Getting it Right

Abstract

Against the backdrop of a crumbling Russian economy, a congressional study issued in February aims criticism at two key U.S. efforts designed to keep desperate Russian weapons scientists from selling their talents to the highest bidder.

The report by the General Accounting Office (GAO) focuses on two Energy Department efforts: the five-year-old Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention (IPP) program and the new Nuclear Cities Initiative. The IPP program, which seeks to commercialize Russian technologies, allocates about 10 percent of its funding for projects in the chemical and biological weapons complexes; the rest goes to the nuclear sector. In contrast, the Nuclear Cities Initiative is totally devoted to the problems encountered in the Russian nuclear weapons complex.

Although the report questions the effectiveness of the programs' implementation, it does not examine the consequences of allowing them to fail. This is the real issue. If congressional complaints result in the withering rather than the strengthening of these efforts, Congress will make the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction more likely.

The IPP critique

The GAO report–Nuclear Nonproliferation: Concerns with DOE's Efforts to Reduce the Risks Posed by Russia's Unemployed Weapons Scientists–focuses largely on the implementation of the IPP program and raises legitimate issues that require immediate remedial action (see “The Critique, in Brief,” opposite page).

A GAO report is critical of U.S. aid programs for Russian scientists. But it does not consider the cost of allowing these programs to fail.

Three of the complaints concern two fundamental funding questions: Why are two-thirds of the program's funds being spent in the United States? And, why is Russia taxing U.S. aid? Given the proliferation stakes in Russia, neither of these actions is defensible and both sides need to ensure that in the future a majority of U.S. nonproliferation funds sent to Russia will go to needy scientists. This is an issue for top-level government attention.

Other concerns allege sloppy management by the United States–in particular, whether the U.S. government adequately identifies which Russian scientists need to be targeted for funding, and whether it knows what those scientists are working on.

The Energy Department's IPP program has supported about 6,000 scientists; meanwhile, the science center programs in Russia and Ukraine, which are managed by the State Department, have provided temporary work for another 24,000 scientists and technicians.

However, the United States pays Russian scientists about $600 a month for projects that often last no more than a few years–generally not enough to support a family or finance a change in career. Part-time weapons work remains financially attractive, even though state salaries are small and paychecks months late. Thousands of other weapons workers receive no U.S. funding.

Improving the evaluation and oversight of individual projects is a problem that can be fixed. But targeting the key scientists who should be engaged in non-weapons work and ensuring that they work on peaceful projects full time require that funding inadequacies, as well as management shortfalls, be fixed.

The final critique of IPP is that it has failed in its commercialization goals. The numbers cannot be contested. Of more than 400 projects, only two have come close to commercialization, and one of those is failing. But this does not mean that increased commercialization in Russia's weapons complex is impossible. New approaches can produce results.

The Nuclear Cities critique

One of the key efforts to bring new missions and commercial activity to Russia's closed nuclear complex is the Nuclear Cities Initiative, or NCI. The GAO says there are many “uncertainties and questions” related to the initiative, which got under way in September.

In particular, the report questions whether limited access to the cities, the “virtual collapse” of the banking system, and Russia's continuing economic difficulties will impede commercial support for job creation. It answers by stating that in light of the “limited commercial success” of the earlier IPP program and the current economic conditions in Russia, the Nuclear Cities Initiative “is likely to be a subsidy program for Russia for many years rather than a stimulus for economic development.”

This finding is not on target. The objectives of the NCI are bigger than those of IPP. The focus of NCI is on creating new employment opportunities as a means of facilitating the downsizing of the over-sized, under-funded Russian complex.

The Russian government wants to consolidate some of its weapons-related institutes while avoiding social dislocation and unrest. Unless the underlying financial and employment problems are jointly addressed, the proliferation threats from Russia will remain.

It is important to remember that Russia has the world's largest nuclear weapons enterprise, which involves about 150 institutes and production facilities, with the most significant of them in 10 “closed” cities.

This nuclear complex has been in steady decline for more than a decade and now teeters on collapse (see “Retooling Russia's Nuclear Cities” in the September/October 1998 Bulletin). The Ministry of Atomic Energy says it has 30-50,000 excess employees. At this writing, some $400 million in back wages are believed to be owed to its workers.

New approaches

The critique, in brief

The costs to implement the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program from fiscal year 1994 through June 1998 are as follows:

▪ Of the $63.5 million spent, $23.7 million, or 37 percent, went to scientific institutes in the Newly Independent States.

