Recommendations, Part II: The Medium Term

In the medium term we need to take several measures. Cooperative Threat Reduction should receive a major review, with the Executive, the GAO and the CRS assisting the Congress in a comprehensive study of the program. Those aspects which can reasonably be expected to produce results should be placed under greater oversight, with unrealistic elements of CTR scrapped, saving the money for other uses.

The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) should be expanded with a particular eye towards enlisting the involvement not only of Russia herself but also of Russia’s land neighbors and those who control the key waterways leading to and from Russian ports, the Danish and Turkish Straits. Improved intelligence capabilities and cooperation are needed to ensure that interdiction efforts can target proliferation threats in spite of dual-use materials and the small quantities needed for attacks.

Regarding the Container Security Initiative (CSI), the US needs to:

• Encourage Russia to live up to its statements as a WCO and G8 member and allow CSI scanning in its ports
• Fund research to ensure that CSI scanning is able to detect biological and chemical threats
• Develop and fund intelligence efforts to identify circumvention of CSI scanning by use of third-party ports
• Encourage the further expansion of CSI around the world to decrease the number of non-CSI ports through which C/BW could be smuggled

The disruption of terrorist and criminal networks should be another key component of our medium-term efforts. Increased intelligence penetration abroad, coupled with law enforcement and financial efforts at home and in the nations of our friends and allies, will not only disrupt non-state efforts at proliferating C/BW, but will also provide the sort of intelligence needed to improve the efficiency of CTR, PSI and CSI. In addition to adequate funding, these disruption efforts also require coordination among the various agencies of the US government, probably to be done through the National Security Council.

Options, Part I: The Orthodox Views

There is no silver bullet to solve the problem of non-state biological and chemical weapons proliferation out of Russia. Many of the existing programs could be significantly increased in size or given a new focus; various elements of policy can be mixed and matched to try to create a multi-facet solution.

One obvious option is to try to improve the oversight and efficiency of CTR. The existing programs we have need to be held accountable so that they actually produce their maximum possible results. Those overseeing efforts to find alternative employment for Russian weapons scientists need to see that the funds allocated for this purpose are not lost in the bureaucratic process. Furthermore, programs such as the Department of Energy’s Initiative for Proliferation Prevention need to be re-worked or copied elsewhere so that they include chemical and biological knowledge as well.

In its 1995 report, the General Accounting Office found that most CTR defense conversion efforts were ‘converting dormant facilities that once produced items related to weapons of mass destruction,’ rather than eliminating current production capacity. (See CRS)

A further problem that needs correcting is that CTR personnel cannot even report on their own activities with accuracy: the 2007 CTR report to Congress specified in one place that the Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility would begin operations in December 2008, while elsewhere in the same report it was stated that operations would begin in July. Such basic bureaucratic failures could be addressed in order to make CTR more effective.

However, a stepped-up version of CTR cannot fully address the problem. The GAO, commenting upon CTR’s biological efforts, said that

Key risks [involved with CTR] include sustaining Russia’s existing biological weapons infrastructure, maintaining or advancing Russian scientists’ skills to develop offensive biological weapons, and the potential misuse of US assistance to fund offensive research.

Because of the dual-use nature of chemical and biological technologies, these outcomes are not simply a result of poor management – although that may exacerbate the failure – but are an inherent problem with any CTR-type program. As the same report goes on to explain,

None of these [safeguards the US relies upon] would prevent Russian project participants or institutes from potentially using their skills or research outputs to later work on offensive weapons activities at any of the Russian military institutes that remain closed to the United States.

For this reason, many are calling for the abolition or serious curtailment of CTR, arguing that it is both a fundamental failure and a waste of money.

These two options encompass almost the entire debate surrounding the prevention of biological and chemical weapons proliferation in Russia. The one school of thought, while perhaps recognizing the shortcomings of CTR, points to the size of the threat and insists something must be done, concluding that CTR is better than nothing, while the other school of though, pointing to the high costs and frequent failures of CTR, insists it should be scrapped. Neither school is considering other options and neither side is thinking long-term.

