of deadly biological and chemical agents; and, most dramatically, of nuclear tests in the deserts and mountains of South Asia. There has never been a better time for a new, comprehensive review of the troubled state of the international non-proliferation regime along with credible solutions for today's most pressing proliferation problems. Repairing the Regime, is just such a book. In early 1999, 450 experts from 17 nations attended the Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference in Washington DC, the most important annual gathering in the non-proliferation field. This collection reflects their passionate debates on the key issues, trends, and dilemmas facing all of us today. It provides strong arguments for both marshaling international resources to repair and sustain the global non-proliferation regime and for dealing concretely with the particular security concerns of the nations and regions most affected by contemporary threats. Repairing the Regime looks at a multitude of strategies for strengthening controls on WMD and increasing security around the world.

—RUSSIA—

—5—
The Crisis in Russia's Nuclear Cities

Ken Luongo , Matthew Bunn
Rose Gottemoeller, Lev Ryabev

The Russian nuclear complex is the largest in the world, encompassing ten dedicated “closed” cities and dozens of other facilities and employing hundreds of thousands of employees across the Russian Federation. Formerly dedicated to the production of plutonium and highly enriched uranium and of nuclear weapons, these cities now face serious economic and social problems brought on by the end of the Cold War, the collapse of the Soviet system, and the reduced demand for nuclear weapon-related activities in Russia. The Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy has, after several years, finally acknowledged that the size of the nuclear complex must be reduced to reflect current economic and security requirements. The United States and Russia have launched the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI) to facilitate commercial development in these closed cities, thereby providing alternative, peaceful employment for scientists and technicians that might otherwise be forced to sell their nuclear-related skills to the highest bidder. The nuclear cities' current situation and Russian and U.S. efforts to address those situations are discussed below.

TAKING THE INITIATIVE

By Ken Luongo

It has been very difficult to focus the attention of the public or of policymakers on the serious problems that currently exist in Russia's closed nuclear cities. While some attention has been given to various pieces of the problem, the underlying economic issues and the need to redirect scientific activities in the cities remain largely ignored. These issues need to be addressed in a comprehensive manner if the proliferation problems emanating from the Russian nuclear complex are to be adequately addressed and ultimately solved. The risk of nuclear materials and technology leaking out of the nuclear cities to rogue regimes or terrorist groups is a clear example of how economics is affecting proliferation. There are ten closed nuclear cities in Russia. During the Cold War, these cities were dedicated to nuclear weapon design, weapon assembly and disassembly, and the production of fissile materials. For the last ten years, these cities have been struggling to diversify some of their activities to non-defense-related work. While these efforts have shown mixed results, Russia is taking internal steps, in cooperation with international programs, to address this issue.

FIGURE 5.1

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RUSSIA'S NUCLEAR CITIES

The list of Russian accomplishments in reorienting the cities is pretty short, and much more remains to be done. We estimate that thirty thousand to fifty thousand jobs need to be created or alternative employment needs to be found. Such levels are required in order for the Russian complex to be reduced to a more manageable size consistent with post—Cold War realities. These two missions—creating nonweapons employment opportunities and downsizing the nuclear complex in Russia—are the two major goals of the Nuclear Cities Initiative (NCI).

The Nuclear Cities Initiative is a good example of how nongovernmental organizations can help facilitate policy. There existed an underlying desire in both governments to work cooperatively on the nuclear cities problem. The U.S. and Russian national laboratories had discussions on this issue, and there were also some basic discussions taking place at the governmental level. But government officials tend to be too diversified and too frantic with their current priorities to really think comprehensively about what should be done. With no dedicated project in place, and no concrete plan from which to begin, little progress was made.

As one of its first acts, the nongovernmental Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council (RAN SAC) organized a roundtable in Moscow designed to identify steps the United States and Russia could take to address the economic and employment issues plaguing the Russian complex. This meeting was attended by, among others, Dr. Lev Ryabev from MINATOM, who was accompanied by Dr. Evgeny Avrorin, then the director of the nuclear weapon design laboratory at Chelyabinsk-70. Dr. Avrorin has proved to be instrumental in the development of the NCI. Other key Russian participants included the directors of Arzamas-16 and Tomsk-7 and the chief engineer from Krasnoyarsk-26. The meeting discussed a variety of topics, including what types of projects might interest Russian participants and what the American government might be willing and able to do. All the participants left with a feeling of accomplishment and enthusiasm for the number of new ideas that had emerged from their cooperative efforts.

On the basis of the results of the meeting and subsequent analysis, RAN SAC drew up a proposal for expanded action between the U.S. and Russian governments in this area and recommended that an initial budget of $60 million be established. The proposal recommended that activities be initiated in three major areas: product commercialization and business training, non-proliferation analysis and collaboration, and environmental restoration.

The proposal was released in early September 1997 in advance of the ninth session of the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission, with the goal of the United States and Russia's accepting this proposal as part of the Gore-Chernomyrdin process. A statement of support was made at this meeting, and in March 1998 Vice President Gore and Prime Minister Chernomyrdin approved the initiation of the Nuclear Cities Initiative. In summer 1998, Senators Joseph Biden and Pete Domenici sponsored an amendment to fund the new NCI effort at $30 million (subsequently reduced to $15 million in the final legislation). An intergovernmental agreement on NCI was finalized in September 1998, and the program was under way.

The birth of the Nuclear Cities Initiative is a very successful example of how nongovernmental organizations can work collaboratively with the U.S. and Russian governments in support of an important policy initiative. RANSAC did not try to pressure either government into action but instead created a process for mutually respectful collaboration, provided a balanced analysis of the problem, and presented both governments with a road map of recommendations. This facilitated an understanding of what each government could and could not live with, brought key officials and experts together, allowed people on the ground at the individual Russian nuclear facilities to provide their perspective and needs, and created a policy framework that the U.S. and Russian governments could endorse. This process certainly is not a strict recipe for future action but rather a description of one method that led to a successful conclusion.

