regime would be the poorer without them.
There is no doubting the influence and relevance of nonproliferation and disarmament-related nongovernmental organizations. Three of them have received the Nobel Peace Prize in recent years, most notably for the promotional work that led to the 1997 Ottawa Convention banning the use, stockpiling and production of anti-personnel landmines. That convention was widely hailed as the triumph of an emergent “global civil society.”
NGOs play many useful roles: incubators of ideas, policy advisers, collectors and purveyors of information, facilitators of dialogue, monitors of government activity and doers of good deeds. But generally they can be categorized as either activists or analysts, with broad areas of overlap. It is a rare analyst whose conclusions are not coupled with policy suggestions, but the most respected groups take no institutional policy stance: e.g., The Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and InternationalStudies, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Stimson Center. The Center for American Progress, on the other hand, is clearly aligned with the Democratic Party, thereby giving a partisan edge to the nonproliferation pronouncements of Senior Vice President Joseph Cirincione.
Particularly in America, NGOs also supplement academic institutions by acting as holding pens for out-ofoffice politicians and otherwise out-of-work bureaucrats where they can continue to contribute their expertise and hone their policy views. Former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton is at the American Enterprise Institute, former Assistant Secretary for Nonproliferation Robert Einhorn leads the nonproliferation program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and former NSC Senior Director for Nonproliferation Gary Samore is director of studies at the CFR, to name just
three.
The power of NGOs, including their ability to irritate governments, largely derives from the public pressure they can mobilize. Indeed, influencing decisions at the national level is the quintessential NGO role. At their best, informed and caring groups generate public awareness and educate all sides. At their worst, they are biased, unrealistic and unmindful of the larger picture.
The irritation level only rises when NGOs seek a participatoryrole in deliberations on international treaties. Because private groups lack the legitimacy and accountability expected of sovereign governments, decisionmaking in national security matters is properly limited to nations. Smaller nations that lack capacity on technical issues such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty are often all too willing to accept ghostwritten speeches and even diplomatic talking points from NGOs eager to channel their positions directly into diplomacy. A former U.S. diplomat tells the story of how representatives from several Non-Aligned Movement countries, during bilateral consultations with the U.S. prior to the 1990 NPT Review Conference, used almost identical briefing notes provided by Parliamentarians for Global Action.
Despite such concerns, many multilateral conferences recognize the relevance of NGOs and accord them a speaking role, albeit usually limited to a half-day session. But even this limited role is viewed suspiciously in some quarters. “Who are these individuals, community spokespersons and NGOs?” asked Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs Senior Fellow Gerald Steinberg in a critique last year. “Who chooses, funds and legitimates their claims to speak for others?” He noted that the NGO participants from Egypt, Palestine and North Africa at a conference of parties to the Ottawa Landmine Convention a few years ago all echoed a single position, parroting the views of their governments.
Resistance to the role of NGOs becomes most intense when such organizations advocate policies that seem to support a national adversary — for example, when the Brussels-based International Crisis Group in early 2006 suggested that Iran be authorized to maintain small-scale enrichment facilities, despite the joint policy of Washington, London, Paris and Berlin opposing any uranium enrichment in Iran. Nonetheless, such policy advocacy is all part of the proper give-and-take of public debate in democratic societies.
NGOs can also be differentiated between those that toil for profit and those who do not. Most organizations involved in the nonproliferation arena have nonprofit status. Laudable work is also performed, however, by consulting firms such as SAIC, where former Arms Control and Disarmament Agency official Lewis Dunn hangs his hat when he is not advising U.S. government agencies or sharing his wisdom on the academic and international conference circuits. Political risk consultancies such as the Eurasia Group also contribute thoughtful analysis to the public policy milieu on proliferation problem countries.
To implement the many congressionally mandated programs aimed at securing “loose nukes” in the former Soviet Union, the executive branch relies heavily upon firms in the for-profit sector. Consulting organizations such as Booz Allen Hamilton provide much of the actual “boots on the ground” American oversight and advisory services to Russia and other governments involved in the multibillion-dollar effort.
