DTRA and Cooperative Threat Reduction

I appreciate the opportunity to be here today. The control of weapons of mass destruction and the minimization of their spread is perhaps one of the most difficult issues we have faced in the last century. I would like to emphasize very much that dealing with this issue requires us to work together, as well as to explore and solve the problems together. And I make the comment that we have an obligation to explore that problem together because of the tremendous historical context of the 50-year Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union.

During the period of the Cold War, both the United States and the Soviet Union created systems of unbelievable destruction, and created those systems in what we now consider almost unimaginable quantities. What is quite amazing, though, in retrospect is that we both recognized that danger, and we have backed away from the brink we placed ourselves on. Unlike other aspirants who perhaps would wish to have these weapons, we realized the danger and jointly through the system of treaties and agreements, we found ways to reduce the threat of those systems and back away from the point of danger.

So one of the strong points I would like to make is that the present situation is quite different from the past, when two nations represented a threat to one another with these systems. We now live in a world in which we do not threaten each other as much as the spread of these weapons into the hands of other parties presents a threat to both of us. We were once in control of this business, but now it threatens to escape our control. So I would like to begin by giving you a phrase from my agency. The mission statement for my agency is to reduce the present threat and to prepare for the future threat. I would like to speak to the two halves of this phrase separately.

If you look at the first half - reduce the present threat - we find that these activities fall under the START treaty, the INF treaty, CWC, BWC, and the CFE treaty, places where the United States and Russia now work together to reduce the size of the systems and have better control of the systems which we built in the past. For example, this morning I came back from Votkinsk, where we are working together in two very different venues. For eleven years now we have successfully monitored one of your assembly plants to look at missiles coming out, as you have monitored a plant in the United States. Yesterday we had the ceremony to site a plant, built with CTR funds, for the recovery of strategic rocket motor materials. Let me point out that both systems are unfortunately the systems that are easy to work with: the nuclear systems that are large, discoverable, and that were almost exclusively in our past, and I hope in our future, controlled by our governments. The threat that concerns me in the future is the one in which we have a much greater need to be partners than foes, as in the past. These are the threats that are evolving, ones that are not potentially under the easy control of the United States or Russia. So I think that the subject for discussion this afternoon is what the opportunities are for us to be partners and work together, because together we are much more credible and believable than if we work separately. We could seek opportunities, for example, to create norms in biological research communities so that small states and small organizations do not create biological weapons, thereby teaching others about the remarkable success we had in recognizing our own risk and backing away from it. I have a very simple proposal that I would outline in that area. But I would like to make very clear in these areas is that, as we work on counterproliferation and on trying to influence the actions of other people, we do not consider Russia a threat and I would hope that Russia would not consider us a threat. So let me give you some very concrete and simple examples where I think we could teach others as well as learn very effectively. It would be an interesting experiment to sit jointly with representatives of the Indian and Pakistani governments, and have them deal with the inventories of nuclear weapons they might possess a decade from now: nuclear weapons that would have very short flight times. They would be very quick weapons, exactly the sorts of weapons that we worked our way back from in Europe in the last decade. It would be very easy for us to show India and Pakistan how fast they could accelerate a nuclear exchange that would do tremendous damage. We could give them the example of the approach we used during the Cuban missile crisis. Working through the days of that crisis could provide a model by which they could understand how to warn one another and work back from the danger they might face in the future.

Another case, one which would be interesting to pursue, would be a similar table-top exercise done with several governments in the Middle East. It would assume what their hypothetical chemical and biological weapons armaments mounted on missiles might be in a decade, and ask them to consider what norms and what means they would try to work out jointly to provide stability in the area. Again, we would act as mediators and as teachers, not as people who have all the solutions.

So let me close by saying that the activities driven by treaties and agreements that we have between us at present, I consider very successful. I think they have a long future. The question I would pose to you, the question I have for discussion, is how do we work with the weapons, not just between ourselves but as educators and examples to the rest of the world. Together we have a credibility to encourage the world to back away from some of the dangers that we faced ourselves in the past 50 years.

Question and Answer Session

Timerbaev. Dr. Davis, I would like to know about your Agency, created quite recently, about its functions and what activities it conducts.

Dr. Davis. The Agency was created to bring together in one place in the Department of Defense almost all of the means for dealing with threats from weapons of mass destruction. The hope was that by putting these pieces together, each of them would be more effective in its separate mission, which I will now explain to you. There are six directorates of the agency, two of which are very familiar to you. First, the On-Site Inspection Directorate executes all of the United States’ inspections under treaties. These people carry out inspections in Russia and host Russian inspections in the United States. Second is the directorate headed by Brig. Gen. [Thomas] Kuenning, and it executes the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program or the Nunn-Lugar Program. The third directorate is one which executes the Department of Defense’s work in export control, as well as the control of both weapons under the international export control regimes, and technology exported by US manufacturers or companies. So these three directorates together make up the half of the Agency we think [inaudible] engaging in nonproliferation, the activities that keep weapons out of the hands of proliferant states, or out of the hands of terrorist organizations.

The next three directorates are those that we aggregate together in terms of counterproliferation, organizations that attempt to give the Department of Defense the ability to respond to weapons in the hands of other people. The first of these is our Chemical and Biological Directorate, which executes all of the research and all of the acquisition activities to equip US Forces with defensive means against chemical and biological weapons. The next directorate is the Nuclear Support Directorate, which has the Department of Defense’s responsibility for training on the handling of nuclear weapons, as well as all safety, security, and accident responses to nuclear weapons. And the final directorate is called the Counterproliferation Directorate, which does research on weapons that could strike facilities producing weapons of mass destruction. This gives us ability to hold that risk, or to discourage people from creating or using the weapons of mass destruction if we are asked to do so.

It may seem strange that we have put together offensive and defensive systems into one organization, but we think that to fully manage the threat we must integrate these and be able to think across all the boundaries. We have done this partly because of the concern that biological or chemical weapons might be used in large-scale terrorist events within the United States. If such event were to occur, particularly a biological event, it would probably require that we do something quite unprecedented in American history: using resources of our military within the boundaries of our country. The American military plays almost no role in the domestic life of our nation, so to use their resources on a large scale is for us a matter of considerable political crisis; therefore, we must understand the problem very thoroughly before it ever occurs. As you see we have quite a large number of responsibilities, and we try to keep them focused on the positive aspects of reducing the incentive to use weapons, providing real means to draw down weapons systems around the world.