After Crawford
Real nuclear-security cooperation.

ith Russia and the U.S. — the world's two most potent nuclear-weapons states — there's always a concern about what's next — greater cooperation or hostility. Certainly, the state of U.S.-Russian nuclear-security cooperation looks far better today than it did a year ago. Then, the Russian military portrayed the U.S. and NATO as its number-one adversary, objected to the U.S. developing missile defenses, emphasized the need to modernize Russia's nuclear weapons, and suspected the U.S. of having sunk their modern attack submarine, the Kursk. Now, it seems we are in an entirely different world, one in which the emerging Bush-Putin agreement to cut nuclear-strategic-weapons deployments and to allow the further development of missile defenses promises to enshrine Crawford, Texas as the final resting place of U.S.-Russian rivalry.

Yet, a closer look at the proposed Crawford agreement, along with Russia's continued nuclear and missile assistance to Iran, the uncertain progress of U.S.-Russian nuclear-threat-reduction efforts, and the continued lack of any accurate inventory of Russian nuclear holdings suggests that real U.S.-Russian nuclear-security cooperation still alludes us.

Consider the U.S.-Russian understandings regarding nuclear-weapons reduction and missile-defense testing. Here the Russians seem only to be pretending not to object to our testing missile defenses so long as we pretend not to be heading where these tests clearly are intended to take us — beyond the limits of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty of l972. Indeed, any true policy breakthrough will have to wait until the president actually does what he has threatened to do — formally withdraw from the ABM Treaty. How the Russians will take such a move is far from clear.

As for the announced cuts in strategic-weapons deployments, these too are less matters of negotiated compromise than foreordained, coordinated announcements of unilateral policy. Meager Russian military funding; a large, costly and decaying Russian strategic force; and increased Russian military interest in modernizing theater nuclear forces over strategic systems have all conspired to make Russian strategic-weapons-deployment reductions imperative even without U.S. agreement. Bush, meanwhile, has consistently voiced his desire to make unilateral U.S. strategic-weapons cuts, since he first broached the idea during his presidential campaign in May of 2000.

The Crawford agreement, of course, is nothing to be unhappy about. When one turns to the matter of Russian nuclear and missile assistance to Iran, however, there is real cause for dismay. Here, the U.S. has pleaded with, cajoled and tried to bribe Moscow for nearly a decade to stop helping Tehran develop multiple-stage rockets and the means to make nuclear weapons. Despite years of diplomacy and billions of dollars in U.S. space and nuclear-cooperation inducements, the Russians have persisted in helping Iran.

Not surprisingly, those anxious to close ranks with Russia, portray its continued proliferation to Iran as yet another opportunity to have a frank exchange of views that might somehow slow such commerce. Surely, something will be said during the Crawford Summit. The problem, however, is that by all estimates, securing Russian pledges of better behavior now are unlikely to make much of a difference. Indeed, short of a liberal overthrow of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, it would take a miracle to keep Iran from acquiring long-range nuclear weapons. In fact, most experts believe that Tehran already has enough technical capabilities to be able to deploy such systems (without any further Russian assistance) within the next five to eight years.

When and if this happens, congressional support for the worthy centerpiece of U.S-Russian nuclear-security cooperation — the Nunn-Lugar cooperative programs to demilitarize and secure Russia's vast strategic-weapons capabilities — will be severely tested. After all, these efforts, which now cost the U.S. taxpayer over a half billion dollars annually, were designed precisely to prevent such proliferation. Worse than that, according to several experts (both dovish and hawkish), it's unclear what impact these programs are having in reducing Russia's ability to remobilize its strategic weapons capabilities.

The reason why we still are unsure on this point is simple. While we know the precise the number of strategic weapons Russia has dismantled, we can only estimate how many bombs worth of nuclear material it has on hand. We lack a precise accounting for all the money we have given to Minatom, Russia's agency for reactor and bomb making. Thus, two years ago, Clinton's Department of Energy privately conceded that the U.S. only knew within 30 percent (plus or minus) what Russia's military nuclear-materials holdings were. That's a big number, one equivalent to approximately 23,000 advanced thermonuclear weapons worth of material, i.e., nearly four times the amount of material contained in all of the strategic nuclear warheads the U.S. has deployed.

Clearly, if we are serious about promoting real nuclear-security cooperation with Russia we need to do better. We need to know if we are reducing their nuclear holdings and by how much. In fact, most people may not know it, but President Bush emphasized this point in his own showcase foreign-policy campaign speech of November 19, l999. There he cited the same 30 percent uncertainty figure and emphasized that "the next president must press for an accurate inventory of all this material."

Mr. Bush was right then. Now, he is the president. With growing fears of nuclear terrorism and theft, he could do worse than raise this issue with Putin. Certainly, attempting anything less would undermine diminish whatever other progress may be made on nuclear security at Crawford. More important, securing such an inventory is critical to measure future progress on this front. Indeed, if nothing is said about securing such an inventory, true nuclear-security cooperation with Russia will be as much of a question as it was before Crawford.