Non-Proliferation Funding Resource Center
For more information, contact Kingston Reif or Lt. General Robert Gard
October 28, 2011
The weapon was eliminated under the Cooperative Threat Reduction program implemented by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency. (DTRA photo)
In President Obama’s historic Prague Speech in April 2009 he stated:
Today, the Cold War has disappeared but thousands of those weapons have not. In a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up. More nations have acquired these weapons. Testing has continued. Black market trade in nuclear secrets and nuclear materials abound. The technology to build a bomb has spread. Terrorists are determined to buy, build or steal one. Our efforts to contain these dangers are centered on a global non-proliferation regime, but as more people and nations break the rules,
we could reach the point where the center cannot hold.
In April 2010 President Obama hosted an unprecedented Nuclear Security Summit in Washington D.C. during which the leaders of 47 nations pledged their support to secure vulnerable nuclear materials on their soil and to work in tandem to decrease threat levels. Numerous bipartisan reports and government officials from both parties have outlined the urgency of the danger and warned that more needs to be done to ensure that terrorists and non-state actors never obtain a nuclear weapon or materials that could be used to create a nuclear device.
In an effort to accelerate the cooperative international effort to secure vulnerable nuclear materials and keep our nation safe from nuclear terrorism, the administration requested nearly $2.7 billion in FY 2011 for the National Nuclear Security Administration’s Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Account. For FY 2012 the administration has asked for $2.5 billion and plans to ask for an additional $14.2 billion over the next five years to reduce the global nuclear threat by detecting, securing, safeguarding, disposing and controlling nuclear and radiological material. The administration also asked for significant increases for the Defense Department’s Cooperative Threat Reduction Program.
Thanks to overwhelming bipartisan support, nuclear material security and nonproliferation activities have received full support over the last decade. Yet in the past year these programs have been subject to unprecedented reductions. Given the Congressional mandate for significant cuts in federal spending over the next decade, there is a grave danger that the budget for nuclear terrorism prevention programs will continue to be at risk.
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