“Cooperating with Russia on WMD Counterproliferation in Syria? We Have Done This Before”

By Joseph Cerami.

Actually, the United States and Russia have cooperated, in very recent history, in the removal and destruction of weapons of mass destruction. Under what are known as Nunn-Lugar programs, the US has worked closely with Russia, and other countries, in removing weapons of mass destruction with remarkable efficiency and effectiveness. Syria will be different, but the US has much recent experience to build on.

The efforts by Senators Sam Nunn (Democrat of Georgia) and Richard Lugar (Republican of Indiana) in US-Russian Cooperative Threat Reduction Programs were key to the effectiveness of the Counterproliferation Policy Initiative that was launched during the first Clinton Administration.

Government policymakers, national security experts, scientists and engineers were among the first to seize the opportunity for forming new relationships among the United States, Russia, and the former Soviet republics (FSR) following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989. Initially, President George H.W. Bush’s notion of a new world order (see George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed) was significant for the executive branch and especially the State and Defense Departments’ promotion of new initiatives.

In the following Clinton administration, in reflecting on his experiences as Secretary of Defense, William Perry notes the significance of the post-Cold War period for establishing an “effective U.S. partnership with Russia in the security sphere.”

In their history of these early counterproliferation programs, defense department officials, Ash Carter (the current Deputy Secretary of Defense) and William Perry (Clinton’s first Secretary of Defense, now with the Hoover Institution at Stanford University) point to the early post-Cold War discussions urging Russia’s policy elite to become “integrationists” to achieve a new, “self-respecting place in the world order.”

In their book, Preventive Defense, Carter and Perry discuss early administration approaches and their experiences as Defense Department officials in the first Clinton administration. The George Bush (41) and then Clinton administrations, in supporting Senators Nunn and Lugar’s initiative, responded quickly to the new threat of nuclear armed former Soviet republics.

Under the authorizing Nunn-Lugar legislation, Defense Department policymakers addressed “loose nukes” issues with programs to eliminate nuclear weapons and fissile material in the Ukraine, and then in Kazakhstan, and Belarus. Special projects, such as Project Sapphire removed weapons grade plutonium and enriched uranium from Kazakhstan and included internal US collaboration among the Departments of Defense, Energy, State, and the CIA.

Other factors in the Nunn-Lugar bargaining do stand out. Traditional Cold War concerns about security and secrecy had to be overcome. Information about compliance arrangements was crucial for building trust and confidence for continuing the program. The complexity and high degree of transparency necessary insured that each side had to step up to new challenges for continuing to shape a new post-Cold War relationship.

There is a real case to be made for using the Syrian WMD disarmament project for promoting legal norms, legitimate claims, and preferences for positive interactions and change. Early Nunn-Lugar barriers included overcoming fifty years of Cold War mistrust with the Russians.

Carter and Perry’s account includes the significance of President Clinton and Vice President Gore’s interventions to develop trust with the new governments of Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus. The Nunn-Lugar programs successes were tied to the larger issues regarding building a community of shared norms, values and identities in terms of international institutions, arms control, and multilateral organizations.