Opinion Editorials & Interviews
20 Years of US-Russian Cooperation on Nuclear Risk Reduction
William J. Burns, U.S. Ambassador to Russia
Rossiyskaya Gazeta, December 19, 2007
Twenty years ago, Moscow and Washington signed an important, but little-noticed agreement that helped our two countries to move from confrontation to cooperation on nuclear issues. The agreement established Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers in both capitals and represented another step toward the end of the Cold War. The idea behind the centers was that transparency and clear communication would reduce the risk of nuclear war. For the past two decades, the Russian and American professionals manning the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers around the clock have conducted thousands of information exchanges about the size, launches, and deployment of each country's missile nuclear forces. The work of the centers grew to include inspection notifications and data sharing to help verify compliance with the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty and other arms control agreements. Other countries joined Russia and the United States in this effort, and centers were established in Belarus and Kazakhstan as well.
This December, we join our Russian military and civilian colleagues in marking the twentieth anniversary of the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center in Moscow. We recognize their historic contributions to a lasting peace and suspect that their work is far from over. To put their achievements in context, it is worth remembering how far we've come in reducing the nuclear threat to our citizenry since the centers were established. After the Cold War ended, both Russia and the United States slashed their nuclear arsenals, retiring thousands of warheads and dismantling thousands of deadly delivery systems. At the same time, Russians and Americans took extraordinary measures to protect their remaining nuclear arsenals and stores of fissile materials. Through our joint Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, dozens of nuclear storage sites have been made more secure. In parallel, hundreds of tons of weapons-grade material have been blended down and converted to commercial use. Five years ago, President Putin and President Bush made another major contribution to this effort by signing the Moscow Treaty. Recognizing that the levels of our nuclear forces still did not reflect current strategic realities, they agreed to cut deployed nuclear warheads by nearly two-thirds. Taken together, the record of U.S.-Russian leadership in reducing nuclear arms and diminishing the danger of nuclear conflict speaks for itself.
The world has changed dramatically since our national Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers exchanged their first messages in 1987. Yet even as we face new threats and challenges, the centers' experience offer some valuable food for thought today: Despite Cold War tensions in the 1980s, nuclear safety and security demanded Russian-American leadership and cooperation; that cooperation required mutual trust and transparency. The Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers were a pioneer effort among the confidence-building measures that paved the way for far-reaching cooperation in the decade to come. Today, nuclear safety and security remain paramount issues; technological advances, the information revolution and global mobility have made nuclear weapons proliferation among both states and non-state actors a graver risk than ever; the need for responsible and determined leadership from Russia and the United States has, if anything, become more compelling.
Russia and the United States are working hard to advance this whole set of nuclear security issues. We have launched a new global initiative against nuclear terrorism. At the direction of our Presidents, our two governments have begun a dialogue on how best to maintain strategic stability and pursue further reductions after the expiration of the START Treaty in 2009 and the Moscow Treaty in 2012. We're focused on successful joint completion of safety and security upgrades at nuclear facilities by the end of 2008. We're working to try to turn differences over possible missile defense sites in Central Europe into a strategic opportunity for joint early warning and missile defense. And, not least, Russia and the United States are cooperating very effectively with our Six Party partners on the North Korean nuclear issue, and despite tactical differences, continuing to work together to ensure that Iran meets it international nuclear obligations and does not develop a nuclear weapons capability.
Looking at our shared experience with the Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers in this context, there is also obviously much more that can be done to enhance communication between us, on everything from data exchange on ballistic missile launches, to difficult questions of missile defense and space and deterrence posture, to equally complicated issues like the future of the INF Treaty. There are no easy answers to any of these questions, but all of them require a candid, sustained, systematic strategic dialogue between us and a commitment to transparency and mutual trust. We may not be able to agree on every issue, but neither of us can afford miscommunication or the absence of genuine consultation.
It is sometimes difficult, amidst all the mutual frustration in our relationship these days, to focus on the singular reality that an enormous amount of good can come of Russian-American leadership on the nuclear challenges of our time and to recognize the benefits of practical, long-term Russian-American cooperation, like the results of twenty years of work by the dedicated staffs of our Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers. More than on any other single issue, the world depends on Russia and the United States to show responsible leadership on the nuclear question. No matter how many other frictions we may have between us, and no matter who succeeds President Bush and President Putin, that responsibility will remain with all of us for many years to come.