The Role of S&T

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The Role of S&T

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The Role of S&T

U.S. arms control and nonproliferation efforts make use of two principal classes of tools:

Negotiated measures, agreements designed to reduce arms, stem their spread, and build confidence. These include global agreements such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and the chemical and biological weapons conventions as well as strategic and regional security arrangements and measures worked out with individual countries. In addition to arms reduction, these measures address both the "supply side" of proliferation-through controls and monitoring of particular technologies-and the "demand side,"-through measures to build security so that nations feel less need to acquire weapons of mass destruction.
Noncooperative measures, designed to limit the "supply side" of proliferation, make it more difficult for potential proliferators to gain access to the essential technologies, materials, and know-how needed for advanced weapons programs.

Science and technology play critical roles in supporting both these types of tools. Our strategy for science and technology support to nonproliferation and arms control focuses on three critical elements:

Apply technical know-how to build effective arms restraints. In-depth understanding of the technologies to be controlled is essential to our efforts to build effective arms reduction and nonproliferation regimes. From implementing effective export controls to stop proliferation at its source, to designing verification provisions that will offer high assurance of compliance, to assessing the impact of proposed restraints on U.S. military programs and on civilian economies, it is critical to maintain a strong cadre of technical experts to support arms reduction and nonproliferation efforts-in Federal agencies, in the national laboratories, and in private industry (see "Government-Industry Collaboration in Nonproliferation").
Continually improve detection, monitoring, and verification capabilities. The remarkable global network of satellites, planes, ships, and ground stations the United States has developed to detect and monitor potentially threatening military activities is one of the great technical achievements of the 20th century. At the same time, advanced technologies for on-site inspections have enabled an impressive global effort to ensure that treaties are abided by and that technologies supplied for peaceful uses are not diverted to military purposes. But in a world of ever-changing technology, these technologies must continually be improved. A robust range of monitoring and verification capabilities offers policymakers the greatest flexibility in crafting arms control and nonproliferation regimes. And early detection of proliferant weapons programs-demanding ever more sophisticated means to measure the often minute or concealed indications of weapons-related activity and to piece together activities that may be harmless in isolation but add together to form a threatening program-enables us to focus on problems before they become crises.
Use science and technology cooperation to advance arms reduction and nonproliferation goals. International cooperation in science and technology can engage the technical community to resolve issues that otherwise could contribute to proliferation pressures. In addition, professional interactions within the international scientific community can build the trust and confidence needed to make progress in arms control and nonproliferation.

Government-Industry Collaboration in Nonproliferation:
The Chemical Manufacturers Association and
the Chemical Weapons Convention

Partnership between government and industry is becoming an increasingly important part of our nonproliferation efforts. The role of the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) in supporting the Chemical Weapons Convention is one example of an effective public-private collaboration to strengthen arms control and nonproliferation.

Efforts to eliminate the threat of chemical weapons date from the mid-19th century. Until recently, however, the major achievement was the Geneva Protocol of 1925, which banned the use of chemical weapons in warfare but still allowed nations to build up chemical weapons stockpiles for defensive purposes. Today, a more comprehensive chemical weapons arms control regime is needed to prevent the spread of chemical weapons. The only way to ensure that chemical weapons are not used in the future is to eliminate them, prohibit their reintroduction, and provide the means to verify both.

The CMA has provided technical assistance and input to the U.S. Government delegation negotiating the Chemical Weapons Convention for more than 15 years. Although the U.S. chemical industry does not produce chemical weapons, the CMA agreed that commercial chemical facilities must be covered by the CWC verification program in order to prevent the illegal diversion of legitimate commercial chemicals into weapons. Throughout this partnership with the government, CMA has been an unequivocal supporter of a ban on the manufacture, use, and storage of chemical weapons.

CMA helped to coordinate U.S. industry support for the Convention. The Association worked with representatives of other U.S. industry sectors, such as the pharmaceutical manufacturers and the synthetic organic chemical manufacturers. A number of CMA member companies volunteered their facilities in order to test the on-site inspection procedures being considered under both the CWC and a bilateral agreement with Russia.

The Administration has been working closely with the chemical industry in crafting the U.S. CWC implementing legislation. That legislation, once enacted, will ensure that the CWC provides a strong deterrent against illegal uses of chemicals, establishes an effective verification program, minimizes the administrative burden of commercial compliance with the CWC, protects company interests in proprietary information, and minimizes the intrusiveness of the verification process. There is little question that the efforts of the CMA have helped to produce a highly valuable arms control agreement.

