The Foreign Service Journal, December 2009

26 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 the State Department. ACDA’s subsequent merger with State was a consequence of politics in the Senate. Senator Jesse Helms, R-N.C., made the Clinton adminis- tration’s acquiescence in the merger a condition for gaining Senate advice and consent to the Chemical Wea- pons Convention. There was, as well, a lessening of congressional focus on ACDA following the end of the Cold War. Finally, some arms control skeptics found it useful to silence a separate agency that had pursued measures they considered counterproductive. The decision to merge ACDA with State was made in 1997, and implemented on April 1, 1999. The four ACDA bureaus were organized into three: nonprolifer- ation, arms control, and verification and compliance (the latter resulting from legislation initiated by the Senate). Together with State’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs, they were placed under the Office of the Under Secre- tary for and Arms Control and International Security (fa- miliarly known as the “T” Bureaus). There was, thus, a net loss in senior leadership devoted to arms control. In 2005-2006, an internal review by State’s Office of the Inspector General, which supported the Bush ad- ministration’s predisposition, led to a second reorganiza- tion that combined the arms control and nonproliferation bureaus. This decision triggered another exodus of long- serving Civil Service staff. Meanwhile, in 2001 the longstanding effort to nego- tiate a protocol to the Biological Weapons Convention to strengthen its implementation failed when the U.S. withdrew its support. The 2005 Non-Proliferation Treaty Review Conference (which followed the 1995 in- definite extension of the NPT and a successful 2000 re- view conference establishing an agenda for further control steps, including entry into force of the CTBT) failed — in part over U.S. unwillingness to support CTBT’s ratification. It should be noted, however, that the administration continued to support the buildup of the treaty’s international monitoring system via a preparatory commission. On May 15, 2008, Senator Daniel Akaka, D-Hawaii, chairman of the Subcommittee on Oversight of Govern- ment Management, the Federal Work Force, and the District of Columbia, convened a hearing to review the consequences of ACDA’s merger with the State Department and the subsequent reorganization of its 1999 structure. The hearing pro- vided a troubling picture of the present situation: technical and pol- icy expertise and historical memory have been substantially reduced. Sen. Akaka argued that U.S. arms control objectives had not been well served, and urged remedial action. His opening statement and the testimony of witnesses is available at www.senate.gov . A Government Accountability Office report to Akaka’s subcommittee in July 2009 found that the State Depart- ment could not show that it had achieved all its objectives for the 2005-2006 restructuring of the arms control and nonproliferation functions because of a lack of clearly de- fined goals and ways to measure their achievement. Ac- cording to the report, the reorganization “appeared to lose credibility among staff, may have contributed to reduced employee morale, and created negative impressions among staff that continue to the present.” The depart- ment agreed with the GAO’s conclusions and recommen- dations, and undertook appropriate implementing mea- sures. In an article published in January in the Web edition of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , I discussed the find- ings of the 2008 Akaka hearing, concluding that, optimally, it would make sense to re-establish ACDA as provided for in the 1994 Arms Control and Disarmament Act. But at his confirmation hearing on Jan. 22, in response to a question whether arms control functions should be taken away from State and assigned to independent agen- cies, Deputy Secretary of State-designate Jacob Lew stated: “Arms control and nonproliferation are central el- ements of our foreign policy and core functions of the De- partment of State.” The deputy secretary continued: “ Success in negoti- ating a successor to the START Treaty and promoting, de- veloping and securing consensus and progress on [weapons of mass destruction] proliferation requires bi- lateral and multilateral diplomacy, drawing on all the re- sources of the department and led by the Secretary, who has made clear the priority she assigns to these issues. These functions should be integrated into the department rather than be assigned to independent agencies. The de- F O C U S ACDA was mainly housed in State, but maintained its own structure and, perhaps most importantly, its own personnel system.