Executive Summary of Report

Nearly twenty years after the end of the Cold War, Russia and the United States continue to maintain hundreds of nuclear weapons capable of striking the other side, and to have at least some of these nuclear forces at Cold War levels of alert, that is, ready to fire within a few minutes of receiving an order to do so.

Even during the Cold War, alert levels were not static and moved up or down in step with changes in the strategic and tactical environments. While the operational readiness of some weapon systems has been reduced, there has been no major change in the readiness levels of most of the nuclear weapon systems in the post-Cold War era. This is in considerable part because Russia and the United States believe that despite fundamental changes in their overall relationship, vital interest requires maintaining a high level of nuclear deterrence.

The post-Cold War experience also demonstrates that alert levels can be reduced and measures can be taken to reduce the risk of accidents or unauthorized takeover of nuclear weapons. Further measures could be taken to reduce operational readiness of nuclear arsenals. U.S. and Russian experts alike stressed survivability as a key element in the acceptance of these measures because of its importance to maintaining deterrence.

Cold War legacy postures under which thousands of weapons are kept on high readiness can be altered through top-down policy initiatives, as was the case in the early 1990s with one class of nuclear weapons.

Technical issues related to the peculiar "ready" character of land-based ICBMs can be resolved by bringing designers into discussions on decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons. There was a sense that technical solutions to the problems of nuclear risk reduction are available and can be multilateralized. Information sharing can help implementation of these solutions.

Concerns over "re-alerting" races and vulnerability of "de-alerted" forces to conventional or nuclear strikes during "reversal" can be addressed through survivable forces, dialogue, and confidence building.

Other nuclear weapon states apparently have alert practices that differ from those of Russia and the United States. It was debated whether this state of affairs can be ascribed to an absence of nuclear war fighting capabilities or to a different assessment of the post-Cold War nuclear security environment. There was a sense that nuclear doctrines and alert practices of different nuclear weapon states cannot be analyzed in a vacuum and must be evaluated as parts of a larger political and security framework.

Non-nuclear weapon states' experts forcefully asserted the legitimate interest their states have in the issue and underlined the practical and constructive approach of the U.N. General Assembly resolution on reducing operational readiness of nuclear forces.

Non-nuclear weapon states say that lowering of the operational status of nuclear weapons would both reduce the risk of accidental or unintended nuclear war and provide a much-needed practical boost for disarmament and nonproliferation. Decreasing the operational readiness of nuclear weapons would be a highly desirable confidence-building measure between nuclear weapon states and non-nuclear weapon states. It would also be a welcome step in the lead-up to the 2010 Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference.

The principal objection to decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons as commonly understood has been that it seeks to address a problem that does not exist. Even if it does exist in some instances, it can be addressed by technical and organizational means updated to cover current threats such as nuclear terrorism. Furthermore, the remedy itself could end up undermining nuclear deterrence and strategic or crisis stability.

The insight that emerged during the meeting was that the above objection flows from a narrow view of de-alerting as meaning measures that make it physically impossible to promptly launch an attack on order. Such a view also leads to a somewhat excessive focus on verification of technical measures, which ends up giving an easy argument to the opponents of de-alerting-that it is not verifiable and therefore should not be attempted.

There are no fundamental obstacles to many useful measures of decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons, provided the issue is not framed narrowly. De-alert has to be seen not only as a technical fix but also as a strategic step in deemphasizing the military role of nuclear weapons, in other words, moving to retaliatory strike postures and doctrines instead of legacy preemptive or "launch on warning" postures. The ongoing U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) offers an opportunity for such a perceptual shift.

If decreasing operational readiness of nuclear weapons is reframed in this manner, several concrete steps become possible:

As part of the START follow-on negotiations, Russia and the United States could examine how measures to reduce operational readiness can accompany the bilateral arms control process.

Both Russia and the United States could further strengthen controls against unauthorized action, takeover, and tampering; further increase the capability of warning systems to discriminate real from imagined attacks; and enhance the survivability of their forces and their command and control systems.

