Instability Threatens U.S. Security

In the fall of 1991, conditions in the disintegrating Soviet Union created a clear and present threat to nuclear safety and stability world-wide. An estimated 30,000 nuclear weapons were spread among the former Soviet republics. About 3,200 strategic nuclear warheads were located outside of Russia on the territories of Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. Political, social, and economic upheaval heightened the prospects that, unassisted, the former Soviet republics would be unable to provide for safe and secure storage or disposition of these nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. These conditions also caused concerns that former Soviet nuclear weapons scientists and engineers would export their expertise or services to rogue countries and groups.

SS-25 Mobile Missile

The dangers posed by this situation in the new independent states (NIS) were becoming increasingly clear: weapons might be diverted or used in an unauthorized manner; warheads and fissile materials might be sold to countries or groups inimical to the United States; and former Soviet weapons scientists and engineers might contribute to global proliferation. Although significant positive changes were occurring in the NIS and many of the threats that confronted the United States throughout the Cold War were disappearing, these weapons and materials continued to pose serious risks to U.S. national security.

Weapons of Mass Destruction Threat (as of Jan 95)

The spectre that nuclear materials could be smuggled beyond Russia's borders increased expectations in the West that it would be only a matter of time before sufficient materials to build a bomb fell into the hands of rogue states, unless immediate action was taken.

Congress responded to these conditions and associated threats by initiating the Nunn-Lugar program in November 1991. Referred to as the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, this congressional effort provided the Department of Defense (DoD) with the authority to fund assistance to the eligible states of the former Soviet Union to dismantle and destroy weapons of mass destruction; to strengthen the security of nuclear weapons and fissile materials in connection with dismantlement; to prevent proliferation; and to help demilitarize the industrial and scientific infrastructure which has supported weapons of mass destruction in the NIS.