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CIAO DATE: 04/05/07
Proliferation Security Initiative: A Piece of the Arms Control Puzzle
by Wade Boese
Libya’s December 2003 renunciation of its chemical and nuclear weapons programs and the exposure of the A.Q. Khan nuclear black market network two months later rank as the most prominent nonproliferation successes of the last several years. Bush administration officials attributed both developments, in part, to an earlier interdiction of the ship BBC China, steaming toward Libya loaded with nuclear contraband. This seizure occurred as part of the administration’s Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to intercept shipments of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) and their components worldwide. With the Bush administration hyping the initiative as one of its leading achievements, PSI soon became the poster child for stopping proliferation.
In truth, interdiction is not a novel concept, and the Libyan interception might well have happened without PSI. One State Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity, explained that the initiative marks a “better way of doing what we have been doing for a long time.”1 PSI, which does not legally empower countries to do anything that they could not have done before, is no panacea for halting proliferation. Shipments will get through, as the mixed success of the United States in the war on drugs suggests. North Korea and Iran, the two countries believed to be closest to barging into the nuclear weapons club, have arguably advanced their known or suspected weapons programs far enough that intermittent PSI interdictions would be insufficient to stymie or roll back these two states’ arms efforts. Ending foreign WMD programs and denying terrorists the lethal weapons they seek still require a multi-pronged strategy, of which interdiction is one component.
Inauspicious Beginnings. On 9 December 2002, Spanish naval forces, with American urging, stopped and boarded the So San in the Arabian Sea on its way from North Korea toward the Middle East. Onboard, they discovered fifteen short-range Scud-B ballistic missiles and conventional warheads. Two days later, the United States announced that the ship and its cargo were released and heading for Yemen, the purchaser of the missiles. U.S. government spokesmen explained that no legal basis existed for confiscating the cargo as no interna tional agreement outlawed ballistic missiles. 2 Still, the fact that North Korea—a member of President George W. Bush’s “axis of evil”—was able to deliver its lethal wares did not sit well with many administration officials.
The So San’s release ironically coincided with the administration’s unveiling of its National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, a document outlining how Washington planned to stem proliferation. Identified as a “critical part” of stem ming the spread of ballistic missiles and WMD, interdiction appeared first under the strategy’s counterproliferation pillar.3
PSI Emerges. Not long after the vex ing So San incident, President Bush announced on 31 May 2003 that the United States and several of its close allies were banding together to “keep the world’s most destructive weapons away from our shores and out of the hands of our common enemies.”4 Australia, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom formed the original PSI group with the United States. Over the next year, Canada, Norway, Russia, and Singapore joined, and over forty additional countries voiced their support for the initiative’s mission.
PSI participants pledge to interdict shipments of WMD, delivery systems, and related materials at sea, on land, and in the air to states and non-state actors of concern. To enhance their chances of success, PSI participants commit to shar ing intelligence and improving cooperation between their militaries and law enforcement agencies. But no participant is ever obliged to act. In addition, there is no special register of goods to intercept, though PSI is meant to reinforce treaties and export control regimes that proscribe or restrict the possession and trade in specific weapons, technologies, and materials. This flexibility reflects the informal structure of PSI, which participating countries describe as “an activity, not an organization.” President Bush’s top arms control official and primary PSI architect, John Bolton, brags frequently about the initiative’s casualness. “It doesn’t have a secretariat; it doesn’t have a headquarters building; it doesn’t rely on mass meetings of diplomats,” he stated on 28 September 2004.5 In this respect PSI is very much the mirror image of its creator, who favors preserving U.S. freedom of action over legally binding obligations. All PSI activities, including interdictions, exercises, intelligence sharing, and war-gaming, are voluntary.
Wade Boese is Research Director at the Arms Control Association and reports for Arms Control Today.