The current centerpiece of U.S.-Russian security collaboration is the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Costing nearly a billion dollars annually, this effort and the projects it supports have run for nearly a decade now and gained the kind of political, bureaucratic and budgetary support that has all but institutionalized them. Indeed, not only are they likely to continue for many more years, their success or failure has become identified with the future of U.S.-Russian cooperation generally.
Looking at the current state of these programs it is easy to see why. On the one hand, they have succeeded in helping Russia pay for the dismantlement and securing of a significant number of deployed strategic weapons systems and related research, production, and storage facilities. What they have yet to extend to, however, are the most worrisome of Russia’s strategic weapons activities – Moscow’s continued proliferation of missile and nuclear technology to those nations still at odds with the U.S., e.g., Iran, Iraq, and China.
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