Loose Nukes in New Neighborhoods: The Next Generation of Proliferation Prevention

Need for a New Concept The international nuclear and biological threat reduction agenda now encompasses numerous U.S. government agencies and has a budget of more than $1.7 billion in the current fiscal year.1 With U.S. activities as the core, these programs are supplemented by the Group of Eight (G-8) Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction and several other multilateral initiatives, including the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism and the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). The budgets of key programs in the three major U.S. agencies participating in international threat reduction activities, the Departments of Defense, Energy, and State, currently still devote more than one-half of their combined funding to activities in Russia and the other former Soviet states.2 Congress has incrementally provided authority for U.S. agencies to expand their mission to other global hotspots; the agencies have exercised that authority primarily in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East.3 For example, the Defense Department has used the authority to remove chemical weapons from Albania and Libya.