Table Of ContentAvoiding Armageddon: The US Military’s Response to
Trans-Regional Nuclear Proliferation in a Post-Soviet
World
A Monograph
by
MAJ Andrew S. Glenn
US Army
School of Advanced Military Studies
United States Army Command and General Staff College
Fort Leavenworth, Kansas
2016
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Avoiding Armageddon: The US Military1s Response to Trans-Regional Nuclear
Proliferation in a Post-Soviet World
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Glenn, Andrew S., MAJ
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14. ABSTRACT
Following the dissolution ofthe Soviet Union in 1991, black markets for nuclear material rapidly expanded and proliferation by both state and
non-state actors soared. The Department of Defense began a lengthy process of creating mechanisms to address the proliferation through what
ultimately became a strategic comprised of three pillars: nonproliferation, counterproliferation, and consequence management. The Department of
Defense ultimately achieved unity ofcommand by enforcing organizational changes within the department, establishing a new functional
combatant command with a sub-unified command that maintains responsibility for integrating and synchronizing plans and operations to counter
proliferation, and by establishing contingency plans to address known proliferation events.
By studying strategic documents, operations plans, unified command plans, and organizational histories, the author determined that key to
counterproliferation has been unity ofcommand. While unity of command was not immediate, the department did achieve unity ofeffort early,
which mitigated serious consequences.
1S. SUBJECT TERMS
Counterproliferation, Nonproliferation, Counter-proliferation, Proliferation, Nuclear weapons, Weapons ofmass destruction, Weapons of mass
effect
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Name of Candidate: MAJ Andrew S. Glenn
Monograph Title: Avoiding Armageddon: The US Military’s Response to Trans-
Regional Nuclear Proliferation in a Post-Soviet World
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Abstract
Avoiding Armageddon: The US Military’s Response to Trans-Regional Nuclear Proliferation in a
Post-Soviet World, by MAJ Andrew S. Glenn, US Army, 47 pages.
Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, black markets for nuclear material rapidly
expanded and proliferation by both state and non-state actors soared. The Department of Defense
began a lengthy process of creating mechanisms to address the proliferation through what
ultimately became a strategic comprised of three pillars: nonproliferation, counterproliferation,
and consequence management. The Department of Defense ultimately achieved unity of
command by enforcing organizational changes within the department, establishing a new
functional combatant command with a sub-unified command that maintains responsibility for
integrating and synchronizing plans and operations to counter proliferation, and by establishing
contingency plans to address known proliferation events.
By studying strategic documents, operations plans, unified command plans, and organizational
histories, the author determined that key to counterproliferation has been unity of command.
While unity of command was not immediate, the department did achieve unity of effort early,
which mitigated serious consequences.
iii
Contents
Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1
Methodology ................................................................................................................................... 5
Historiography ................................................................................................................................. 6
Proliferation ................................................................................................................................... 10
Counterproliferation ...................................................................................................................... 17
Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................... 33
Bibliography .................................................................................................................................. 37
iv
Introduction
At 7:00 AM on the nineteenth of August 1991, tanks of the Tamanskaya and
Kantemirovskaya Tank Divisions barreled into Moscow, reinforced by the Fifty-First, 137th, and
331st Paratroop Regiments. The forces quickly surrounded the Kremlin and the Russian White
House.1 Simultaneously, conspirators placed the Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev, his family,
and several of his closest advisors under house arrest at his dacha in the Crimean town of Foros.
To limit further his ability to leave, the conspirators parked two tractor-trailers on the airfield
blocking his Tupolev TU-134 jet and Mil MI-8 helicopter.2 After several tense hours of this
stand-off, Russian president Boris Yeltsin exited the Russian White House and climbed on top of
a tank of the Tamanskaya Division, denouncing the coup. This would later prove to be an iconic
moment, greatly enhancing Yeltsin’s image and popularity and unintentionally demonstrating the
impotence of the Soviet president.3 Unfortunately, the coup d’état persisted and would ultimately
have the unintended consequence of bringing about the dissolution of the Union of Soviet
Socialist Republics.
The conspirators remained quiet until the following afternoon. When they finally
appeared, they confirmed the power grab by the State Committee on the State of Emergency—or
the Gang of Eight. The Gang of Eight included Gorbachev’s vice president Gennady Yanayev,
Soviet prime minister, Valentine Pavlov, defense minister Marshal Dmitry Yazov, interior
minister Boris Pugo, chairman of the Committee for State Security (KGB) Vladimir Kryuchokov,
1 Andrew Glenn, trans., “Avgustovskiy putch GKChP. Khronika cobitiy 19-22 avgusta
1991 goda,” REA Novosti, August 19, 2011, accessed March 8, 2016, http://ria.ru/spravka/
20110819/415632412.html.
