Cooperative Threat Reduction Program Research Articles

Global Health Security Capacity and Capability Measurement Framework Within the Biological Threat Reduction Program

The Biological Threat Reduction Program, part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program since 1991, is mandated by the US Congress to regularly provide public reporting as part of its accountability. The Biological Threat Reduction Program recently designed a metrics and evaluation framework to measure its impact and effectiveness in partner countries. The framework focuses on capacity and capability strengthening related to biosafety, biosecurity, and biosurveillance. This is a marked shift from the previous approach, which relied on more tangible outcomes such as the elimination of weapons of mass destruction production assets, delivery devices, munitions, and construction activities. The new metrics and evaluation framework tracks the program's impact across 24 biosafety, biosecurity, and biosurveillance metrics and numerous capability, capacity, sustainability, and regional leadership indicators for human and animal health systems. The framework uses quantitative and qualitative inputs to generate measurement scores for program investment in partner countries. Overall, the framework provides a robust feedback loop between requirements, plans, and implementation processes throughout each step of the program's annual management lifecycle.

A Study on the Application of Cooperative Threat Reduction Program for the Dismantlement of NK WMD

A Study on the Application of Cooperative Threat Reduction Program for the Dismantlement of NK WMD

Initiating a cooperative denuclearization effort with North Korea

ABSTRACTAs the United States and North Korea pursue negotiations on a “denuclearization” agreement, the two countries should consider initiating cooperative measures as a way to build confidence and encourage finalization of a complete agreement. Based on lessons from the initial engagements carried out under the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program in states of the former Soviet Union (FSU), initial cooperation should focus on safety and security, training, and infrastructure elimination. By offering to implement these initiatives now while negotiations are underway, the United States could gain additional insights into North Korean intentions. These early initiatives could be proposed without compromising the US maximum-pressure campaign on North Korea by using the current authorities of the CTR program and carefully designing specific exemptions that may be required for any agreed measures. If North Korea is truly interested in pursuing disarmament efforts, the initial cooperative projects would enable them to begin reaping potential benefits while negotiations continue with sanctions still in place. These initial proposals could also be expanded to include additional international partners such as Russia, China, South Korea, and Japan. Such programs and initiatives would support and supplement longer-term strategies to address North Korean weapons-of-mass-destruction challenges.

“Defense by other means”: future evolution(s) of cooperative threat reduction

ABSTRACTThis article discusses likely future contexts of, and options for, global threat-reduction activities to support nonproliferation goals over the next five to ten years. Threat-reduction activities span a continuum from unilateral actions that the United States might take with little cooperation and transparency at one end to cooperative actions associated with negotiated treaties and agreements at the other. This study focuses on cooperative approaches embodied in the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, which has been the most visible program reducing the threats posed by weapons of mass destruction for over two decades. We argue that CTR’s evolution can be described in terms of the relationship between the desired US influence on outcomes, the ability to generate a common threat definition, and appetite for collaboration on threat reduction. To that end, this article provides an introduction and overview of CTR initiatives over its twenty-seven-year history and a review of relevant legislation and trends. After introducing and describing the CTR Possible Futures Framework, this article offers five possible options for—and discusses the implications of—CTR’s future evolution.

Trump Administration’s Initiatives in Resolving North Korea’s Nuclear Problem: Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Approach

The purpose of the paper is to review the applicability of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR), the so-called Nunn-Lugar program to North Korea in an effort to denuclearize the country. To this end, it focuses on analysis of some US scholars and experts’ initiatives on that program based on lessons learned from the former Soviet Union to set the ground rules for resolving North Korea’s nuclear issues because the US has been a salient country able to serve as an engine of non-proliferation and expertise that can be used around world. This article argues that the ground rules should be built in terms of clarifying the concept of threats, identifying the means of strike capability, and choosing the participants and their roles in the negotiation in order to increase the possibility of success for the CTR program on North Korea. In line with these principles, US-Republic of Korea (ROK) coordination would be crucial, despite of obstacles like DPRK’s objection of ROK’s involvement in this process of bilateral engagement between US and DPRK. The ROK would need to be more actively engaged in the CTR program with the help of financial resources as well as technical assistance that could make a soft landing for North Korea’s CTR program, as the Korean Energy Development Organization (KEDO) during the mid-1990s envisioned. It is more likely to apply this approach to North Korea’s nuclear program and to achieve a good result in resolving North Korean nuclear problems by the active participation of the two co-sponsor and co-initiator of CTR model, Nunn and Lugar, into the discussions in the administration of President Trump.

