Reforming Soviet Infrastructure: The Gore-Chernomyrdin. Commission’s Many Initiatives

[Y]ou have to see this [space station] not as a tinker toy, not as particular project,

but as an infrastructure and as new kind of infrastructure.

—Clinton administration official42

With the Clinton administration, plans for the Shuttle-Mir flights adopted an important new meaning as “confidence building measures” between the United States and Soviet Union. Rather than being the end product, Shuttle-Mir became a means to more intensive cooperation in space that culminated in what eventu­ally came to be known as the International Space Station Program. Thus, after August 1993, the Shuttle-Mir flight planning came to be retroactively defined as Phase I of the ISS. The Shuttle-Mir and ISS projects were bound in part by a comprehensive $400-million contract between NASA and the Russian Space Agency as well as by administrative jurisdiction—both projects operated under the International Space Station Program Office.

To appreciate the greater significance of NASA’s collaborative work with the Russian Space Agency in Shuttle-Mir, and later the ISS, space exploration must be recognized as but one element within a clearly defined regime of the policy objectives of the Clinton administration. These fields fell under the jurisdiction of the 1993-1998 US-Russian Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation (also known as the Gore-Chernomyrdin Commission or GCC). Through agreements reached by Vice President Al Gore and Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, the White House aimed to reshape Russian bureaucratic and free market relations for the protection of American investments, long-term political stability of Russia, and the control of weapons knowledge and hardware.

These objectives are evident in three fields. (1) They refined fiscal, admin­istrative, and insurance procedures to make international trade safer for inves­tors. (2) They set up bureaucratic mechanisms in the field of defense conversion and demobilization intended to aid Russia in the retooling of military produc­tion facilities for consumer goods and producer durables. (3) The commission introduced environmental measures enlisting Russian resources and personnel in the Mission to Planet Earth Joint Working Group (MTPE/JWG), the Earth Sciences JWG, and by founding a Russian Environmental Task Force. The point bears repeating: these working groups and task forces provided opportunities for collaboration in space as well as “non-space” activities.

Led by the Russian Academy of Science and NASA, the JWGs assembled entities that had since the early 1960s been swapping data and working in col­laborative research projects. In addition to the RAS and NASA, these included the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA, formerly the Weather Bureau), the Russian Federal Service for Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring (also known as ROSGIDROMET, and formerly the Soviet HYDROMET), and the new authority on civil space, the Russian Space Agency. As of 1994, these agencies were engaged in approximately 22 activi­ties. The most notable included the world’s only orbiting ozone spectrometer, correlative measurement of the ozone layer, climatology studies, studies of the productivity of Russia’s Boreal Forest, health, fire risk, and context in the global carbon cycle, American watershed research by satellite, vulcanological studies of Russia’s Kamchatka peninsula, tectonics studies, a study of gravity and magnet­ics in Tibet and China, and ocean studies by satellite. One sign of the times: the agencies included joint work in Internet connectivity between NASA and Moscow’s Institute of Space Research (IKI).43

In a gesture coupling demobilization and environmentalism, the Russians agreed to assemble an Environmental Task Force (ETF), fashioned after the example set by the Americans. This task force worked to combine geophysi­cal research needs with data and images available only in classified systems and databases. Both the United States and Russia charged their ETF panels with “assessing the potential application of classified intelligence and defense systems and data to environmental studies.” Classified data and information holdings were then reviewed to see if they were relevant to environmental researchers.

Eventually, the United States and Russia would swap old reconnaissance images, but as of 1994, the partners agreed to operate autonomously. Indeed, in the 1994 draft terms, the Americans explicitly noted that this cooperation was by no means an exercise intended to open Russian classified data to the West.44

Another project joining demobilization and environmental policy was that concerning the Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometers (TOMS). Flown on NASA craft since 1978, these instruments had monitored ozone concentrations and, in particular, annual depletion over the southern hemisphere and the Antarctic ozone hole.45

The first TOMS instrument to fly on a meteor was launched in 1991 from the Russian launch facility Plesetsk. Carried into orbit aboard a Cyclone launcher (designed as an ICBM during the Cold War), the TOMS was key to Soviet-American implementation of the Vienna convention on the protection of the ozone.

Unlike the earlier Bion satellites, TOMS instrument packages were not insu­lar passive passengers. Instead, they demanded compatibility of electrical power supply, control, synchronization, data transmission, mechanical, and thermal utilities.46 NASA engineers refurbished a Nimbus-7 TOMS Engineering Model, retrofitting it with an Interface Adapter Model (making it possible to “plug in” to the Russian Meteor-3).47 One unanticipated advantage was that the Meteor TOMS was able to record the effects of the Philipino volcano Mt. Pinatubo (which had erupted two months before the TOMS launch). For a full two years, the Meteor-3 TOMS indicated that ozone had been affected by the scattering effects of the stratospheric sulfate aerosol layer from the volcanic eruption.48

In addition to the policies here, the two nations agreed in principle to a joint conference to “help Russian environmental scientists establish their data needs and begin to match those needs to Russian sources of relevant information.” This conference would explore Russia’s highest priorities in the environment, equipping researchers for studies in radioactive pollution, air and water quality, methods for dealing with industrial/ecological disasters, the effects of defense conversion, soil degradation, and forest management/deforestation.49

The two nations entered into a joint technology development project explor­ing alternative energy sources that linked environmental initiatives with private innovation. The vice president and the prime minister instituted an Environmental Equipment Commodity Import Program, providing $125 million in grants for the export of US-manufactured equipment to Russia, seeking to improve energy efficiency in production, transport, and use.

