Pathways to Cooperation: A Menu of Potential U.S.-Russian Cooperative Projects in the Nuclear Sphere

In 2015, the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) and the Russia-based Center for Energy and Security Studies (CENESS) launched a Track 1.5 Dialogue to examine prospective U.S.-Russian cooperation across five thematic areas: nuclear science, nuclear energy, nuclear safety, nuclear security, and nuclear environmental remediation. The Dialogue included three roundtables in Washington and in Moscow, ten working papers, and a major international conference in February 2016 in Moscow. The outcome of this Dialogue is a new NTI-CENESS report, released in February 2017, called Pathways to Cooperation: A Menu of Potential U.S.-Russian Cooperative Projects in the Nuclear Sphere. The report features 51 recommendations for policymakers in Washington and Moscow to consider in the near-term and as political relations improve. This paper will provide an overview of the background and genesis of the Dialogue, present highlights of the recommendations, and offer ideas for next steps for bilateral U.S.-Russian nuclear cooperation.