U.S. Nuclear Risk Reduction Center Annual Consultations and 20th Anniversary

This year marks the 20^th Anniversary of the first arms control notification exchanged between the United States and the Soviet Union, by means of the U.S. and U.S.S.R. Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers. The U.S. Center – operated by the Department of State – and its counterparts in the Russian Federation, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan held their annual consultations on April 8-10. In addition to their usual agenda of procedural and communications issues, this year’s consultation provided an opportunity to commemorate 20 years of successful transparency and confidence building under the 1987 agreement.

The Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers, established by the “Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on the Establishment of Nuclear Risk Reduction Centers,” signed in September 1987, are responsible for vital time-sensitive communications required by arms control treaties and security agreements. Watch Officers staff their Centers around the clock, receiving, translating, and disseminating these notifications, which go directly to the U.S. Department of State and the Russian Ministry of Defense. There are now equivalent Centers in Moscow, Russia; Kyiv, Ukraine; Minsk, Belarus; and Almaty, Kazakhstan. The Center is an integral part of the U.S. arms control verification, compliance and implementation process. Since 2003 the United States Nuclear Risk Reduction Center has been processing over 6,000 notifications a year in support of over a dozen arms control treaties and agreements.