of material prepared for use in weapons-i.e., material that will be eligible for the HEU Purchase Agreement, the Plutonium Disposition Program, Material Consolidation, or the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility.

If this is true, it would mean that, by 2011, 300 metric tons of the 603 metric tons of concern to the MPC&A program could have been eliminated under the HEU Purchase Agreement, 50 metric tons of plutonium could have been secured in the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility, 13-27 tons could have been down-blended under the Material Consolidation Program, and eight metric tons of plutonium could have been rendered safe under the Plutonium Disposition Program.

Of course, certain additions to inventory would also occur, and not every ton of material eliminated automatically reduces the burden on the MPC&A program because a vault containing one metric ton of HEU may require virtually the same level of security as a vault holding 20 tons.

At a minimum, however, one can be confident that if the spectrum of cross-program impacts on Russian fissile materials described here were taken into account, the total material remaining at the end of the period would not be the same as it is today, and, quite possibly, the demands on the MPC&A program would have been significantly reduced.

More Like This

The cases noted above are illustrative of a far broader problem. Other examples of issues affecting multiple U.S. non-proliferation programs in Russia include the question of how IAEA inspections will follow Russian nuclear materials from the Mayak FMSF into the Plutonium Disposition Program; the prospects for utilizing additional storage capacity at the Mayak FMSF to secure Russian HEU and, possibly, additional plutonium; and opportunities to accelerate the down-blending of HEU under the HEU Purchase Agreement or to enlarge the scope of that agreement to eliminate additional HEU. Moreover, a strategic planning process covering all of the U.S. non-proliferation programs in Russia could

• allocate financial and diplomatic resources for maximum efficiency;

• permit tracking of programmatic milestones so as to allow the administration to accelerate one program if a related effort faltered; and

identify unmet fissile material security threats, where new U.S. initiatives may be needed (for example, to curb Russia's continued separation of 1-2 metric tons of plutonium from nuclear power plant fuel each year, a matter that was not addressed until late in the second Clinton administration). Why were these and other interagency issues not raised during the Clinton administration? The core reason was that each program faced so many challenges of its own that managers' time and energy were devoted to addressing the obstacles immediately in front of them. These challenges included pressing for sufficient budgets, addressing congressional concerns, and-most difficult-finding satisfactory approaches to meeting Russian requirements. This is not a throw-away point. The programs at issue often involved massive budgets; entailed highly complex activities at numerous sites in Russia; required maintaining complicated relationships with U.S. contractors; and, most demanding, sought to build novel relationships with the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy that involved its most sensitive activities.

With these preoccupations, it is not surprising that mission-focused program managers often resisted the idea of incorporating additional dimensions—read, “additional headaches”—into their decisionmaking. Respect for colleagues' hard work and concern that, if one intruded on another's program, the favor might be returned also instilled caution. Diverse chains of command within and among U.S. agencies exacerbated the problem because of the difficulty of challenging a decision already tacitly or formally endorsed by a high-ranking official in a different chain.

Generally speaking, at the level where the various programs were understood in detail, authority was lacking to integrate them more effectively. At the same time, those possessing the necessary authority to improve program coordination, such as the staff members at the National Security Council and the Office of Management and Budget, lacked the detailed knowledge of the programs required to appreciate the need for such efforts and the opportunities they could have provided. For its part, the interagency process, which convened principally to focus on the issues of the moment (in particular, coordination of the diplomatic initiatives), needed to keep the various programs moving forward. Periodic high-level meetings between Vice President Al Gore and his Russian counterparts through the U.S.-Russia Bilateral Commission fell prey to the same

exigencies. Finally, the U.S. coordinator for Russia/NIS assistance at the Department of State, although compiling useful cross-program information, lacked the authority over other agencies necessary to advance strategic planning.

Although these trends prevented broad strategic planning of the type urged here, important coordination did take place on individual issues. One example was the creation of a joint DOD-DOE budget and strategy for developing technologies to address complex transparency issues affecting the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility, the Plutonium Production Reactor Agreement, and other programs. In another instance, the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, in order to maintain an accelerated schedule for the dismantlement of Russian strategic submarines, sought the concurrence of other U.S. agencies for the reprocessing of the submarines' spent fuel. To help work the issue, DOE undertook a rapid study of the question, which became the basis for a consensus in support of the Pentagon initiative. Similarly, the departments of Defense and Energy collaborated closely on work with the Russian navy, with whom both had important programs, to avoid unintended impacts on each other's efforts.

