Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI)
Three Years On
Transcript of a roundtable discussion organized
by BASIC
At the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Washington D.C, 25 September 2006
Speakers and themes:
Introduction: Ian DAVIS, Co-Executive
Director, BASIC
Moderator: Steven MONBLATT, Executive Secretary,
Inter-American Committee Against Terrorism
David ISENBERG, Senior Analyst, BASIC
Richard A. LOVE, Senior Research Fellow, Center
for the Study of WMD, National Defense University
Moderator: Ambassador James GOODBY
Leah KUCHINSKY, Research Associate, Monterey Institute
Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Ian DAVIS, Co-Executive Director, BASIC
Moderator: David ISENBERG, Senior Analyst, BASIC
Mary Beth NIKITIN, Fellow, Center for Strategic
and International Studies
Charles PEÑA, Senior Fellow, George Washington
University Homeland Security Policy Institute
Moderator: Ambassador James LEONARD, BASIC Council
Jofi JOSEPH, Former staffer, Senate Foreign Relations
Committee
Matt STUMPF, US State Department
Timothy KANE, Australian Embassy, Washington,
DC
Wojciech FLERA, Embassy of Poland, Washington,
DC
Concluding remarks: Ian DAVIS, Co-Executive
Director, BASIC
BASIC's project on the PSI is supported by the UK Economic and
Social Research Council (ESRC). For further details, see the special
section on the PSI on the BASIC Web site at: http://www.basicint.org/nuclear/counterproliferation/psi.htm
Ian Davis: Good morning ladies and
gentleman, my name is Ian Davis, I am the Executive Director of
the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), and I
would like to warmly welcome you to this roundtable discussion on
the PSI.
BASIC is a transatlantic arms control and security think-tank.
With offices, staff, advisors, and governing board membership on
both sides of the Atlantic, we play a unique role as a transatlantic
bridge for policy makers and opinion shapers.
The Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI), also known as the
Cracow Initiative, is now just over three years old. Nearly 80 participating
states are now committed to working cooperatively to curtail trafficking
of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), their delivery systems and
related materials on the seas, in the air and on the ground. From
the very beginning we took the line at BASIC that this was an idea
that had merit and growth potential. But only if it is done right.
To this end we began thinking about how it could be made more effective
and more congruent with international law.
To date we have published several information notes covering operational
aspects of the PSI, an in-depth report of how it relates to the
international law of the sea and we have set up a special section
on our Web site devoted to the issue. Some of these materials you
will find in the information pack, as well as a selection of additional
background material from other reputable sources on the PSI. Two
of the BASIC Papers in the pack are very much 'work in progress'
and we will be revising them in the light of the discussions today
and further research and analysis.
Last year we received funding from the UK Economic and Social Research
Council to continue to track and analyze implementation of the initiative,
and to carry out research on the implications for international
law and international security. In particular, there were several
'knowledge gaps' that we identified, which we felt could benefit
from further research. These included:
a.Jurisdiction issues on the High Seas, including the nature
and scope of rights of third states to carry out interdictions
as a result of bilateral boarding agreements.
b.Whether new measures can be introduced to place the legal responsibility
on flag states, shippers and masters to ensure that their cargoes
are WMD-free.
c.The inter-relationship between the myriad of maritime security,
counter-terrorism and counter-proliferation initiatives, e.g.
do all of these initiatives (SUA Convention, the PSI, the Container
Security Initiative, the Port Security Initiative etc) add up
to a coherent whole?
This is the first of two roundtable conferences that we are organizing
to discuss some of our interim research findings and to review PSI-related
issues with key stakeholders. We will be holding a second roundtable
in London later this year or early in 2007.
We are recording today's event to help facilitate the publication
of a summary of the roundtable discussion. I should stress, however,
that this meeting is taking place under Chatham House rules since
we want to encourage an open and frank discussion. Thus, unless
stated otherwise all remarks should be treated on a non-attributable
basis.
It has been said that the PSI is "the most oversold and the most
promising non-proliferation initiative to emerge in decades". And
it certainly seems to be an issue that draws out either strong support
or skepticism. Supporters point to the growth in the number of states
that back the initiative; the six US bilateral ship-boarding agreements
to expedite searches of suspicious cargoes; the support of the United
Nations in Resolution 1540 and the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan
in his March 2005 speech; the regular Joint Interdiction Exercises
and Operational Expert Meetings; and a number of successful interdictions.
Skeptics tend to fall into two camps: those who complain that it
lacks real substance (it is all smoke and mirrors and brings little
new to the table) and those who are concerned by some of its legal
implications and under-representation in some strategically important
regions - leaving major players like India and China outside the
ring, despite overtures by the US to bring them in.
