At the conclusion of the Cold War, most Americans were convinced that the threat of war with Russia was over. In support of this, today the Russian military is in rapid decay and combat training has been curtailed sharply, making experts believe that it would take more than a decade to reverse course and substantially rearm. However, despite this popular belief, Russia remains a top security threat to the United States. The catch, of course, is that Russia's nuclear arsenal is second only to the United States. Aside from the weapons themselves, Russia has enough plutonium to build as many as 50,000 more weapons and enough highly enriched uranium for another 80,000. As it turns out, the deadly legacy of the Cold War risks putting weapons and nuclear materials in the hands of terrorists or others hostile to the United States.

Some experts worry that Russia could go the way of Germany in the 1930s. Feeling isolated and wounded, as the Germans did after their defeat in World War I, the Russians might feel compelled to rearm and lash out. To counter this, some experts offer the concept of "preventive defense" in order to engage Russia in cooperative efforts. This concept would include a new emphasis on arms control to improve custody and control of Russia's entire nuclear arsenal, not just the intercontinental forces that threatened America during the Cold War. Such defense diplomacy grows even more important as the "honeymoon" phase of the post-Cold War partnership with Russia ends as the Boris Yeltsin era draws to a close and a more difficult era begins.

The current financial crisis in Russia has led some experts to speculate that Russia could sell a portion of its arsenal of weapons of mass destruction in order to stay afloat. Millions of Russians are growing poorer and business and industry are crippled. The country faces $17.5 billion in foreign debt payments this year, but it can pay only half that at most. The big crunch could come as soon as May, when several billion dollars of debt come due. Russia has already missed several substantial debt payments, and further defaults may scare away remaining foreign banks and investors, dealing an additional blow to Russia's muddled attempts to build a functioning market economy. Russia is so impoverished that the national budget for the entire year is only $25 billion--a sum the U.S. government spends about every six days. Russia is already the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) largest single borrower and Moscow's debts this year include $4.8 billion to the fund. In effect, the IMF may end up lending to Russia so Moscow can repay the money it borrowed previously. President Clinton has been a big supporter of aid to Russia, and U.S. policy has often been guided by the notion that Russia must not be allowed to descend into chaos because of its political importance and its nuclear arsenal. This line of thinking led the United States and other Western countries to pour billions of dollars into Russia even while the economy was careening from one crisis to the next.

Many experts believe that Russian scientists are likely to sell their technology abroad because of the country's financial situation. The Russian financial burden coupled with poorly secured nuclear materials is encouraging scientists to sell their knowledge and materials to interested parties. Much of the former Soviet arsenal is unaccounted for, including suitcase nukes, which are rumored to be among the missing items. Although that has not been confirmed, the US produced suitcase-sized nuclear weapons during the Cold War making it not out of the realm of possibility that the Russians did as well. Whether they are missing however, has not been proven conclusively.

The threat of Russia selling its weapons of mass destruction abroad has led to an uproar in the United States. Ignoring pressure from the United States, Russia has sold nuclear and missile technology partly because of the hard currency it brings to the suffering Russian economy. Both Congress and the Clinton administration have acted against the possibility of a Russian-Iranian connection fearing that Iran would be in a far stronger position to dominate the Persian Gulf region. Furthermore, it would pose an immediate threat to U.S. forces in the gulf, to our allies throughout the Middle East, and even to some locations in Europe. The United States has long been concerned about Russian nuclear and missile cooperation with Iran and earlier this year imposed sanctions on 10 Russian institutes and companies that it suspects of helping Iran develop a nuclear arsenal. Russia has denied rendering any sensitive missile or nuclear technology to Iran although it is building a civilian atomic energy reactor in Bushehr on Iran's Gulf coast.

Russia and the United States had expected to finalize two nuclear security agreements that would have pumped hundreds of millions of dollars into the Russian treasury and eased tensions over Russia's nuclear cooperation with Iran. The deals were scheduled to be completed during a crucial visit to Washington by Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, who was coming primarily in hopes of persuading the IMF to grant new loans to shore up Russia's crippled economy. One agreement that was to be signed during their meeting arranged for Russia to receive more than $300 million from the United States in payment for uranium removed from Russian nuclear weapons and for Russia to gain immediate access to the worldwide commercial uranium market for future sales of similar material. In the second deal, Washington was prepared to accept a proposal by Atomic Energy Minister Yevgeny Adamov to restrict the cooperation of two Russian scientific institutes with Iran's nuclear program, in exchange for a lifting of U.S. sanctions on the two institutes. These deals were designed to ensure continued disassembly of Russian nuclear weapons, secure disposition of the bomb material and to provide a regular flow of desperately needed cash into the Russian Atomic Energy Ministry. However, the NATO bombings in Kosovo have delayed the signings of these agreements.

Besides selling nuclear weapons for money, there is another problem with Russia and their weapons of mass destruction concerning the infamous Y2K bug. The Russians have had problems in the past with their early warning systems for nuclear war, which nearly led to a nuclear crisis in 1995. The early warning system thought that a Norwegian scientific rocket was a nuclear attack. Boris Yeltsin had his nuclear briefcase opened and was thinking of launching nuclear weapons. Since 1995, the Russian early warning system has deteriorated and the Y2K problem now will make the situation worse. So to help overcome that, the United States is fixing its Y2K problem with its early warning problem and will share early warning data with Russia. Furthermore, the US has reached an agreement with Russia to set up a center to ensure that neither nation launches a nuclear attack erroneously if computers controlling the two nations' nuclear weapons malfunction because of Year 2000 date code problems.

In conclusion, Russia has many unsolved problems concerning their weapons of mass destruction. The huge financial burden currently placed on Russia opens the possibility of these weapons leaving the Russian borders to hostile countries. Russian scientists trying to feed their families could sell "suitcase nukes" or simply their knowledge to hostile countries in order to make a quick profit. Furthermore, for all we know, the Y2K bug could cause a malfunction in the Russian computer systems causing World War III. And just when it seemed like things might get better, a deal to ease the financial burden in Russia in exchange for nuclear weapons and uranium has been further delayed because of NATO attacks in Kosovo. Consequently, until the financial and political situation in Russia is improved, all we Americans can do is sit with our fingers crossed that no "suitcase nukes" get into the wrong hands.

 http://abcnews.go.com/wire/Politics/AP19990314_20.html

 http://cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9901/20/BC-NUCLEAR-RUSSIA-IRAN.reut/index.html

 http://cnn.com/ALLPOLITICS/stories/1999/03/23/russia.ap/

 http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WPlate/1999-03/21/044l-032199-idx.html

 http://abcnews.go.com/sections/world/DailyNews/chat_990226eland.html

 http://cnn.com/WORLD/Europe/9903/20/BC-Russia-US.ap/

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