Building Infectious Disease Research Programs to Promote Security and Enhance Collaborations with Countries of the Former Soviet Union

Addressing the threat of infectious diseases, whether natural, the results of a laboratory accident, or a deliberate act of bioterrorism, requires no corner of the world be ignored. The mobility of infectious agents and their rapid adaptability, whether to climate change or socioeconomic drivers or both, demand the science employed to understand these processes be advanced and tailored to a country or a region, but with a global vision. In many parts of the world, largely because of economic struggles, scientific capacity has not kept pace with the need to accomplish this goal and has left these regions and hence the world vulnerable to infectious disease outbreaks. To build scientific capability in a developing region requires cooperation and participation of experienced international scientists who understand the issues and are committed to educate the next generations of young investigators in the region. These efforts need to be coupled with the understanding and resolve of local governments and international agencies to promote an aggressive science agenda. International collaborative scientific investigation of infectious diseases not only adds significantly to scientific knowledge, but it promotes health security, international trust, and long-term economic benefit to the region involved. This premise is based on the observation that the most powerful human inspiration is that which brings peoples together to work on and solve important global challenges. The republics of the former Soviet Union provide a valuable case study for the need to rebuild scientific capacity as they are located at the crossroads where many of the world’s great epidemics began. The scientific infrastructure and disease surveillance capabilities of the region suffered significant decline after the breakup of the Soviet Union. The U.S. Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, a part of the U.S. Department of Defense, together with partner countries, have worked diligently to improve the capabilities in this region to guard against the potential future risk from especially dangerous pathogens. The dissolution of the Soviet Union left behind many scientists still working to study pathogens using antiquated protocols in unsafe laboratories. To address this situation, the CTR program began improving laboratory infrastructure, establishing biosafety and biosecurity programs, and training scientists in modern techniques, with emphasis on biosurveillance and safe containment of especially dangerous pathogens. In the Republic of Georgia, this effort culminated in the construction of a modern containment laboratory, the Richard G. Lugar Center for Public Health Research in Tbilisi to house both isolated especially dangerous pathogens as well as the research to be conducted on these agents. The need now is to utilize and sustain the investment made by CTR by establishing strong public and animal health science programs in these facilities tailored to the needs of the region and the goals for which this investment was made. A similar effort is ongoing in other former Soviet Republics. Here, we provide the analysis and recommendations of an international panel of expert scientists appointed by the Cooperative Biological Engagement Program of the Defense Threat Reduction Agency to provide advice to the stakeholders on the scientific path for the future. The emphasis is on an implementation strategy for decision makers and scientists to consider providing a sustainable biological science program in support of the One Health initiative. Opportunities, potential barriers, and lessons learned while meeting the needs of the Republic of Georgia and the Caucasus region are discussed. It is hoped that this effort will serve as a model for similar scientific needs in not only the former Soviet Union republics but also other regions challenged by infectious diseases where the CTR program operates.

Implementing the global health security agenda: lessons from global health and security programs.

The Global Health Security Agenda (GHSA) describes a vision for a world that is safe and secure from infectious disease threats; it underscores the importance of developing the international capacity to prevent, detect, and respond to pandemic agents. In February 2014, the United States committed to support the GHSA by expanding and intensifying ongoing efforts across the US government. Implementing these goals will require interagency coordination and harmonization of diverse health security elements. Lessons learned from the Global Health Initiative (GHI), the President's Emergency Program for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program underscore that centralized political, technical, and fiscal authority will be key to developing robust, sustainable, and integrated global health security efforts across the US government. In this article, we review the strengths and challenges of GHI, PEPFAR, and CTR and develop recommendations for implementing a unified US global health security program.