Arrangements related to data exchange and ensuring a capability to destroy a "rogue" missile in flight could be multilateralized, at least in terms of sharing data, to bring other declared nuclear weapon states into the process.

Multilateralization of institutions such as the Joint Data Exchange Center may also have collateral benefits in the area of space security.

The premise of maintaining nuclear deterrence between Russia and the United States should not be considered immutable. A dialogue on legacy nuclear postures and doctrines in the Russia-U.S. context may trigger a broader dialogue among relevant states on reducing the salience of nuclear weapons, thus facilitating progress on disarmament and nonproliferation.

Nearly 18 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ensuing restoration of Ukraine’s independence, the country has yet to make a clear, committed choice about its geopolitical future. Having established itself as a sovereign state in the 1990s, Ukraine’s foreign policy sought to balance its drive to build links to Europe and the United States with its need to maintain stable relations with Russia.

Many believed the 2004 Orange Revolution and Viktor Yushchenko’s subsequent election as president would lead to a concerted Ukrainian push to integrate fully into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community. But political infighting within Kyiv and other problems have stymied the country’s efforts to take advantage of its new opportunities. The upcoming presidential election hopefully will result in an executive branch that can execute more coherent policies than has been the case in the past four years.

The United States and European countries that would like to see Ukraine more closely linked to the West will have to decide the best way to pursue engagement with Ukraine after Ukrainians choose their next president. It is possible, for example, that the new president will adopt a more modest pace to efforts to integrate into institutions such as NATO, while showing greater sensitivity to Russian concerns. In such a case, the United States and Ukraine’s supporters in Europe should maintain robust relations with Kyiv and press the country’s government to implement needed constitutional and economic reforms, while keeping doors open and working with Ukraine to integrate it into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community at a pace that Kyiv will choose.

This volume brings together a distinguished group of scholars working on Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union to examine in depth three waves of democratic change that took place in eleven different former Communist nations. Its essays draw important conclusions about the rise, development, and breakdown of both democracy and dictatorship in each country and together provide a rich comparative perspective on the post-Communist world. The first democratic wave to sweep this region encompasses the rapid rise of democratic regimes from 1989 to 1992 from the ashes of Communism and Communist states. The second wave arose with accession to the European Union (from 2004 to 2007) and the third, with the electoral defeat of dictators (1996 to 2005) in Croatia, Serbia, Georgia, and Ukraine. Although these three waves took place in different countries and involved different strategies, they nonetheless shared several overarching commonalities. International factors played a role in all three waves, as did citizens demanding political change. Further, each wave revealed not just victorious democrats but also highly resourceful authoritarians. The authors of each chapter in this volume examine both internal and external dimensions of both democratic success and failure.

As the Bush administration comes to a close, U.S.-Russian relations have fallen to their lowest level since the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991. Unresolved and problematic issues dominate the agenda, little confidence exists between Washington and Moscow, and the shrill tone of official rhetoric approaches that of the Cold War.

This state of affairs is a far cry from what Presidents George Bush and Vladimir Putin envisaged in 2002, when they defined a framework for a qualitatively different U.S.-Russian relationship. Both sides bear responsibility for the failure to realize that vision.

As President Barack Obama takes charge of the Oval Office, he confronts a wary and assertive Russia among the many foreign policy challenges in his inbox. Moscow desires to reclaim “great power” status, an ambition fueled over the past five years by hundreds of billions of dollars in energy revenues. Its desires are colored by a bitter perception that the West took advantage of Russian weakness in the 1990s and that Washington has failed to take serious account of Moscow’s interests. Building a more sustainable relationship with Russia will not prove easy.

Ukraine and Ukrainians will be tested over the course of 2009. The global financial and economic crisis already has provoked a deep recession and falling living standards. Kyiv will need to make a real effort to strike a balance between integration into Europe and the Euro-Atlantic community and maintaining stable relations with Russia. Doing so will not be easy, as Russia regards Ukraine’s pro-Western policy as inimical to Russian interests, and Ukraine’s politics are subject to influence from Moscow. In particular, Ukraine must address its energy security situation, where it remains vulnerable to Russian pressure.