[Mb-civic] A Nuclear Blunder?

[Michael Butler]

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    A Nuclear Blunder?
    By Michael Hirsh and Eve Conant
    Newsweek

    Wednesday 11 May 2005

    Critics say UN Ambassador-designate John Bolton didn¹t properly prepare
for a key nonproliferation conference, which could be a serious setback in
US efforts to isolate Iran.

    George W. Bush has said it often enough. The No. 1 security challenge
for America post-9/11 is to prevent nuclear weapons from falling into the
hands of terrorists or rogue regimes. In a landmark speech at the National
Defense University in February 2004, the president called for a toughened
Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and other new initiatives. "There is a
consensus among nations that proliferation cannot be tolerated," Bush said.
"Yet this consensus means little unless it is translated into action."

    By action Bush meant the hard work of diplomacy, John Bolton, the
president¹s point man on nuclear arms control, told Congress a month later.
For one thing, America needed to lead an effort at "closing a loophole" in
the 35-year-old NPT, Bolton testified back then. The treaty¹s provisions had
to be updated to prevent countries like Iran from enriching uranium under
cover of a peaceful civilian program‹which is technically permitted under
the NPT‹when what Tehran really sought was a bomb, according to the
administration.

    But if the NPT needed so much fixing under US leadership, why was the
United States so shockingly unprepared when the treaty came up for its
five-year review at a major conference in New York this month, in the view
of many delegates? And why has the United States been losing control of the
conference¹s agenda this week to Iran and other countries‹a potentially
serious setback to US efforts to isolate Tehran?

    Part of the answer, several sources close to the negotiations tell
NEWSWEEK, lies with Bolton, the undersecretary of State for arms control.
Since last fall Bolton, Bush¹s embattled nominee to be America¹s ambassador
to the United Nations, has aggressively lobbied for a senior job in the
second Bush administration. During that time, Bolton did almost no
diplomatic groundwork for the NPT conference, these officials say.

    "John was absent without leave" when it came to implementing the agenda
that the president laid out in his February 2004 speech, a former senior
Bush official declares flatly. Another former government official with
experience in nonproliferation agrees. "Everyone knew the conference was
coming and that it would be contentious. But Bolton stopped all diplomacy on
this six months ago," this official said. "The White House and the National
Security Council started worrying, wondering what was going on. So a few
months ago the NSC had to step in and get things going themselves. The NPT
regime is full of holes‹it's very hard for the US to meet our objectives‹it
takes diplomacy."

    Diplomacy is just a fancy word for salesmanship‹making phone calls,
working the corridors, listening to and poking holes in opposing arguments,
lobbying others to back one¹s position. But "delegates didn¹t hear a peep
from the US until a week before the conference," says Joseph Cirincione of
the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "There¹s no sign of any
coordinated US effort to develop a positive program." One diplomat involved
with the conference agrees. "There were a number of the issues Bush raised
in his February 2004 speech that needed to be taken up here, like the
establishment of a special committee at the IAEA [the International Atomic
Energy Agency] to go after [treaty] noncompliers. But painfully little has
been done on that a year later."

    A spokesperson for the NSC referred all questions about Bolton and its
own role to the State Department. Asked to respond to the criticism, a State
Department official denied that the United States had been unprepared for
the conference or was underplaying it. He said that Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice couldn¹t attend because she was caught in between
back-to-back foreign trips to Latin America and to Russia. Bolton himself
was preoccupied with his Senate confirmation, and Robert Joseph has yet to
be confirmed as Bolton¹s replacement as undersecretary, the State official
said, adding, "We had several prep conferences for the NPT."

    Bolton, who faces a scheduled confirmation vote in the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee on Thursday, has been savaged by critics in recent weeks
over his alleged manipulation of intelligence, his sometimes tempestuous
efforts to sideline officials who disagreed with him, his statements under
oath and other complaints. Throughout the Bolton controversy, his backers in
the Bush administration have argued that though he may need better people
skills, he has been very effective as a public official. Yet some critics of
Bolton say that his alleged mishandling of the NPT conference and other
initiatives show that he has sometimes botched the administration¹s business
as well.