Think-Tanks and Blogs
Think-tank NGOs play a key research and policy formulation role. Nonproliferation and arms control work by Alexei Arbatov at the Moscow Center of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace helped persuade the Russian government to put nuclear arms reduction issues back on its security policy agenda. CSIS and many other American think-tanks undertake unclassified research tasks in the field of nonproliferation for the CIA and other government agencies. Some nonprofit think-tanks, such as the Institute for Defense Analyses, only work for government contracts, operating some of the 36 “federally funded research and development centers.”
Several think-tanks have carved out a special niche in distilling and providing nonproliferation-related information to the public, breaking through intelligence classification constraints. Information that is screened by independent think-tanks is also more credible. The Institute for Science and International Security, headed by physicist David Albright, has nearly cornered the market in its analysis of satellite imagery of suspect nuclear sites and its almost instantaneous explanations of reports from the International Atomic Energy Agency. ISIS often discloses important but sensitive information that the U.N. nuclear watchdog is constrained from releasing except to member-states.
Some NGOs perform a beneficial role by publicizing information papers for all delegates before and during multinational meetings. In reporting on U.N.-related arms control meetings, the London-based Acronym Institute serves as a repository of institutional memory.
NGOs also host useful informal gatherings. Diplomats find value in “working the crowd” at retreats held in Annecy, France, like the ones co-sponsored by the Monterey Institute of International Studies’ Center for Nonproliferation Studies prior to annual NPT conferences.
In the blog sphere, www.armscontrolwonk.com, run by Jeffrey Lewis of the New America Foundation, represents one of the best sources of instant technical analysis and insights about proliferation-related events. Less wonky, but still targeted to the inside-the-Beltway community, is the Global Security Newswire, a daily compilation of nonproliferation-related news on the Web site of the Nuclear Threat Initiative (also available as a daily listserv).
The NTI Web site also hosts the databases compiled by the Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute of International Studies, which bills itself, without exaggeration, as “the most comprehensive open-source data resource in the world on nuclear, biological and chemical weapons and missile proliferation developments.” Although the data have gaps (the chronology on nuclear and missile developments stops in 2002, for example) and the citations are not completely accurate, the CNS databases are the best resource for students researching proliferation problems.
A useful resource for nonproliferation aficionados is the weekly “nuclear calendar” compiled and circulated by the Friends Committee on National Legislation, a Quaker-affiliated lobbying group. Published each Monday morning that the U.S. Congress is in session, the calendar provides a weekly update of national and international events concerning nuclear weapons, disarmament and nonproliferation, including congressional hearings, NGO seminars and multinational conferences. A glance at any week’s listing is a salutary reminder o f how much intellectual activity is devoted to nonproliferation topics, particularly in Washington. Attending all the interesting seminars and presentations listed in the nuclear calendar could almost be a full-time occupation by itself. It is a shame that most executive-branch officials find little time to participate in such events.
Several NGOs monitor nuclear activity worldwide. This January, when Georgian authorities announced the details of a sting operation last year that caught a smalltime Russian sausage smuggler trying to peddle 100 grams of highly enriched uranium, the Natural Resources Council drew on its database to conclude, tentatively, that the isotopic mix of uranium particles in the smuggled goods was of Russian origin. In 1999, to bridge the gap between open-source and government-supplied information on nuclear trafficking, researchers at the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University established a database on incidents of nuclear smuggling. When the lead researchers moved to the University of Salzburg in 2004, the information moved with them. The Wisconsin Project on Nuclear Arms Control, run by Gary Milhollin, operates a compilation of suspected buyers of proliferation-sensitive products.
