U.S. POLICY TOWARD CONTROL OF SOVIET “NUKES” SUFFERS FROM WRONG DIAGNOSIS, DANGEROUS R_X

(Washington, D.C.): In recent days,
the United States has gone to
extraordinary lengths to convey a single,
insistent demand: The newly independent
republics of the former Soviet Union must
submit the nuclear weapons on their
territory to the exclusive control of a
“unified, central authority”
and swiftly relocate them to the Russian
republic. The Bush Administration’s
expectation evidently is that such
weapons will then be dismantled or better
safeguarded by the Russian authorities.

So preoccupied is official Washington
with this problem that the Administration
has dispatched no less a figure than
Secretary of State James Baker to convey
its message directly to the leaders of
the new Commonwealth of Independent
States, as well as to the vestigial
leadership of the old USSR. Unfortunately
for the Administration, neither its
diagnosis of the problem nor its
prescription for remedying it are sound.
Unless President Bush recognizes this
reality swiftly, he stands to compound
the damage already done to future
relations with the emerging powers in the
old Soviet empire by his past
overinvestment in the Gorbachev regime.

Misdiagnosis of the Nuclear
Situation

• There is no
  “unified command
  structure” extant in the
  former Soviet Union. As
  a practical matter, the fractures
  and fault lines that have riven
  the Soviet state have also begun
  to manifest themselves in the
  imperial military establishment.
  Loyalties are being divided along
  ethnic, geographic and
  organizational lines. Paychecks
  once issued by Moscow center are,
  for the moment, now being cut by
  the Russian republic.
• When republican officials — like
  the leaders of the three founding
  states of the new Commonwealth —
  offer assurances that the nuclear
  weapons are “under
  control,” they do not
  mean that they are controlled in
  the same way as in the past. Now,
  they contend that authority to
  release Soviet “nukes”
  is vested in a new tripartite
  arrangement which represents a
  fundamental departure from a
  monolithic control approach.

• There is little
  willingness on the part of the
  non-Russian republics to entrust
  the state that has kept them in
  thrall for centuries with
  exclusive possession of nuclear
  weapons. While the three
  other republics with strategic
  forces on their soil (Ukraine,
  Byelorussia and Kazakhstan) have
  expressed their intentions to
  become “nuclear-free,” all
  have subsequently imposed caveats
  on that commitment or otherwise
  postponed the day when it would
  be realized. Kazakh President
  Nursultan Nazarbayev actually
  went so far yesterday as to tell
  Secretary Baker explicitly that
  his nation would retain its
  nuclear weapons as long as the
  Russian republic did so.
• The picture is even more confused
  with respect to the far larger
  number of republics that have
  short-range, tactical weapons on
  their soil. It seems safe to
  assume, however, that many — if
  not virtually all — of these
  republics will decide they would
  prefer to have these nuclear arms
  remain in place until such time
  as circumstances permit them to
  be safely destroyed in situ.

• It is hard to imagine a
  more dubious idea than that of
  insisting that tens of thousands
  of highly portable nuclear
  weapons be swiftly put on the
  roads, rail networks and air
  routes of the former Soviet
  Union. There is a real
  danger that — under present
  circumstances, at least — such
  devices would be diverted, lost
  or stolen in the process of their
  being transported to Russia.
  After all, millions of tons of
  food and other valuable
  commodities disappeared every
  year en route from one locale to
  another in the old USSR; it seems
  a safe bet that the same fate
  would befall at a minimum some of
  the nuclear weapons stored in
  non-Russian republics.

Prescription for U.S.
Policy

In light of these realities, the
United States would be well advised to
adopt a radically different strategy for
addressing its legitimate concerns about
the nuclear inventory of the former USSR.
Such a strategy would have three aspects:
First, it would incorporate a
“systemic” rather than
“symptomatic” approach to the
problem. Second, it would address the people
part of the disintegrating Soviet nuclear
arsenal. Finally, it would develop near-
and longer-term means of providing for
the effective control and destruction of
the former Moscow center’s thermonuclear
stockpile.

A “Systemic”
Approach: In the past, the
United States and its allies have pursued
a “symptomatic” approach to the
problem of the Soviet nuclear threat. It
was exemplified by the pursuit and
codification of various arms control
agreements. Underlying this approach was
the notion that the best the
West could hope to do was to moderate
the behavior of its Soviet adversaries by
mitigating somewhat the growth in or, at
best, the size of Moscow’s arsenal. The
Bush Administration’s present policy for
controlling the Soviet empire’s residual
nuclear weaponry amounts to a
continuation of this approach.

What is needed now, however, is a
radically different strategy — one that
has as its express purpose the dismantling,
not the preservation, of what remains of
the Soviet system. Such an approach can
be thought of as “systemic“
arms control. If the United States is
seen by the successors to the Soviet
empire as supportive of their efforts at
self-determination and responsible
self-governance, it is likely to be far
more influential on such questions as the
disposition of nuclear arms.

