US-Russian Cooperation to Improve Security for Nuclear Weapons and Materials

This chapter appears in Sarah Bidgood and William C. Potter, eds., End of an Era: The United States, Russia, and Nuclear Nonproliferation (Monterey, Calif.: James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, 2021).

The cooperation the United States and Russia carried out from 1991 to 2014 to improve security for nuclear weapons and weapon-usable nuclear materials represents a remarkable example of nonproliferation cooperation in sensitive areas of national security. The cooperation led to dramatic improvements in security for nuclear stockpiles in Russia and the other states of the former Soviet Union, improving US, Russian, and global security by reducing the risk that terrorists or proliferating states might be able to acquire nuclear weapons or the materials needed to make them. Hundreds of participants in both Russia and the United States deserve enormous credit for their brave, creative, and difficult work to make this cooperation succeed.

Nevertheless, for many in Russia—especially those who were not direct participants—this cooperation left a sour taste. In a sense, it framed Russia as a weak country that needed US help to manage its nuclear stockpiles. In Moscow, there are lingering concerns over the intrusion on secrecy: US experts ended up visiting most of Russia’s nuclear weapon storage facilities and most buildings with separated plutonium or highly enriched uranium (HEU)—places that had, until then, been strictly off-limits to foreigners. And because the Americans paid for most of what was done, they tended to have more say about what would be done and how it would be done, in a way that Russian participants sometimes saw as unfair.

The cooperation proceeded in stages, with mistakes, breakthroughs, and learning along the way. Over time, the two sides worked together to mitigate Russian concerns, negotiating detailed access agreements that provided only enough access to confirm that agreed work was done and establishing working groups to make decisions jointly about what would be done next and how. Moreover, it is often forgotten that the access was not entirely one-sided: Russian experts also visited nearly all of the major facilities of the US nuclear weapons complex.

In the late 2000s, this cooperation slowed and became more difficult as Russia’s economy stabilized, the most urgent nuclear security work was finished, Russia’s security services began taking a larger role in Russian policy, and Russia’s relations with the West soured. Ultimately, the joint work ground almost entirely to a halt when the United States cut off nuclear energy cooperation as part of the sanctions it imposed after Russia’s annexation of Crimea and destabilization of eastern Ukraine in 2014 and Russia suspended nearly all nuclear security cooperation in response.

Today, the particular kind of cooperation that took place in the past is no longer needed or appropriate. Russia does not need to rely on US taxpayers to pay for nuclear security improvements, and the Russian government has no desire to have Americans visiting many of its most sensitive nuclear facilities.