Some NGOs have taken on an explicit role in monitoring international conventions. Landmine Monitor, established in 1998 by the International Campaign to Ban Landmines, has become the de facto monitoring mechanism for the U.N.’s Mine Ban Convention. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute and the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons, a U.N. body, have a formal agreement to share unclassified information. When it comes to verification (as distinct from monitoring that can contribute to verification), however, advocacy NGOs simply do not have the impartiality and objectivity required for the job.
Making Things Happen
NGOs typically operate by seeking to motivate states to take certain decisions or actions. Some groups transcend this function by taking it upon themselves to carry out the action they are seeking.
In addition to its informational role in raising public awareness, the Nuclear Threat Initiative — founded by Ted Turner and former Senator Sam Nunn in 2001 — also undertakes actions to reduce the spread of nuclear, biological and chemical weapons, including by financing prog rams to secure nuclear materials in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere. Largely funded by Turner and Warren Buffett, NTI was recently described by the New York Times Sunday Magazine as perhaps “the most ambitious example of private dollars subsidizing national security.”
When a U.S. effort to remove highly enriched uranium from a nuclear reactor site in Serbia ran aground on bureaucratic obstacles over lack of legal authority to undertake associated expenses, NTI stepped into the breach and provided $5 million. This served as a catalyst for legal and policy changes to allow Russia to accept the highly enriched uranium and blend it down to a harmless alloy. That effort has now paid off in other successful U.S. efforts to remove nuclear material from civilian reactors around the world.
Last year, NTI put up $50 million as seed money for a major new proposal to fund the creation of an international nuclear fuel bank that countries could draw upon for a guaranteed supply of enriched uranium to power nuclear reactors, thereby obviating any need for them to develop sensitive enrichment technologies themselves. Without uranium enrichment or plutonium reprocessing technology, key to producing nuclear material, the nuclear energy on which a carbon-choked, globally warmed world must increasingly depend need not present a proliferation risk. Several countries are grappling with how to make fuel-supply mechanisms attractive for potential users and commercially
viable for suppliers.
Track II Events
NGOs carry out a particularly useful function in serving as facilitators of dialogue between states or non-state actors for whom direct dialogue is impossible or constrained. Such Track II dialogues (as distinguished from “Track I” direct government-to-government talks) have become a staple of the nongovernmental community. The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs won the Nobel Prize in 1995 for their work bringing technical expertise to security issues in the Cold War in ways that allowed the U.S. and USSR to continue a dialogue that was otherwise blocked. Many NGOs seek today to bridge the similar gaps that have prevented direct discussions between the U.S. and countries such as North Korea and Iran.
The University of California’s Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation was one of the first to establish a quasi-annual set of Track II meetings involving foreign and defense officials and academics from the countries that later came together to form the Six-Party Talks on denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. The Northeast Asia Cooperation Dialogue is still active, convening most recently in April 2006. Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Christopher Hill and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Kim Gye-Gwan participated, although Hill at that time was not allowed to have substantive discussions with Kim.
On some occasions, North Korea has refused to participate in Track II events, even when they offer a facesaving way of engaging with counterparts. When Pyongyang does want to participate, the National Committee on American Foreign Policy and the Korea Society have sponsored seminars in New York that provide a venue where North Korean diplomats can have informal talks with U.S. counterparts.
The U.S.-U.N. Association has provided a setting for influential members of the Washington policy community to meet with Iranian officials and academics, as has Carnegie’s Moscow Office. The Nixon Center, in conjunction with the International Institute for Strategic Studies and the Geneva Center for Democratic Control of Armed Forces, organizes sessions in Geneva for U.S.-Iran dialogue. In the past two years, however, Iranian government officials have refused to attend such events unless American officials do so as well.
By contrast with Democratic administrations, Republican administrations tend to be more inclined to discount the views of NGOs. This is because the bulk of the activist organizations lean toward the other end of the political spectrum, approaching nonproliferation from a disarmament perspective. They and the organizations to which they belong adhere strongly to the original bargain of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: namely, that nonnuclear weapon states gave up any pursuit of nuclear weapons in exchange for the five original nuclear weapon states agreeing to disarm eventually. The disarmament advocates argue that the acknowledged nuclear weapon states, by modernizing their own nuclear arsenals, lose the moral authority to demand that Iran and North Korea forgo dual-use nuclear technology.