In all these efforts, our ability as a nation to draw on a wide range of scientific and technical resources, and to coordinate those resources will be crucial. The reminder of this chapter outlines the contribution of S&T in each of these critical areas.

S&T's Role in Building Effective Arms Restraints

Controlling arms begins with understanding the technology that should be controlled. The close and active participation of the technical community-both inside and outside government-is essential to the formulation of effective policy across the broad spectrum of efforts to build effective arms control and nonproliferation measures, including the following:

Treaties and agreements designed to limit arms, build confidence, and constrain proliferation.
Export controls to limit commerce in relevant technologies and materials.
Strengthened national controls worldwide to prevent unauthorized transfers of weapons, materials, technologies, and know-how.

Treaties and Agreements

Negotiated measures-bilateral, multilateral, and regional agreements which limit arms, build confidence, and constrain proliferation-are among the most important tools in our comprehensive arms control and nonproliferation program.

Strategic nuclear arms have been the focus of intensive arms control efforts for decades, seeking a more stable nuclear balance at lower force levels. Under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I), which entered into force in December 1994, the United States and Russia are carrying out substantial reductions in their strategic nuclear forces. START I established a verification regime of unprecedented stringency, incorporating some twelve types of on-site inspections. With U.S. assistance under the Nunn-Lugar program, hundreds of strategic launchers in the former Soviet Union have already been eliminated to comply with START I's provisions. Under the Lisbon Protocol to START I, and the January 1994 Trilateral Agreement between the United States, Russia, and Ukraine, all the nuclear weapons on the territories of Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakstan are being shipped back to Russia-a major victory for U.S. arms control and nonproliferation policy.

START II, signed in January 1993 but still awaiting ratification, calls for still deeper reductions, to some 3,500 deployed strategic warheads in the United States and Russia, along with the complete elimination of destabilizing multiple-warhead land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). At their September 1994 summit, President Clinton and President Yeltsin agreed to consider still deeper cuts and additional limitations as soon as START II is ratified. START II ratification is a top priority, as the treaty will greatly benefit both U.S. and Russian security. As these reductions in long-range strategic arms continue, the United States and the former Soviet Union have already eliminated their land-based missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, under the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, which established the precedent for incorporating extensive on-site inspections in such arms agreements.

The 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty, in which both the United States and the Soviet Union agreed not to build nationwide defenses against strategic ballistic missiles, provides the confidence in each side's deterrent effectiveness that has allowed these large-scale arms reductions. The ABM Treaty is a key element of our arms control and nuclear deterrence policy and is crucial to strategic stability, START I implementation, and START II ratification. At the same time, the growing threat posed by the proliferation of theater ballistic missiles demands that we develop highly effective theater ballistic missile defenses. Hence, we are engaging in discussions with Russia and the other former Soviet successor states to clarify the boundaries between permitted theater defenses and strictly limited strategic defenses-while maintaining the viability of the ABM Treaty as a guarantor of strategic stability.

These past arms control agreements focused on the strategic missiles, bombers, and launchers that would have launched a deliberate nuclear attack. Today, when the principal risk is less a deliberate attack than the possibility of loss of control, it is critical also to build confidence in the reduction and secure management of nuclear weapons themselves, and the plutonium and HEU needed to make them.

At their January 1994 summit, Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin took a major step in this direction, agreeing to establish a joint working group to explore measures to ensure the "transparency and irreversibility of the process of reduction of nuclear weapons" and to expand cooperation in ensuring effective security and accounting for nuclear materials. In June of 1994, Vice President Al Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin signed an agreement cutting off production of plutonium for weapons. At the September 1994 Clinton-Yeltsin summit, the two Presidents agreed that, for the first time ever, the United States and Russia would tell each other how many nuclear weapons, and how much plutonium and HEU each has. And at their meeting in May 1995, the two Presidents agreed on an agenda for confidence-building data exchanges and reciprocal inspections and on a commitment that neither side would ever again use excess plutonium or HEU from dismantled weapons, from civilian programs, or from new production for new weapons.

Proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has also been the focus of intensive international negotiations for decades. The centerpiece of global efforts to stop the spread of nuclear weapons is the NPT, which requires all its non-nuclear-weapon-state parties to forswear nuclear weapons and place their nuclear activities under comprehensive International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards. In return, all parties are to have access to peaceful nuclear technologies and to negotiate in good faith toward arms reduction and disarmament. In June 1995, the NPT was extended indefinitely-and in the aftermath of post-Desert Storm discoveries about Iraq's nuclear weapons, the IAEA safeguards system is being substantially strengthened, with a renewed focus on detecting undeclared nuclear activities.

Existing global treaties covering chemical weapons and biological weapons go even further, banning these abhorrent weapons entirely. The recently completed Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) bans the development, production, possession, and use of chemical weapons and establishes the most comprehensive monitoring and inspection regime yet formulated in an international treaty. Prompt Senate ratification of this treaty is a high priority. The Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), which entered into force in 1975, bans development, production, and stockpiling of biological agents or toxins except for peaceful or defensive purposes. The United States supports international efforts to develop a legally binding protocol to strengthen the BWC.

To strengthen the global nonproliferation regime and meet our commitment to ending the nuclear arms race, the United States is actively pursuing a true "zero yield" Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), with the goal of completing a treaty as soon as possible and no later than September 1996. The CTBT, a goal of both Democratic and Republican Presidents reaching back to Dwight Eisenhower, is supported by nearly all the world's nations. At the same time, we are working to bolster the nonproliferation regime with a global treaty ending forever the production of fissile material for weapons.

These global regimes are complemented by regional arrangements, such as nuclear-weapon-free zones in Latin America and the South Pacific, and nuclear agreements between Argentina and Brazil, North and South Korea, and Russia, Ukraine, and the United States. Such regional arrangements can be tailored to the needs of particular regions. The framework accord reached with North Korea in 1994, for example, represents a major Clinton Administration accomplishment, requiring North Korea to roll back its dangerous nuclear weapons program and renew its dialogue with the South. The Trilateral Agreement between Russia, Ukraine, and the United States, to take another example, commits Ukraine to send all the nuclear weapons on its soil back to Russia for dismantlement, in return for commitments to respect Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity, and Russia's provision of reactor fuel as compensation for the value of the uranium in the warheads sent back to Russia. Such regional security agreements can build security and confidence between potential adversaries and reduce the demand for weapons of mass destruction.

Conventional arms control and confidence-building measures are another major focus of international negotiations and agreements. The 30-nation Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), which entered into force in 1992, mandates steep reductions in five key categories of conventional arms in Europe. Several agreements under the auspices of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe limit military exercises and require states to give notifications, permit observation of exercises, and exchange information about defense doctrines and budgets. The Open Skies Treaty, signed in 1992 but still awaiting entry into force, allows its parties-states in Europe and North America-to fly unarmed aerial observation missions over one another's territory to help build confidence and enhance transparency. We are working to promote similar arms reduction and confidence-building measures in other regions.

We are also committed to increasing participation in a global confidence-building effort, the United Nations Register of Conventional Arms, under which member nations voluntarily provide data on exports and imports of conventional arms. We are taking the lead to expand the Register to include military holdings and procurement through national production, thereby providing a more complete picture of change in a nation's military capabilities each year.

Detailed participation from the technical community has been and continues to be critical in the design and implementation of all of these agreements. From devising safeguard technologies to ensure, at minimum cost, that nuclear material is not diverted, to devising conventional arms limits that will effectively constrain offensive strike capabilities while allowing for robust defenses, to exploring restraints that can allow effective theater defenses while maintaining the strength of the ABM Treaty's limits on strategic missile defenses, the technical community's role in these efforts has been indispensable.

Export Controls

These treaties and agreements are supported by national measures designed to prevent the advanced weapons-related technologies, materials, and know-how from falling into the hands of potential proliferators. Export controls in particular are an essential element of our approach to nonproliferation. Here too, technical support-in understanding what technologies must be controlled, and how-is indispensable. Fundamentally, the spread of scientific and technical know-how is the crux of the supply side of the proliferation problem. Technological advances on which modern society depends also make it easier to design, manufacture, and use advanced weapons. Our firm goal is to draw a balance that will allow countries around the world to reap the economic benefits of these advances, without compromising national security.

