May 29, 2014

TURNER TO INTRODUCE BILL TO SUSPEND NNSA ACTIVITIES WITH RUSSIA

By ExchangeMonitor

Responding to Russia’s actions in Ukraine, Rep. Mike Turner (R-Ohio) said he will introduce a bill today that would suspend all National Nuclear Security Administration work in Russia. The wide-ranging bill would prohibit the “contact, cooperation or transfer of technology” between the NNSA and the Russian Federal until Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz certifies that Russia is no longer occupying Crimea, violating the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty, and is complying with the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe. In a statement, Turner said the Administration’s response to Russia’s actions in Ukraine have been “defensive, unsure, and unable to change Putin’s course of action. Today, Congress is providing the Obama Administration with a to-do list. This legislation outlines specific measures that can be taken up immediately and that will signal a fundamental shift in U.S. strategy.”

At a House Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee hearing yesterday, the NNSA said about $100 million is expected to be spent in Fiscal Year 2015 on Russian nuclear security upgrades, but acting Administrator Bruce Held emphasized that the agency was currently reviewing its plans for work with Moscow. A plan to provide laser-based protective force training equipment to Moscow has already been scrapped, he noted. “We need to look at this in a very clear-eyed fashion,” Held said, adding: “I would suggest that we’re in the business of U.S. national security, not in subsidizing the Russians one way or the other. Our responsibility … is U.S. national security. And so if that money is judged not to be serving those interests, then we shouldn’t pursue it.”

He suggested that nonproliferation and nuclear security work has often survived other tense periods in U.S. and Russian relations, and NNSA nonproliferation chief Anne Harrington said after the hearing that none of the agency’s work was with Russia’s military, focusing instead on customs and border security and activities with Russia’s nuclear agency, Rosatom. “There is relaly little intersection there,” she told NS&D Monitor. “And great intersection with our own U.S. national security interests in trying to keep [nuclear] material out of the hands of terrorists.” Rep. Jim Bridenstine (R-Okla.) raised concerns at the hearing that U.S. nonproliferation funds were subsidizing Russia’s nuclear modernization efforts. “Clearly, if Moscow has money to spend on its own nuclear forces, then it is quite capable of fulfilling its nonproliferation obligations without relying on the U.S. taxpayer,” Bridenstine said.

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