The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2007

temoeller said in April. “They see it as a very serious secu- rity issue, and obviously they believe it’s in their interest to pursue it.” U.S. programs have also tackled the issue of finding employment for scientists and engineers formerly employed in the Soviet WMD complex. It’s estimated that in 10 closed nuclear cities, the Soviet government employed more than 150,000 scientists and engineers. (There were another 65,000 specialists in biological weapons and 6,000 chemical weapons experts.) The United States, through the State Department, has funded Science and Technology Centers in Moscow and Kiev. These have been largely successful in providing sci- entists with short-term incomes, but have been less suc- cessful in finding meaningful productive work for the sci- entists. A program with similar goals run by the DOE, called Initiatives for Proliferation Prevention, is reported to have supported 16,000 specialists from 180 institutes for a time, with participation from private companies and the U.S. national laboratories. According to William Tobey, deputy administrator for defense nuclear nonproliferation at DOE’s the National Nuclear Security Agency, the risk of nuclear scientists going astray is also reduced by the improved situation in Russia. “The Russian nuclear industry is undergoing sig- nificant growth,” Tobey tells the Foreign Service Journal . “They’ve announced ambitious plans for reactor construc- tion, and that has fueled the demand for nuclear techni- cians.” The NNSA and Rosatom also signed an agreement in April designed to make sure that the Russians sustain the security upgrades after the United States phases out its assistance, which will probably happen over the next few years. Overall, the United States can point to impressive suc- cess in its counterproliferation efforts. Says Gottemoeller, “We’ve made an enormous investment but it’s been a valu- able investment. We have managed in historical terms to prevent a huge catastrophe, the uncontrolled breakup and dissipation of the Soviet nuclear arsenal. A lot of that stuff F O C U S J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 41