Medical Threat and Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Warfare

a. Since World War II, the Soviet Union has represented the principal threat to the national security interests of the US. During this period, the military capability of the Soviet Armed Forces grew enormously. Starting in the later years of the 1980's, the international security environment has undergone rapid, fundamental, and revolutionary changes. The Soviet Union has disintegrated with the collapse of Soviet communism as a viable economic and political system. The Warsaw Pact has dissolved as a political and military entity. The central Soviet government has been replaced by the Commonwealth of Independent Republics (CIR), currently dominated by the Russian Republic. The cohesion of Soviet strategic military capability has been fractured by—