Toxic Archipelago: Preventing Proliferation from the Former Soviet Chemical and Biological Weapons Complexes Amy E. Smithson Report No. 32 December 1999 Copyright©1999 11 Dupont Circle, NW Ninth Floor Washington, DC 20036 phone 202.223.5956 fax 202.238.9604
[email protected] Copyright©1999 by The Henry L. Stimson Center 11 Dupont Circle, NW Ninth Floor Washington, DC 20036 tel 202.223.5956 fax 202.238.9604 email
[email protected] Preface and Acknowledgments This report is the second major narrative by the Stimson Center’s Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project on the problems associated with the vast chemical and biological weapons capabilities created by the USSR. An earlier report, Chemical Weapons Disarmament in Russia: Problems and Prospects (October 1995), contained the first public discussion of security shortcomings at Russia’s chemical weapons facilities and the most detailed account publicly available of the top secret chemical weapons development program of Soviet origin, code-named novichok. Toxic Archipelago examines another aspect of the USSR’s weapons of mass destruction legacy, the proliferation problems that stem from the former Soviet chemical and biological weapons complexes. Given the number of institutes and individuals with expertise in chemical and biological weaponry that have been virtually without the financial support of their domestic governments since the beginning of 1992, this report provides an overview of a significant and complex proliferation dilemma and appraises the efforts being made to address it. This topic and other issues of chemical and biological weapons proliferation concern are also covered on the project’s worldwide web page, which can be found at the Chemical and Biological Weapons Nonproliferation Project section of the Stimson web site at: www.stimson.org/.