President Bush and the other G-7 countries have agreed to spend up to $20 billion over the next 10 years to fund a new "global partnership for the destruction of weapons of mass destruction." The funds will help Russia better control and eliminate its vast stocks of nuclear materials, as well as chemical weapons and biological weapon agents. The pledge is a major step forward, especially for Europe, Japan and Canada, whose support for threat reduction efforts in Russia have not come any where near to matching the $5 billion contribution made by the U.S. since the collapse of the Soviet Union.
While this pledge represents progress, it still falls short of the size contribution many experts believe is necessary to deal with the immediate threat of proliferation from Russia. The Baker-Cutler report of 2001 recommended that support for U.S. Department of Energy programs alone be tripled to $3 billion per year, to say nothing of the contributions made by Defense and State Department programs. The combined G-8 pledge is double current spending overall, but falls far short of the panel's recommendation for the amount of money needed to respond to the size and consequences of the threat in Russia.
Moreover, the money to fund these programs is only part of the challenge. Coordination between US government programs is lacking, international coordination is all but non-existent. The announcement made no mention of efforts to ensure this assistance is well coordinated and focused. Coordinating the efforts of 7 countries will make past U.S. bureaucratic turf battles on this issue seem like sandbox scuffles. In addition, the United States has spent 10 years trying to build trust with its Russian counterparts in order to gain the access to sensitive facilities required to implement these programs. While Presidents Bush and Putin agreed that the other G-8 states would enjoy the same hard won priveledges for access, tax exemption and accountability now held by the United States, it remains to be seen if pledges from the top of the Russian government will permiate the Russian bureaucracy.
The Bush administration has raised this critical issue at the highest levels with Russia, and secured a political pledge for big money from Europe, Canada and Japan. Both are welcome steps and positive developments. Moreover, the administration has now politically and diplomatically embraced the threat reduction agenda, a major move from the original inclination of the administration when it assumed office. The next step is to ensure that G-8 countries actually produce the funds pledged and that this money is delivered and well focused on real threats.