▪ The amount of money that reached the scientists at the institutes is unknown because the institutes' overhead charges, taxes, and other fees reduced the amount of money available to pay the scientists.

▪ About 63 percent, or $39.8 million, of the program's funds was spent in the United States, mostly by the Energy Department's national laboratories in implementing and providing oversight of the program.

Regarding the extent to which the [IPP] program is meeting its nonproliferation and commercialization goals, GAO found the following:

▪ The program has been successful in employing weapons scientists through research and development projects, but it has not achieved its broader nonproliferation goal of long-term employment through the commercialization of these projects.

▪ Program officials do not always know how many scientists are receiving program funding or whether the key scientists and institutes are being targeted.

▪ Some scientists currently working on Russia's weapons of mass destruction program are receiving program funds.

▪ Some “dual-use” projects may have unintentionally provided defense-related information–an outcome that could negatively affect U.S. national security interests.

▪ Chemical and biological projects may not be adequately reviewed by U.S. officials prior to approval.

The Nuclear Cities Initiative may cost $600 million over the next five years:

▪ The initiative is still largely in a conceptual phase, and it is uncertain how jobs will be created in the 10 nuclear cities because of restricted access and the current financial crisis in Russia.

▪ The initiative is likely to be a subsidy program for Russia for many years, given the lack of commercial success in the Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention program.

From Nuclear Nonproliferation: Concerns with DOE's Efforts to Reduce the Risks Posed by Russia's Unemployed Weapons Scientists

General Accounting Office, February 1999

Other U.S.-Russian cooperative nuclear security programs

The International Science and Technology Center (ISTC). This international program, which began in 1994, is funded by the U.S. State Department in concert with Japan, Canada, and the European Union. Its purpose is to engage Russian weapons scientists in non-military research projects, through short-term contracts. To date, the ISTC has helped support about 24,000 individuals in peaceful research projects.

The Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) Program. In this effort, initiated in 1994, U.S. and Russian nuclear material experts are cooperating to train personnel and install advanced security systems at Russian facilities containing plutonium and highly enriched uranium. The program, run by the Energy Department, has received roughly $590 million to date.

The Fissile Material Storage Facility. As part of the Defense Department's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, the United States is contributing funds to the design and construction of a large, high-security facility at Mayak (Chelyabinsk-65), where 50,000 containers of fissile material removed from retired Russian nuclear weapons will be stored. The project began in 1992, and the first storage module for 25,000 containers will likely be completed in 2002. So far, the CTR program has obligated about $165 million for this project.

Core conversion. In 1997 the United States agreed to facilitate the conversion of Russia's three remaining plutonium production reactors at the closed cities of Tomsk-7 and Krasnoyarsk-26 to no longer produce weapon-grade plutonium. Originally intended to be complete by the end of 2000, this project will now likely be implemented by 2002. To date the United States has committed about $50 million for this project.

The Highly Enriched Uranium (HEU) Purchase Agreement. The United States agreed to purchase 500 metric tons of HEU taken from dismantled Russian warheads over the next 20 years. (The material would be downblended for use as reactor fuel.) The estimated value of this deal is $12 billion, and it was originally intended to be executed through a budget-neutral, quasi-commercial process. A congressional appropriation of $325 million in the fiscal 1999 budget was designed to keep the deal on track. The Energy Department also funds activities to verify the source of the downblended material.

Plutonium disposition. Both the United States and Russia have declared that they will dispose of 50 metric tons of excess weapon plutonium and, since 1995, the Energy Department has received nearly $50 million to conduct small-scale disposition tests, analyses, and demonstrations with the Russians, and to continue work toward an official agreement specifying plutonium disposition rates, facilities, and techniques to be pursued.

Other nuclear security cooperation under CTR. The Cooperative Threat Reduction program, founded in 1992, provides a variety of equipment and support to assist Russia in the safe destruction of strategic delivery systems, the transportation of nuclear warheads, the physical protection of nuclear-weapon storage sites, warhead accounting, and chemical and biological weapon destruction and facility dismantlement.

Other “lab-to-lab” work. In addition to the Material Protection, Control, and Accounting program, the Energy Department and Minatom labs are cooperating on research into warhead dismantlement transparency methods and procedures, export control development, and general scientific cooperation.

–K. L. & W. H.

