Stockpiles of Terror

Imagine Iraqi President Saddam Hussein or Osama bin Laden obtaining a nuclear weapon partly because Congress refused to act. Impossible? The frightening reality, as The Times’ Sonni Efron reported Monday, is that a handful of House conservatives and Pentagon hawks are tying up vital programs that fund the destruction of Russian nuclear and chemical arms stockpiles left over from the Cold War.

Congress and the first Bush administration quickly realized that with the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 everything possible had to be done to stop terrorists and rogue regimes from plundering the former Soviet Union’s nuclear materials. The poverty of many Russian scientists and lack of adequate safeguards at research institutes and nuclear sites made this nightmare a real possibility.

In 1991, the joint U.S.-Russian Cooperative Threat Reduction program began the destruction of nuclear warheads, elimination of weapons-grade uranium and retraining of former Soviet nuclear, chemical and biological weapons scientists for peaceful purposes. To date, 6,000 warheads, 400 missile silos and 1,400 missiles have been decommissioned.

According to Sen. Richard G. Lugar (R-Ind.), Reps. Duncan Hunter (R-Alpine) and Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) are spearheading a movement to impede the funding of nonproliferation programs. Hunter and Weldon still have a Cold War mentality; they apparently see the Russian military, which has been unable to subdue Chechnya, as a potent threat to the United States. Their argument: Money for such programs allows the Russians to dispose of obsolete weapons and spend more on new weaponry. As a result, Hunter and others have, among other things, foolishly crippled a program to construct a plant in southern Russia that would liquidate about 45,000 tons of nerve gas stored in decaying canisters.

There is no fantasy James Bond to avert a potential tragedy once terrorists have acquired weapons of mass destruction by bribing an impoverished Russian scientist or guard. The United States, which has already spent $7 billion on ridding the world of these ferocious weapons, must continue to fund nonproliferation programs.

President Bush should clip the wings of the hawks on Capitol Hill and make it clear that he wants the money to start flowing again. This would require him to move against otherwise friendly conservatives, something he is always reluctant to do. But the stakes could not be higher. The danger is not that the U.S. will spend too much on destroying obsolete Russian weaponry but that it won’t spend enough.