Our domestic export control system addresses the full range of weapons-related exports, from weapons of mass destruction to dual-use equipment and technology. The Department of State, pursuant to the provisions of the Arms Export Control Act, regulates the export of munitions items including weapon systems, missiles, specially designed components for those systems, and related technology. The Department of Commerce regulates the export of dual-use items under the Export Administration Act. Nuclear-related exports are controlled by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Department of Energy, and the Department of Commerce pursuant to the Atomic Energy Act and in coordination with the Departments of State and Defense and the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency.

The United States is a member of all the non-proliferation-related multilateral export control regimes: the Missile Technology Control Regime, for missiles capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction; the Australia Group, for chemical and biological weapons related materials; the Nuclear Suppliers Group, for nuclear and dual-use equipment and materials and related technologies; and the Zangger Committee, also for nuclear supplies. Each of these regimes coordinates the controls of member states on the export of equipment, material, and technology that has a particular utility in the development of weapons of mass destruction and delivery systems.

The United States has also proposed that a new regime be established to succeed the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (COCOM), focusing on conventional arms sales and dual-use technologies. Our goals for this regime are to increase transparency of transfers of conventional arms and related technology, to establish effective international controls, and to promote restraint-particularly to regions of tension and to states that are likely to pose a threat to international peace and security.

Potential proliferators unable to buy technologies in one country are likely to turn to another, so the international export control system is only as strong as its weakest links. Therefore, the United States has taken the lead in assisting other countries in developing their own export controls on weapons-related technology and materials. Around the globe, the United States has conducted international seminars on export control, provided equipment, and helped set up legal infrastructures to implement effective national export control systems.

National Controls To Prevent Unauthorized Transfers

Each nation that possesses advanced weapons and weapons-related technologies, materials, and know-how bears the responsibility for ensuring that these items do not fall into the wrong hands through theft or diversion. The global black market in conventional arms, ever-increasing reports of smuggling of deadly nuclear materials, and the unauthorized leakage of chemical and biological technologies pose serious threats to international security that must be addressed.

Within the United States, programs to ensure against theft and diversion of such items are extensive and highly effective. As just one example, the Department of Energy spends some $800 million every year on safeguards and security in the U.S. nuclear weapons complex.

In addition, the Administration supports a wide range of cooperative programs to combat these threats around the world. In particular, the United States is a leader in cooperative efforts to stop nuclear smuggling and to ensure that all stocks of fissile materials worldwide are held under the highest standards of safety, security, and international accountability. Some of the initiatives we have undertaken include converting research reactors to run on non-weapons-usable low-enriched uranium and taking back spent U.S.-origin HEU fuel for safe storage in the United States. We are working actively with other countries to end the accumulation of excess stocks of plutonium and HEU, and, over time, to reduce these stocks.

Detection, Monitoring, and Verification

Technologies for detection, monitoring, and verification are the centerpiece of the U.S. nonproliferation and arms control S&T program. From satellites that can snap pictures of a new weapons facility under construction, to airborne sensors that can "sniff" the effluent from a chemical weapons production plant, to ships that can track missiles as they streak across the sky, the United States has developed and deployed a wide-ranging global network of national technical means of verification that can support arms reduction and nonproliferation monitoring. National technical means of verification are the cornerstone of our national monitoring capability and provide a vital underpinning for cooperative measures as well, offering critical clues to focus inspection efforts. In addition, the United States is a world leader in developing new technologies and approaches for cost-effective on-site inspections-a critical part of most international regimes.

All these programs rely heavily on advanced science and technology. Technological advancements are the key to better and cheaper detection and monitoring, which, in turn, can facilitate new agreements to enhance national security.

Our science and technology program in detection and monitoring is extremely broad, encompassing sensors for virtually every part of the electromagnetic spectrum as well as detectors of other indicators of weapons-related activities. Most activities are directed at establishing technological feasibility, although some develop operational capabilities. These systems are designed to operate on a variety of platforms, under conditions ranging from cooperative to noncooperative. They depend on sophisticated control, communications, data processing, and analysis methods. Much of the R&D in this area is conducted at Federally funded laboratories, including those of the Departments of Energy and Defense, and by commercial firms under contract to the U.S. Government. To maintain the ability of these laboratories to respond to specific requirements that emerge, often with little lead time, a continuing broad-based program of basic science in fields as diverse as biology, chemistry, optics, and solid-state physics is essential.

Detection technologies can be placed into three broad categories: space-based, land-sea-air-based, and on-site.