The Gap

Cooperative Threat Reduction, the preeminent program aimed at stopping the proliferation of Russian WMDs has had several shortcomings. The 2007 CTR report to Congress said that

Construction of Russia’s first Chemical Weapons Destruction Facility (CWDF) for nerve-agent-filled, proliferable weapons continued…. In February [2005]… the lack of an approved practical plan for the elimination of Russia’s stockpile of nerve agents was addressed.

Meaning, in nearly 15 years of CTR no CWDF had been built and no plan for eliminated nerve agents developed.

But more fundamentally, US efforts generally fail on five key points.

* First, most US policies address state uses and transfers of WMDs, rather than non-state transfers.
* Second, they deal with legal, not black market trade.
* Third, many US policies ignore the pitfalls posed by the dual-use quality of biological and chemical weapons.
* Forth, US policies tend to suffer from “nuclear blindness,” address the nuclear threat but in so doing ignoring the biological and chemical threat.
* Finally, US policy fails to address the essential question of why Russia has been reluctant to cooperate with CTR.

Russian obfuscation can be explained in several ways. The Russian government may perceive that the threat of global terrorism, while affecting Russia, is more of an American problem than a Russian one. Furthermore, it is understandable that the Russians are hesitant to have American inspectors crawling all over some of their most sensitive sites, destroying weapons; while it is not in Russian interests to have their biological and chemical weapons stolen or sold on the black market, the sensitive nature of the weapons and technology involved creates a reluctance among the Russian military to fully cooperate with American requests. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that

Although the United States would have liked to allocate more funds for chain of custody efforts, officials in Russia did not share this priority.

Put simply, Russian calculations of the cost and benefit of American threat reduction programs may conclude that such programs are not in Russia’s overall interest. In addition, the Russian government may be reluctant, for the sake of pride, to admit that it is unable to take care of its own weapons, that it does not know where they all are and cannot ensure their security. At the most basic level, the Russian regime is an authoritarian one, conspiratorial and suspicious; these are traits carried in its political DNA. A government that bullies its own people and its neighbors finds it difficult to believe that others might actually be interested in the common good; furthermore, a regime that makes routine use of censorship and deception does not take kindly to notions of transparency and openness.

The Threat, Part III: Negligence and Ongoing Research

Preventing proliferation becomes increasingly difficult in light of the fact that

The Soviet Union never instituted a comprehensive control and accounting system for these materials, relying instead on physical security and isolated facilities to protect against attacks from the outside and the control of the Communist regime to protect against subversion or theft from the inside. (See CRS)

As a result, Russian authorities often do not even know if weapons are missing, in what quantities, or when they disappeared. Furthermore, the ability of the current Russian regime to provide physical security is considerably less than that of its Soviet predecessor.

Ongoing Russian research efforts, ostensibly to develop defenses against C/BW, pose an additional threat. Even if these defensive claims are true and the Russians are acting in good faith, such research remains outside controls of the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) and poses a proliferation threat, since both the materials and the knowledge learned could find their way to the black market and – by virtue of their dual-use nature – be put to work creating offensive weapons, as Former Assistant Secretary of State Carl W. Ford has testified.

The Threat, Part II: The Nature of C/BW

Several attributes of biological and chemical weapons (C/BW) complicate the threat posed by non-state transfers of Russian weapons. C/BW are of an extremely dual-use nature, with many of the technologies and materials used in a variety of legitimate medicinal, agricultural and industrial processes, making these components easier to produce and proliferate than corresponding nuclear technologies and materials. Furthermore, while some C/BW are very complex, experts point out that on the whole they are simpler than nuclear weapons. Michael Moodie explains that

This problem is exacerbated by the very small quantities that may be transferred to bolster a weapons capability. When snippets of protein are all that you need, the notion of controlling transfers of such materials becomes a less attractive option.

Moreover, the means of delivering chemical and biological weapons can be quite simple, including public transportation networks or the postal system. The Congressional Research Service (CRS) reported that

Compared with most conventional weapons, C/B weapons are less well understood and have the potential to cause mass casualties. Even if used in smaller attacks, C/B weapons have the potential to cause mass terror.