    Bolton, for instance, often takes and is given credit for the
administration¹s Proliferation Security Initiative‹an agreement to interdict
suspected WMD shipments on the high seas‹and the deal to dismantle Libya¹s
nuclear program (a deal that Bolton had sought to block). But the former
senior Bush official who criticized Bolton¹s performance on the NPT
conference says that in fact Bolton¹s successor, Robert Joseph, deserves
most of the credit for those achievements. This official adds that it was
Joseph, who was in charge of counterproliferation at the NSC, who had to
pitch in when Bolton fumbled preparations for the NPT conference, as well.
Bush, in his February 2004 speech, also sought to give new powers to the
International Atomic Energy Agency, which enforces the treaty. But Bolton,
says the former Bush official, "focused much more time and attention trying
to deny Mohammed elBaradei a third term" as head of the IAEA. The effort
failed, and it was considered another international humiliation for the
United States. (Ironically, elBaradei has been one of Washington¹s chief
allies at the NPT conference, pushing for parts of the Bush agenda.)

    Critics of Bolton acknowledge that even in the best of times the ongoing
NPT review conference‹which lasts for a month‹is a "painful mess" at which
little of substance is achieved, as one international diplomat involved puts
it. And today the negative sentiment against the United States is so strong,
one Bush official said, that "not even Metternich could win an agreement
here." Mitchell Reiss, the former policy-planning chief at State, says that
"one of the real challenges is trying to persuade the non-aligned movement
[a caucus of non-nuclear developing countries] that nonproliferation is not
a gift to the United States, but that it¹s fundamentally in their
national-security interests."

    Still, in past decades Washington has signaled its seriousness about the
NPT by sending heavy hitters‹Vice President Al Gore went in 1995, Secretary
of State Madeleine Albright in 2000. At the ¹95 conference in particular,
Washington won kudos for leading the fight to extend the NPT¹s life.

    The NPT, perhaps the most successful arms-control treaty in history, has
been in effect since 1970. It permits the already declared nuclear
states‹the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China‹to keep their
nuclear arsenals while forbidding such weapons to everyone else‹as long as
all parties strive "in good faith" to achieve nuclear disarmament and the
non-nuclear states get access to civilian nuclear power. The treaty has 188
signatories and only a few detractors, among them North Korea and
potentially Iran (Israel, Pakistan and India also refuse to sign.) But in
recent years the "loophole" in this grand bargain has become more apparent:
the treaty contains worrisome ambiguities that may allow states like Iran to
legally pursue a nuclear arms capability disguised as a civilian program.

    All signs are that by the end of the month, that loophole will remain.
The Bush administration has achieved, for the moment, a united front with
France, Germany and Britain in seeking to pressure the Iranians to open up
and cease uranium enrichment. But now the administration finds itself
outflanked at the conference as it seeks to win a wider international
consensus in favor of a hard line against Iran. Bush officials have said
that if they must eventually confront Tehran, they want to correct the
unilateralist mistakes made in the run-up to the war in Iraq. Yet in the
last week, as the conference began, the United States found it had to
concede a key point on the agenda. It had to drop its demands for a veiled
reference to the threats from rogue states and terrorism since 2000,
including the covert development of an Iranian nuclear program. Talks have
been all but paralyzed since, to the point where the delegates can¹t even
agree on a basic agenda for the conference.

    Iranian officials at the conference say they are happily signing onto
the agenda of the "nuclear have-nots" led by the non-aligned movement, which
insists the United States and other nuclear states hold to their side of the
NPT bargain. This includes supplying civilian nuclear technology and
committing to an eventual dismantling of their nuclear arsenals. It is this
agenda, one Iranian official involved in the discussions told NEWSWEEK, that
is likely to dominate the meeting "despite the US attempt to divert
attention by focusing on Iran."