Atoms for Peace Revisited: A New Agenda for U.S.-Russian Nuclear Leadership
By William J. Burns, U.S. Ambassador to Russia
Carnegie Moscow Center
March 1, 2007
(For personal use only)

I am delighted to meet with all of you this evening. I can think of no better place to discuss prospects for U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation than the Carnegie Moscow Center, which has done so much to stimulate creativity and collaboration on this crucial issue in recent years. And I can certainly think of no better host than Rose Gottemoeller, whose own work in this area, as well as her integrity and common sense on many other questions, I deeply admire and respect.

Also I am delighted to share the dais with my friend and predecessor, Jim Collins. Jim has the dubious distinction of being one of my first bosses as a diplomat. That means that he shares much of the credit for any good I have done since then and none of the responsibility for any mistakes.

I must admit at the outset that I am hardly a nuclear expert. If such expertise were genetically transmitted, I would be in a far better position this evening, because my father, of whom I am very proud, spent many years of his professional life involved in nuclear matters, first as a U.S. Army general negotiating with the Soviets in the 1980s, and then at the end of the Reagan Administration as Director of the old Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. Sadly, I inherited neither my father's experience nor his insights. But I have learned in various capacities over the years, from my previous service in Moscow in the 1990s to my modest role in negotiating Libya's abandonment of weapons of mass destruction in 2003, that no problem cuts closer to the core of what matters most to the future of global order than the nuclear issue. This evening, I'll offer a few thoughts on the possibilities for U.S.-Russian leadership on that profoundly important subject.

Over a half-century ago, at the dawn of the atomic age, President Eisenhower outlined in a speech before the United Nations General Assembly in New York, a plain but powerful vision for cooperation among the world's nuclear powers. In his "Atoms for Peace" address, he described a shared agenda which had essentially three parts: harnessing the power of the atom for peaceful purposes; curbing the proliferation of nuclear weapons; and urging responsible leadership from America and Russia in managing our own nuclear arsenals. Eisenhower's proposals led to the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency and later to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, but Cold War conflict eroded much of the promise of his ideas.

Fifty years later, the world is a much different place, and Russia and the United States – for all our vocal frustrations and frictions – have a much different relationship. We have disagreements and mutual grievances, and obvious elements of competition and rivalry in relations between us. But we are no longer enemies. We have had enough of Cold Wars and disastrous arms races. And while we may not have a strategic partnership that produces a neat coincidence of interest on every issue, as a recent editorial in Nezavisimaya Gazeta suggested, we certainly can have a partnership on key strategic issues.

None of those issues is more crucial to the world in which we live today than the nuclear challenge about which Eisenhower spoke with such foresight so many decades ago. That challenge has serious economic, environmental and security dimensions. As the global economy's appetite for energy grows, our finite supply of fossil fuels is being consumed. The world demand for oil alone, for example, is likely to increase by as much as 50% by 2030. Mounting use of oil, gas and coal is taking a toll on our environment. All of us who lived through the balmy January of 2007 in Moscow have at least been reminded of the phenomenon of global warming; in fact, the ten warmest years on record around the globe have all occurred since 1990. And as nuclear energy grows more attractive for economic and environmental reasons, it is also growing more attractive for military purposes for states and non-state actors alike. The nuclear weapons ambitions of North Korea and Iran are deeply troubling, and other states are clearly tempted to imitate them. Equally dangerous is the threat of nuclear terrorism. There can be no doubt that, if the terrorists who killed so many innocent people in New York on a September day six years ago, or in Beslan on another September day three years ago, could get their hands on a nuclear device, they would use it to catastrophic effect.

