The U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation is an outstanding example of international cooperation in nuclear security and can be a source of multiple lessons to be used for enhancing nuclear security cooperation between the U.S. and Russia and other stakeholders, as well as for independent implementation of domestic nuclear security programs in any country. These lessons cover multiple topics, including nuclear security subject matter issues, sustainability of technical assistance results, international programs management, as well as impact of cultural differences on cooperation implementation. Yet only those involved in this cooperation in the U.S. and Russia and a handful of experts from academia and NGO know details of this cooperation that provide most valuable experience. To some extent this is explained by the limited amount of relevant information. However, there are valuable publicly available sources of information that remain largely untapped. One of the key sources is Proceedings of INMM Annual Meetings. Since cooperation started in early 90s until it was suspended in 2014 the U.S. and Russian experts independently or as part of joint teams actively used INMM Annual Meetings to report on progress and issues of cooperation. During the peak years of cooperation dozens of Russian experts attended INMM meetings and topics related to cooperation constituted substantial share of the Annual Meeting agenda. Between 1992 and 2019 almost 800 papers covering the U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation were delivered at Annual Meetings. This paper will conduct inventory of INMM papers covering the U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation and outline structure and main areas of cooperation based on available papers. This paper does not pretend to capture all the details of cooperation and highlight all the lessons that can be obtained. Rather, it aims at providing an entry point for future work of authors and other interested researchers.
Year
2020
Abstract