Tighten controls on Russian arsenals

BY MARTIN SCHRAM
Martin Schram is a syndicated columnist in Washington and the author of "Avoiding Armageddon."

October 13, 2004

The moment on Sept. 11, 2001, that the second plane hit the second tower, it was instantly clear to us all that America and the world were plunged into a war on terror.

And that we were in a doomsday race against the terrorists.

We knew that Osama bin Laden had said it was his "religious duty" to obtain a weapon of mass destruction. We knew that, since the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia's stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction have been dangerously vulnerable. Deadly arsenals were stored in dilapidated buildings, secured with just one padlock, in facilities surrounded by chain-link fences ridden with holes, or by crumbling walls that were unguarded and easily scaled.

So you must think, as I thought, that after 9/11, the Bush-Cheney administration surely raced to secure Russia's vulnerable weapons of mass destruction before the terrorists got to them.

Well, you are wrong and I was too.

For almost a full year after the attacks of Sept. 11, President George W. Bush inexplicably froze all funding of the only U.S. program that safeguards America's homeland by securing Russia's vulnerable nuclear, chemical and biological arsenals. The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Act, sponsored in 1991 by now-retired Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and present Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), has secured a number of Russia's facilities by installing the latest high-tech systems.

It has also dismantled some 6,000 old missiles, warheads, bombers and submarines. But more than half of Russia's facilities are woefully under-secured and even unsecured. Including a chemical arsenal where 1.9 million chemical shells - enough to kill everyone on the planet - are stored in decaying buildings with holes in their roofs.

Bush had cut off the funds at the urging of a handful of conservatives in the Pentagon and the House of Representatives who were more worried about challenging Moscow over whether it was providing full access and openness to all U.S. officials at all sites than they were about racing to secure the vulnerable arsenals.

It took intervention by Lugar to persuade Bush to rescind his freeze. In September 2003, Bush flew to Indiana for a series of fund-raisers. Lugar, riding to his home state in the plane, talked with Bush.

The chat became an hour-long Cooperative Threat Reduction Act tutorial. Lugar implored the president to act with urgency to restore cuts made by the Republican-led House and end delay Bush had imposed. "I'll take care of it," Bush promised. And he did. Sort of.

Bush ended the funding freeze - but budgeting for this crucial program has flat-lined ever since. The Bush administration is spending just $1 billion a year on the Nunn-Lugar program to safeguard America by securing Russia's vulnerable arsenals. Hardly a pace of urgency. To put it in perspective, the Bush administration is spending 14 times that annually to fund the unproven Missile Defense System, even though no expert believes terrorists are likely to use an intercontinental missile to attack us.

But experts consider it frighteningly probable that terrorists will be able to conceal a nuclear weapon aboard a freighter and sail into a U.S. port undetected if the terrorists get the weapon at its unsecured source.

That is what Vice President Dick Cheney accurately described in his debate with Sen. John Edwards as "the biggest threat we face today." What he did not explain was why the Bush-Cheney administration actions have not matched its rhetoric of urgency.

At today's pace for funding the Nunn-Lugar program, think tank experts agree, it will take 14 years to secure the vulnerable weapons of mass destruction in Russia alone.

But the urgency cannot stop in Russia. More than 40 countries have more than 100 research reactors that use highly enriched uranium or plutonium and are virtually unguarded.

A new study by the Defense Department's National Defense University recently called the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program "the Marshall Plan of nuclear nonproliferation" and concluded it should be expanded to counter additional global threats. "The Nunn- Lugar program directly addresses the gravest danger the nation faces: nuclear-armed terrorists," says the report.

You don't have to take Sam Nunn's word, or Dick Lugar's word for our perilous vulnerability. Take Vladimir Putin's word. After the latest series of Chechen terrorist attacks, Putin was reported to have dispatched Russian troops to guard all of Russia's far-flung, nuclear weapons facilities.

Russia's president knew the tough truth and acted urgently - when his country was threatened. America's leaders know the tough truth too. What's lacking is the urgent response that shows our leaders finally get it: Homeland security begins not at our shores but at vulnerable arsenals halfway around the world, where Islamic militant terrorists prey.