Space-Based Detection Technologies

Satellites are used for a vast array of monitoring tasks, from photoreconnaissance to detection of atmospheric nuclear tests. We are conducting a wide-ranging program of research and development on new monitoring technologies, which includes the design and fabrication for actual deployment of sensor systems needed for treaty verification and proliferation detection. The technology of satellite detection is expensive and exacting, but it must be supported if our monitoring capabilities are to keep pace with a fast-changing world.

As one critical example, we are expanding our research and development efforts to detect nuclear proliferant activities before the assembly of weapons. New space-based sensor systems may offer the capability to identify some of the signatures associated with the early stages of nuclear weapons development programs-such as waste heat from a hidden nuclear reactor.

Land-Sea-Air-Based Detection Technologies

Ground stations around the world are used to track potentially threatening activities, with radar, radio, and other sensors. Aircraft can take photographs, listen to radio signals, and pick up air samples for chemical analysis. Ships at sea are particularly useful for monitoring missile tests and naval and coastal activities.

In all these areas, too, our ongoing S&T program is opening new opportunities for arms control and nonproliferation. For example, we have established research and development programs to develop the capability to remotely detect trace gases associated with proliferant activities through active or passive sensing techniques, to analyze extremely small samples and detect small concentrations of key chemical signatures, and to extract critical information from huge amounts of data from multiple sources. These technologies will be key to our ability to detect, characterize, and locate proliferation activities.

Detecting Proliferant Activity With Laser Technology

Nuclear weapons manufacturing processes produce distinctive chemical effluents which might be amenable to detection using airborne platform. However, the effluent quantities are minute; they are not terribly different from naturally occurring elements; and, since circumstances may not allow on-site visits, they must be detected from long standoff ranges. These factors in combination present enormous technical challenges. Programs underway within the Air Force, the Army, and the Department of Energy are each exploring approaches to the active detection of proliferation-related effluents.

Within the Department of Energy, the Office of Nonproliferation and National Security has teamed researchers at five national laboratories-Brookhaven, Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, Pacific Northwest, and Sandia-to develop and assess an active optical remote sensing capability. This program, labeled CALIOPE (Chemical Analysis by Laser Interrogation of Proliferation Effluents) got under way in 1993 and is aimed at using laser systems to detect trace amounts of chemicals and gaseous effluents that result from activities such as nuclear fuel manufacturing, enrichment, and reprocessing, and to do it remotely. CALIOPE draws upon the core competencies of each of the above Energy Department laboratories. There is no other national capability that can match the combination of expertise in nuclear weapons design and manufacturing, chemical analysis, process modeling, sensor and laser technology, atmospheric research, spectroscopy, and large system integration and deployment available in this joint team.

The minute quantities of the effluents anticipated require optical detection techniques which are several orders of magnitude more sensitive than existing active remote-sensing systems. Recent advances in the technology of tunable, high-power laser sources in the relevant wavelength ranges and in sensing techniques may make optical detection practical for this application. The CALIOPE team is addressing difficult technical challenges in the areas of frequency-agile lasers, rugged detectors, and new nonlinear optical materials. Other technical components of their program include signature identification and spectral characterization; laser transmitter and detector/receiver development; and airborne demonstrations.

The program successfully completed its first ground-based system field test in October 1994. The first elevated platform field test is planned for late 1996, leading up to an airborne system demonstration using more rugged components planned before the year 2000.

Technologies for On-Site Inspection

From the NPT, which relies on the IAEA safeguards system to confirm that nuclear material is not being diverted to military purposes, to the CWC, whose monitors will face the challenge of dealing with some 25,000 facilities in 65 countries, technologies for on-site inspection are critical to arms reduction and nonproliferation efforts.

On-site inspectors need procedures and equipment that are simple, reliable, and tamperproof. We are focusing on enabling technologies that can make treaty monitoring and verification tasks as simple and reliable as possible. Technology can also provide cheaper and potentially less intrusive on-site inspections. For example, technologies for remotely operated on-site monitoring can cut down on the frequency and cost of inspector visits.