A big debt of gratitude is owed to Dr. Ryabev, who has been extremely open to suggestions and very good at explaining his complex, and also to Rose Gottemoeller, who really carried the ball inside the U.S. government, leading to the creation of the Nuclear Cities Initiative.

ALTERNATIVE EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES

By Matthew Bunn

In order to achieve its objectives of downsizing the Russian nuclear complex and providing sustainable employment for displaced nuclear employees, the new Nuclear Cities Initiative should focus on four critical areas:

PRIVATE-SECTOR JOB GROWTH

Neither the U.S. government nor the Russian government has the money to forever employ nuclear workers who are no longer needed, so in the long run private job growth in the nuclear cities is the only answer. Given the current economic collapse in Russia, however, fostering private-sector growth and attracting foreign investment in Russia's nuclear cities will not be easy. These cities face a huge number of obstacles to private-sector growth. In addition to the political risks and structural problems that plague private-sector activities in Russia in general, the nuclear cities are physically isolated and their closed status makes access difficult (fortyfive days' advance permission is typically required for a foreign visit). Moreover, their populations have virtually no experience with private businesses or a market economy, and they have virtually no business infrastructure (not having needed it in the past). But the cities offer potential opportunities as well, principally a large number of highly skilled scientists and engineers, willing to work at wage rates far below those that prevail in Western countries. To overcome these obstacles and seize these opportunities, the approach of most past U.S. efforts related to defense conversion, focused on funding high-tech R&D and providing some business training, will be helpful but will not be enough. The full spectrum of tools that have been used to promote private-sector growth in other areas (in Russia and elsewhere)—business centers, loan guarantees, political risk insurance, start-up capital for new enterprises, tax incentives, and the like—are likely to be necessary.

While the Department of Energy (DOE), which is managing the Nuclear Cities Initiative, is not well suited to employ all of these tools, other U.S. and international agencies are, and it will be essential to draw in their experience and resources. The Regional Investment Initiative established under the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission has been designed to target a broad range of assistance to particular regions; a similar approach can and should be taken with the nuclear cities (though their economic prospects are much more problematic than those of the regions chosen for the Regional Investment Initiative). It will be critical for the U.S. government to work closely with the private sector—particularly those large firms that have already been involved in the nuclear cities or have explored involvement, such as Microsoft, Intel, and Sun Microsystems, among others—to find out what forms of support will be needed to leverage larger private-sector commitments. Working with other governments to target similar efforts in these cities is also likely to be key to success. It appears likely that the areas with the most promise for a small amount of government investment to lead to substantial private growth and job creation are (a) low-tech small and medium-size enterprises within the cities, largely providing products and services needed within Russia and (b) approaches in which Western firms hire nuclear city experts as knowledge workers (mathematicians, computer programmers, etc.) so that access to secret production lines, transportation of goods, and the like are not major issues. With the shortage of software experts and other engineers in the United States, U.S. firms are increasingly putting together global teams including engineers around the globe, in which experts from the nuclear cities would be prime candidates for participation. ¹

NON-PROLIFERATION AND ARMS CONTROL

Shifting some former nuclear weapons scientists to non-proliferation and arms control activities should also be a fundamental part of the Nuclear Cities Initiative. This approach would provide jobs for nuclear scientists while at the same time accomplishing objectives that the United States would want accomplished in any case. While there is no prospect for employing tens of thousands of workers on nonproliferation, for the small cadre of top scientists this can be an important avenue of employment. To date, there are significantly more former weapons scientists in the United States who have successfully “converted” to work on non-proliferation and environmental analysis and R&D than have been employed by commercial hightech firms spun off from the labs. If initial U.S. funding helps establish non-proliferation centers of excellence at the Russian weapons labs, and the centers succeed in demonstrating the value and importance of their work, it is possible that the Russian government itself will ultimately pick up the tab for their continued operation if and when the economic situation improves. There are dozens of examples of non-proliferation and arms control issues crying out for the application of additional expertise of the kind nuclear weapons scientists could bring to bear-from developing databases of key technologies on which to base nuclear export control decisions, to developing means to verify deep reductions in nuclear warhead and fissile material stockpiles. Recently, a collaboration between U.S. nongovernmental organizations and foundations and the U.S. government has provided start-up funding for new non-proliferation and arms control analysis centers at Sarov (formerly Arzamas-16), Snezhinsk (formerly Chelyabinsk-70), the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow, and the Institute of Physics and Power Engineering at Obninsk, but there is far more that could be done.²

NUCLEAR REMEDIATION, ENERGY, AND ENVIRONMENTAL TECHNOLOGIES

The United States certainly does not have the funds to pay for cleanup of the Russian nuclear complex or for deployment of new energy and environmental technologies in Russia. But these are all areas where the U.S. government funds hundreds of millions of dollars annually developing new technologies-a small portion of which might be done by experts from Russia's nuclear cities. This would be a win-win-win approach: The United States would get the work done for less (given the low wage rates in Russia), Russian nuclear experts would get challenging and interesting work making use of their skills, and both sides would be able to make use of the resulting technologies. Development of nuclear cleanup technology, in particular, is a “natural” for NCI: both the United States and Russia face massive nuclear cleanup problems in their nuclear complexes, and Russian experts can bring a range of fresh ideas to the U.S. cleanup R&D program at low cost—as well as to heavily contaminated sites where the technologies they develop could be tested. More broadly, it would make sen...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Foreword
• Global Assessment
• Russia
• Asia
• The Middle East
• International Law and Agreements
• Appendixes
• About the Contributors
• About the Editor
• Index