An agency within the U.S. Department of State, AVC is responsible for ensuring that appropriate verification requirements and capabilities are fully considered and integrated into the development, negotiation, and implementation of new arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, agreements, and commitments. It also serves as the main liaison to the U.S. Intelligence Community and other key policymakers for verification and compliance issues.

Created by Congress in December 1999, the Bureau of Verification and Compliance became fully operational on February 1, 2000, mandated to provide oversight of both policy and resources in all areas relating to verification of compliance with international arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament agreements and commitments. It was also given responsibility to be the principal policy liaison to the U.S. Intelligence Community for verification and compliance matters, and to serve as a coordinating entity within the Federal government on the Key Verifications Assets Fund, to assist other departments and agencies in their allocation of efforts toward development of new verification technologies.

Archive 1997-2000

AVC develops and executes verification, compliance, and implementation policy for a wide range of arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, agreements, and commitments, participating in all phases of the process including initial conception, development of the U.S. negotiating position, the negotiations themselves, ratification, implementation, and maintenance of archives. VCI’s offices include: the Office of Nuclear Affairs, the Office of Strategic Issues, the Office of Technology and Assessments, the Office of Biological Weapons Affairs, and the Office of Chemical and Conventional Weapons Affairs. The VCI staff includes political scientists, foreign policy and missile experts, attorneys, engineers, nuclear physicists, seismologists, chemists, biologists, economists, intelligence and communications experts, Foreign Service officers, military officials, personnel on assignment from academia, scientific laboratories, and elsewhere, and civil servants.              

• Prepare, on behalf of the Secretary of State and the President, annual reports to Congress on compliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, agreements, and commitments. The reports include: “Adherence to and Compliance with Arms Control and Nonproliferation Agreements and Commitments” and “World Military Expenditures and Arms Transfers,” which appears to have ceased publication in 2003.
• Operates the Nuclear Risk Reduction Center, which is charged with the transmission, translation, and dissemination of the annual government-to-government notifications required under the implementation of 20 different arms control treaties and security agreements.
• Assesses other nations’ compliance with arms control, nonproliferation, and disarmament treaties, agreements, and commitments, working with other governments and international organizations to acquire data and relevant information for compliance assessments, and to encourage State Parties’ compliance with their commitments, and is also involved in determining when sanctions will be imposed for violations.
• Leads U.S. efforts to develop verification requirements that will eliminate the varied Weapons of Mass Destruction programs of North Koreaand Iran; seeks to strengthen a strategic security relationship with Russia through implementation of the Moscow Treaty, and the development of measures focused on reaching a post-Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty arrangement; aims to engage with China in further dialogues to resolve outstanding compliance issues; and, with Libya, works to continue utilizing the U.S.-U.K.-Libya Trilateral Steering and Cooperation Committee toward elimination of its weapons of mass destruction and long-range missiles.
• Works to create the scientific, institutional, and organizational framework to help the U.S. government effectively discriminate between naturally-occurring outbreaks of disease and a biological weapons attack, and be able to identify the perpetrator.
• Serves as the principal policy liaison for verification and compliance matters to the U.S. Intelligence community, providing guidance on funding and tasking priorities for collection resources and analytical assets to support arms control and proliferation goals.

Treaties and Agreements

William C. Foster Fellows Visiting Scholars Program