The Foreign Service Journal, February 2004

6 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / F E B R U A R Y 2 0 0 4 Testing Time for Nuclear Nonproliferation A number of challenges to nuclear nonproliferation are on the agenda for 2004. Efforts to slow North Korea’s nuclear escalation and halt Iran’s apparent nuclear weapons program are ongoing. Libya has acknowledged its formerly clandestine effort, but the revelation that Pakistan was the Libyan program’s chief sponsor shines the spotlight anew on the three nuclear powers that are not members of the nuclear nonproliferation treaty — Pakistan, India and Israel. The January outburst from NPT-member Brazil, resisting spot inspections of its new uranium enrichment facilities, points to another dilemma. “We need a complete overhaul of our whole policy toward nonprolifera- tion,” says Ashton Carter, co-director of the Preventive Defense Project at Harvard University’s Kennedy School and a former assistant secretary of defense for international security policy, in a New Year interview with the Council on Foreign Relations ( www.cfr.org ). “W e’ve done one thing, taken out Iraq,” Carter states, “but we must do a lot more.” Among possible steps are closing loopholes in the 1968 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and stepping up efforts to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet states, an effort pioneered by the Nunn-Lugar program ( http://lugar.senate.gov/ nunn_lugar_program.html ). Nonproliferation policy, and the NPT in particular, will undoubtedly come under close scrutiny in the com- ing months. But year-end evaluations coinciding with the 50th anniversary of President Dwight Eisenhower’s his- toric “Atoms for Peace” address to the U.N. General Assembly, where he pledged U.S. efforts to help solve the “fearful atomic dilemma” — to make sure that the fruits of the “miraculous inventiveness of man” are used for life, not death — show that the policy has proved itself in important ways. In a talk reviewing the Atoms for Peace policy on Dec. 9, State Department Policy Planning Director Mitchell B. Reiss acknowledged that Eisenhower’s vision had yet to be achieved and that the nuclear weapons threat had not only not diminished, but assumed new shapes and forms ( http://www.state.gov/s/p/rem/2003 /27035.htm ). “ But we also should note,” Reiss concludes, “that more than half a century after the invention of the atomic bomb, well fewer than a dozen states actually have acquired nuclear weapons. Moreover, the com- munity of nations has taken important steps to ensure the abolition of biolog- ical and chemical weapons. Other steps have been initiated to rein in the would-be proliferators of the world, and to keep WMD technology out of the hands of ‘rogue’ states and terror- ist groups alike.” Arms Control Today ’s special De- cember cover feature, titled “NPT Under Siege?,” presents a compre- hensive review of the current nonpro- liferation regime and an evaluation of the major problems at hand ( www. armscontrol.org ). I n his editorial, “The New Nuclear Proliferation Crisis,” Daryl Kimball takes aim at what he terms a newly “fashionable” tendency among some policy-makers to dismiss arms control and nonprolif- eration as ineffective and instead look to pre-emptive military action and the pursuit of new nuclear weapon capa- bilities to dissuade WMD wannabes. But such an approach would forfeit essential nonproliferation tools and provide a false sense of security, says Kimball. “In practical terms, military pre-emption is no substitute for a com- prehensive and consistent preventive approach,” he states, urging, in particu- lar, strengthened international moni- toring and inspection. “Nonprolifer- ation efforts have succeeded when U.S. leadership has been consistent and steadfast,” states Kimball. Ironic- ally, recent evidence that the alleged Iraqi program was, in effect, dead by the end of the Persian Gulf War puts the UNSCOM-IAEA effort in a new, more authoritative light. US-VISIT Launched The first phase of the Department of Homeland Security’s massive entry- exit system, designed to track the more than 35 million foreign visitors to the U.S. every year, began operating Jan. 5 at 115 airports and 14 seaports. Though the program got off to a good start, adding only a minute or so to C YBERNOTES …President Bush’s vision is clear and right: America’s formidable power must continue to be deployed on behalf of principles that are simultaneously American, but that are also beyond and greater than ourselves. – Colin L. Powell, Jan. 1, 2004, www.nytimes.com