§ 1312. FINDINGS AND PURPOSES.
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Findings .— Congress finds the following: It is in the vital security interests of the United States to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction to additional states or to terrorist organizations, and to ensure that other nations’ obligations to modify their stockpiles of such arms in accordance with treaties, executive agreements, or political commitments are fulfilled. In particular, it is in the vital national security interests of the United States to ensure that— all stocks of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material in the Russian Federation are secure and accounted for; stocks of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material that are excess to military needs in the Russian Federation are monitored and reduced; any chemical or biological weapons, related materials, and facilities in the Russian Federation are destroyed; the Russian Federation’s nuclear weapons complex is reduced to a size appropriate to its post-Cold War missions, and its experts in weapons of mass destruction technologies are shifted to gainful and sustainable civilian employment; the Russian Federation’s export control system blocks any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the means of delivering such weapons, and materials, equipment, know-how, or technology that would be used to develop, produce, or deliver such weapons; and these objectives are accomplished with sufficient monitoring and transparency to provide confidence that they have in fact been accomplished and that the funds provided to accomplish these objectives have been spent efficiently and effectively.
United States programs should be designed to accomplish these vital objectives in the Russian Federation as rapidly as possible, and the President should develop and present to Congress a plan for doing so. Substantial progress has been made in United States-Russian Federation cooperative programs to achieve these objectives, but much more remains to be done to reduce the urgent risks to United States national security posed by the current state of the Russian Federation’s weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and complexes.
The threats posed by inadequate management of weapons of mass destruction stockpiles and complexes in the Russian Federation remain urgent. Incidents in years immediately preceding 2001, which have been cited by the Russia Task Force of the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, include— a conspiracy at one of the Russian Federation’s largest nuclear weapons facilities to steal nearly enough highly enriched uranium for a nuclear bomb; an attempt by an employee of the Russian Federation’s premier nuclear weapons facility to sell nuclear weapons designs to agents of Iraq and Afghanistan; and the theft of radioactive material from a Russian Federation submarine base.
Addressing these threats to United States and world security will ultimately consume billions of dollars, a burden that will have to be shared by the Russian Federation, the United States, and other governments, if these threats are to be neutralized. The creation of new funding streams could accelerate progress in reducing these threats to United States security and help the government of the Russian Federation to fulfill its responsibility for secure management of its weapons stockpiles and complexes as United States assistance phases out.
The Russian Federation has a significant foreign debt, a substantial proportion of which it inherited from the Soviet Union. Past debt-for-environment exchanges, in which a portion of a country’s foreign debt is canceled in return for certain environmental commitments or payments by that country, suggest that a debt-for-nonproliferation exchange with the Russian Federation could be designed to provide additional funding for nonproliferation and arms reduction initiatives. Most of the Russian Federation’s official bilateral debt is held by United States allies that are advanced industrial democracies.
Since the issues described pose threats to United States allies as well, United States leadership that results in a larger contribution from United States allies to cooperative threat reduction activities will be needed. At the June 2002 meeting of the G–8 countries, agreement was achieved on a G–8 Global Partnership against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, under which the advanced industrial democracies committed to contribute $20,000,000,000 to nonproliferation programs in the Russian Federation during a 10-year period, with each contributing country having the option to fund some or all of its contribution through reduction in the Russian Federation’s official debt to that country.
The Russian Federation’s Soviet-era official debt to the United States is estimated to be $480,000,000 in Lend-Lease debt and $2,250,000,000 in debt as a result of credits extended under title I of the Agricultural Trade Development and Assistance Act of 1954 [now Food for Peace Act] ( 7 U.S.C. 1701 et seq.). Purposes .— The purposes of this subtitle are— to facilitate the accomplishment of the United States objectives described in the findings set forth in subsection
(a)by providing for the use of a portion of the Russian Federation’s foreign debt to fund nonproliferation programs, thus allowing the use of additional resources for these purposes; and to help ensure that the resources made available to the Russian Federation are targeted to the accomplishment of the United States objectives described in the findings set forth in subsection (a).
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§ 1312
FINDINGS AND PURPOSES.
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