The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2007

tion on nuclear trafficking, re- searchers at the Center for Inter- national Security and Cooperation at Stanford University established a database on incidents of nuclear smuggling. When the lead research- ers moved to the University of Salzburg in 2004, the information moved with them. The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, run by Gary Milhollin, operates a compilation of suspect- ed buyers of proliferation-sensitive products. Some NGOs have taken on an explicit role in moni- toring international conventions. Landmine Monitor, established in 1998 by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has become the de facto monitoring mechanism for the U.N.’s Mine Ban Convention. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, a U.N. body, have a formal agreement to share unclassified information. When it comes to verification (as distinct from monitoring that can contribute to verifi- cation), however, advocacy NGOs simply do not have the impartiality and objectivity required for the job. Making Things Happen NGOs typically operate by seeking to motivate states to take certain decisions or actions. Some groups tran- scend this function by taking it upon themselves to carry out the action they are seeking. In addition to its informational role in raising public awareness, the Nuclear Threat Initiative — founded by Ted Turner and former Senator Sam Nunn in 2001 — also undertakes actions to reduce the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, including by financing programs to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Largely funded by Turner and Warren Buffett, NTI was recently described by the New York Times Sunday Magazine as perhaps “the most ambi- tious example of private dollars subsidizing national secu- rity.” When a U.S. effort to remove highly enriched urani- um from a nuclear reactor site in Serbia ran aground on bureaucratic obstacles over lack of legal authority to undertake associated expenses, NTI stepped into the breach and provided $5 million. This served as a catalyst for legal and policy changes to allow Russia to accept the highly enriched uranium and blend it down to a harmless alloy. That effort has now paid off in other suc- cessful U.S. efforts to remove nuclear material from civilian reac- tors around the world. Last year, NTI put up $50 million as seed money for a major new pro- posal to fund the creation of an international nuclear fuel bank that countries could draw upon for a guaranteed supply of enriched uranium to power nuclear reactors, thereby obviating any need for them to develop sensitive enrich- ment technologies themselves. Without uranium enrich- ment or plutonium reprocessing technology, key to pro- ducing nuclear material, the nuclear energy on which a carbon-choked, globally warmed world must increasingly depend need not present a proliferation risk. Several countries are grappling with how to make fuel-supply mechanisms attractive for potential users and commer- cially viable for suppliers. Track II Events NGOs carry out a particularly useful function in serv- ing as facilitators of dialogue between states or non-state actors for whom direct dialogue is impossible or con- strained. Such Track II dialogues (as distinguished from “Track I” direct government-to-government talks) have become a staple of the nongovernmental community. The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for their work bringing tech- nical expertise to security issues in the Cold War in ways that allowed the U.S. and USSR to continue a dialogue that was otherwise blocked. Many NGOs seek today to bridge the similar gaps that have prevented direct discus- sions between the U.S. and countries such as North Korea and Iran. The University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation was one of the first to establish a quasi-annual set of Track II meetings involving foreign and defense officials and academics from the countries that later came together to form the Six-Party Talks on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The North- east Asia Cooperation Dialogue is still active, convening most recently in April 2006. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-Gwan F O C U S 46 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 7 Several groups have carved out a special niche in distilling and providing nonproliferation-related information to the public.