The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2007

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency) traditionally holds informal discussions with interested NGOs, partic- ularly those that can be expected to be active on the mar- gins of the meetings or writing about them. By explain- ing administration policies, these consultations can help influence organizations that, in turn, influence the wider public at home and abroad. Public servants do not usu- ally like to admit it, but they also have something to learn from the observations of NGO experts, many of whom have more years of experience and deeper subject-mat- ter expertise than their government counterparts. Because many disarmament activists are seen as adversaries, however, the Bush administration has at times tried to keep them at arm’s length. This inclina- tion is generally shared by the civilian bureaucracy at the Pentagon, which in recent years has had a dispro- portionately powerful voice in the formulation and implementation of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation poli- cy. In the run-up to the 2005 NPT Review Conference, for example, key Department of Defense officials saw little reason for the State Department to work with NGOs that did not support the White House’s posi- tions. With National Security Council support, the State Department ultimately was able to include a dozen main- stream NGOs in the outreach effort. But DOD opposi- tion and the time wasted in seeking interagency agree- ment on the details of the outreach effort resulted in a truncated schedule and some organizations being knock- ed off the list of invitees because they were considered to be too vehement in their criticism. This was a missed opportunity, because informed criticism is better than the ill-informed variety. That the Pentagon has such a strong say in the bread- and-butter work of Foggy Bottom has been a recurring sore point for State Department bureaucrats. During the first term of the current administration, Powell-Rumsfeld clashes played out daily in the trenches manned by the Nonproliferation Bureau. That bureau was always at a disadvantage because of the Pentagon-origin of the majority of the NSC gatekeepers dealing with prolifera- tion issues, and because of the strong ideological views of most of the political appointees working those issues at State. The current leadership of the now-named International Security and Nonproliferation Bureau, it must be said, is more willing to engage with critics, who have praised its recent openness. Both Sides of the Spectrum In drawing up the list of invitees to the 2005 NGO outreach effort, the office in charge was encouraged to create “balance” by including nonproliferation groups from the right side of the political spectrum. This was easier said than done, however, because of the relative paucity of nonproliferation experts at that end. Most of the conservative NGOs involved in non- proliferation campaigns approach the issue from a regional perspective, and become expert in prolifera- tion matters mainly because the regimes of concern to them pursue nuclear and chemical weapons. Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, is an economist who frequently comments on Iran’s nuclear program. Nonproliferation NGOs on the right side of the political spectrum often combine an avowedly anti- nuclear perspective with a deep distrust of totalitarian and radical Islamic regimes. The Nuclear Nonprolif- eration Center, run by former Defense Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterproliferation Henry Sokolski, is one of the most prolific advocates of this stripe, bringing a strong technical reputation to the role. A concern about nuclear terrorism unites U.S. NGOs across the political spectrum, from the Center for Defense Information on the left to the Heritage Foundation on the right. In fact, nuclear nonprolifer- ation in general is the “unified field theory” for NGOs and governments around the world, with few excep- tions. Apart from those countries trying to join the nuclear club and their defenders, nearly all countries and all parts of the political spectrum agree on the need to stop the spread of atomic weapons. Debates continue on how much attention to give to the arsenals of the acknowledged nuclear weapon states, but there is no disagreement on the danger of additional states — much less non-state actors — getting the bomb. U.N. Disarmament Research Institute Director Patricia Lewis pithily summed up the role of NGOs when she told an audience heavy with such do-good organizations at a nonproliferation conference in Berlin this March: “We have to pay attention to NGOs — no matter how irritating they are to governments.” They often do not get much respect, but the global nonproliferation regime would be the poorer without NGOs. F O C U S 48 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