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How Will the Iraq War Change Global
Nonproliferation Strategies?
Joseph Cirincione
Trying to determine what the Iraq war will mean for global nonproliferation
regimes is difficult. The war is less than a month old, and the
many uncertainties that remain make it hard to render an assessment
with sufficient confidence. Even within the time that it takes to
write these words and print them, dramatic events might occur that
change this article’s tentative conclusions. As Yogi Berra
said, “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about
the future.” Nonetheless, even at this point, it is useful
to examine how leading policy-makers in the administration would
like the nonproliferation regimes to change and to outline the key
questions we must answer to forge a new strategy.
From Eliminating Weapons to Regimes
If President George W. Bush’s vision of a quick military victory,
a benign and untroubled occupation, and the quick construction of
a democratic Iraq is correct, the rules and structures of the international
system might be further rewritten in favor of a U.S.-centric system.
But even if the war goes badly and the occupation is difficult,
many in the Bush administration can be expected to push on boldly,
lest they lose momentum. In Washington, the executive branch almost
always sets the agenda, and the Bush administration is particularly
good at this.
Still, it is a bit erroneous to talk about “the administration”
as a single unit. Until the White House makes final decisions, there
is fierce contention among various groups within the government
on national security issues. Most observers see three main factions:
the moderate internationalists, led by Secretary of State Colin
Powell; the national conservatives, sometimes epitomized by Secretary
of Defense Donald Rumsfeld; and the aggressive neoconservatives,
led by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Mark Danner of
The New Yorker characterizes what I call the moderates as the pragmatists
in line with the policies of the administration of President George
H. W. Bush. “These are so-called realists. They believe that
foreign policy is the patient management of alliances, competitions
and, to some extent, conflict.”1
The neoconservatives, on the other hand, “take a somewhat
ideological and almost evangelical view of the world,” says
Danner. They believe that American power “should be used to
change the world, not simply to manage it.” Finally, the traditional
conservatives have little use for international organizations and
would not favor overseas deployments unless vital U.S. interests
were threatened.
Unless the war turns into a quagmire, the neoconservatives can
be expected to continue their dominance of the policy apparatus
and to press their carefully constructed agenda. That consists primarily
of a “permanent regime change” policy focused on the Middle
East. “There is tremendous potential to transform the region,”
says Richard Perle, a prominent neoconservative who recently resigned
as chairman of the Defense Policy Board. “If a tyrant like
Saddam [Hussein] can be brought down, others are going to begin
to think…and act to bring down the tyrants that are afflicting
them.”2
There might be less unity among neoconservatives after the war,
however, as some might want to turn their sights on Iran, others
on Syria, and still others might argue for action against North
Korea. Traditional conservatives who support the Iraq war might
split from the neoconservatives’ radical and expensive agenda,
preferring to consolidate gains and start bringing troops home.
They might find that they have a lot more in common with moderate
Republicans concerned about deficits and homeland defense than with
neoconservative ambitions for global transformation.
Still, the neoconservatives are firmly established in the administration,
and their ideas have captured the minds of the president and his
key advisers. Most now see this as a pivotal moment in world history,
comparing it to the years 1945-1947 when a small group in the White
House led the construction of the institutions that shaped the Western
world throughout the Cold War, including the United Nations, NATO,
the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the development
of the doctrine of containment. National security adviser Condoleezza
Rice told Nicholas Lemann of The New Yorker that September 11 “has
started shifting the tectonic plates in international politics.
And it’s important to try to seize on that and position American
interests and institutions and all of that before they harden again.”
These institutions are now outdated, according to some, as is the
central principle that has guided U.S. nonproliferation policy since
World War II. For more than 40 years, there has been a bipartisan
consensus that focused on eliminating nuclear, biological, and chemical
weapons. The weapons themselves were the problem: as long as they
existed, they would be used. “The weapons of war must be abolished
before they abolish us, ” President John F. Kennedy said in
September 1961. “The mere existence of modern weapons…is
a source of horror and discord and distrust.” Thus, Kennedy
started, Lyndon Johnson completed, and Richard Nixon signed the
nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that promised the elimination
of nuclear weapons. Nixon unilaterally ended the U.S. biological
weapons program in 1969 and negotiated the Biological Weapons Convention
that bans these deadly arsenals. George H. W. Bush in 1993 signed
the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC) that similarly bans chemical
weapons, and President Bill Clinton won its ratification in 1997.