Основные этапы развития программы Нанна – Лугара в 1990-е годы

The article examines the main stages of formation and development of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, its goal and tasks at each stage, as well as reasons and methods used by the opposition in the USA to reduce its funding.

Another Way to North Korea's Denuclearization: Multilateral Approach to Nuclear Fuel Cycle

IntroductionThe six-party talks have been suspended since North Korea's withdrawal in April 2009 to protest the UN Security Council's condemnation of l ong-range missile launches in presidential statement. To solve North Korea's nuclear problem, the deadlock in the negotiations with the North should first be broken in the near future. Once the six-party talks resume, the primary discussion could focus on how to denuclearize the North. In order to achieve such an objective, it will be essential to disDepartmentmantle its nuclear weapons program in complete, verifiable, and irreversible manner. In addition to removing the nuclear material and infrastructure, irreversible dismantling of the North's nuclear weapons program would require redirection of the North's nuclear workers to other civilian occupations.While dealing with the North's nuclear problem, it will be important to assure the North of sustainable energy supply for supporting its economic growth. In the present context, nuclear energy is the single huge, economical, and reliable energy source. A constant supply of nuclear energy without proliferation risk would help to eradicate the necessity and false excuses of its indigenous nuclear development program. However, the international society will hesitate to do this because the North has previously attempted to mislead them into believing that its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.Therefore, revisiting 1994's Agreed Framework between the U.S. and North Korea could be considered. However, it has several weaknesses: First, it cannot resolve serious concern regarding the North's intention to divert the spent nuclear fuel discharged from the nuclear power plants, since they are located in the North; second, the North cannot effectively handle the central issue related to the irreversible dismantlement of its nuclear program, which is the diversion of its nuclear workers to other civilian occupations; third, such an approach will involve heavy financial burden on only three countries (Korea, the U.S., and Japan) that took part in the Korean Peninsula Energy Development Organization; and fourth, it is not clear whether the approach would be acceptable to the North. The North Korean Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which Kang proposed as way to redirect the North's nuclear workers, could also be considered.1 However, Kang's proposal is not comprehensive approach to the North's nuclear problem, since it simply focused on the relocation of the nuclear workers.Hence, new comprehensive approach is needed that allows the North an opportunity to reap the benefits of its nuclear energy program according to Article IV of the Nonproliferation Treaty but prevents the North's nuclear workers from conducting clandestine nuclear activities. To achieve such an objective, an approach similar to the approach to the nuclear fuel could be solution. The multilateral approach to the nuclear fuel cycle has been proposed and widely discussed since Mohamed El-Baradei, the former director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), called for the creation of a new mechanism that will assure supplies of nuclear fuel and reactors to countries which want them, while strengthening nonproliferation through better controls over the sensitive parts of the nuclear fuel cycle. This paper reviews the previous proposals of the multilateral approach to the nuclear fuel cycle which have been recommended since 2003 and proposes comprehensive multilateral approach to solve North Korea's nuclear problem.Multilateral Approach to the Nuclear Fuel CycleThe anticipated increase in global energy demand would result in the expansion of nuclear energy use worldwide, mainly due to the construction of nuclear power plants in countries that do not currently have established nuclear industries. This could result in the worldwide dissemination of uranium enrichment and spent fuel reprocessing technologies because most countries would aim for local development of these sensitive technologies. …

Breaking Out of the CTR Mold?

Canada’s recent biosecurity partnership with Kyrgyzstan could create a new model for preventing brain drain, showing it has learned a lot from the Cooperative Threat Reduction program—both good and bad.

Learning to build the bomb

At the end of the cold war in 1991,the USand its allies realized that the former Soviet Union had thousands of unsecured nuclear weapons, tons of unguarded fissile material, and unemployed nuclear weapons scientists. The materials and expertise necessary for a so-called rogue state or terrorist group to build a nuclear weapon were readily accessible. So the US set about helping the former Soviet states secure their weapons, materials, and scientists through various facets of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Several CTRprojects were aimed specifically at preventing a mass exodus of former Soviet scientists to rogue states by reemploying them on peaceful projects and thus taking away the temptation to sell their weapons expertise to any state that came recruiting. But 15 years on, the reemployment programs have made slow progress in the former Soviet Union; official US government reports and various academic studies attest to that fact.l And yet the feared mass exodus of scientists to rogue states never happened (but plenty of former Soviet scientists emigrated to Western states), even though Libya, North Korea, and Pakistan were building nuclear weapons programs and were presumably in need of nuclear expertise. Now Iran is also building an enrichment program, and perhaps more. If those states were not recruiting unemployed former Soviet scientists with experience designing and building nuclear weapons, then where did they-and where would potential nuclear-weapons states-get their nuclear workforce?