In this regard, reports that the Indonesian government may join
the PSI are particularly noteworthy, since it would provide the
PSI with greater access to one of the world's critical choke points-the
Straits of Malacca-through which a quarter of global trade passes
each year.
Certainly, judging the success or otherwise of the PSI is problematic
because participating states have released few details of interdiction
operations carried out thus far. US Administration officials cite
two-dozen interdictions undertaken with partners in the 12 months
to April 2006, including two alleged shipments of dual-use materials
and components destined for Iran's nuclear and missile programmes.
Of course, with so little information available on PSI interdiction,
gauging the significance of these operational successes is challenging.
Anyway, I hope our discussion today will help to shed some new light.
Perhaps the initiative's foremost achievement in its brief existence
has been to consolidate interdiction efforts already conducted by
states and international organisations, such as NATO, into a more
focused and concerted global response to proliferation. The PSI
did not introduce the concept or practice of interdiction, but it
has contributed to bringing a global focus to previously local,
sub-regional and regional operations in the Mediterranean, Red Sea,
Gulf of Aden, Arabian Sea and Gulf of Oman.
Since interdiction is the topic of our opening panel. I am going
to close my opening remarks by introducing the chair of that panel:
Steven Monblatt. Although currently directing counter-terrorism
capacity building programs for the Organization of American States,
and before that a long-serving and distinguished US diplomat with
foreign assignments include Brazil, Mexico, Turkey, India, Spain,
Nigeria, Nicaragua, and Indonesia, I am very pleased to be able
to announce that Steven will be joining BASIC as a our new Co-Executive
Director here in Washington at the beginning of October. So, Steven,
a very warm welcome and over to you -
Session 1-The Role of Interdiction in the 21st
Century
Moderator: Thank you Ian and good morning
everybody. I noticed by way of your introductions that some of you
are very new to Washington or very new to the subject. None of you--all
of you are senior to me in that regard. I--I really started on this
in the last few days, so I have a lot of ground to cover and while
I'm here to moderate and perhaps offer some ideas on PSI, I have
to say as much as any of you I'm here to learn what I can from the
different interventions.
I'm particularly happy to see somebody from the Argentine Embassy
here; we work closely with Argentina and in fact I'm going to Buenos
Aires tomorrow for a meeting and I also am especially happy to see
somebody from the Embassy of Spain here. Spain has become one of
our major program parts in the OAS under the programs that we have.
I'm not going to Spain tomorrow but I'm going to try to get over
the next time I go over to Europe.
Let me just say a couple of opening words. My background for the
last few years has been in counterterrorism. Counterterrorism is
not the same thing as nonproliferation; but I have noticed in doing
the reading and some thinking about today's discussion that there
are some points of comparison--two in particular; one is this--that
if you had asked people working on counterterrorism prior to 9/11
how they understood their jobs they would have said probably most
of them that their job was to find terrorists, bring them to trial,
and put them in jail. And if you had asked them after 9/11 almost
all of them would have said their job is to prevent terrorist acts.
And I think implicit in the PSI and other nonproliferation initiatives
is the whole question of prevention of--of proliferation of having
these dangerous weapons, dangerous materials, dangerous technologies
spread behind where they are now and ultimately to roll them back.
The other element that I think is common is that every successful
counterterrorism initiative that I know of is fundamentally based
on intelligence--good intelligence and I think that good intelligence
is essential to any sort of initiative such as PSI. There is so
much that we don't know and so much that we need to know.
Finally one other point of maybe not comparison but something
that I've been thinking about for some time is that while PSI is
new, intervention--interdiction at sea is not new; it's been going
on for a long time. I think of the international campaigns waged
as early as the 18th--19th Centuries against slavery, against piracy.
What has changed in that time are first of all the international
laws that govern what nations can do at sea and second of all the
technology that's available both to those nations that are trying
to control or interdict dangerous substances and those technologies
that are available to the people who wish to spread them. These
represent in both cases I think special challenges that those of
us concerned with this issue need to address.
That's pretty much all I have by way of introduction. I have some
really terrific speeches on counterterrorism but I haven't written
anything yet on nonproliferation so I don't have a lot of new stuff
to offer you. I hope by the next time we get together I will. With
that in mind, I want to turn the--the table over to our speakers.
Let me start with David Isenberg. As David has said he's our Senior
Analyst in the Washington Office. He has a wide background in Arms
Control and National Security issues. He has a BA from the University
of Oregon; I've just been out in Oregon. It's a wonderful place
to have a BA from--and an MA in International Affairs from American
University. I live right by American University so I feel good about
them too. He's Adjunct Scholar at the CATO Institute, a Member of
the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy, an Advisor to the
Straus Military Reform Project at the Center for Defense Information,
and a Correspondent for Asia Times, a blogger for the Partnership
for a Secure America and was formerly a member of the Defense Trades
Advisory Group of the US State Department.