Since the end of the Cold War, there has been general agreement
that the most serious threat to the national security of the United
States “is posed by the proliferation of nuclear, biological
and chemical weapons and their means of delivery,” as Clinton
put it in November 1998. But George W. Bush has changed that formula.
Now, as he said in his 2003 State of the Union address, “The
gravest danger facing America and the world is outlaw regimes that
seek and possess nuclear, chemical and biological weapons.”
(Emphasis added.)
The new clause makes all the difference. The focus has shifted
from eliminating weapons to eliminating certain regimes that have
those weapons. It is a strategy of picking and choosing good guys
and bad guys. Possession of these weapons by allied or friendly
regimes is tolerated, even encouraged, while governments designated
as threats must not only disarm, but be deposed. In this strategy,
universal norms and treaties are a hindrance to U.S. freedom of
action, not strategic levers in the battle against nonproliferation.
Burning the Bridges We’re On
To neoconservatives, the construction of new institutions begins
with the destruction of the old. They say the failure of George
W. Bush to win UN Security Council support for the war shows that
the United Nations itself must go. Columnist George Will writes,
“The United Nations is not a good idea badly implemented, it
is a bad idea.”3 The March 17 cover of
the Weekly Standard is devoted to “Present at the Destruction:
The United Nations Implodes.” Inside, contributing editor David
Gelernter says the United Nations “today is an impediment to
world safety. It should be replaced.…The core of the new organization—call
it the Big Three—would be a Britain-Russia-America triumvirate.”
In another example of neoconservative thinking, Charles Krauthammer,
America’s most passionate unilateralist, tells the president
in the Washington Post simply to “walk away.”4
Such extreme views are now commonplace in neoconservative circles.
Yet, many noted foreign policy experts find it difficult to take
this challenge seriously. “What is most striking is just how
relevant the United Nations has become,” argues Anne-Marie
Slaughter, dean of Princeton’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public
and International Affairs. “And contrary to all the bluster
on both sides of the Atlantic, that will continue to be true.”5
Unfortunately, Slaughter appears to be wrong. Her mistake, however,
is understandable. In its public statements, the Bush administration
has sought to minimize opposition and please both the neoconservatives
and the mainstream foreign policy establishment. The best example
of this schizophrenic approach is the Bush administration’s
September 2002 National Security Strategy. At one point, the document
appeals to more traditional thinkers:
We are also guided by the conviction that no nation can
build a safer, better world alone. Alliances and multilateral
institutions can multiply the strength of freedom-loving nations.
The United States is committed to lasting institutions like
the United Nations, the World Trade Organization, the Organization
of American States and NATO as well as other long-standing alliances.
The National Security Strategy, however, cut and pasted verbal
concessions to outsiders and administration moderates alongside
more hard-line views. Indeed, we can now see that the document drafters
were willing to put in multilateral boilerplate as long as they
could get official blessing for the radical new concepts of pre-emption
and unilateral action. They had learned from bitter experience:
These ideas were put forward by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul
Wolfowitz a decade ago in the first Bush administration but were
harshly rejected. Given another chance, the neoconservatives have
sought to advance their agenda with stealth tactics.
The drive to war in Iraq quickly sacrificed multilateral principles
in favor of the more deeply felt new doctrine, also in the strategy:
“We will not hesitate to act alone” and, “if necessary,
act preemptively.” In this view, there is no need for permanent
alliances or permanent multilateral organizations. Indeed, these
are seen as impediments to U.S. action, unnecessary fetters on American
power. Why should the greatest nation on Earth be forced to seek
the approval of Cameroon for its vital national security policies?
Similarly, NATO is now treated as a tool kit for the administration.
When they see something they need, they take it; otherwise, it is
ignored. As Wolfowitz noted in his draft 1992 defense policy guidance,
the United States “should expect future coalitions to be ad
hoc assemblies” that might not outlive a particular crisis.
“The United States,” he argued, “should be postured
to act independently when collective action cannot be orchestrated.”
The End of UN Inspections?
The idea that the United States would cast aside key international
institutions that we ourselves created and that are so integral
to the idea of collective security might seem incomprehensible.