Cooperation To Control Fissile Materials

Under Clinton Administration leadership, the United States and Russia, as the world's largest nuclear powers, have undertaken a wide-ranging cooperative effort to control their huge stocks of weapons-usable plutonium and HEU. This cooperation includes doz dozens of initiatives in four key areas: (1) securing nuclear materials, thereby reducing the risk of theft or diversion; (2) building confidence through openness, with data exchanges, reciprocal inspections, and other cooperative measures designed to build each side's confidence in its understanding of the size, character, security, and rate of reduction of the other's stockpiles of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable materials; (3) halting accumulation of excess stocks, including the 1994 agreement halting production of additional plutonium for weapons; and (4) of excess materials, transforming excess plutonium and HEU into forms that no longer pose substantial security threats. In all these areas, intensive U.S.-Russian cooperation is already under way.

A key example of the mutual benefit of such science and technology cooperation is the new security and accounting system recently installed at the Kurchatov Institute in Moscow. In just two months in late 1994, for less than $1 million, Russian and U.S. s scientists installed a radically improved system to protect and account for the weapons-usable material used in a building housing two critical facilities at Kurchatov. The system includes a computerized material accounting system, nuclear material detectors to detect any attempted theft, motion detectors, alarms, closed-circuit television monitors, and a double security fence. Today, similar cooperative efforts are under way to modernize security and accounting systems elsewhere at Kurchatov and at a wide range of other facilities throughout the former Soviet Union, directly reducing the risk that such materials could fall into the wrong hands through nuclear theft and nuclear smuggling.

A key example of U.S. leadership in providing technology for international on-site monitoring is our support for the IAEA safeguards system. Since 1967 the United States has funded a program to research, develop, test, and deploy new technologies for IAEA safeguards, including methods and equipment for sealing and for providing long-term surveillance of material and equipment; new methods and equipment for measuring nuclear materials and monitoring the operation of nuclear processes, such as reprocessing spent fuel and separating plutonium; and new information management methods and technologies. This program is conducted through the Department of Energy's national laboratories as well as commercial firms. The national laboratories provide a solid foundation of basic and applied research on which IAEA safeguards also depend. The IAEA considers the U.S. program-the first and largest of several such national programs-essential to the IAEA's ability to keep up with evolving technologies and national capabilities.

Improving Worldwide Adherence to
Nonproliferation Norms

We must not limit ourselves to controlling the supply of weapons of mass destruction and their missile delivery systems; we must also concentrate on reducing the demand for them. International science and technology cooperation plays an important role in this connection-providing incentives for cooperative arms control and nonproliferation policies, offering new civilian opportunities for weapons experts, fostering reform-minded science and technology communities, supporting efforts to peacefully resolve conflicts and build confidence, and bringing international science and technology efforts to bear in addressing security problems and regional pressures that can contribute to proliferation.

Both the United States and the nations of the former Soviet Union are faced with the challenge of redirecting the talents of thousands of weapons scientists and engineers to new and productive tasks. The sweeping economic transformations shaking the former Soviet Union make this problem both more urgent-because of the risk of a "brain drain" to countries interested in acquiring weapons of mass destruction-and more difficult to resolve. To meet this challenge, the United States has established a wide range of cooperative programs to bring the extraordinary talents of former weapons scientists to bear on key civilian and national security problems.

Our international collaborative efforts to reduce proliferation risks include improving protection, accounting, and control of nuclear materials; preparing for entry into force of the CWC; integrating a global seismic network to detect nuclear blasts; finding new approaches to strengthen the BWC; and jointly exploring plutonium disposition options with Russian and other scientists. In regional contexts, collaborative efforts in arms control monitoring can serve as technical confidence-building measures. To this end, we have encouraged foreign government officials and scientists to participate in workshops at the Cooperative Monitoring Center at Sandia National Laboratory, where they can see for themselves technologies that can be applied to build security and confidence between potential adversaries.

International S&T cooperation can provide displaced weapons scientists with new challenges in civilian research, reducing possible incentives to sell their weapons expertise to potential proliferators. International S&T;cooperation can also increase mutual understanding between the scientific communities of participating states of each others' activities and objectives and thereby build confidence. The United States and Russia have established extensive laboratory-to-laboratory contacts, and such contacts between the United States and China are developing. Laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation programs have included civilian research in such areas as high-intensity magnetic fields, plasma physics, and computing. These projects have not only kept former weapons scientists employed, but they have also made key technological contributions to scientific and security problems-to the benefit of both sides.

