Sen. Sam Nunn: 'We Have a Choice Between Cooperation or Catastrophe'

As a U.S. senator, Sam Nunn played a key role in conceiving the legislation—and then securing Congressional and government support—to fund the dismantling and safeguarding of nuclear weapons and materials in the possession of a disintegrating Soviet Union. This effort came to be known as the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program, and June 17 marked 25 years since the signing of the first general framework agreement for CTR-funded projects by presidents George H.W. Bush and Boris Yeltsin. To learn more about this painstaking process, see our timeline of nuclear-security cooperation among the U.S., Russia and the other Newly Independent States.

As recalled by Graham Allison, outgoing director of Harvard's Belfer Center: "A leading Democratic Senator from Georgia, Sam Nunn, and a Republican Senator from Indiana, Dick Lugar, not only recognized the challenge but also created a breathtaking response. Too late in the Congressional calendar to hold hearings on the issue, they designed an imaginative and unprecedented legislative maneuver by which they attached an amendment to the Defense Appropriations Bill. It took money appropriated for the U.S. defense budget and allowed the Secretary of Defense to spend $400 million, helping Russia to secure and eliminate former Soviet nuclear weapons. In what has been the most significant U.S. policy initiative towards Russia in the post-Cold War period to date, it was not the chief executive, but rather, leaders in the Congress, who both put the problem on the agenda and legislated the program of action to address it."