The Death of Disarmament in Russia?

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink. --Anonymous With growing confidence, analysts and policymakers have referred to death of arms control, the Cold War industry that produced landmark agreements intended to curb the growth of opposing strategic arsenals. For better or worse, the United States did not keep arms control on life support. In October 1999 the US Senate rejected the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which would eliminate the Department of Energy's only proven means of ensuring the safety and reliability of the United States' nuclear stockpile if ratified. Three later, the Bush Administration legally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the 1972 pact with the Soviet Union that outlawed national missile shields. In May 2002 the United States and Russia did sign a new Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (known as the Treaty of Moscow) that will reduce strategic nuclear weapons to between 1,700 and 2,200 warheads by the end of 2012, but this legal vehicle was more an act of diplomatic charity than a necessary contract. Russia relishes the prestige that accompanies splashy arms control formalities, but America's former peer did not need a treaty to see the benefits of strategic forces cuts--absent significant funding increases, its arsenal will decline to less than 2,000 warheads by 2015 with or without the new pact. (1) This reality was suggested by President Bush, who casually offered to write it down on a piece of paper if Moscow felt it needed an official agreement to do what the United States was going to do over the next ten years anyway. (2) Traditional arms control agreements with Russia, it seems, are as much a part of Cold War history as the Soviet Union itself. Now, the same experts may be unwittingly witnessing the demise of disarmament in Russia. Most of the dismantlement programs the United States initiated to secure and ultimately destroy Russian nuclear, biological, and chemical weapon systems appear to be completed or no longer agree with Moscow's policy goals. The Department of Defense's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program and the Department of Energy's Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (NN) program suffer from poor Russian cooperation as well as from access and transparency problems that have crippled major parts of the sister initiatives. In addition, Russia's spending priorities and contributions do not reflect a continuing, mutual interest in disarmament. Moscow, to be sure, is willing to take advantage of US disarmament resources--but frequently acts against the spirit of the overall effort. Today, Russia seems to view these cooperative initiatives as a means to a strategic modernization program that includes the production of new weapon systems, the elimination and cleanup of older ones, and the maintenance of illicit biological and probably chemical warfare programs. The sum realities of poor transparency and cooperation, backward spending priorities, and stubborn proliferation practices--all key indicators of a country's true arms control intentions--bare a divergence of objectives and expectations between Washington and Moscow that may have already upended the well-meaning programs' primary purpose. A thorough and candid reexamination of US nonproliferation policy toward Russia is in order. Early Success To date, the oft-cited Cooperative Threat Reduction program has achieved a respectable measure of success in deactivating strategic weapons--nuclear warheads and their associated delivery systems--in Russia and the rest of the former Soviet Union. By the Defense Department's count, the CTR program has helped to destroy some 530 intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and no less than 27 ballistic missile submarines over the last dozen years. The congressionally-mandated initiative also has effected the elimination of 475 submarine-launched ballistic missiles and about 120 heavy bombers. …

Cleaning-up the Arctic's Cold War Legacy

In September 1996, the defence ministers of Norway, Russia and the United States signed a Declaration on Arctic Military Environmental Cooperation (AMEC). Formally devised as a forum for communication on military-environmental interactions, AMEC is in practice a mechanism for enhancing Russia's capacity to manage spent nuclear fuel and radioactive waste from its Northern Fleet. This paper describes AMEC's development, aims, organization and activities, and discusses the environmental and political circumstances that led Norway to propose its creation. The paper examines important linkages with US strategic arms reduction and non-proliferation objectives, and argues that AMEC's early signs of success stem directly from its linkage with the US Cooperative Threat Reduction program. While this linkage provides AMEC with important benefits, it also exposes AMEC to a degree of risk within US and Russian domestic politics.