The Nuclear Cities Initiative is substantially different from the other U.S. Russian nonproliferation programs. Other programs have attempted to freeze nuclear scientists in place by funding them to perform basic science tasks, many of which have no applicability to real-world problems. In contrast, the Nuclear Cities Initiative seeks to weave together a variety of commercial activities with other pursuits more familiar to Russia's nuclear sector, including increasing the amount of analytical and development work related to nonproliferation and the environment.

Nonproliferation and environmental activities may require long-term U.S. funding. But if properly developed, they will produce jobs, incomes, and tangible solutions to problems that plague both countries. And these are areas where non-governmental organizations can supplement government activity.

The Princeton University Center for Energy and Environmental Studies and the Russian-American Nuclear Security Advisory Council are facilitating the development of new nonproliferation analysis centers at two key closed cities. Other groups are preparing to provide similar assistance in the energy, environmental, and business areas.

Employing a multifaceted strategy may be the best way to ensure that political support in the United States is solidified and that the transformation of the Russian weapons complex will begin in earnest. Nevertheless, in practice, the Nuclear Cities Initiative could end up repeating the mistakes of the IPP program–if the same flawed implementation approaches are adopted.

One serious misstep would be for the Energy Department to rely heavily on its national laboratories for entrepreneurial expertise. The labs have few experts in economic development. The NCI program must have the continuing advice of seasoned business experts and specialists on the Russian economy, and it must focus on providing usable business education, training, and analysis.

With hard-nosed advice from business consultants grounded in the real world, the program should be able to help Russian institutes obtain contracts from Western companies.

The program must also facilitate the most accessible commercial opportunities first. This means contracting for Russian brain power. Russian scientists, for instance, are already performing unclassified computer calculations for the Intel and Sun corporations with great success. And NCI money is going into a computing center at one closed city.

Expansion in this area may be thwarted by the tight restrictions Congress has imposed on the export of advanced computers to Russian nuclear weapon laboratories. In this case two national security imperatives clash–the desire to control high technology exports and the need to create profitable economic opportunities to lure scientists away from weapons work.

Russian weapons scientists also could be employed to remotely perform engineering and research and development work for Western companies via computer hookups–if more high-speed Internet hookups are provided. Although the Energy Department is beginning to put some money into a project that could speed Internet access, wide availability is years away.

All of these activities, if effectively executed in the early years of the NCI program, should create a solid foundation for tackling the hardest commercialization activities–convincing Western investors to create new businesses in the closed cities.

The future

In 1992, when Congress approved the first funds for the Nunn-Lugar program–a cornerstone of U.S. efforts to decrease the proliferation dangers resulting from Russia's post-communist transition–there was a sense that the problem could be solved quickly, perhaps by the end of the decade.

Seven years later, it is clear that these estimates were optimistic. We now know that a long-term plan is needed to truly address Russia's proliferation problems–one that engages governments, the private sector, the university community, and non-governmental organizations in a cohesive and strategic fashion. Without a coordinated and well-funded approach, the proliferation problems posed by the Russian weapon complexes will not abate much.

In 1999, the major U.S. programs to tackle the brain-drain problem in Russia are funded at about $60 million. The Nuclear Cities Initiative, which seeks to transcend the limited goals of these existing programs, is estimated by Energy to need $600 million over the next five years. However, administration documents show that closer to $200 million has been allocated for this period.

Neither amount is sufficient to adequately galvanize action by the fractured Russian bureaucracy or to achieve the major objectives of the program during this period.

Over five decades, the United States spent more than $5 trillion (in inflation-adjusted dollars) on building its nuclear weapons and infrastructure to counter the Soviet threat. Today it makes sense to carve out several billion in the coming years from the U.S. budget surplus to help ensure that nuclear expertise, technology, and materials do not spread beyond Russia's borders into the international black market. With this level of funding, the Russian government will take notice and real national security results can be accomplished.

To create the political support for greater funding, the Energy Department and other government agencies must reform their past approaches to U.S.-Russian nonproliferation programs by improving management and ensuring that most of the money allocated for these activities is used in Russia, not in the United States.

And Russia must become more aggressive in exempting U.S. assistance from taxes and delivering on its commitment to financially contribute to these efforts through matching funds and in-kind support.

Together, the United States and Russia need to seriously plan for the ultimate transition of these efforts from substantial government support to reliance on commercial development and outside investment.

The General Accounting Office has usefully identified how U.S.-Russian cooperative nuclear security programs can be better implemented. But these criticisms should serve as the basis for reform and expansion of these vital activities, not as an excuse for abandoning them.