Reducing the Nuclear Dangers from the Former Soviet Union

The disintegration of the former Soviet union, a nation armed with over 27,000 nuclear weapons, poses a new form of nuclear danger. There are, however, practical actions the United States can take in the next weeks and months to reduce these risks.

So far, the performance of the Soviet system for controlling nuclear weapons, materials, technology, and know-how has been impressive. Since the explosion of the first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949, the Soviet Union reliably maintained control over thousands of nuclear weapons without a single major incident. The Soviet control system has functioned through several total reorganizations of executive and legislative authority, a coup and a countercoup, and now the collapse of the authority of the center to which it was subordinated.

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