Launching More Effective Planning

To exploit the opportunities that a better government-wide planning process would provide, the Bush administration needs to create a forum for identifying and working on issues that affect multiple U.S. non-proliferation programs in Russia. A number of outside specialists and panels have called for the creation of a senior coordinator or "czar" for these activities, to be situated in the National Security Council (NSC) with direct access to the president. The Clinton administration resisted this option, however, and the Bush administration's reorganization of the NSC has focused on other priorities. Appointing a powerful figure in the White House to set government-wide goals and priorities, coordinate the myriad programs at issue, drive agencies to meet objectives, and provide political clout to overcome obstacles may well be the ideal solution. More modest alternatives, however, implemented through an assistant-secretary-level working group coordinated by NSC Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense Robert Joseph could achieve much and could be implemented far more easily, without the upheaval of realigning responsibilities within the executive branch.

The broad strategic goals for U.S. non-proliferation in Russia will be set shortly as the Bush team completes its program reviews, and these objectives will have the imprimatur of the president in the form of a presidential decision document. In all likelihood, these goals will look much like those of the Clinton administration: securing and eliminating fissile materials, irreversibly removing such materials from military use, creating non-defense employment opportunities for Russian weapons of mass destruction scientists, and facilitating the downsizing of the Russian nuclear weapons complex. Implementation then becomes the key issue.

The approach suggested here to improve program implementation is to build up gradually to better overall strategic planning through a series of manifestly useful, easy-to-implement, and relatively uncontroversial steps that examine cross-program interactions. Once cross-program issues or opportunities have been identified at the level of an interagency working group, they tend to be addressed. The critical first step is recognizing such linkages and their potential importance. If this is done, it is not unreasonable to hope that attentiveness to such issues will gradually be infused into program management.

The process could begin with tasking the planning group to prepare a number of studies to establish baselines for further action. A logical starting point would be to develop an inventory of the most obvious cross-program relationships, an integrated calendar of the coming year's anticipated activities with clear milestones (to be gradually expanded into two- and three-year plans), and a prioritized list of expected requirements for high-level diplomatic intervention to support specific program objectives.

With these tools, coupled with presidential articulation of overall program goals, important building blocks for more intensive strategic planning would be in hand. An agreed inventory of cross-program interactions would naturally lead to the establishment of subgroups to exploit or resolve such linkages; agreed program milestones projected into the coming year could be expected to help shape future budgeting decisions; and the very development of a list of prioritized diplomatic

interventions would itself constitute a small-scale strategic planning effort.

Early attention should also be given to the preparation of a year-by-year projection of job requirements in a number of key Russian nuclear cities and a comparison of these requirements to the job creation impacts of all current and planned U.S. program activities at these sites, including programs whose principal goal is not job creation per se. By delineating where Russian nuclear complex downsizing was expected to have the greatest impact, U.S. policy-makers could focus job creation efforts on locations where the need was most urgent.

Also needed without delay is a year-by-year projection of the inventory of Russian fissile material not in weapons and an analysis that plots against this inventory the predicted accomplishments of the MPC&A and Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility programs in enhancing the security of the remaining material. The author prepared such an analysis in the form of a spreadsheet, based largely on the assumptions outlined above along with several other projections, and then charted the combined impact of U.S. fissile material elimination and security programs.'

8

The results shown in the chart below for illustrative purposes only-suggest that the MPC&A program might achieve its overall goal earlier than predicted because of reductions in the inventory at risk that are achieved by other U.S. programs. Although much more work would be needed before such data would be sufficiently accurate to underpin administration policy-making, the overall approach is useful and rather straightforward. It appears, however, that no similar spreadsheet or chart has ever been produced within the executive branch.

Understanding Investment Costs

A planning process of this type would also permit development of interprogram cost analyses. These could play a crucial role in future investment decisions for U.S. non-proliferation programs in Russia, but they have rarely been used in the past.