This approach would involve an
immediate shift in U.S. policy on at
least three fronts:

• Offer Recognition:
  Garry Kasparov — the World Chess
  Champion and a formidable figure
  in the democratic movement in the
  former Soviet Union — recently
  told a press conference sponsored
  by the Center for Security Policy
  that if the Western democracies
  wish to encourage the non-Russian
  republics to eliminate the
  nuclear arms currently on their
  soil, the most useful thing to do
  would be to recognize their
  independence. He argued that
  these republics view such
  recognition as their best
  protection against a resurgent
  communist center or, in its
  absence, renascent Russian
  imperialism. According to
  Kasparov, were these republics to
  be equipped with the West’s
  recognition, they would be far
  less likely to see a need to
  retain nuclear weaponry.
• Encourage Proliferation
  of Veto Power over
  Nuclear Release: The
  United States should recognize
  that its interests (and those of
  the whole world) are actually
  best served by maximizing the
  number of entities in the former
  USSR whose permission is required
  to release or to relocate nuclear
  arms. Certainly, such a
  “dual-key” (or,
  multiple-key) arrangement would
  appear vastly preferable to
  reposing exclusive release
  authority in the same cast of
  characters whose antipathy to the
  West helped drive the
  accumulation of these massive
  nuclear forces in the first
  place. Happily, this is precisely
  the sort of release mechanism the
  charter members of the
  Commonwealth have said they are
  instituting for control of their
  nuclear weapons.
• Tie Future Aid and Trade
  Relations Not Only to Republics’
  Behavior on the Nuclear Front but
  to Systemic Change:
  Where governments are accountable
  to their publics for defense
  policy and resource allocation
  decisions, the danger of such
  governments engaging in
  aggressive behavior is
  appreciably diminished.
  Similarly, if the market —
  rather than the government —
  acts as the preponderant force in
  determining and effecting the
  society’s spending priorities,
  that society ceases as a
  practical matter to have the
  mechanisms necessary for the
  routine diversion of funds to
  excessive, and threatening,
  military activities.

By making clear that it will use
its economic, financial,
technological and political power
to assist republics engaged in
both democratic and free market
institution-building and
responsible control of nuclear
weapons, the United States can do
much to encourage the creation of
conditions in which the old
Soviet threat will be permanently
eliminated.

The People Dimension:
Perhaps an even more troublesome and
immediate problem than the control of
Soviet thermonuclear arms is the question
of the possible transfer of weapons
technology should trained physicists and
engineers be recruited from the empire’s
military-industrial complex by nuclear
“wannabe” states. Three steps
would appear likely to make this problem
more manageable, however:

• Identify key personnel:
  Republican authorities should be
  required to provide a list of
  those individuals who would be in
  a position to transfer
  significant information about
  nuclear — and for that matter,
  chemical, biological or missile
  — technologies.
• Engage them in the job of
  neutralizing nuclear weapons:
  The United States should
  undertake to involve such
  scientists, engineers and
  physicists in the immense task of
  disabling and destroying Soviet
  weapons of mass destruction.
  Ideally, this should be done in a
  manner that promotes private
  enterprise in the former USSR.
• Serve notice on Soviet
  weapons scientists that they will
  be at risk if they are discovered
  aiding pariah states:
  The United States and other
  civilized nations should make
  clear their determination to
  prevent the transfer of weapons
  of mass destruction know-how by
  direct action against individuals
  engaged in such transfers. The
  deterrent value of this message
  can be powerfully reinforced if
  concurred in by the
  counterintelligence services of
  these scientists’ home republics.

In addition, the sorts of structural
changes recommended above will do much
over time to alleviate the problem of
untoward Soviet technology transfers
through scientific emigration by creating
an economy better able to utilize and
remunerate such experts for their
talents.

Securing Soviet Weapons: Finally,
the United States should engage with the
republics to facilitate the earliest
possible disabling and elimination of
Soviet nuclear and other weapons of mass
destruction. As a practical matter, it
should be understood that this represents
a monumental technical challenge that
would — under the best of circumstances
— be extremely time-consuming to perform
in a safe manner. For example, special
facilities and highly skilled personnel
are required to dispose in a secure
manner of plutonium and highly enriched
uranium or to disassemble chemical arms.

Accordingly, the focus of American
policy at this time should be on
obtaining a rapid and complete inventory
of the quantity and whereabouts of all
weapons of mass destruction in the former
USSR. Once that is accomplished, rather
than encourage their prompt relocation
over an insecure transportation system,
the United States should be working with
the republics to neutralize these systems
in place. Until that can
be effected, the U.S. government —
perhaps with the collaboration of
specialists from the NATO alliance who
have vast experience in maintaining
nuclear weapons security — should
concentrate on ensuring that all such
weapons remain monitorably under wraps.

Conclusion

By properly perceiving and addressing
the problem of Soviet nuclear and other
weapons of mass destruction, the United
States can reasonably expect to
accomplish two things: First, it can
begin to undo the self-inflicted damage
to its relations with the newly
independent republics of the former USSR
caused by its past preoccupation with
Mikhail Gorbachev’s regime. And second,
it can set in train steps more likely to
prevent a near-term nuclear incident
while encouraging a real — and lasting
— diminution of what remains of the
Soviet threat.