Surely, the United Nation’s work on hunger, women, children,
and other causes is too valuable to lose? But even if the more extreme
views in the administration are moderated and the United States
continues to cooperate with the United Nations, the attacks on the
inspections process in Iraq might have fatally weakened all international
inspection operations.
In order to press the case that war was the only way to save the
world from Saddam Hussein, the administration had to diminish, defile,
and dismiss inspection efforts. Most of the fire was focused on
the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC)
and its leader Hans Blix, but if anything, the International Atomic
Energy Agency is hated more, particularly for its repeated rebuttal
of administration charges that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons
program.
If the administration did not trust UN inspectors in Iraq, why
should it trust them in Iran, North Korea, or any other state? But
what could take their place? After all, the United States depends
on UN inspections to monitor compliance with key nuclear, chemical,
and biological weapons treaties.
Post-war Iraq might provide an alternative model of inspections
more amenable to the neoconservatives’ new doctrines. Senior
national security aides have been working on the concept of U.S.-based
disarmament teams for months. Former UN Special Commission (UNSCOM)
weapons inspectors have been drawn into this new disarmament apparatus
by the Pentagon, alongside intelligence analysts and veterans from
the Cooperative Threat Reduction program, which helps secure and
dismantle weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union.
“Mobile Exploitation Teams” of inspectors are in Iraq
equipped with the latest detection technologies, including:6
- Chemical Agent Monitors, hand-held devices for rapid detection
of chemical molecules.
- Portable Isotopic Neutron Spectroscopy, which uses a neutron
beam to identify the contents of sealed containers.
- Handheld Advanced Nucleic Acid Analyzers, which can identify
specific sequences of DNA in biological samples (such as those
for anthrax) within 15 minutes.
- Laser-Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy, which can precisely
identify materials from a distance.
All the plans to find and eliminate Iraqi arms were drawn up independently
of UN weapons inspections. They might prove an attractive alternative
to chronically underfunded and geographically balanced international
inspection teams. These would be under complete U.S. control and
could be used in a bilateral process between the United States and
the offending country, much as the U.S.-Soviet inspections were
conducted during the Cold War, although these would be strictly
one-way.
Rebuilding the Regime
Three excellent articles in this and the March 2003 issues of Arms
Control Today address the key issues involved with the administration’s
policies toward the use of nuclear weapons, the salami tactics being
used to bring us closer to resuming testing of new nuclear weapons,
and the anemic support provided for nuclear nonproliferation efforts.
Representative John Spratt (D-SC) warns in one of these pieces of
“a dangerous drift” in U.S. policy. “My greatest
concern is that some in the administration and in Congress seem
to think that the United States can move the world in one direction
while Washington moves in another—that we can continue to prevail
on other countries not to develop nuclear weapons while we develop
new tactical applications for such weapons and possibly resume nuclear
testing,” he writes.
The war is likely to exacerbate this drift. Spratt last month laid
out a clear agenda for what he believes is a better course. Similarly,
Sidney Drell, James Goodby, Raymond Jeanloz, and Robert Peurifoy
in their March article detailed steps to strengthen the NPT. In
the current issue, Michael Beck and Seema Gahlaut call for restructuring
the current export control regimes. All of these suggestions make
sense. They must be placed, however, in the context of a new, overarching
strategy that recognizes both the flaws of the existing nonproliferation
regime and the value of some of the correctives proposed by regime
critics.
This strategy does not yet exist. It needs to be created—and
soon. Then and only then can we progress beyond just repairing a
regime badly damaged by neglect, disagreement, noncompliance, and
outright rejection to rebuilding it entirely into a new, stronger,
more universally accepted barrier to the spread of nuclear, chemical,
and biological weapons.
“Conservative defense intellectuals and officials deserve
credit for highlighting the fact that effective nonproliferation
requires changes in the policies of governments of states unwilling
to abide by international laws and norms,” notes George Perkovich.
“Yet they then proceed to make the reverse mistake, looking
only at the outlaws and ignoring the challenges posed by nuclear
weapons in general.”7
Still, it will not do to try to go back to the antebellum regime.