The Cooperative Threat Reduction Program

In the fall of 1991, conditions in the disintegrating Soviet Union posed a clear threat to nuclear safety and global stability. An estimated 30,000 nuclearweapons were spread among the former Soviet republics. About 3,200 strategic nuclear warheads were located outside Russia in the territories of Belarus, Kazakstan, and Ukraine. Political, social, and economic upheaval heightened the prospects that the former Soviet republics would not be able to provide for safeand secure storage or disposition of these nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction.

The dangers posed by this situation were clear: new nuclear nations could spring fully formed from the collapse of the former Soviet Union; weapons might be diverted or used in an unauthorized manner; warheads and fissile materials might be sold to countries or groups with goals that are contrary to ours; and former Soviet weapons scientists and engineers might export their expertise or services to rogue countries and groups.

Congress responded to these conditions and associated threats by initiating the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program in November 1991. Often referred to as the Nunn-Lugar program, after the Senators who spearheaded the effort, this initiative provided the Department of Defense authority and funding to assist the eligible states of the former Soviet Union in weapons dismantlement and destruction, strengthening the security of nuclear warheads and fissile materials in connection with warhead dismantlement, and demilitarization of the Newly Independent States infrastructure.

The Administration has championed this program and made it an operational success. The CTR program is helping to ensure that nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction are adequately controlled and safeguarded and to prevent proliferation of these weapons and expertise. CTR assistance is facilitating theformer Soviet states in meeting and even accelerating their START obligations. To date, CTR has contributed to the removal of over 2,500 warheads from missile and bomber bases into secure central storage in Russia; the return to Russia of over 1,000 warheads that were located in Belarus, Ukraine, and Kazakstan; the deactivation of four regiments of SS-19 ICBMs in Ukraine; the removal of 750 missiles from their launchers and elimination of approximately 575 launchers andbombers throughout the former Soviet Union; and the current or projected reemployment of over 5,000 Russian weapon scientists and engineers on peaceful, civilian research projects. The Project Sapphire mission in November 1994 to remove 600 kilograms of highly enriched uranium to the United States from poorlysecured storage in Kazakstan was partially funded through CTR. In addition, CTR is assisting the Russians in preparing to implement the Chemical Weapons Convention.

Science and technology are at the heart of many of the CTR program activities. The science and technology centers in Moscow, Kiev, and Almaty help to redirect weapons scientists to commercial research. Defense conversion servesa similar goal, helping weapons manufacturers transfer their technological strengths into civilian products, with the assistance of U.S. companies. Providing environmentally sound destruction methods is helping ensure continued compliance with arms control treaties. And U.S. technology has provided solutions to some important bottlenecks in the dismantlement process. For example, U.S. experts are contributing to the design of a plutonium storage facility in Russia (including the features that will ensure that the material issecure and accounted for), and are helping to build a pilot plant for chemical weapon destruction. U.S. experts will also review Ukrainian proposals for safe disposition of liquid rocket fuel removed from SS-19s based in Ukraine. Developing solutions to these problems will allow dismantlement efforts to continue more quickly.

CTR is not traditional foreign aid. Rather, by directly addressing the dangers in the former Soviet Union concerning weapons of mass destruction, it isdefense by other means. The United States spent many billions of dollars during the Cold War to deter and defend against the Soviet Union's weapons of mass destruction. The CTR program is on a significantly smaller scale, but the payoffis tremendous. The results, unlike deterrence, are tangible, observable, and in some cases, immediate. The program also is helping to prevent the emergence of new threats as the new independent states continue to deal with the uncertainties and instabilities of post-Soviet sovereignty and independence.

Similarly, we have worked with the European Union, Japan, and other nations to establish the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow and a similar organization in Kiev. These centers are already employing thousands of former weapons scientists in work on nonmilitary projects, chosen through a painstaking process for their outstanding scientific or economic merit. In addition, at the Clinton-Yeltsin summit in May 1995, a new Civilian Research and Development Foundation was announced, which will provide funding to maintain Russia's world-class basic research enterprise.

To complement these programs with a more direct tie-in to economic applications, the Department of Energy has established the Industrial Partnering Program, which brings the talents of U.S. and Russian weapons laboratories together with the interests of industry. Every dollar the U.S. Government provides for a project in the Industrial Partnering Program is matched by industry. This is truly a partnership between government, industry, and the laboratories to bring new technologies out of the laboratory and into the marketplace. Industry has been an enthusiastic participant, and hundreds of projects are already under way.

