[Congressional Record Volume 159, Number 73 (Wednesday, May 22, 2013)]
[Senate]
[Pages S3765-S3767]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Mrs. SHAHEEN:
  S. 1021. A bill to provide for a Next Generation Cooperative Threat 
Reduction Strategy, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Foreign 
Relations.
  Mrs. SHAHEEN. Mr. President, I rise today to discuss the threat posed 
by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction around the globe 
and to introduce legislation aimed at modernizing the way the United 
States addresses this critical national security challenge. My bill, 
the Next Generation Cooperative Threat Reduction Act of 2013, requires 
the President to establish a multi-year comprehensive and well-
resourced regional assistance strategy to coordinate and advance 
cooperative threat reduction and related nonproliferation efforts in 
one of the most critical regions to U.S. national security interests: 
the Middle East and North Africa.
  Fifty years ago, in 1963, President Kennedy famously said that he was 
``haunted'' by the possibility that the United States could soon face a 
rapidly growing number of nuclear powers in our world. At the time, he 
predicted that by 1975, there could be as many as twenty countries with 
nuclear weapons. However, thanks to strong, forward-thinking and 
innovative American leadership on the nonproliferation agenda, 
including efforts like the Nonproliferation Treaty and the Nunn-Lugar 
program, we have so far averted Kennedy's nuclear nightmare.
  Recent WMD-related developments, including Syria's chemical weapons 
stockpile and Iran's nuclear program, have begun to test the limits of 
our nonproliferation regime. I am afraid we may be quickly reaching an 
important crossroads--one where we either prove President Kennedy wrong 
for a little while longer, or find out that his nightmare prediction 
was simply a half-century too soon.
  As WMD-related materials and know-how continue to spread, the 
challenge of WMD proliferation is getting more

