Defense
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Could Russia's economic
meltdown lead to loose nukes?
Senior lawmakers alarmed by Russia's collapsing
economy fear some of the nuclear power's atomic arsenal could fall into the
wrong hands.
While officials say there's no immediate reason to
think Russia's weapons could be sold off to the highest bidder or stolen, Sen.
John McCain (R-Ariz.) intends to hold hearings next year on what Moscow is
doing to keep its nukes safe.
“We’re going to be taking on that
whole issue in Armed Services Committee and we’ll be figuring out what needs to
be done,” McCain, who will chair the panel in the next Congress, told The
Hill. “Particularly, the state of the nuclear inventory.”
Fellow Armed Services Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.)
called the arsenal — estimated in the thousands of warheads — “a source of
revenue” for the Russian government, as well as negotiating leverage.
He said President Vladimir Putin “is getting pretty
aggressive because he has problems at home and maybe if you go back to the old
system” of being more confrontational about nuclear weapons, pressure would
ease.
On Tuesday, the White House announced President Obama would sign a bill imposing additional sanctions
on Moscow. The legislation comes as the value of the country’s currency, the
ruble, has tanked in recent weeks along with a dramatic fall in the price of
oil, Russia’s No. 1 export.
Russia’s current economic freefall is somewhat
reminiscent of the early 1990s after the fall of Communism, when lawmakers in
Washington labored to develop initiatives to prevent the spread of weapons of
mass destruction, most notably with the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction
Program, which was designed to lock down and eliminate unconventional arms.
However, that joint U.S.-Russia program expired two
years ago after Moscow declared it would not extend the agreement. Since then,
the Kremlin has grown increasingly uncooperative on nuclear security.
Diplomats in Vienna last month said Russian envoys skipped an initial planning meeting
for the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit and that Moscow may boycott the biannual
meeting, a cornerstone of the president’s nonproliferation agenda.
The International Atomic Energy Agency's trafficking
database has documented 2,477 incidents from the beginning of 1993 to the end
of 2013 of "unauthorized activities and events involving nuclear and other
radioactive material outside of regulatory control." As recently as last
week, authorities in Moldova accused seven people of smuggling uranium on a a
train from Russia.
Collaboration between the Washington and Moscow on
nuclear security is “in the process of unraveling as a result of the decisions
the Russians have made,” said Ken Luongo, president of the Partnership for
Global Security.
But Russia’s nuclear assets are not nearly as
vulnerable as during the breakup of the Soviet Union, he said.
Luongo said it would be “politically unthinkable” for
Russia to sell atomic weapons, and that the global community would likely view
it as the “ultimate crime against humanity.”
But, “it doesn’t take much of this stuff to become a
problem,” he noted.
Russia has around 8,000 warheads, according to a
recent estimate by Hans Kristensen and Robert Norris from the Federation
of American Scientists.
For now, lawmakers are keeping a close watch on Moscow
and how it reacts to the economic meltdown.
“I would think that Russia’s economic challenges could
be turned around by Russian leadership if it chartered a different course,”
said Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee.
“There’s still time for them to do that, but in the
interim I think that there’s enough command and control to guarantee the
security of the weapons,” he added.
Retiring Armed Services Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.)
said he has seen no indication of a return to a black market mentality in
Russia.
“I haven’t seen any evidence, doesn’t mean there isn’t
any evidence,” he told The Hill.
Levin said the Russians “would be very much afraid of
any loose nukes, as to whose hands they might fall in, as to whether they might
be the first victims of any terrorist attack given the neighborhood that they
live in.
“I don’t foresee that they would be lax, or more lax
on that issue.”
Sen. Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.), another member of the
Armed Services panel, voiced similar concerns.
“They do have an interest in ensuring that nuclear
weapons don’t get in the hands of non-state actors because from their
perspective they could be the subject of the bad end of that as well,” she
said.
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