Congress authorized around $1 billion for U.S. programs that provide nonproliferation and threat reduction assistance to Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union in the FY2012 budget—including $508.2 million for DOD's Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) program, around $450 million for the Department of Energy's (DOE) nonproliferation programs in Russia, and around $75 million for State Department nonproliferation programs in the former Soviet Union. With these programs, the United States seeks to help the recipient nations transport, store, and eliminate nuclear, chemical, and other weapons; secure and eliminate the materials used in nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons; and prevent proliferation of the knowledge needed to produce these weapons to nations or groups outside the former Soviet Union. A failed coup in Moscow in August 1991 and the subsequent disintegration of the Soviet Union had raised concerns about the safety and security of Soviet nuclear weapons. It has also expanded financially, from an initial level of approximately $400 million per year to a total of nearly $1 billion per year across the three agencies. An Evolving Program

Initially, many in Congress saw U.S. assistance under Nunn-Lugar as an emergency response to impending chaos in the Soviet Union. The Bush Administration also linked U.S. threat reduction and nonproliferation assistance to the former Soviet States to U.S. efforts to keep weapons of mass destruction away from terrorists. Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction Program

		Program Objectives

At its inception, the CTR program sought to provide Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan with assistance in the safe and secure transportation, storage, and dismantlement of nuclear weapons. In addition, $33 million in funding for the International Science and Technology Center in Moscow moved from the DOD budget to the State Department budget. It has also helped construct storage facilities for missiles removed from deployment and fuel removed from deactivated missiles. The State Department also manages the Export Control and Related Border Security Assistance (EXBS) Program. Analysts have raised numerous questions about the science center programs. It seeks to coordinate these and other U.S. efforts to identify and stop the smuggling of nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons or materials. These are mainly research facilities that operate nuclear reactors. This program is designed to bring commercial enterprises to Russia's closed nuclear cities, so that Russia can reduce the size of its weapons complex and so that the scientists and engineers will not be tempted to sell their knowledge to nations seeking nuclear weapons. government." Furthermore, Russia has not provided the United States with access to many facilities in Russia's nuclear weapons complex, leaving large holes in the U.S. ability to improve security for the nuclear materials at those facilities. They argued that the President should have only a limited ability to waive the certification requirements.
Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar amendment, authorizing U.S. threat reduction assistance to the former Soviet Union, in November 1991, after a failed coup in Moscow and the disintegration of the Soviet Union raised concerns about the safety and security of Soviet nuclear weapons. The annual program has grown from $400 million in the DOD budget to over $1 billion per year across three agencies—DOD, DOE, and the State Department. It has also evolved from an emergency response to impending chaos in the Soviet Union, to a more comprehensive threat reduction and nonproliferation effort, to a broader program seeking to keep nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons from leaking out of the former Soviet Union and into the hands of rogue nations or terrorist groups, to a global program to address the threat of weapons of mass destruction.
The Department of Defense manages the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program, which provides Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan with assistance in transporting, storing, and dismantling nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. U.S. assistance has helped these nations eliminate the delivery systems for nuclear weapons under the START Treaty, secure weapons storage areas, construct a storage facility for nuclear materials removed from weapons, construct a destruction facility for chemical weapons, and secure biological weapons materials.
The State Department manages the International Science and Technology Centers in Moscow and Kiev. These centers have provided research grants to scientists and engineers so that they will not sell their knowledge to other nations or terrorist groups. The State Department has also provided assistance with export and border control programs in the former Soviet states. The Department of Energy manages programs that seek to improve the security of nuclear warheads in storage and nuclear materials at civilian, naval, and nuclear weapons complex facilities. It also funds programs that help nuclear scientists and engineers find employment in commercial enterprises. DOE is also helping Russia dispose of plutonium removed from nuclear weapons and shut down its remaining plutonium-producing reactors by replacing them with fossil-fuel plants.
Analysts have debated numerous issues related to U.S. nonproliferation and threat reduction assistance. These include questions about the coordination of and priority given to these programs in the U.S. government, questions about Russia's willingness to provide the United States with access to its weapons facilities, questions about the President's ability to waive certification requirements so that the programs can go forward, and questions about the need to expand the efforts into a global program that receives funding from numerous nations and possibly extends assistance to others outside the former Soviet Union.
This report will be updated as needed.