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G-8 Effort to Prevent WMD Proliferation Needs More Funding, Researchers Say By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — A multinational effort to secure WMD materials in the former Soviet Union needs more support to be effective, a group of more than 20 international research organizations said in a report released this week (see GSN, Sept. 22). In establishing the Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction last year, the Group of Eight nations pledged $20 billion over 10 years to help fund nonproliferation projects, primarily in Russia. The effort was launched during a 2002 G-8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada. The G-8 consists of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, and several other nations have joined the effort, including Finland, the European Union, Norway, the Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland (see GSN, June 6). According to a report by the Strengthening the Global Partnership project, partnership nations have provided “inadequate and short-sighted” funding to adequately combat WMD proliferation threats. While partnership members have so far pledged $18.6 billion to the effort, this figure does not represent actual national funding allocations, the report says. It also says that the pledged funding is for projects designed to be carried out over the 10-year course of the partnership rather than immediate work, and that much of the pledged funding is for projects that were initiated before the launch of the partnership. “We are doing a lot of things, but we are not moving nearly fast enough. We have a common peril and we must hold leaders to be accountable for the wise pledges they have made,” the Singapore Straits Times today quoted former U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) as saying. In addition, according to the report, many of the funding pledges made by partnership members are “minimal” compared with national resources. For example, if current spending patterns are maintained, every partnership member with the exception of Russia itself will spend less than 1 percent of what they devote to defense spending on cooperative assistance programs. In addition, no partnership member has agreed to provide as much as 1 percent of their annual gross domestic product toward the efforts of the partnership, the report says. “It is in the interest of every member to make a contribution to the partnership proportional to its means and reflective of the magnitude of the threat the partnership confronts,” it says. [EDITOR’S NOTE: Sam Nunn is chief executive officer of the Nuclear Threat Initiative. NTI is the sole sponsor of Global Security Newswire, which is published independently by National Journal Group.]
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