Never has there been a moment when the kinds of nuclear questions that Eisenhower foresaw have been more important than they are today. And never has there been a moment when America and Russia, still possessing nuclear capabilities and responsibilities that no other nations on earth can match, have had a greater opportunity to demonstrate real leadership. It would be a huge mistake, not only for the two of us but for the sake of global order, to miss that opportunity. That is exactly why President Bush and President Putin, in St. Petersburg last summer, and then again in the fall in Moscow and Hanoi, have placed such emphasis on realizing the full potential of U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation. Their efforts are already creating a very significant legacy, and much more is possible in the months and years ahead.

Before looking ahead, it's worth remembering how far we've come in nuclear cooperation in the last fifteen years. The deep nuclear arms reductions foreshadowed by the arms control agreements of the 1970s and 1980s were finally realized after the end of the Cold War. Both Russia and the United States slashed our nuclear arsenals, retiring thousands of warheads and dismantling thousands of deadly delivery systems. We stopped the routine targeting of each other's territory, and our bombers are no longer on nuclear alert. Working together, we successfully completed the denuclearization of Belarus, Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

Five years ago, President Putin and President Bush made another major contribution to this effort by signing the Moscow Treaty. Recognizing that the levels of our nuclear forces still did not reflect current strategic realities, they agreed to cut deployed nuclear warheads by nearly two-thirds. It is hard to imagine a more substantial example of U.S.-Russian leadership in reducing nuclear arms and diminishing the danger of nuclear conflict.

At the same time, Russians and Americans took extraordinary measures to protect their remaining nuclear arsenals and stores of fissile materials. With remarkable vision, Senator Lugar and Senator Nunn took the initiative in the early 1990s to create the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, aimed at working with Russians to dismantle outdated weapons and improve security for warhead and fissile material storage facilities. As it marks its fifteenth anniversary, the Nunn-Lugar program stands alongside the Marshall Plan as an historic example of American statesmanship and farsightedness.

Through the CTR program, thousands of warheads and hundreds of missiles have been destroyed. Dozens of nuclear storage sites, many of them perilously vulnerable to nuclear theft in the chaos of Russia in the 1990s, have been made more secure. Operations have begun at the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility, the single biggest nuclear project in the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. In parallel, under the U.S.-Russian HEU Agreement, hundreds of tons of weapons-grade material have been blended down and converted to commercial use. While far from perfect, and often unnoticed, these programs offer a truly impressive record of bilateral cooperation on the issue that still affects the physical security of our two countries more than any other.

As the United States and Russia have made progress in reducing and safeguarding our arsenals of nuclear weapons, interest has grown around the world in expanding reliance on civilian nuclear energy. The tragedies at Chernobyl and Three Mile Island understandably inhibited this trend in Russia and the U.S., but significant advances in nuclear safety and power plant construction, as well as new technologies, have opened up considerable opportunities. Already today, more than fifteen percent of total electricity worldwide is being generated by nuclear power, and that number is on the rise.

President Putin and President Bush have both recognized the importance of rapidly developing civilian nuclear technology, and making its benefits available to the developing world. Both the United States and Russia have ambitious new construction projects. For the first time in our history, we are negotiating a civilian nuclear cooperation framework agreement, commonly known as a "123" agreement after Section 123 of the U.S. Atomic Energy Act. This agreement, on which we have made substantial progress, would open up new avenues for collaborative activities, from advanced reactor research and development to spent fuel management. Underlying our common interest in such programs is the recognition that reliable energy supplies are essential to the global economy – and that nuclear energy is an essential part of the solution to that problem, as well as an environmentally-friendly alternative in an era in which massive consumption of hydrocarbons is becoming a bigger and bigger concern. Another dimension of our civilian nuclear cooperation involves the ongoing negotiation to amend the existing "suspension" agreement, in order to work out new mutually-acceptable terms for Russian access to the U.S. uranium market.

