The Foreign Service Journal, September 2009

40 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 9 ormer Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, the originator and co-author of the 1991 Nunn- Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Pro- gram (better known as the Nunn-Lugar Act), has provided American diplomats with an indispensable tool in their efforts to eliminate or secure nuclear and fissile materials in the former Soviet Union. Building on that suc- cess, the 2004 Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act has facilitated De- fense Department nonproliferation projects in other parts of the world. In recognition of that enduring achievement, and for his lifetime of public service, on June 18 the American Foreign Service Association conferred its 2009 award for Lifetime Contributions to American Diplomacy on Sen. Nunn. (See p. 55 for full coverage of the AFSA awards ceremony.) A meeting in Moscow with Soviet Premier Mikhail Gor- bachev shortly after the August 1991 coup attempt inspired the senator to introduce his legislation. Even before the So- viet Union collapsed, he recognized the grave proliferation risk posed by its vast arsenal of nuclear, chemical and bio- logical weapons. Working with the ranking Republican member of the Senate Foreign Relations and Intelligence Committee, Richard Lugar (who also received the lifetime contributions award from AFSA, in 2005), Sen. Nunn per- suaded reluctant congressional leaders and the administra- tion of President George H.W. Bush that the need to respond was critical and urgent. For nearly 20 years now, Nunn-Lugar has provided cru- cial funding to dismantle a huge array of bombers, missiles, submarines and other launch vehicles. The program also facilitated the safe removal of all nuclear weapons from Ukraine, Kazakhstan and Belarus, thereby turning the coun- tries with the third-, fourth- and eighth-largest nuclear ar- senals, respectively, into nuclear weapons–free nations. And thousands of Soviet scientists formerly engaged in research on weapons of mass destruction have turned to cooperative pursuits. No less a figure than President Barack Obama has hailed Sen. Nunn for upholding the tradition of a bipartisan for- eign policy. Writing in The Audacity of Hope , then-Senator Obama describes him and Sen. Lugar as “two men who un- derstood the need to nurture coalitions before crises strike, and who applied this knowledge to the critical problem of nuclear proliferation.” An Early Commitment to Public Service Samuel Augustus Nunn was born in Macon, Ga., on Sept. 8, 1938, and raised in nearby Perry. A grandnephew of Representative Carl Vinson, he grew up with a family connection to politics. Nunn entered Georgia Tech in 1956, transferring to Emory University the next year, where he earned his un- dergraduate degree in 1960 and a law degree in 1962. After active-duty service in the United States Coast Guard, he spent six years in the Coast Guard Reserve, and also served for a short time as a congressional staffer. The future senator returned to Perry to practice law and manage the family farm before entering politics as a mem- ber of the Georgia House of Representatives in 1968. Four years later, he was elected to the U.S. Senate, serving four consecutive terms. As chairman of the Senate Committee S AM N UNN : N ATIONAL S ECURITY V ISIONARY B OTH AS A FOUR - TERM U.S. SENATOR AND A PRIVATE CITIZEN , S AM N UNN HAS TIRELESSLY ADVOCATED NONPROLIFERATION . F OR THOSE EFFORTS , HE IS THE LATEST RECIPIENT OF AFSA’ S L IFETIME C ONTRIBUTIONS TO A MERICAN D IPLOMACY A WARD . B Y S TEVEN A LAN H ONLEY Steven Alan Honley is the editor of the Journal . F