At the end of the cold war in 1991, the US and its allies realized that the former Soviet Union had thousands of unsecured nuclear weapons, tons of unguarded fissile material, and unemployed nuclear weapons scientists. The materials and expertise necessary for a so-called rogue state or terrorist group to build a nuclear weapon were readily accessible.
So the US set about helping the former Soviet states secure their weapons, materials, and scientists through various facets of the Cooperative Threat Reduction program. Several CTR projects were aimed specifically at preventing a mass exodus of former Soviet scientists to rogue states by reemploying them on peaceful projects—and thus taking away the temptation to sell their weapons expertise to any state that came recruiting.
But 15 years on, the reemployment programs have made slow progress in the former Soviet Union; official US government reports and various academic studies attest to that fact....