If the first pillar in U.S.-Russian nuclear leadership, as Eisenhower foresaw fifty years ago, is the development of civilian nuclear power for the benefit of the entire world, the second indispensable element is ensuring that that happens in a way that does not contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. For precisely that purpose, President Putin and President Bush have made very similar proposals in recent years to provide nuclear fuel services to other nations under strict international supervision. As part of a future system of international fuel centers, Russia has already identified one site on its soil, in an effort in which Kazakhstan likely will also participate. President Bush has laid out an ambitious plan for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership, conceptually similar to President Putin's initiative, aimed at developing innovative nuclear reactor and fuel cycle technologies. GNEP envisions the establishment of international supply frameworks to enhance reliable fuel services and supplies to the world market for the purpose of generating nuclear energy without spreading enrichment and reprocessing technologies. At the St. Petersburg G-8 Summit last June, our two Presidents announced their determination to combine our efforts, as a way to help assure access to fuel while minimizing the risk of weapons proliferation, and to meet rising energy demand around the world without emission of greenhouse gases.

Experts from both our countries, including from the U.S. Department of Energy and ROSATOM, are working hard at the direction of our Presidents to develop a common plan of action. It is important to note the strength of bipartisan support in the United States for this effort, as evidenced in the legislation introduced in the Congress recently by Representative Tom Lantos, the Chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee. As he emphasized during his visit to Moscow last week, Congressman Lantos' proposal for establishment of an international fuel bank, and careful international controls on uranium enrichment and spent-fuel reprocessing facilities, reflects a shared U.S.-Russian interest in bolstering the existing nonproliferation regime. Former Senator Nunn's valuable efforts through the Nuclear Threat Initiative are moving along similar lines.

Meanwhile, the United States and Russia are cooperating effectively on the two most immediate nuclear proliferation threats posed by other states, namely North Korea and Iran. We seek in both cases through diplomatic means to stop the spread of weapons, and avoid a very dangerous threat to international stability. Working with China, Japan, and South Korea in the Six Party Talks, we took an important step earlier this month toward full implementation of the September 2005 agreement on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. Much hard work remains, but U.S.-Russian diplomacy has been essential. The same is true on Iran. Along with China, Britain, France and Germany, we have pressed consistently for a diplomatic resolution, as laid out in United Nations Security Council resolution 1737. Unfortunately, the Iranian regime has thusfar refused to meet its obligations, as the International Atomic Energy Agency reported in detail last week. The United Nations Security Council must now consider how best to respond, and very close U.S.-Russian diplomatic coordination is underway, including in meetings last week between Secretary Rice and Foreign Minister Lavrov in Berlin, and between National Security Advisor Hadley and President Putin and senior Russian officials in Moscow. Neither of us can afford a nuclear-armed regime in Tehran.

As the North Korean and Iranian cases make clear, the risk of additional states acquiring nuclear weapons is growing. So is pressure on the NPT and the IAEA and the entire existing nonproliferation regime. One response to that mounting strain is our effort, articulated by our two Presidents in their joint statement in St. Petersburg last June, to make the Additional Protocol to the NPT an essential norm for verifying compliance with nuclear safeguards obligations, and to promote universal adherence to the Additional Protocol. We continue to work together to prevent transfers of sensitive nuclear equipment, materials and technologies to states that may seek to use them for weapons purposes, and will continue to advance the objectives of the Proliferation Security Initiative.

The risk of additional states developing nuclear weapons capabilities is compounded by the dangers of terrorists acquiring them too. That is why UN Security Council resolution 1540, which obligates countries to enact and enforce strong export controls and other measures to prevent weapons of mass destruction from falling into the hands of terrorists, is such a vital step. I'm proud that the United States and Russia were among the first two nations to sign the International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism.

In the past year, Russia and the United States have launched an extremely important, if still largely unnoticed, diplomatic initiative to build practical global cooperation to combat nuclear terrorism, harnessing the various measures which I've just mentioned in a concerted international campaign. At meetings in Morocco and Turkey, Russia and the United States have taken the lead in this effort. Eleven other countries have already joined us, and we expect many more to express their support in the months to come. I can think of no better example of how crucial American and Russian leadership has become than this new global initiative against nuclear terrorism. No other two countries in the world can bring to bear the depth of experience, capability and shared interest than we can on this profoundly important problem.