2 Serge Schmemann, “The Soviet Crisis; Gorbachev Reportedly Arrested in the Crimea,”
The New York Times, August 20, 1991, accessed October 11, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/
1991/08/21/world/the-soviet-crisis-gorbachev-reportedly-arrested-in-the-crimea.html.
3 William Green Miller, American Diplomacy and Soviet Disintegration (Washington,
DC: Institute for the Study of Diplomacy Publications, 1996), 16-17.
1
and several others. In a televised statement, Yanayev denied the putsch and stated that he
assumed power only to allow Gorbachev time to recuperate and tend to his poor health, resulting
from his heavy workload over the preceding six years. Yanayev further stated that the Gang of
Eight would continue to pursue Gorbachev’s policies that he “began in 1985.”4 This statement, of
course, was as ingenuous as the putsch was legitimate.
At the heart of the conspirators’ grievances lay the New Union Treaty—also known as the
Novo-Ogoryovo Treaty or the Treaty for the Union of Sovereign States.5 Gorbachev led delegates
through several iterations of drafting and negotiating the treaty. On twenty-five July 1991,
Gorbachev announced that the representatives had negotiated a final treaty, which would
fundamentally alter the Soviet Union. First, the treaty was entirely voluntary. States had the
option of being signatories.6 The Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania), Armenia,
Georgia, and Moldova boycotted a referendum on maintaining the union and announced their
intentions not to sign the treaty and to leave the union.7 The remaining republics—Russia,
Belarus, Ukraine, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
Uzbekistan—agreed to remain. The New Union Treaty shifted power from the federal
4 Gennedy Yanayev, produced by Simon Marks, “The Soviet Coup: Day One, August
19th 1991,” World Monitor (1991; The Discovery Channel, 2011), accessed October 11, 2015,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsF4c06txHM. Yanayev’s comments echoed the
conspirator’s original statement released on state radio. “BBC ON THIS DAY | 19 August 1991:
Hardliners Stage Coup Against Gorbachev,” BBC News, last modified 2015, accessed October
11, 2015, http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/19/newsid_2499000/2499453.
stm.
5 Bridget Kendall, “New Light Shed on 1991 Anti-Gorbachev Coup,” BBC News (August
18, 2011), accessed October 14, 2015, http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-14560280.
6 Carey Goldberg, “New Soviet Federal Treaty Completed: Reform: It Launches A
Transformation From A Centralized Empire To A Looser Federation Of Sovereign States. The
Signing Will Strengthen Gorbachev's Hand,” LA Times (25 July 2015), accessed October 14,
2015, http://articles.latimes.com/1991-07-25/news/mn-177_1_union-treaty.
7 Roman Solchanyk, “Union Treaty,” Encyclopedia of Russian History (2004), accessed
October 14, 2015, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-3404101429.html.
2
government to these independent republics. It granted the ability to raise armies for limited use
and decreased the role of the central government’s economic policies.8
Kryuchokov, as paranoid as westerners would expect the head of the KGB to be, bugged
negotiations and shared the results with the other hardline conspirators. In their desperate attempt
to thwart the perceived dismantlement of their beloved empire, they decided to wrest power from
Gorbachev and continue the existing order of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.9 Ironically,
their attempt likely hastened the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
The coup, which started the day before the New Union Treaty was signed and in effect,
lasted only three days. During the confusion of the coup, the three Baltic States opportunistically
declared their independence. In the week following the putsch, five other states (including three
of the four hosts of the Soviet’s nuclear arsenals and four of the nine states that agreed to the New
Union Treaty) declared their independence, as well. The conspirators met one of their goals: the
prevention of the creation of the Union of Sovereign States. Their plan, however, ultimately
backfired as the Soviet Union existed in name and for a short time, only. On December Eighth of
1991, Russian, Ukraine, and Belarus declared the end of the Soviet Union and the formation of
the Commonwealth of Independent States. This was despite the efforts Gorbachev made to draft a
new union treaty to replace the failed Twenty August treaty. Ultimately, he realized that only the
loosest confederation would be possible and capitulated to the Commonwealth of Independent
States, announcing on December Seventeenth that the Soviet Union would cease to exist by the
end of the month. Gorbachev and Yeltsin met and agreed to the transfer of state functions from
the Soviet Union to the Russian Federation.10 On Christmas Day, Gorbachev made his final
8 Andrew Glenn, trans., “Dogovor o Soyuze Syverenniyx Gosudarstv,” Pravda (27
November 1991), reproduced in Gorbechav Fund, accessed 14 October 2015, http://www.gorby.
ru/gorbachev/zhizn_i_reformy2/page_31/.
