Amitai Etzioni is a university professor at George Washington University and the author of Winning Without War and The Hard Way to Peace. He can be reached at etzioni@gwu.edu.

A leading item in the competition for the most inane piece of public policy of the 1990s is Congress' refusal to extend and expand the program that provides a select group of former Soviet scientists with a meager salary of about $7,000 a year. These salaries are being paid to keep them working on civilian projects, rather than further developing nuclear weapons or sharing their knowledge with terrorist supporting governments. (Funds also have been refused for converting the scientists' labs from military to commercial use.)

The total State Department budget for these scientists' salaries (under a program called International Science and Technology Centers) requested by the Clinton administration was $274 million over five years, some $51 million per average year. The amounts involved are quite a bit lower than the funds the press reports that Russian political leaders and their associates have siphoned off to cover their credit-card debts, overseas junkets and simple fattening of their Swiss bank accounts from the billions we granted Russia.

The wrong target

Republicans in Congress have raised several kinds of objections to converting these nuclear swords into plowshares. They fear that the program will turn into a new welfare racket, in which former Soviet nuclear scientists will stay "forever" on the American dole. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-NC) and Rep. Curt Weldon (R-PA), have complained that the civilian program has so far failed to turn most of the labs involved into commercially viable "profit centers." This is hardly astonishing, given that even in the much more benign American context, attempts to convert military facilities and talents into commercial ones have been slow, prohibitively expensive and often unsuccessful. The talents needed to make bombs are somehow rather distinct from those required to develop and market washing machines and toasters.

Attempts to convert military talents into commercial ones have been slow and expensive

Republicans also have complained, drawing on a study by the General Accounting Office (GAO), that the expenditures of Russian facilities are not monitored closely enough. Some of the funds, it has been reported, do not end up quite where they are supposed to. Having recently been to Russia, where I witnessed the depth and scope of the prevailing corruption, it is hard to expect otherwise.

Moreover, funding spillage has not stopped us in the past from continuing to ship billions to Russia for privatization and for economic development. Congress objected to taxes paid by the program to Russia and the cut American contracts having been taken out of the budget. Actually, these criticisms apply to some programs run by the Defense Department, trying to convert so-called nuclear cities, but not to those conducted by the State Department.

One cannot help but wonder if the difference between those programs whose funding is continued and those that pay for the civilian employment of Russian scientists where funding is being cut off, is the money American corporations get off the deal. Big business gains a goodly portion of the orders placed by the Russians using the "economic development" billions and, hence, lobbies Congress for more such grants. At the same time, these corporations stand to gain little, if anything, if we succeed in stopping Russian nuclear specialists from moving to or working for rogue states, so who cares if the program ends?

A valuable proposition

The total amount of money involved, an increase of merely $170 million from the previously allotted $104 million, is minimal even when projected over five years. It sounds like a lot of dough, until one compares it to most items in our defense budget; for instance, compare it to the billion-and-a-half dollars that Sen. Trent Lott (R-MS) inserted in the just-approved defense bill for building a naval vessel in his state. Too bad the Navy neither needs nor wants it.

Moreover, others, including the European Union, Norway, Canada, Japan and even global financier George Soros, are picking up part of the total costs of the conversion drive. If we cut back our support, one hardly can expect these countries to maintain their contributions, let alone pick up the slack, given their weaker economic condition and sense that the United States already has greatly fallen behind on its other international obligations, especially paying its United Nations dues.

We seem to be entering an especially partisan period -- particularly when it comes to foreign policy. But given the small amounts involved and the obvious merit of the plowshare project, maybe this can be one area in which party differences are left at the Capitol's doors. After all, it does not take a Ph.D. in nuclear physics or strategic studies to realize the value of providing harmless pursuits to the scientists involved or trying to slow down the proliferation of nuclear know-how to rogue states such as Iraq and Iran. If all else fails, maybe Congress could take the millions needed for the plowshare project from the "economic development" billions we have been granting Russia with next to no conditions attached.