In trade and investment, the White House helped reshape Russian tax and tariff structures to better protect American investors. Additionally, the US Export-Import Bank, the Russian Ministry of Finance, and the Central Bank of Russia entered into a Project Incentive Agreement offering financial support for “project risk transac­tions” in all sectors of the economy. The two nations agreed to a new protocol for income taxation, intended to stimulate American investment in Russia. They implemented a memorandum of understanding for an American Business Center. Backed by $12 million, this program was intended to help US businesses invest capital, transfer technologies, and provide business-related training to Russians. The agreement provided $110 million in financing and insurance against transna­tional business deals for the Overseas Private Investments Corporation (as of 1993 centering on mineral companies and truck manufacturers). Similar plans abounded for “model” American gas stations, guidance in materials and product quality con­trol, all intended to aid the transfer of US business models and practice.

In the fields of the environment, energy, and the complicated task of keeping educated nuclear industry workers employed, Russia agreed to review the safety of its older nuclear reactors, enhance their integrity, and participate in studies for research and development in the field of nuclear power generation. At the same time the two nations set up a legal framework, protecting US firms from liability when supplying safety assistance to Russian nuclear power plants. In addition to this, they planned an Oil and Gas Technology Center Announcement to facilitate the exchange and use of technologies between the two nations, hoping to improve the recovery of oil and gas and reduce production costs in Russia. Both sides believed that facilitating Russia’s transition to a market economy still required that the US government adopt a degree of liability on behalf of American investors, Russian businessmen, and the ailing Russian state. Where tax revenues were not at stake, credibility was.

As the two countries methodically dismantled nuclear weapons arsenals under SALT-II, they drafted agreements on the principles and methods of defense conversion and the diversification of former defense industries. In addition to protocol for converting defense firms to civil production, the two parties set aside $20 million in Nunn-Lugar funds to help Russian industries retool for producing modular housing.50

Space exploration and research occupied a fourth field of collaboration, bridging the environment, trade, and science writ large. As noted earlier, most projects being pursued at this time (including the Shuttle-Mir, Phobos lander, Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometor-Cyclone, Konus, and WIND experiment) predated the Clinton administration but were in many regards appropriated into the defense conversion regimes of the Clinton White House. Table 8.2 illustrates the range of projects pursued and relative costs.51

Human spaceflight programs figure most prominently among these projects, though between FY1993 and 1997 the Bion 11 and 12 spaceflights accounted for $16 million.52 Meanwhile, the space sciences accounted for roughly 14.5 percent of all program costs, as detailed later. At the five-year anniversary of the GCC, Prime Minister Chernomyrdin reported that overall commodi­ties turnover between the two nations had doubled in the past five years and that American investment accounted for one-third of foreign investment in the Russian Federation.53

In 1995, the Office of Technology Assessment evaluated the situation. In his foreword, Director Roger Herdman noted that “much of the motiva­tion for the expansion of cooperation with Russia lies beyond programmatic considerations.”54 In particular, the report pointed out that continued coopera­tion, including large payments for Russian space goods and services, might help stabilize Russia’s economy and provide an incentive for some of Russia’s techno­logical elite to stay at home, so contributing to the nonproliferation of weapons of mass destruction. Whether intended only to stabilize the internal structures, or to control the flow of weapons knowledge outside the former Soviet Union, the need to maintain vibrant research programs in Russia were “essential pro­gram justifications” for cooperation, linking the survival of scientific communi­ties with collective security.55

Table 8.2 NASA-Russian activities: summary of agency programs and costs with the Russian Republic ($ in millions—provided to Congress March 1995) FY1995 FY1996 FY1997 FY1998 FY1999 Russian Space Agency 100.00 100.00 100.00 Contract Mir missions 141.7 102.7 54.3 16.3 .6 Space station-related 20.0 20.0 10.0 0.0 0.0 developments Space science 14.4 10.1 9.2 12.3 6.2 Earth science 3.7 3.1 3.3 3.0 3.0 Space access 2.7 Aeronautics 11.7 3.0 Tracking and data 2.3 1.9 2.0 2.1 2.1 Total [761.7] 296.5 240.8 178.8 33.7 11.9 Source: US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, US-Russian Cooperation in Space OTA-ISS-618 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, April, 1995), 56. These figures include the initial $400M agreement for Shuttle-Mir and ISS cooperation, plus cooperation in other fields and increases to the initial contract detailed below. See table 8.3 in this chapter.

As early as 1992 collaborators had begun to take a new host of factors in international relations into account. Similar to the fields of trade, nuclear energy, and environmental regulation, space exploration and research became levers of reform. In 1998 Boris Yeltsin explained that the principle role of the Gore – Chernomyrdin Commission projects had been to “create a solid economic foundation for the system of relations between Russia moving along towards market reforms and the United States.” Yeltsin concluded that they had suc­ceeded, observing, “We are working very closely together in a number of key directions—the development of science, technology, health care, environmental protection, the peaceful use of space, and reduction of the nuclear threat.”56 Cooperation with the Russians supported growing bureaucratic, commercial, and intellectual infrastructures between the world’s two leading space programs. Thus, Russian-American cooperation on the International Space Station mapped on to administrative reform in the Russian space complex as well as NASA and its contractors. In 1993 and 1994 NASA narrowly managed to save the Space Station Freedom program from the White House and congress by streamlining management, cutting spending, and linking cooperation in space to post-Cold War regimes of international security—believing that space cooperation would keep Russian science workers employed, but also linking the promises of com­merce and ISS cooperation to treaties such as the Missile Technology Control Regime.