Pathogen Proliferation: Threats from the Former Soviet Bioweapons Complex

This article outlines the proliferation threats of pathogen collections from the former Soviet biological weapons (BW) program and the inherent difficulties in safeguarding sensitive biological materials. It describes new U.S. government efforts to improve security conditions of these collections through the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Finally, the article analyzes these U.S. programs and offers additional policy recommendations to reduce the proliferation threat from these dangerous pathogens.

Arms control by other means

The years ahead may be a period in which traditional nuclear-arms control, as practised since the launch of SALT negotiations over three decades ago, will stumble at best and become deadlocked at worst. Instead, the US may have to pursue its arms-control objectives through less formal, non-treaty-based means. US-Russian nuclear reductions that are unilateral in principle, but coordinated in practice, could foster a cooperative restructuring of both sides' nuclear-force postures. More ambitious and integrated use of post-Cold War channels of nuclear cooperation - for example, the continuing Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, offer a means to reinforce and extend unilateral actions, as well as to enhance the safety and control of Russia's nuclear arsenal.

ICBMs and the Environment: Assessments at a Base in Kazakhstan

A paper by two U.S. scientists explores the environmental/health hazard posed by abandoned missile launch sites and control facilities (dismantled by 1998 as part of the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program) at an ICBM base in north-central Kazakhstan. It summarizes the findings of Environmental Site Assessment Reports based on a program of water and soil sampling at the sites, with a particular focus on testing for the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, various toxic metals, and radiation. The study is important in that it documents levels of contamination (and describes abatement measures) at a former Soviet missile base. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: H50, 110, Q20, 7 figures, 10 references.

Countering the spread of chemical and biological weapons

Two international events aimed at halting the spread of chemical and biological weapons occurred last week. In Tashkent, Uzbekistan, the U.S. signed a bilateral agreement with the Uzbeks to dismantle a former Soviet chemical weapons research facility in the desert city of Nukus. In London, scientists from three national academies met to discuss ways to control biological weapons. The bilateral agreement allots up to $6 million from the U.S.'s Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program—informally known Nunn-Lugar funds—for destruction of the Chemical Research Institute in Nukus. The facility—described by Brian Moran, director of the Pentagon's Office of CTR Policy, as the size of a couple of football fields—was used by the Soviets to research and test chemical weapons. Pentagon spokesman Vic Warzinski says the 18-month U.S.-funded destruction project will eliminate a serious proliferation threat. Among the chemical agents the Soviets tested at Nukus was a new class of lethal nerve agents known No...

Seismic experiments, nuclear dismantlement go hand in hand in Kazakhstan

Unique seismic experiments involving large chemical explosions at different depths have been conducted in Kazakhstan, thanks to nuclear dismantlement activity there. Collaborative efforts of several bodies have provided this creative, cost‐efficient extension of the dismantling work, improving technical monitoring and verification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).For the past several years, the Defense Special Weapons Agency (DSWA) has been closing the nuclear test tunnels and bore‐holes at the former Soviet nuclear test site nearSemipalatinsk, eastern Kazakhstan, as part of the Nunn‐Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program. The existence of this program and the infrastructure that was in place to implement it made it possible to conduct the seismic experiments. As a result, benchmark data have been collected on the variations in seismic signals from explosions at different burial depths.

Lessons from the Nunn‐Lugar cooperative threat reduction program

The authors highlight the Nunn‐Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program's strengths and weaknesses over the past few years and make suggestions to further improve this essential program in the face of growing domestic political opposition in both the US and newly independent states (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. Dr. William C. Potter is a professor and director of the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies (MIIS), and John M. Shields is a Senior Analyst for the same center. A revised version of this article appears in Dismantling the Cold Vim, forthcoming in 1997 from MIT Press.

Conference findings on the Nunn‐Lugar cooperative threat reduction program: Donor and recipient country perspectives

Conference findings on the Nunn‐Lugar cooperative threat reduction program: Donor and recipient country perspectives