Our second panelist is Richard Love, Professor and Senior Research
Fellow at the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction
at NDU, which is one of my favorite places in Washington to--to
go to--to hang out at; his current projects include WMD Interdiction
Foreign Consequence Management and Combating WMD Strategy and Operations.
He's the Course Director for the Gravest Danger, Combating WMD and
Consequence Management and Incidence Response at the National War
College. His bio is way longer than mine and much more distinguished
but you can read it all and I think I'd rather than read what's
already written I'm going to turn the floor over first of all to
David. David....
David Isenberg: Okay; before I begin one
housekeeping detail--there should be a sign-up sheet for monthly
updates that we produce on various issues, BW, Nuclear Missile Defense,
NATO, and one that we're starting up on PSI. If you'd like to get
all or any of these just put your information on this sheet and
you'll get them in the future.
Okay; I should say I find it a little bit ironic or at least amusing
that we're talking about PSI at least in the maritime realm because
once upon a time in a century now passed, I spent a few years in
the Navy mostly as a swabjockey but if I had known 30-odd years
later there was going to be something like PSI, who knows I--I might
have stayed. It would have made--certainly would have made life
more interesting and probably more fun than a daily regime of scraping
paint. I think my remarks here are basically going to be derived
from the draft paper that you have in your packets. I may not say
everything I want to say in the time allotted but you'll be able
to read the entire people if you wish and see all what I was going
to say.
The goal here and I should say one other thing, which is that
there are those people, I'm sure my other panelists during the day,
who are such masters of the material and speak with such erudition
and clarity that it's absolutely--and they need not to work off
prepared notes, and it's a joy to listen to them; however I'm not
such a person. I don't have that mastery and I don't speak with
such élan and I'm going to have to work off notes, so forgive me
for that.
The goal here is to explore the origins of PSI and determine whether
those who instigated it are satisfied with its progress. In the
spirit of Dean Atchison's famous diplomatic memoir in 1969 Present
At the Creation in which he described the early post World War
II years, we basically set out to review the original aims and motivations
for establishing PSI in discussion with some of its key founding
fathers between August of last year and August of this year. We've
interviewed seven current or former US State Department officials
with intimate knowledge of PSI; all the interviews save one were
carried out on a non-attribution basis. The objectives were to discover
what was currently happening in terms of both operational procedures
and policy making within the US Government in relation to PSI, piece
together our recent history concerning its development, and test
attitudes of the US policy stakeholders toward WMD proliferation
and counter-proliferation strategies and in particular to discover
the level of awareness about the dynamics that drive WMD proliferation.
The impetus for creating PSI and I don't think it's a surprise
for anybody here was the increased concern over WMD proliferation.
Prior to 9/11 attacks, US concern was primarily the proliferation
of WMD to so-called rogue States--later after 9/11 the concern
grew to include sub-State actors such as terrorist groups, particularly
development--particularly significant in development to PSI, as
I think everybody here knows was the interdiction of the So San
stopped by Spanish Naval Forces when it was bound for Yemen back
in December 2002.
Conventional wisdom says it was allowed to continue on its way
because there was no legal authority to seize the cargo. The legal
basis for the interdiction was the failure of the vessel to fly
its flag which allowed investigation and boarding but not the seizure
of its cargo. The White House subsequently confirmed that the legal
case for confiscation was weak. However, one former State Department
official argued that politics rather than law was a determining
factor; he said--if I give something away by saying he--but
I think anonymity is still assured--although it was asserted to
be a problem of sufficient authority that we didn't have the legal
framework to do anything I don't believe that to be the case. I
think the So San was allowed through for political reasons because
the Vice President of all people decided it had to be let go. The
relationship with Yemen on counterterrorism was more important than
a bunch of North Korean scud missiles.
The same official thought the So San interdiction actually sent
the wrong message. You can't board a ship, document what's onboard;
we couldn't even do it ourselves. The Spanish did it and then let
it go. It sent all the wrong messages because the North Koreans,
they go to school on us. There is nothing worse than having your
bark be worse than your bite. A lot of things that could and should
probably be done unilaterally or bilaterally--not multilaterally
to be most effective are trying to be worked multilaterally which
is not necessarily the way to do it. I think you just heard in the
last part of that sentence the State Department diplomatic protocol
at work. We have equated the existence of the PSI with the existence
of coherent approach to stopping proliferation for key target countries.
People assume that things are happening coherently to try to stop
proliferation networks and functions and so having an exercise in
the sea to demonstrate that we can board ships doesn't stick scare
in North Koreans, okay. They laugh at it.
