THE FOREIGN SERVICE JOURNAL | MARCH-APRIL 2026 29 When he submitted the agreement to Congress, President Barack Obama declared that it would “promote, and will not constitute an unreasonable risk to, the common defense and security.” Indeed, U.S. officials—rather ironically, it would transpire—argued that the deal would “enhance our ability to manage and mitigate the risk of China diverting sensitive nuclear technology to its military programs or re-exporting it without U.S. permission.” Commercial pressures, however, seem to have driven the decision. Industry trade representatives at the Nuclear Energy Institute believed that it would “clear the way for U.S. companies to sell dozens of nuclear reactors to China, the biggest nuclear power market in the world,” as reported on May 10, 2015, in The Washington Post. A Strategic Pivot In reaction to Beijing’s abuse of the Sino-American civilnuclear cooperation relationship, however, the first Trump administration revised U.S. export rules for sending such technology to China in October 2018, imposing much more stringent conditions and establishing a “presumption of denial” for many transfers with which the Obama administration had previously been comfortable. This was the opening salvo in the first Trump administration’s decision to pivot the United States into a technology-denial competitive strategy with China, which picked up pace rapidly thereafter when we put the semiconductor company Huawei on the Commerce Department’s “Entity List” as part of this technology strategy. No matter with whom they’re negotiated, 123 Agreements are key elements in any U.S. administration’s national security strategy, and their negotiation is a critical function. As the China example shows, thoughtful statecraft is sometimes also needed in knowing when to back off from enthusiastic civil-nuclear cooperation efforts. This “123 diplomacy,” therefore, can be a pretty big deal. Beginning in the first Trump administration, we also developed an additional instrument of diplomatic statecraft in the civilnuclear technology arena: Nuclear Cooperation Memoranda of Understanding (NCMOUs). These are not formal, legally binding instruments like 123 Agreements; and they aren’t, in themselves, legally sufficient under the Atomic Energy Act to launch full-scale cooperation on something like a nuclear reactor project. Nevertheless, they can be valuable in helping partner countries get to the point at which they are ready for the kind of deep cooperation that a full, formal 123 Agreement can set in motion. As I pointed out at the State Department when we first rolled out this concept, NCMOUs allow “a country weighing the possible development of a nuclear power program [to] use a less formal instrument to build strategic ties with the United States, its experts, industry, and cutting-edge researchers about how best to tailor future opportunities to its specific needs.” These memoranda can “help states build their own infrastructure for the responsible use of nuclear energy and technology and adopt best practices in nuclear safety, security, and nonproliferation, including independent regulatory oversight.” NCMOUs can thus contribute to establishing “the basis for a broader, strategic relationship between the United States and those countries considering civil nuclear energy,” thereby “laying the foundation for making [these] partner countries fully prepared to take advantage of the emerging technologies and coming innovations in reactor design and other areas that are being pioneered in the United States, and to do so under the highest standards of safety, security, and nonproliferation.” So far, the United States has signed NCMOUs with at least 12 countries. Vital Work There are multiple facets to U.S. nuclear technology diplomacy, and it remains an important instrument of American statecraft. Our diplomats should be proud of the roles they play in this endeavor. Despite the lamentable recent turn in American political life against professional expertise—and the degree to which our current leaders distrust those who have skill sets and experience one develops only “in the trenches” of real-world engagement on technically complex and multifaceted challenges in public service—it’s worth remembering that U.S. national security still depends heavily on the talented civil servants and Foreign Service officers who shoulder the burdens of diplomatic engagement in our country’s interest. Nuclear security diplomacy is only one example of this, but it’s a good one. n No matter with whom they’re negotiated, 123 Agreements are key elements in any U.S. administration’s national security strategy, and their negotiation is a critical function.
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