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Bush Outlines Proposals to Stem Proliferation
Painting a stark picture of a world facing growing dangers from
the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), President George
W. Bush offered seven proposals to tamp down rising proliferation
threats in a Feb. 11 speech at the National Defense University.
Bush said today’s “greatest threat” is the specter
of a “secret and sudden attack with chemical or biological
or radiological or nuclear weapons.” He described the possibility
of such an attack as less remote than during the Cold War, contending
that, unlike the Soviet Union, terrorists view such dangerous arms
as weapons of “first resort.” Making matters worse, the
president noted, “[t]hese terrible weapons are becoming easier
to acquire, build, hide, and transport.”
Bush said that rising awareness and condemnation of the problem
is not enough. International consensus against proliferation “means
little unless it is translated into action,” the president
declared. He said the world must do more to deny, ferret out, and
punish individuals, groups, and governments seeking weapons of mass
destruction.
Toward that end, Bush set out seven proposals, not all of which
were new, that his administration will pursue.
The most far-reaching initiative calls upon governments to revisit,
in part, the right of states lawfully to possess, under certain
conditions, equipment and technologies to reprocess plutonium or
enrich uranium. These technologies can be used to make fuel for
power reactors and to produce nuclear bomb material. Specifically,
Bush argued that states not already legally operating reprocessing
and enrichment plants ought to be prevented from acquiring such
capabilities from the 40-member Nuclear
Suppliers Group, which includes many of the world’s leading
exporters of nuclear technologies, equipment, and materials. That
group excludes several countries with significant nuclear capabilities,
such as India and Israel, as well as known proliferators Pakistan
and North Korea. On Jan. 26, China formally applied to join the
voluntary regime.
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Bush's Seven Proposals
During his speech at the National Defense University Feb.
11, President George W. Bush proposed seven steps to help
combat the development and spread of weapons of mass destruction
(WMD):
· Expand
the Proliferation Security Initiative to take direct action
against proliferation networks and seek greater cooperation
among intelligence, military, and law enforcement services.
· Strengthen laws and
international controls that govern proliferation by passing
a Bush-proposed UN Security Council resolution that requires
all states to criminalize proliferation, enact strict export
controls, and secure sensitive materials within their borders.
· Ask the 40 states in
the Nuclear Suppliers Group to refuse to sell uranium enrichment
or reprocessing equipment or technology to any state that
does not already possess full-scale, functioning enrichment
or reprocessing plants. Ensure that states renouncing enrichment
and reprocessing technologies have reliable access, at reasonable
cost, to fuel for civilian reactors.
· Expand efforts to secure
WMD in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere under Nunn-Lugar
and the G-8 partnership.
· Make signing the IAEA
Additional Protocol by next year a condition for countries
seeking imports for their civilian nuclear programs.
· Create a special committee
on safeguards and verification within the International Atomic
Energy Agency (IAEA).
· Prevent any state under
investigation for proliferation violations from serving on
the IAEA Board of Governors or on the new special committee.
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Bush’s proposal conflicts with the key bargain
of the nuclear
Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) that promised states forswearing
nuclear weapons “the fullest possible exchange of equipment,
materials and scientific and technological information for the peaceful
uses of nuclear energy.” Bush charged that unscrupulous governments
have exploited this “loophole” to advance nuclear weapons
programs illicitly under the guise of civilian programs. Iran and
North Korea are the two states under the greatest suspicion by Washington
as wrongfully taking advantage of the NPT provision.
The president said that governments truly interested in peaceful
nuclear programs have no need for enrichment and reprocessing capabilities.
Governments forgoing these capabilities should be guaranteed nuclear
fuel for civilian reactors at “reasonable cost,” he stated.
The chief international official charged with verifying that non-nuclear-weapon
states under the NPT do not misuse their civilian nuclear technologies
for weapons shares Bush’s concerns about reprocessing and enrichment
activities, although he has advocated a different approach. Mohamed
ElBaradei, director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency
(IAEA), has recommended that the rights of all states to nuclear
technology be preserved but that capabilities useful in building
arms be put under multinational control and supervision.
Bush said his proposal “will prevent new states from developing
the means to produce fissile material for nuclear bombs.”
However, Bush did not call on all states currently capable of producing
fissile materials—highly enriched uranium and plutonium—to
cease such activities. For more than a decade, the United States
has pushed for the negotiation of a fissile material cutoff treaty
(FMCT) to end the production of these two materials for nuclear
weapons purposes, but Bush made no mention of the proposed agreement.
