|
|||||
|
|||||
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|||||
 |
 |
    |
|
|
|||
 |
|
||
|
|||
|
|
|
|
||||||||
|
Expert Recommends U.S. Arms Control Reorganization By David Ruppe WASHINGTON — The U.S. State and Defense departments should consider an organizational overhaul that would merge their arms control and nonproliferation bureaucracies and cut some State arms control offices, a former defense nonproliferation official said in a report released yesterday. Cold War arms control regimes “are of far less significance to the future of the world than they once were,” according to the report by Henry Sokolski, who leads the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center and was the deputy for nonproliferation policy in the office of the secretary of defense during George H. W. Bush’s administration. The report’s recommendations are intended to better focus arms control efforts on supporting nonproliferation objectives and to encourage better “innovation and creative tension between these two departments,” Sokolski said. His report, “Evaluating America’s Nonproliferation Bureaucracy,” recommends several major organizational changes: — Create an Office of the Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Strategic Weapons Interdiction and Nonproliferation, which would formulate nonproliferation policies and oversee implementation of agreements, proposed treaty efforts, and the activities of multilateral arms-control organizations; — Merge the State Department’s nonproliferation and arms-control bureaus into a new strategic weapons threat reductions bureau that would promote nonproliferation and oversee arms control agreements “most related to the promotion of nonproliferation,” such as the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC), Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), Fissile Materials Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (CTBT); and — Shift some State Department arms control bureau activities deemed less supportive of nonproliferation, such as liaising with the International Atomic Energy Agency and Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons on verification matters, to the department’s existing Bureau for Verification and Compliance. The State Department inspector general’s office recently reportedly recommended merging the department’s arms control and nonproliferation bureaus and former Secretary of State Colin Powell earlier this month reportedly issued a memo approval the proposal (see GSN, Jan. 12). Whether any reorganization occurs, however, will depend on the support of current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Sokolski said at an event last night to discuss his report. Concern About U.S. Arms Control Commitment Some experts have expressed concern that such changes could further reduce U.S. government support for international arms control activities, beyond what is perceived to have already occurred — the administration’s unwillingness to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty or support a BWC verification protocol, and its withdrawal from the Antiballistic Missile Treaty — and that that could work contrary to U.S. nonproliferation objectives (see GSN, March 27, 2002). “If you’re really concerned about country X getting new weapons systems or nonstate actors getting nuclear, chemical or biological weapons, you should focus your efforts on Russia or Pakistan … because they actually have the weapons,” said Wade Boese, research director of the Arms Control Association, who attended the event. “That’s where the Wal-Mart of WMD is at.” Sokolski said arms control has become a less important concern than nonproliferation. “I think … any reasonable cut on this, even if you’re a Democrat, would mean that arms control, which used to be the central fulcrum for understanding whether things were getting better or worse with regard to the security of the world, with regard to things that are declared by states openly to be in their possession, is not as central as it once was. We worry at least as much with what Iran does or doesn’t have, than how we’re dealing with what Russia does have and has declared,” he said. The report suggests scaling back the number of State Department nonproliferation and arms control bureau offices, if not necessarily the functions they perform, from about 20 to five, and increasing the number of Defense Department personnel dedicated to nonproliferation. State arms control and nonproliferation offices are “overstaffed” and a number of their activities “clearly overlap,” whereas defense nonproliferation staffing is “woefully small,” the report says. It estimates the Defense Department has “only six full-time billets to cover the policy portfolios that State has approximately 200 people assigned to do.” The report does not suggest where State’s missile defense cooperation office, located in the arms control bureau, should be located. Certain priorities of the past, the report says, such as “technical cooperation, arms control-like agreements, and commodity-list-driven export controls and sanctions — are no longer the only, or even necessarily the most pressing, nonproliferation priorities.” Catchall export controls, proliferation traffic interdictions, and other counter-proliferation activities such as preparing defenses, offenses and for wars, it says, “arguably constitute the new proliferation realities that need to be focused on more and deserve attention in any reorganization of America’s nonproliferation bureaucracy.”
| ||||||||||
Back to top