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diffuse and harder to track. Our focus and our resource commitment need 
to match the severity of this emerging threat. Now is the time for us 
to recommit to an aggressive nonproliferation agenda and to demonstrate 
to the world that the U.S. will continue to lead in curbing the threat 
posed by nuclear, chemical and biological weapons around the world.
  We should start in one of the most dangerous, most unstable regions 
in the world today: the Middle East and North Africa.
  Nowhere is the proliferation challenge more glaring than in the 
countries of the Middle East and North Africa, where political 
instability and deeply-rooted violent extremism sit atop a complex web 
of ethnic differences, a history of violence and extremism, robust 
military capabilities, a growing collection of unsecured conventional 
and possible WMD-related weapons and a variety of inexperienced and 
potentially unstable governments brought into power by the Arab Spring.
  Continued upheaval in Syria and the threat posed by the Assad 
regime's substantial chemical weapons stockpile pose a grave challenge 
to U.S. interests. Iran's continued illicit development of its nuclear 
program and its movement towards an advanced nuclear weapons capability 
threatens the U.S. and our allies and could lead to a nuclear arms race 
in the region. Terrorist groups like Hezbollah, Hamas, and al Qaeda 
continue to operate throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and 
their direct ties to the Iranian and Syrian regimes only exacerbates 
the threat posed by these groups as they seek to acquire weapons of 
mass destruction or know-how.
  Add to these threats the fact that the Arab Spring and continued 
revolutions across the region have brought popularly elected, yet 
untested governments into power that possess minimal capability and 
very little experience in countering WMD proliferation.
  In the face of this growing and complex challenge, it is obvious that 
the Middle East and North African region represents the next generation 
of WMD-related tests for the United States. Yet, our resources and our 
programming are not getting ahead of the threat. In fact, the 
nonpartisan ``Project on U.S. Middle East Nonproliferation Strategy'' 
estimates that, excluding programs in Iraq, only two percent of last 
year's nonproliferation-related programming, or approximately 
$20,000,000 of an estimated $1,000,000,000, was spent in Middle East 
and North Africa countries.
  Luckily for us, we have a successful model for engagement on this 
issue that we can fall back on. Just over two decades ago, Senators Sam 
Nunn and Dick Lugar initiated what has proven to be one of the 
country's most effective foreign policy efforts. The Nunn-Lugar 
Cooperative Threat Reduction, CTR, Program has led to the successful 
deactivation of well over 13,000 nuclear warheads, as well as the 
destruction of over 1,400 intercontinental ballistic missiles and 
almost 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapon agents. Because of Nunn-
Lugar, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus are nuclear weapons free and 
Albania is chemical weapons free.
  The principles of Nunn-Lugar can and should be more fully translated 
into the Middle East and North Africa. Congress has long supported 
expanding CTR into the Middle East, but it was only last fall that the 
Administration finally completed the bureaucratic changes necessary to 
more robustly engage in this region.
  It is time we expand and ramp up our CTR efforts to prevent the 
potential proliferation of WMD-related weapons, technologies, 
materials, and know-how in this difficult and volatile part of the 
world. That is why I am introducing the Next Generation Cooperative 
Threat Reduction Act of 2013, which is aimed at modernizing our CTR and 
nonproliferation programs and expanding them more comprehensively 
throughout this region.
  The bill calls for the President to develop and implement a multi-
year comprehensive regional assistance strategy to coordinate and 
advance CTR and nonproliferation in the Middle East and North Africa. 
The strategy requires an integrated, whole-of-government commitment to 
building on the cooperative threat model demonstrated by Nunn-Lugar's 
successes, the initiation of new CTR programs with newly elected 
partners in the region, and plans to ensure burden-sharing and 
leveraging of additional outside resources.
  The bill allows for the support of innovative and creative assistance 
programs aimed at enhancing the capacity of governments in the region 
to prevent, detect, and interdict illicit WMD-related trade. Activities 
could include:
  Encouraging and assisting with security and destruction of chemical 
weapons stockpiles; Promoting the adoption and implementation of 
enhanced and comprehensive strategic trade control laws and 
strengthening export controls and border security, including maritime 
security; Promoting government-to-government engagement among emerging 
political and public policy leaders, including the possibility of 
training courses for parliamentarians and national technical advisors; 
Promoting activities that seek to work with civil society 
organizations, media representatives, and public diplomacy officials to 
help develop a culture of nonproliferation responsibility among the 
general public; The possible establishment of nuclear, chemical, or 
biological security Centers of Excellence in the Middle East; 
Supporting, enhancing, or building upon regional nonproliferation 
programs and institutions already in place, including such multilateral 
initiatives as the December 2010 Gulf Cooperation Council conference on 
the implementation of UNSCR 1540 or the Arab Atomic Energy Agency and 
its Arab Network of Nuclear Regulators; Supporting, enhancing, or 
building upon previous multilateral initiatives, including the Group of 
Eight's Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials 
of Mass Destruction or the White House-led Nuclear Security Summits in 
2010 and 2012 to more fully incorporate and include countries of the 
Middle East and North Africa region; Encouraging countries to adopt and 
adhere to the IAEA Additional Protocol; Promoting and supporting WMD-
related regional confidence-building measures and Track Two regional 
dialogues on nonproliferation and related issues; Working 
collaboratively with businesses, foundations, universities, think tanks 
and other sectors, including the possibility of prizes and challenges 
to spur innovation in achieving appropriate Middle East and North 
Africa nonproliferation objectives; Supporting and expanding successful 
existing Middle East and North Africa partnerships, including the 
Middle East Consortium for Infectious Disease Surveillance; Promoting 
the establishment of professional networks that foster voluntary 
regional interaction on weapons of mass destruction-related issues; or 
enhancing United States-Europe cooperation on combating proliferation 
in the Middle East and North Africa region.
  The threat posed by WMD-related materials falling into the hands of 
terrorists remains our greatest and gravest threat. As former Defense 
Secretary Robert Gates said, ``Every senior leader, when you're asked 
what keeps you awake at night, it's the thought of a terrorist ending 
up with a weapon of mass destruction, especially nuclear.''
  To date, we have largely kept WMD materials out of terrorists' hands. 
Unfortunately, however, being successful ``to date'' is not good 
enough. When it comes to terrorism and WMD in our world, the reality is 
that the international community cannot afford to make a single 
mistake. We cannot be complacent because one miscalculation . . . one 
unprotected border . . . one unsecured facility . . . could all lead to 
a mushroom cloud somewhere in our world.
  We need to remain vigilant, to think ahead, and to anticipate where 
the next threats will come from and adapt to get ahead of it.
  That is why I would urge my colleagues in the Senate to take up and 
pass the Next Generation Cooperative Threat Reduction Act of 2013. We 
need to demonstrate that the United States will continue to lead the 
international community in curbing the threat posed by WMD 
proliferation. My legislation does just that. I hope the Senate will 
support this important effort.
  Before yielding the floor, I want to thank my colleagues in the U.S. 
Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, at the White House and at 
the Departments of State and Defense who contributed to this 
legislation. I also want

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to give special thanks to the Co-Chairs of the Project on U.S. Middle 
East Nonproliferation Strategy, including David Albright, Mark 
Dubowitz, Orde Kittrie, Leonard Spector and Michael Yaffe, whose 
report, ``U.S. Nonproliferation Strategy for the Changing Middle 
East,'' served as the inspiration for this legislation.

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