The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

24 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / D E C E M B E R 2 0 0 9 deploying nuclear weapons) and the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission (tasked with developing such wea- pons) often had intersecting roles in the executive branch’s focus on nu- clear testing issues. Nuclear arms control was suffi- ciently important that department secretaries and senior White House officials coordinated policy decisions for the Limited Test Ban Treaty negotiations, often with the direct involvement of the president. Congressional involvement, in addition to the Foreign Relations and Armed Services Commit- tees, included the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy. Although arms control is inevitably an interagency ef- fort, with final coordination by the National Security Council and the White House, for 38 years one U.S. agency had a specific mandate to advance U.S. arms con- trol policies: the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. In 1961, recognizing that earlier bureaucratic arrange- ments were insufficient to address the threat of nuclear weapons, the Kennedy administration and prominent sen- ators, led by Hubert Humphrey, D-Minn., created that agency to provide specialized support to, and leadership for, arms control matters. ACDA played an important part in the negotiation of the LTBT and most, if not all, of the subsequent nuclear agreements, including the NPT, SALT, the TTBT and PNET, INF and START, and the CTBT, as well as the 1972 Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention, the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention and the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty. While ACDA was a separate agency, it was, of course, an integral component of the executive branch, and no freer than any other agency to go its own way. However, the Arms Control and Disarmament Act establishing ACDA provided that its director “shall serve as the prin- cipal adviser to the Secretary of State and the president on arms control and disarmament matters.” It further stip- ulated: “In carrying out his duties under this act the di- rector shall, under the direction of the Secretary of State, have primary responsibility within the government for arms control and disarmament matters, as defined in this act.” These provisions recognized both that arms control is sufficiently important to require a separate agency to take a leading role in its pursuit, and that the president needs to be directly advised on arms con- trol issues, even if the Secretary of State has differing views. This dual- ity is not unlike the role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff within the Depart- ment of Defense. The provisions also recognize that the products of the arms control process, typically treaties, are more in the provenance of the State Department than other departments or agen- cies in the executive branch. ACDA was mainly housed in the State Department, but maintained its own structure and, perhaps most im- portantly, its own — primarily Civil Service — personnel system. The front office had a director equivalent in rank to the Deputy Secretary of State, a deputy director and a counselor. The agency had four bureaus, each headed by an assistant director; a legal adviser’s office that also carried out legislative liaison functions; and other com- ponents of a self-contained agency. The top positions were all subject to Senate confirmation. The structure and personnel mix supported teamwork among the civil servants, FSOs and military officers assigned or detailed to the agency. ACDA’s modest size (never more than 250 staff in total) resulted in flexibility across bureaucratic lines. Civil servants with science backgrounds framed issues in in- teragency studies and developed technically sound defi- nitions and provisions for agreements under negotiation. They had opportunities to serve on delegations, where issues with a strong technical component such as con- straints on ballistic missiles, nuclear testing and chemical weapons were considered. They acquired reporting skills and engaged in bilateral and multilateral diplomacy alongside Foreign Service officers. At the same time, FSOs assigned to work on arms con- trol could acquire in-depth experience with technically complicated negotiations. The mix of scientists, lawyers, diplomats and military officers, who could assimilate some of each other’s skills and experience, was important to ACDA’s ability to get results. The structure of the agency evolved with the changing emphasis on issues over the years. The financial burdens of weapons programs faded as an issue to be addressed (though the devotion of such a substantial fraction of the federal budget to weapons suggests it should again be dealt with), and more prominence was given to nonpro- F O C U S The structure of ACDA evolved with the changing emphasis on issues over the years.