Keeping Activists at Arm’s Length
“NGO outreach” is an established part of the State Department’s public diplomacy. Before major multilateral forums, the State Department (and formerly the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency) traditionally holds informal discussions with interested NGOs, particularly those that can be expected to be active on the margins of the meetings or writing about them. By explaining administration policies, these consultations can help influence organizations that, in turn, influence the wider public at home and abroad. Public servants do not usually like to admit it, but they also have something to learn from the observations of NGO experts, many of whom have more years of experience and deeper subject-matter expertise than their government counterparts. Because many disarmament activists are seen as adversaries, however, the Bush administration has at times tried to keep them at arm’s length. This inclination is generally shared by the civilian bureaucracy at the Pentagon, which in recent years has had a disproportionately powerful voice in the formulation and implementation of U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy.
In the run-up to the 2005 NPT Review Conference,for example, key Department of Defense officials saw little reason for the State Department to work with NGOs that did not support the White House’s positions. With National Security Council support, the State Department ultimately was able to include a dozen mainstream NGOs in the outreach effort. But DOD opposition and the time wasted in seeking interagency agreement on the details of the outreach effort resulted in a truncated schedule and some organizations being knocked off the list of invitees because they were considered to be too vehement in their criticism. This was a missed opportunity, because informed criticism is better than the ill-informed variety.
That the Pentagon has such a strong say in the bread-and-butter work of Foggy Bottom has been a recurring sore point for State Department bureaucrats. During the first term of the current administration, Powell-Rumsfeld clashes played out daily in the trenches manned by the Nonproliferation Bureau. That bureau was always at a disadvantage because of the Pentagon-origin of the majority of the NSC gatekeepers dealing with proliferation issues, and because of the strong ideological views of most of the political appointees working those issues at State. The current leadership of the now-named International Security and Nonproliferation Bureau, it must be said, is more willing to engage with critics, who have praised its recent openness.
Both Sides of the Spectrum
In drawing up the list of invitees to the 2005 NGO outreach effort, the office in charge was encouraged to create “balance” by including nonproliferation groups from the right side of the political spectrum. This was easier said than done, however, because of the relative paucity of nonproliferation experts at that end.
Most of the conservative NGOs involved in nonproliferation campaigns approach the issue from a regional perspective, and become expert in proliferation matters mainly because the regimes of concern to them pursue nuclear and chemical weapons. Patrick Clawson, deputy director of the Washington Institute for Near East policy, is an economist who frequently comments on Iran’s nuclear program.
Nonproliferation NGOs on the right side of the political spectrum often combine an avowedly antinuclear perspective with a deep distrust of totalitarian and radical Islamic regimes. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Center, run by former Defense Department Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterproliferation Henry Sokolski, is one of the most prolific advocates of this stripe, bringing a strong technical reputation to the role.
A concern about nuclear terrorism unites U.S. NGOs across the political spectrum, from the Center for Defense Information on the left to the Heritage Foundation on the right. In fact, nuclear nonproliferation in general is the “unified field theory” for NGOs and governments around the world, with few exceptions. Apart from those countries trying to join the nuclear club and their defenders, nearly all countries and all parts of the political spectrum agree on the need to stop the spread of atomic weapons. Debates continue on how much attention to give to the arsenals of the acknowledged nuclear weapon states, but there is no disagreement on the danger of additional states — much less non-state actors — getting the bomb.
U.N. Disarmament Research Institute Director Patricia Lewis pithily summed up the role of NGOs when she told an audience heavy with such do-good organizations at a nonproliferation conference in Berlin this March: “We have to pay attention to NGOs — no matter how irritating they are to governments.” They often do not get much respect, but the global nonproliferation regime would be the poorer without NGOs.