The administration initiated a review of the FMCT concept late last
year after China appeared to remove a long-standing obstacle to
starting negotiations on the treaty at the UN Conference on Disarmament.
(See
ACT, November 2003.)
In his speech, Bush described in great detail how the father of
Pakistan’s nuclear bomb program, Abdul Qadeer Khan, built up
a proliferation ring that supplied nuclear know-how and technologies
to Iran, Libya, and North Korea. The president said governments
must act more aggressively to uncover and prosecute black-market
peddlers and smugglers such as Khan that operate across borders.
Bush proposed that the U.S.-led effort to intercept shipments of
dangerous weapons—the
Proliferation Security Initiative—be empowered to halt
proliferation earlier in the supply chain before weapons and other
deadly goods are already in transit. He further called on states
to support a U.S.-sponsored UN Security Council resolution to “criminalize
proliferation.”
Despite his tough talk on the need to arrest and penalize proliferators,
Bush did not comment on or criticize Pakistani Gen. President Pervez
Musharraf’s pardon of Khan.
The president also spoke of the need to eliminate and better secure
weapons and materials at their source so they are unavailable or
inaccessible to terrorists and other potential buyers or thieves.
As part of this effort, Bush implied that operations similar to
ones conducted in Bulgaria,
Romania,
and Serbia
to extract weapons-usable materials from their territories could
be replicated elsewhere. “We will help nations end the use
of weapons-grade uranium in research reactors,” he stated.
Bush also said that national and international programs dedicated
to dismantling and safeguarding leftover arsenals, as well as providing
work for former weapons engineers and scientists in the former Soviet
Union, should be expanded to additional states, such as Iraq and
Libya. The United States announced last December that it would soon
start an initial two-year, $2 million program to employ Iraqis with
weapons expertise in that state’s reconstruction efforts. (See
ACT, January/February 2004.)
Bush did not propose any specific increase in U.S. funding for all
these activities. In fact, overall spending on global WMD reduction
and security programs has remained constant at about $1 billion
annually, despite calls from Bush’s potential Democratic presidential
opponents to spend up to three times as much.
Bush also urged all states to adopt an IAEA
additional protocol giving international inspectors more power
to roam around and collect information inside their borders on short
notice. He recommended that governments that do not become bound
by additional protocols by next year be made ineligible for imports
to their civilian nuclear programs. The U.S. additional protocol
is currently awaiting Senate approval, and in his speech, Bush prodded
the Senate to act quickly.
Bush also suggested that the IAEA should set up a special body to
work on verification and compliance issues and prohibit states suspected
of illegal nuclear activities from serving on the organization’s
Board of Governors. “Those actively breaking the rules should
not be entrusted with enforcing the rules,” the president explained.
Addressing proliferators, Bush held out two options with very different
ends. He said they could drop their pursuit of dangerous weapons
and thereby improve relations with the United States and the world
or continue to seek WMD and face “political isolation, economic
hardship, and other unwelcome consequences.”
Bush recommended that proliferators follow
the example of Libyan President Moammar Gaddafi in choosing
the former and not that of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, who
he said opted for the latter and now “sits in a prison cell.”
Bush did not comment on the continuing and so far fruitless search
for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, merely saying that Hussein
“refused to disarm or account for his illegal weapons and programs.”
Bush’s address received a generally positive response from
Congress, but Democrats challenged the president to match his words
with deeds and money.
House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) pointed out that the administration
is seeking roughly $42 million less in funding this year than last
year for Department of Defense programs to eliminate and guard Soviet-era
weaponry. “There is a glaring gap between [Bush’s] statements
today and the paltry funding for nonproliferation efforts that he
has called for in his budget for next year,” Hoyer stated in
a press release.
Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.), ranking member on the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee, accused the administration of saying one thing
and doing another when it comes to nuclear weapons. Biden charged
the administration with seeking to develop new nuclear weapons of
“dubious utility,” showing disdain for arms control treaties,
and suggesting that the United States might use nuclear weapons
against states without them. “Such administration actions have
unwittingly promoted a world of proliferation, thereby undermining
U.S. security,” Biden declared in a Feb. 11 press release.
Biden’s colleague on the Foreign Relations Committee, Chairman
Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), took a different tone. “Implementing
the steps outlined today by President Bush will make great progress
toward a safer world,” Lugar said.
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