OSD Policy hosted a one-day forum on the origin, implementation, challenges, and future of Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR), which concluded with a Presidential Address. CTR is the 1992 program initiated by Senators Sam Nunn, distinguished professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and Richard Lugar (R-Indiana) with the intent to help “secure and dismantle weapons of mass destruction and their associated infrastructure in former Soviet Union states.” In the ensuing twenty years, the CTR program has expanded beyond the former Soviet States (FSU) to southeast and south Asia and to Africa. Since 2009, CTR has expanded substantively in the areas of biosurveillance and with increased geographic focus on Africa and nuclear trafficking in southeast Asia. Within the DoD, the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) is responsible for executing CTR programs. The Department of Energy also has CTR programs; historically DoD emphasis has been on nation-states other than Russia and DOE CTR on Russia. CTR is widely considered to be an example of strategic offensive arms control.

The most widely covered portion of President Obama’s address was related to the current internal conflict in Syria: “Today, I want to make it absolutely clear to Assad and those under his command [that] the world is watching. The use of chemical weapons is, and would be, totally unacceptable. And if you make the tragic mistake of using these weapons, there where be consequences, and you will be held accountable.”

President Obama cited Senators Nunn and Lugar as visionaries who thought ahead to something new - to cooperation in an area of strategic significance. He noted that Nunn-Lugar CTR was the foundation of policies he laid out in his Prague speech. With respect to US domestic politics, he spoke to Sen Lugar as a model of public service as problem-solving, governance, and where compromise is a virtue not a vice. In all, he spoke for less than thirty minutes and indicated that it was not intended to be a major policy speech.

Secretary Panetta indicated that he considered CTR to be “at a critical inflection point” in moving from emphasis on Russia to other states. None of his comments indicated (affirmatively or negatively) if he saw inflection points beyond the geographic. He spoke to what Nunn and Lugar have done as “keeping our country safe” in similar context – although not equal magnitude – to conventional military capabilities/operations. He asserted that his biggest concern about national security is that those who are elected to office today not have the will and courage to solve problem to govern this country. 

Opening the CTR Symposia, Gen Robert Kehler, STRATCOM, spoke to modern deterrence challenges as more complicated than any previous. He asserted that reductions in ballistic missiles and CW stockpiles, accomplished via CTR, enable him to direct intelligence resources to evolving and untraditional threats.   

Both Senators Nunn and Lugar spoke about how the CTR program came to be in a time of uncertainty and during a time in which large number of voices within the defense/national security establishment were calling for starving and isolating the then-recently disintegrated USSR. Senators Nunn and Lugar were offering a proposal that ran counter to the dominant narrative of the time.

Senator Nunn asserted that we need to make nuclear weapons less prominent part of war plans and US deterrence posture and discusses ongoing issues (that don’t get a lot of attention) particularly command and control as windows of decision-making that are often very short. Regarding reducing the threat of biological proliferation, he notes that the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) is pursuing a Track II effort on biological verification and references another effort to look at approaching proliferation issues in ways that expand from traditional arms control approach. He also strongly asserted that the most important part of CTR has been fostering “scientist to scientist, people to people” interactions and the effect it has had on building trust.

View the 20 minute ceremony: http://www.c-span.org/Events/President-Obama-Delivers-Remarks-on-Securing-Nuclear-Weapons/10737436272/.