For example, Russia might be willing to store additional fissile material in the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility, but presumably it would cost money to prepare the material and transport it to the site. If Russia asked the Cooperative Threat Reduction program to pay these costs, the Pentagon might be unwilling, perceiving the expenses as new costs that would detract from other programs. However, if one takes into account the impact that storing more material at Mayak would have on other programs, the investment might actually be far smaller than it initially seemed and could perhaps represent a net savings to the U.S. government as a whole. This would be the case, for example, if the material in question had yet to be covered by the MPC&A program. Because the material protected in Mayak would not have to be secured by MPC&A, the MPC&A program would avoid costs and save money.

A similar approach could be used as the Pentagon considers the possible completion of the second wing of the Mayak FMSF, which would allow much more weapons-usable material to be stored there and reduce the burdens on the MPC&A program. In all likelihood, the avoided-cost savings to the MPC&A program would not come close to fully offsetting the price of the new wing, but they might measurably reduce the overall outlay for the facility.

The DOE Plutonium Disposition Program used this approach in analyzing the domestic component of its activities. It recognized that by disposing of plutonium currently stored at the Rocky Flats plant near Denver, it would save some $350 million annually in storage costs, eventually recouping the expense of disposition. This "avoided cost" approach, however, has not been applied to U.S. nonproliferation investments in Russia.

Cross-program investment analyses could prove important in assessing choices concerning the elimination of Russian fissile materials. Current U.S. plans are to eliminate 30 metric tons per year of Russian HEU under the HEU Purchase Agreement through 2013 and to eliminate two metric tons of plutonium from 2007 through 2024 under the Plutonium Disposition Program. Given the complexity of the latter program, it is not unlikely that it will fall behind schedule. The United States could still meet its overall fissile material elimination goals, however, if in each year that the Plutonium Disposition Program were delayed beyond 2007, the United States arranged for the down-blending of an equivalent amount of HEU (6.25 metric tons) in addition to the 500 metric tons already covered

by the HEU Purchase Agreement.9 Because blending down additional HEU would cost much less than eliminating a weapon-equivalent of plutonium under the Plutonium Disposition Program, the comparative budgetary Impact of the HEU contingency plan would not be severe. For relatively little additional money, the United States could eliminate the same amount of weapons-equivalent fissile material annually even if the Plutonium Disposition Program were delayed.

Despite the obvious utility of such comparisons, U.S. officials overseeing non-proliferation efforts in Russia have rarely used cross-program investment analyses of the type described in these examples. Such analyses need to be made an integral part of the interagency planning process proposed here.

Conclusions

U.S. non-proliferation programs in Russia have been marked by innovation, dynamism, and considerable success. Nonetheless, because these efforts have been implemented by three separate U.S. government departments and a sizable publicly held corporation and because each program has been closely focused on achieving its objectives in the face of numerous obstacles, coordination among the programs has suffered, and numerous opportunities to enhance the combined impact of these activities have been missed.

An important step toward rectifying this situation would be the establishment of an NSC-led interagency strategic planning group, which could use a series of studies and periodic reports as a basis for improved coordination. Actions as simple as preparing an integrated annual calendar of milestones for all major programs and tracking them over the course of the year or establishing a comprehensive year-by-year projection of the inventory of Russian fissile materials covered by various U.S. programs would be significant steps forward. The process would help prioritize diplomatic initiatives, enhance efficient use of budgetary resources, and identify potential conflicts and synergies among the U.S. efforts. As the new Bush team completes its reviews of U.S. nonproliferation programs in Russia, this is one new initiative that would be widely applauded.

Inventory of highly enriched uranium and plutonium not in weapons and still of conern.

Highly enriched uranium and plutonium secured by the MPC&A program and in the Mayak Storage facility.

NOTES

I am indebted to Matthew Bunn, assistant director of the Science, Technology, and Public Policy Program at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, for his valuable comments on an early draft of this article.

1. See Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, A Report Card on the Department of Energy's Nonproliferation Programs with Russia, January 10, 2001, p. 2; Matthew Bunn, The Next Wave: Urgently Needed Steps to Control Warheads and Fissile Material, Belfer Center for International Affairs and Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, April 2000, p. 118-120; John P. Holdren, "Reducing the Threat of Nuclear Theft in the Former Soviet Union," Arms Control Today, March 1996, p. 20.