Reports & Papers
Preface
General policy guidelines and specific steps to address problems concerning the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their delivery vehicles, as well as related debates in the context of Russian-U.S. relations, feature prominently in joint declarations and statements made by the Russian and U.S. presidents, other government officials, as well as in general agreements and unilaterally adopted documents, and in the findings, conferences, symposiums and workshops of government and nongovernmental organizations. Over the recent years, WMD nonproliferation has been a focal issue for the Russian scientific community.
In Russia, nonproliferation issues are primarily studied by the institutes of the Russian Academy of Sciences; specifically, the Institute of World Economy and International Relations, the Institute of Europe, the Institute of U.S. and Canada Studies, the Institute of Oriental Studies, the Institute of the Far East, and the Russian Institute of Strategic Studies. The leading nongovernmental organizations involved in this research are Russia’s Center of Political Studies, the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy; the Carnegie Moscow Center; Center for Disarmament, Energy and Ecology of the Moscow Institute of Physical Engineering; the Scientists’ Committee for Global Security; Center of Export Control Problems; Center of Strategic Nuclear Forces Problems, and a number of other organizations.
Research is conducted and expert assessments are made in cooperation with organizations in the United States such as the National Academy of Sciences, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI), the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and others. The First and Second Moscow International Nonproliferation Conferences, organized by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and Center for Policy Studies in Russia (PIR Center) in 2000 and 2003, as well as the Symposium on U.S.-Russian Cooperation in Nuclear Arms Nonproliferation organized under the NTI program and held by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow in October 2002, were good illustrations of this cooperation. All those events were attended by senior state officials and leading scientists from Russia, the United States, and other countries.
The following is an overview of Russian and U.S. policies on the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their delivery vehicles, as implemented by the top political leaderships over recent years, integrated with comments from representatives of leading Russian government and nongovernmental agencies as well as the expert community.