Overview of the U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction Program for Biological Warfare Agents in the Former Soviet Union

摘要

The fall of the Soviet Union signaled the end of the Cold War and brought great relief to many, who, as a result, felt that the threat of mutually assured annihilation from weapons of mass destruction (WMD) has been relegated to the waste bins of history. The demise of the former power did not, however, signal an end to the weapons themselves. Given the size of the Soviet Union's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons arsenal, the flowering of terrorist operations, and flourishing materiel transfer networks around the globe, vulnerability to WMD confronts the United States as its number one security concern. To secure the WMD specifically in Russia and the states of the former Soviet Union (FSU), the U.S. implemented the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program in 1991. This program is designed to assist the FSU states with the security, destruction and dismantling of these weapons in order to keep them out of the hands of non-rational actors and countries of concern. While laudable in intention, the program in the area of biological weapons (BW) production demonstrates questionable strategy and effectiveness. Progress has been slow and uneven, despite twelve years of effort and an influx of $7 billion; unintentional consequences may result if certain participants do not make substantive changes. This paper will describe the overarching CTR guidance, US policy for BW counterproliferation in Russia and select states of the FSU, the interagency role in BW CTR, the challenges facing the BW CTR and recommendations for facilitating an effective counterproliferation program for the FSU's BW program.