Expanding Cooperative Threat Reduction In the Middle East and North Africa: Law-Related Tools for Maximizing Success in 2018 and Beyond

Executive Summary The Department of Defense Cooperative Threat Reduction program (DOD/CTR) is beginning to expand into a new set of countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, with a particular emphasis on addressing chemical weapons and biosecurity. Meanwhile, DOD/CTR work in the former Soviet Union (FSU) has now lasted some twenty years. Law-related issues have had a pivotal impact on DOD/CTRs FSU work. For example, the difficulty of reaching agreement on umbrella agreements and extending them has stalled several past projects and reportedly jeopardized the CTR programs ability to continue achieving its objectives in Russia beyond the 20 year mark. There has been no systematic effort to either derive lessons from the role of legal issues in DOD/CTRs FSU work or to identify, and develop recommendations for addressing, law-related issues that could play a similarly pivotal role in the success of DOD/CTRs MENA work at the 5, 10 and 20 year mark. This project would both systematically derive lessons from legal issues impacting DOD/CTRs FSU work and identify, and develop recommendations for addressing, law-related issues that could play a pivotal role in the success of DOD/CTRs MENA work over the next 5 to 20 years.