Clearly, changes are needed, and new approaches must be tried. It
should be possible to join the best of both the traditional and
the new approaches. This new synthesized strategy could be developed
around key questions that I and my colleagues at the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace are proposing as a starting point for our
efforts.8
Key Questions for a New Strategy
1. What are the most pressing proliferation dangers that a nonproliferation
strategy must address?
2. What are the strengths and liabilities of the traditional, treaty-based
approach? How can a regime designed for a world of state actors
be adapted to deal effectively with nonstate threats as well? How
can recent experiences help strengthen enforcement of the nonproliferation
regime?
3. Under what conditions are regime change and/or military pre-emption
a viable policy for preventing proliferation or blocking its consequences?
Does focusing nonproliferation policy only on certain regimes—Iran,
Iraq, and North Korea—while implicitly accepting others’
possession of nuclear weapons—India, Israel, and Pakistan—undermine
long-term prospects of preventing proliferation?
4. Can the strengths of both approaches be captured in a coherent
synthesis? Where do they clash counter-productively?
5. Neither coercive counterproliferation nor the current nonproliferation
regime fulfills the requirement for detailed and reliable accounting
and monitoring of global fissile material stocks. What steps must
be taken to establish such an accounting and monitoring system?
6. How can we strengthen cooperative threat reduction policies
and techniques? Conversely, what is the potential of coercive inspections
and disarmament techniques?
7. Drawing from the new and the traditional approaches, what are
likely to be the most effective strategies for dealing with the
toughest remaining cases—North Korea and Iran?
8. Is it desirable or necessary to find a “legal” place
for India, Israel, and Pakistan within the nonproliferation regime?
If so, how can this be done without weakening the regime? If not,
what are the implications of their not being accommodated formally?
In either case, how can the threat of nuclear war in South Asia
or the Middle East be reduced?
9. Are new approaches needed to replace the two central “bargains”
of the NPT?
- The Article IV commitment by the nuclear “haves” to
assist the “have-nots” in gaining the benefits of peaceful
applications of nuclear technology and know-how. In the case of
Iran, and perhaps elsewhere, the United States argues that peaceful
cooperation cannot be prevented from providing military applications.
- The Article VI commitment by the nuclear “haves,”
updated in 1995, to pursue a cessation of the nuclear arms race
and other steps toward nuclear disarmament. U.S. refusal to ratify
the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty is only the most dramatic example
of disregard for these commitments.
10. If these elements of the old bargain are tacitly being discarded
by the nuclear “haves,” will the “have-nots”
at some point make this a global crisis? How can the existing commitment
of the member states to the NPT be sustained if the terms of the
bargain are being changed? What would be the real effects of a weakened
or shattered international nonproliferation regime?
A comprehensive, international nonproliferation strategy should
be based on solid, validated answers to these questions. Developing
those answers will not be easy. Achieving political consensus around
them will be even more difficult. However, if there is one assumption
that will certainly still be true after the Iraq war, it is that
the existence and spread of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons
will remain an urgent public concern and policy problem. The nonproliferation
community must forge a new national and international strategy that
can win broad consensus, or it risks abandonment by a frightened
public or displacement by illusionists promoting quick military
cures.
NOTES
1. “The War Behind Closed Doors,” Frontline, PBS,
January 25, 2003.
2. Ibid.
3. George F. Will, “U.N. Absurdity,” The Washington
Post, March 13, 2003, p. A23.
4. Charles Krauthammer, “Don’t Go Back to the U.N.,”
The Washington Post, March 21, 2003, p. A37.
5. Anne-Marie Slaughter, “The Will to Make It Work,” The
Washington Post, March 2, 2003, p. B1.
6. Debora MacKenzie, “Experts to Hunt for Banned Iraqi Weapons,"
New Scientist, March 21, 2003, available at http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99993534.
7. George Perkovich, “Bush’s Nuclear Revolution: A Regime
Change in Nonproliferation,” Foreign Affairs, March-April
2003.
8. These questions were developed as part of a collaborative project
involving George Perkovich, Rose Gottemoeller, Jessica Mathews,
Michael Swaine, Jon Wolfsthal, and others at the Carnegie Endowment.
The author alone takes responsibility for the particular wording
in this article.
Joseph Cirincione is the lead author of Deadly
Arsenals: Tracking Weapons of Mass Destruction (Carnegie Endowment,
2002) and the director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace.
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