Washington, D.C.
April 27, 2004
The President's 11 February speech at the National Defense University set out seven proposals to strengthen America's, and the world's, non-proliferation efforts. Each of the proposals is a step in the right direction. Indeed, if the proposals are to be faulted, it is that they do not go far enough. The greatest weakness of the proposals is not their content but their context. The President's NDU speech cried out, "Do as I say, not as I do." Rather than address the proposals directly, as Ambassadors Salander and Dean have already done so well, I would like to discuss several Administration actions that undermine the intent of the President's speech. The President's 11 February speech at the National Defense University set out seven proposals to strengthen America's, and the world's, non-proliferation efforts. Each of the proposals is a step in the right direction. Indeed, if the proposals are to be faulted, it is that they do not go far enough. The greatest weakness of the proposals is not their content but their context. The President's NDU speech cried out, "Do as I say, not as I do." Rather than address the proposals directly, as Ambassadors Salander and Dean have already done so well, I would like to discuss several Administration actions that undermine the intent of the President's speech.
The President's first proposal was to strengthen the Proliferation Security Initiative. The PSI can be a powerful tool and, if crafted carefully, can remain well within existing international law concerning, for example, freedom of the seas. The President closed this proposal, however, with the words "Our message to proliferators must be consistent and it must be clear: we will find you, and we're not going to rest until you are stopped." This is in the same speech in which the President describes in some detail the Pakistani proliferation debacle. The President publicly accepts the Pakistani government's implausible claim that Kahn and a tiny handful of accomplices were responsible for turning Pakistan into the Wal-Mart of nuclear proliferation. One can easily imagine a future, a future in which one of his proliferated bombs kills millions, in which Kahn will go down in history as one of the world's greatest villains. Yet Kahn not only goes unpunished, he is still lauded as a hero in his home country and continues to enjoy the luxury he bought by recklessly endangering the world with nuclear weapons. And from the President we hear not a peep. In fact, the Administration recently gave notice that it was about to upgrade Pakistan's status with regard to the export of US weapons. Clearly, the President has decided that short term political expedients, both here and in Pakistan and Afghanistan, require that he look the other way at what is a far larger, but admittedly longer-term, problem. Still, if the President's "message to proliferators must be consistent and it must be clear," then he must impose some sanction on Pakistan, or demand that Pakistan impose some sanction on Kahn.
The President has said we have to keep the worlds most dangerous weapons out of the hands of the world's most dangerous people but, as Ash Carter points out, he focuses only on the bad actors, not on the bad weapons. The Administration's actions make clear that it believes the problem is not the weapons but unfriendly regimes. This approach must change because regimes change.
The President's second proposal is a call to all nations to enact stricter export controls, another laudable goal. At the same time, however, the Administration is reviewing the Missile Technology Control Regime, or MTCR, which limits export of missile technology. We do not yet know what the review will suggest but many supporters of the MTCR fear, based on comments from some administration officials, that the Administration will recommend a significant weakening of the MTCR.
The MTCR was designed to reduce the threat from ballistic missiles by reducing their proliferation but critics of the MTCR argue that it also retards development and widespread deployment of ballistic missile defenses so the net effect of the MTCR might be to actually increase the danger. For a variety of technical reasons (that I can go on about for hours), building defensive missiles is technically more challenging than building offensive missiles. A missile is a rocket with a guidance system. Freer exports of the rocket technology will aid offensive missile development at least as much as defensive missile development, for example, allowing nations to move from liquid to solid propellants with all the advantages that implies. Export of defensive guidance technology will allow reverse engineering of the sensors and computer algorithms used by the defensive missiles, making it easier to develop decoys and countermeasures. The Administration's obsession with a premature deployment of missile defense has blinded it to the benefits of retarding the proliferation and development of offensive ballistic missiles. Weakening the MTCR is counterproductive on the short term but also sets the wrong tone for calls to tighten export controls.
The President's third proposal is to expand efforts to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union. There is no question that the cooperative efforts to dismantle the Soviet Union's Cold war arsenal have serious problems, many clearly the fault of the Russians. Nevertheless, we can do more, as the President has called for. One of the great successes of the post-Cold War dismantlement has been the Megatons to Megawatts program that has begun the process of buying up 500 tons of highly enriched uranium, or HEU, blending it with normal uranium to get an enrichment level that can be used as fuel in civilian nuclear reactors. (Keeping in mind that a critical mass of HEU is about 50 kilograms, I am always staggered to consider the idea of 500 tons of the stuff.) We are about at the one third mark in this program. There is estimated to be as much as additional 500 tons of Russian HEU that could be brought under the blend-down umbrella. There is a decided lack of enthusiasm for expanding the blend-down program. In part, it is a question of cost, and partly it is a question of disruption of the civilian nuclear enrichment market. Indeed, even though the Paducah gas diffusion plant is soon closing down, there are plans for two new gas centrifuge plants, one operated by USEC and the other operated by the European consortium URENCO, that will actually increase the current enrichment capacity in the United States, further squeezing the market for blended down Russian HEU. We must not let short term worries about the uranium market get in the way of further reduction in excess Russian, and even US, HEU stockpiles. Whatever we have to do to take care of USEC, it will be a small price to pay to get the world's major stockpile of HEU burned up.
Another source of friction between the US and Russia in efforts at cooperative threat reduction is access to Russian sites. Rose Gottemoeller has suggested that the US accept from Russia the same kind of inspections we expect of them. This would have the effect of making the Russians more accepting of intrusive inspections but also make the US more realistic in its requests. This relates to the President's fifth proposal, to work toward the widest possible acceptance of the IAEA Additional Protocol. This is admirable and the US should lead by example, being as open as possible with its nuclear programs and minimizing the special treatment that established nuclear powers in the past have come to expect.
Finally, there is one more suggestion that I want to make, even though it is not directly related to the President's February speech, because it is a major effort of the Federation of American Scientists. Most people who are killed by terrorists are not killed by nuclear bombs, or dirty bombs, or chemical or biological weapons. Most are killed by guns and conventional explosives. The Organization of American States treaty to regulate the trade in small arms has been signed by the United States but not yet ratified by the Senate. The Administration should request a vote and the Senate should ratify this treaty.
In conclusion, the United States is losing the moral high ground, it is shunning its responsibility to lead by example. We cannot forever tell the world: do as I say, not as I do.
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