The Bush administration launched the war in Iraq ostensibly to secure weapons of mass destruction and prevent al-Qaeda from acquiring them. The president has said repeatedly that nothing is more important to the security of the U.S. than preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. And yet, while the U.S. spends $10 billion a month on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Defense Department plans to spend nearly 25 percent less on securing fissile material and weapons of mass destruction in 2008 than it spent in 2006.
Former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apparently didn't think much of nonproliferation efforts. Former Assistant Defense Secretary Kenneth Adelman, quoted in a recent The New York Times Magazine article by Michael Crowley, says Rumsfeld thought "it was a wimpy thing to have the Pentagon involved in." These days, it is clear from their actions that Pentagon leaders have less desire to fund nonproliferation efforts than J. Edgar Hoover had in playing touch football at the Kennedy compound in Hyannisport.
There's no denying the successes of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, conceived by Democratic Sen. Sam Nunn and Republican Sen. Richard Lugar in securing or destroying WMDs. And yet, on the 15th anniversary of Nunn-Lugar's initial funding, the Pentagon has zeroed-out all spending for destruction of chemical weapons in its 2008 budget request. That's right, Pentagon leaders don't see the value next year in spending one thin dime to destroy or secure VX, soman, sarin, or lewisite/mustard nerve and blister agents from Russia or the former Soviet states.
The 2008 Defense Department funding request for the Cooperative Threat Reduction Act is $348 million, down from $372 million this year and $454 million in 2006. Factor in inflation, and funding for Nunn-Lugar is down by nearly half since its inception.
How could that be, given that 150,000 American troops are embroiled in a war that was all about preventing terrorists from acquiring weapons of mass destruction? And what about the one percent doctrine? Vice President Dick Cheney was quoted in Ron Suskind's recent book, The One Percent Doctrine, saying that the U.S. would be justified in its Iraq military actions even if there was only a one percent chance of "the unimaginable coming due." Isn't there a one percent chance that terrorists will get their hands on WMDs? Ten billion dollars a month to fight a war in which there were no weapons of mass destruction is justified, but spending a fraction of that over an entire year to secure WMDs is not?
When I pointed this out to Lugar's press secretary, Andy Fisher, he responded that "Nunn-Lugar is fully funded for the mission." According to Fisher, Nunn-Lugar is being defunded because construction of a billion-dollar chemical weapons neutralization plant in Russia is virtually done.
Not so, say a number of former Defense Department, Energy Department and Senate Armed Services Committee officials who have personally inspected the site.
The centerpiece of the efforts to destroy Russia's chemical weapons stockpiles is at Shchuch'ye, north of Kazakhstan in the Ural Mountains, where Russia has stored 5,400 tons of nerve agents. The U.S. agreed to pay for it, but construction costs have doubled. With no more Nunn-Lugar funding for chemical weapons destruction in the 2008 budget, the U.S. is leaving the facility only partially built and the job undone.
There are several ways to look at funding levels for Nunn-Lugar. First, is it adequate to do what the government says it needs to do to address what it calls the No. 1 threat against the U.S.? Granted, some of the major weapons-destruction-related construction projects are winding down, but why are there no new programs being conceived, let alone implemented? Earlier this decade, legislation gave the Pentagon authorization to spend Nunn-Lugar money outside the former Soviet states. Since then, that authorization has been exercised only once, when $50 million was spent to secure or destroy a stockpile of chemical weapons that turned up in Albania.
The absolute wrong way to look at funding is as a giveaway to Russia. "Let the Russians pay for it themselves" has always been the mantra from Nunn-Lugar detractors, not acknowledging that it is in America's best interest to do whatever it takes to keep WMDs out of the hands of terrorists.
With a shortsightedness that rivals the disbanding of the Iraqi Army, too many Pentagon leaders believe that nonproliferation is a job for the Energy or State Departments, ignoring the reality that military-to-military cooperation and trust between American and Russian generals is the quickest and most effective way to tackle the problem.
Today, even as the American-Russian political relationship deteriorates, nobody is worried that the land of the czars will revert to being our sworn enemy once again. Overflowing in petro-rubles, Russia no longer needs our financial aid as a quid pro quo for letting U.S. inspectors traipse through Russian weapons facilities. Russia would rather tap America's technical expertise, particularly in areas like nuclear energy development. We're willing to share that expertise with everyone from India to North Korea, so why not Russia if it means that more WMDs are taken out of play?
I don't believe that an act of nuclear terrorism is necessarily inevitable. As argued by Graham Allison, the long-time Defense Department adviser and former dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government, such an occurrence is the "ultimate preventable catastrophe."
We know that there is a demand from terrorists to acquire WMDs. We also know that there is a supply of WMDs out there. As yet, supply and demand have not met, but the window in time to keep them apart is shrinking.
* The full article can be found in the May 2007 issue of the Armed Forces Journal