The third pillar of our approach to the nuclear challenges of our times is how we manage our own remaining nuclear arsenals. Certainly this is a far different question than it was when Eisenhower spoke in New York in 1953, in the wake of the development of thermonuclear bombs in both our countries, and with the nuclear arms race between us moving ahead full tilt. In a manner unique in human history, we have together made enormous strides in the decade and a half since the end of the Cold War to reduce our stores of nuclear weapons and safeguard those that remain. But there is more to be done, and how well we do it will have a significant impact on our ability to jointly encourage responsible behavior from the rest of the world. Strengthening existing nonproliferation regimes also means demonstrating our commitment to Article VI of the NPT, as our two Presidents stressed last summer in St. Petersburg.

We have made considerable progress in implementing the goals of the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, which we recently renewed for another seven years. While many challenges remain, we are on track to meet the objective set by our Presidents in Bratislava in 2005 to complete planned security upgrades by the end of 2008. As I noted earlier, the Mayak Fissile Material Storage Facility is now operational. The United States and Russia continue to cooperate quite effectively on repatriation of highly-enriched uranium from third countries, and on planning for nuclear emergency response. More broadly, we have begun to consider how best to adapt our joint work on these issues, which began fifteen years ago as essentially an assistance program at a moment when Russia faced huge economic and social problems, and has evolved naturally with Russia's impressive national revival into a genuine partnership. Nuclear safety and security in facilities in both our countries remains among the highest of all our national security priorities, and that is unlikely to change for decades to come.

It is also important today to look ahead to the challenges and possibilities that lie beyond the expiration of the START Treaty in 2009, and the Moscow Treaty in 2012. At the direction of our Presidents, we have begun a strategic security dialogue to consider what we want in place when the START Treaty expires, what further steps to pursue, and what sort of transparency and confidence-building regime makes the most sense. There is also much more that can be done to enhance communication between us, on everything from data exchange on ballistic missile launches, to difficult questions of missile defense and space and deterrence posture, to equally complicated and consequential issues like the future of the INF Treaty. There are no easy answers to any of these questions, but all of them require a candid, sustained, systematic strategic dialogue between us. We may not be able to agree on every issue, but neither of us can afford miscommunication or the absence of genuine consultation.

The world has changed in ways that President Eisenhower could not have imagined, speaking before the UN, more than half a century ago. But the power of his vision of a world of nuclear possibilities, and nuclear dangers, is as profound as ever. In an age in which the global economy is eating up fossil fuels at a rate which Eisenhower could not have foreseen, civilian nuclear power becomes more and more important. In an age in which our environment seems more fragile than ever, the advantages of nuclear energy become more and more clear. And in an age in which technological advances, the information revolution, and global mobility have made nuclear weapons proliferation among both states and non-state actors a graver risk than ever, the need for responsible and determined leadership from Russia and the United States becomes more and more compelling.

There are no other two states on this planet who have the history, the capacity, and the common purpose that the two of us can apply to this issue. It is sometimes difficult, amidst all the mutual frustration in our relationship these days, to focus on that singular reality. But an enormous amount of good can come of Russian-American leadership on the nuclear challenges of our time, whether it's the development of international fuel centers or new proliferation-resistant nuclear technology, or diplomatic solutions on North Korea and Iran. More than on any other single issue, the world depends on Russia and the United States to show responsible leadership on the nuclear question. No matter how many other frictions we may have between us, and no matter who succeeds President Bush and President Putin, that responsibility will remain with us for many years to come. Let us hope that a half century from now, when historians look back at this era just as we are looking back at Eisenhower's plea to harness atoms for peace, they will see that we seized this moment boldly, and did all we could to shape events for the better. That is a matter not only of our deepest mutual self-interest, but of the interest of the entire world.

Thank you.