Globalizing Cooperative Threat Reduction: A Survey of Options. Updated April 15, 2004

摘要

Increasingly, Congress and the Administration are looking to utilize nonproliferation assistance programs, including cooperative threat reduction, to help reduce the risk of terrorist access to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). In the FY2004 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress authorized the Bush Administration to spend $50 million of unobligated funds from the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program in states outside the former Soviet Union. Thus far, the Bush Administration has proposed that such funds could be used for retraining weapons scientists in Iraq and Libya or for reducing uranium enrichment levels in foreign research nuclear reactors. This report, which will be updated as needed, analyzes the range of possibilities for applying CTR funds, what kinds of assistance might be supplied, and describes legal, financial, technical, and political constraints on possible assistance. A key underlying issue is whether countries that pose particular risks are prepared to provide adequate cooperation to achieve CTR objectives. As many observers have noted, CTR programs cannot be precisely replicated in other countries. A common factor must be the willingness of such states to cooperate. Across the board, Congress may wish to consider domestic and international legal and political restrictions on cooperation with states outside the nonproliferation regimes, low levels of transparency exhibited by most of the potential recipient states, and the lack of incentives for many of these states to pursue threat reduction measures. In addition, Congress may wish to consider whether potentially expanding the geographic scope of CTR may have a negative effect on existing programs. One school of thought believes Russia, as the largest source of stocks of biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons, should continue to be the main focus of attention. Other observers believe there is now an opportunity to focus additionally on states within the nexus of terrorism and WMD.