9 Kendall, “New Light.”
10 Miller, American Diplomacy, 16-20.
3
appearance announcing his resignation as president, as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
existed no more.11 The defining global order changed.
Three short weeks before the August coup, the United States and Soviet Union had
signed the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). The United States, understandably,
maintained an interest in seeing START not dissolve along with the Soviet Union. Secretary of
State James Baker expressed concern of the Soviet dissolution resulting in a “Yugoslavia with
nukes.”12 While most of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal resided within Russia, there were
more than twenty deployment, production, and other nuclear weapons related sites outside of the
state. Additionally, there were seventy-two nuclear-equipped intercontinental ballistic missiles
(ICBM) in Belarus, more than one-hundred in Kazakhstan, and nearly 200 in Ukraine.
Additionally, Kazakhstan and Ukraine each possessed nuclear-equipped air-launched cruise
missiles.13 Secretary Baker was understandably concerned.
Ultimately, the former Soviet republics of Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan all safely
surrendered their Soviet nuclear weapons to post-Communist Russia in the years that followed,
and became signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty in 1993 or 1994.14 Despite these
voluntary surrenders, large quantities of nuclear material proliferated and seeped into a trans-
regional black market—representing a threat that persists today with nearly eighteen open-source
reports of nuclear-related trafficking incidents in 2009 and 2010. Today, these ‘loose nukes’
11 Mikhail Gorbachev, “Farewell Address,” The New York Times (December 25, 1991),
accessed October 14, 2015, http://www.nytimres.com/1991/12/26/world/end-of-the-soviet-union-
text-of-gorbachev-s-farewell-address.html?pagewanted=all.
12 Keith Bradsher, “Noting Soviet Eclipse, Baker Sees Arms Risks,” The New York Times
(December 9, 1991), accessed November 17, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/1991/12/09/world/
noting-soviet-eclipse-baker-sees-arms-risks.html.
13 Ivo Daalder, Nuclear Arms Control After the Moscow Coup (Washington, DC: Institute
for the Study of Diplomacy Publications, 1996), 27.
14 United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs, Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of
Nuclear Weapons, accessed 17 November 2015, https://disarmament.un.org/treaties/t/npt.
4
represent one of many trans-regional threats that the US military must synchronize the efforts of
geographic and functional combatant commands to address. To address better today’s trans-
regional threats, one ought to ask “how did the US military address the trans-regional nature of
nuclear proliferation after the dissolution of the Soviet Union?”
By studying relevant documents from the Joint Staff, various combatant commands, and
historical summaries, a slow evolution becomes visible. Throughout the 1990s, the country’s
counterproliferation efforts grew from simple deterrence to a coherent strategy, synchronized by
the Department of Defense. To achieve coherence, the Department of Defense evolved
mechanisms to synchronize counterproliferation efforts through multiple iterations of strategic
guidance, institutional and structural changes (including the shifting of geographic combatant
command boundaries, the creation senior executive service positions, and the consolidation of
responsibility within a functional combatant command and a combat support agency), the
creation of a specified contingency plan, and the empowerment of supporting commands to
offensively counter proliferation.
Methodology
This monograph explains how the US Department of Defense counterproliferation
approach evolved following the dissolution of the Soviet Union by examining the various
documents that discuss counterproliferation strategy, combatant command charters, Unified
Command Plans, and other directives. Examining the department’s requirements for
counterproliferation, set forth by the legislative and executive branches in the form of statutes,
strategic guidance, and policies provides a glimpse into what the Department of Defense was
attempting to achieve. The organization of the monograph will first seek to define the problem
presented by the rapid proliferation of nuclear materials following Soviet dissolution in 1991.
Criminal networks and opportunistic, disaffected former Soviet employees conspired to establish
a global black market for nuclear material, which if left unchecked threatened US interests.
5
Description:Avoiding Armageddon: The US Military1s Response to Trans-Regional Nuclear. Proliferation in a Post-Soviet World. Sa. CONTRACT NUMBER.
