Update: The Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction – Part 1

When the Bush administration took office a decade ago, the specter of proliferating nuclear weapons was high on its agenda. During the previous decade, six key nations acquired, tested or had sought or had come close to acquiring nuclear weapons, including North Korea, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and India. Except for the last two, all were signatories to the NPT or Nuclear Non Proliferation Treaty, in which the non-nuclear weapons states pledge not to acquire nuclear weapons in return for a pledge from the nuclear armed states to end the nuclear arms ace, reduce their nuclear weapons and negotiate in good faith toward a world without nuclear weapons, but in the context of complete and general disarmament.

The past policies inherited by the new Bush administration were seriously inadequate to the task they faced. Part of the problem was the conventional wisdom over the extent and nature of these weapons programs. For example, while Libya’s chemical weapons program was a brief concern in 1996, its nuclear program was considered largely non-existent. North Korea’s 1994 nuclear agreement with the US, Japan and the Republic of Korea was widely hailed as comprehensive and a success. As for Iran, the US and the European Union had sought to deal with the mullahs through economic engagement and trade. In addition, the intelligence community missed the nuclear bomb tests of Pakistan and India, largely because US policy had soft-pedaled Pakistan’s nuclear program in order to secure its participation in the comprehensive test ban treaty, while India was still not divided from its past close association with the Soviet Union, making approaches from the United States difficult.

Particularly troublesome was not only the inherited policy framework, but also the conventional assessment of how serious were the possible nuclear threats coming from these rogue states. This issue has been shielded from examination largely because much of the comment about proliferation matters is fixated on the charge that the British and American Governments “sexed up” the threat assessment of Iraq’s weapons in order to justify using military force to compel compliance with nearly twenty UN resolutions.

Although this charge has not withstood closer scrutiny, it has forced a less than careful examination of the previous assessments of the threats from other rogue states. I believe much of the intelligence community and many policy makers, including the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Administration in charge of enforcing the NPT, systematically “sexed down” the nuclear threat from rogue countries, in some part due to policy maker’s preference to see these problems “go away.” In the case of North Korea, some officials believed their own press releases about the apparent success of the counter proliferation effort called the Agreed Framework with North Korea. At other times, the leadership of IAEA simply dismissed warnings of growing proliferation threats.

What is at least interesting and in my view a lesson to be woven into our current policies, is that in 2004, the Bush administration discovered, for example, what turned out to be a very extensive Libyan nuclear program, with thousands of centrifuges, and private and government suppliers’ networks far more extensive than any previous assessment had even hinted at, reaching all the way to Pakistan and China. Compare by contrast “Deadly Arsenals” published by the Carnegie Endowment prior to the Bush administration taking office, where the very idea that Libya had a robust nuclear weapons program was dismissed out of hand. This is a stark reminder of the “unknown unknowns” that still may be out there.

The Bush administration also uncovered intelligence showing a North Korean dual track effort at acquiring nuclear weapons with a uranium enrichment program running parallel to their Yongbon nuclear reactor. The North Koreans admitted as much initially at a New York UN meeting, and confirmed this later at a subsequent meeting. The Bush administration had little choice but to declare the 1994 Agreed Framework with North Korea, brokered in large part by former President Carter, a fraud, which had obviously lulled the US and its allies to sleep under the pretense that the North Korean nuclear program was safely contained.

In addition, the Bush administration also discovered that while publicly proclaiming their adherence to a missile test moratorium, the North Koreans were actually shipping their rocket engines to Iran for testing, a stealth policy that allowed the North to both continue development of their missiles and at the same time win brownie points with the US disarmament community that touted the test moratorium as evidence of North Korea’s good will.

The administration also inherited little if any framework for properly assessing or containing Iran’s nuclear programs. The European Union was committed to maintaining its economic ties to Iran, and avoided like the plague any possible IAEA inspection report that would lead the matter to the United Nations Security Council and possible mandatory sanctions against Iran.

The policy in the recent past has been to secure IAEA inspections, hope the Iranians are telling the truth, and then express shock and dismay when the Iranians shortly thereafter admit to even more violations of the NPT or program elements they previously had denied. The current progress toward stronger sanctions on Iran and general agreement that they are not in compliance with their NPT obligations is a good thing. But unfortunately, China and Russia are not abiding by the sanctions agreed to. And while future meetings on Iran’s nuclear program are now in the cards, we remain stuck with the same dilemma faced by the Bush administration for eight years. The IAEA and NPT system only work when you have a fully cooperative state. [See Part 2 tomorrow.]