Finally, international S&T cooperation can help engage and foster scientific communities that can be critical voices for reform. American scientists can influence the views of foreign counterparts in positive ways. From Andrei Sakharov in the former Soviet Union to Jose Goldemberg in Brazil, scientists with an international perspective-resulting in part from their participation in international S&T cooperation and other international forums-have played leading roles in national decisions to restrain weapons programs that threaten international security. Nongovernment organizations also can constructively engage scientists in threshold states and other problem countries to advance international nonproliferation norms. The Administration will continue to encourage international cooperation as a means of engaging the scientific community in the nonproliferation effort.

Conducting the Arms Control
and Nonproliferation S&T Program

The United States will pursue a robust and focused S&T strategy to support our arms control and nonproliferation objectives. In particular, we will do the following:

Focus our export controls on maintaining high walls around a small number of key, proliferation-critical technologies while expanding trade in less sensitive items that can be the engine of economic development. To do this, we will maintain a systematic technical analysis effort to identify critical leverage-point technologies and approaches to their control.
Maintain a robust, broad-based development program in detection, monitoring, and verification technologies, including space-based, ground-based, sea-based, air-based, and on-site systems, and a strong foundation of basic science.
Maintain a robust technical program to provide improved technologies and methods to support international nonproliferation and arms control regimes, including IAEA safeguards, chemical and biological detection, detection of nuclear testing, and other technologies.
Continue broad-scale programs of international S&T cooperation designed to reduce proliferation risks, including cooperative programs to ensure that all weapons-usable nuclear materials are secure and accounted for.
Continue in-depth technical analysis of what types of future controls and reductions could most benefit U.S. and international security in the post-Cold War era.

Arms control and nonproliferation S&T is fundamentally an interagency activity which involves many federal agencies, including the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, the Departments of State, Energy, and Defense, and the Intelligence Community. Because no single agency has purview over both requirements and S&T resources, we have substantially improved coordination among these agencies through the National Science and Technology Council to ensure requirements are identified and addressed effectively.

In August 1994, following a comprehensive review, the President established the interagency Nonproliferation and Arms Control Technology Working Group (NPAC TWG), designating the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Department of Energy, and Department of Defense as cochairs. The NPAC TWG coordinates arms control and non-proliferation-related research and development governmentwide to help guard against redundancies and gaps.

Currently, the NPAC TWG is developing in-depth analysis of our R&D;activities in chemical and biological warfare detection technologies, fieldable nuclear detectors, proliferation modeling, multispectral and active electro-optical sensing, underground detection techniques, research and development database consolidation, START verification sensors, nuclear test monitoring and verification technologies, and unattended remote sensors. In the future, additional in-depth analysis will be developed in other areas, including data fusion, advanced conventional weapons detection technologies, and other existing and future treaty-specific monitoring and verification technologies.

The Challenges Ahead

Arms control and nonproliferation require a dynamic blend of policy, technology, and diplomacy. There is an inevitable tension, however, between the competing incentives for controlling technology and sharing it. The technologies in which the United States has the lead are the most marketable in today's global economy, and emerging markets are among the most attractive for future economic growth. But advanced technologies can be used for destructive as well as constructive purposes. And emerging markets are often associated with developing nations and regions with less stable economic and political arrangements.

Purely economic factors would have us relax export controls on U.S. goods and services, while narrow security goals might lead us to protect all our own technology and intelligence products. Our nonproliferation goals, on the other hand, motivate us toward restrictive control of weapons-related technologies and increased sharing of detection, monitoring, and verification technology and intelligence products. We balance these competing imperatives by restraining trade-both ours and that of other countries-in potentially dangerous technologies and materials, promoting commercial interests without compromising security, and participating in carefully constructed monitoring and verification regimes.

While the inexorable spread of technology is a fundamental part of the nonproliferation problem, at the same time science and technology are great enablers for arms control and nonproliferation, broadening the range of the possible and offering an expanding array of options for policymakers and diplomats alike. The close engagement of the scientific community which we have fostered is indispensable for making sure our technology control policies are wise and effective, our S&T investments are well chosen, and our international cooperative efforts are most fruitful. We are steadfast in our commitment to applying our scientific and technical resources to the challenges of arms control and nonproliferation. To meet these challenges successfully will require not just the technology of today but also constant improvements that enable us to maintain our leadership position.