Although much casual press coverage refers to PSI as being the
brainchild of former US State Department Undersecretary for Arms
Control and International Security John Bolton, now our Ambassador
to the UN, much--I think it's useful to point out most of our interviewees
did not agree with that assessment. They almost uniformly to a persons
note that PSI was actually created as a result of the December 2002
US national strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction which
lists interdiction among various other counter-proliferation strategies
and as we know President Bush formally unveiled in a speech in Cracow,
Poland in 2002.
Some think that implementation of the PSI has actually improved
since Undersecretary Bolton left the State Department. One former
State Department official said I think there is a significant
difference between the way Undersecretary Joseph is running things
and the one that--and the way Undersecretary Bolton ran them. Undersecretary
Joseph was intimately involved with the AQ Kahn network; he's been
a believer in the use of all the intelligence resources to drastically
stop proliferation. I mean he's a very tough guy but he's serious.
My impression of the previous leadership was weak; it was a lot
of talk. It was focused on expressions of indignation--both bad
guys, both evil guys--well so what.
It's well know PSI of course is US-initiated and led attempt to
curb the international spread of WMD. It's worth noting the Bush
Administration has gone to great lengths to diplomatically negotiate
with other nations to enlist their cooperation. Since the Bush Administration
for the past few years has not been well known for putting great
emphasis on diplomatic negotiation with other countries I think
it's worth pointing out that in this--that they have.
This was probably made easier by the fact that PSI is a voluntary
agreement and not a treaty--as one interviewee noted; there is
nothing to negotiate because there is no agreement that is signed.
A lot of it simply consists of answering questions that they have.
How was PSI created? Was it a unilateral effort conceived within
the State Department or was it a combined effort across agencies
and possibly other countries? One official stated that PSI was flushed
out internally in the State Department, but at the same time that
was happening obviously there was a discussion going on; I think
there's been an effort to have other agencies and other groups to
fully work with us. Those other agencies that were involved or consulted
probably included the Office of the Legal Advisor in the Department
of State, CIA, Navy, Army, DOD and the Department of Energy. However,
and I think this is important--this is still largely conjecture
since none--none of those interviewed would specifically say whichever
Departments were involved in the creation of PSI.
Interestingly however, we did in the course of our research on
the Washington side--did contact a number of places--the Coast Guard,
Pentagon, CIA, Navy, Army--in an attempt to contact--in an attempt
to obtain contact points for the PSI but failed anyone in those
agencies with any knowledge of PSI. All of them denied knowing it;
all of them that denied knowing about PSI should have been key actors
in its creation since there's supposedly active in interdiction
training and execution. But how can they be active if they don't
know about it?
According to one article, a key element to PSI is gathering and
sharing of intelligence. How does the US receive intelligence about
suspect cargo? Presumably CIA and every US intelligence agency work
both on their own and in cooperation with intelligence services
in other nations. Since the PSI is a supporting element of the national
security strategy it would seem logical for DOD to be a key player
and for the Army and Coast Guard, along with the Navy to participate
in those interdictions. However, we received limited help in trying
to find other people and agencies involved; most of them were unfamiliar;
some of them said they would try to find someone and get back to
us. Most of them never did. But for whatever reason they always
seem to say that ultimately it's the State Department's baby and
if we wanted to know about it we should talk to people at the State
Department, which we ended up doing. For whatever other reason,
the other agencies simply didn't want to acknowledge participation.
Now this may reflect the fact that in its first couple of years
PSI was more talk than action. One former State Department official
said I think things are better--are definitely better organized
now than they were before. Bob Joseph has moved this from being
a sound-byte to being something I would call a serious effort. The
problem is that for the first four years the last two years of the
first term there was a lot of talk and there was almost no action;
but now in fairness, they have the capability, they have an organization,
they have people that are assigned to not just work in interdiction
related issues on categories--nuclear, biological, and chemical,
but also on countries and that's a huge change. The first time we
didn't have that though with the exception of the AQ Kahn network
and--well I'll leave that part out. [Pause]
Let me--I just realized if I had said what I was going to say
I might give away somebody's anonymity so excuse me. I'll just have
to jump over that.
Recruitment of allies is also an early priority. Which countries
was the US most interested in persuading to join PSI? One official
commented that when he worked at the State there was a couple of
regions with strong interest because they were areas of contracting.
Notably countries with open registries, so-called Flags of Convenience
in areas of high-trafficking were clear priorities. The official
commented that the particular regions that I had in mind were
Southeast Asia, especially the area around the Strait of Malacca.
So there's a lot of interest in persuading Indonesia, Malaysia,
Thailand to sign up--Vietnam and Cambodia as well, likewise the
Persian Gulf.
I think it's self-evident but why would Flags of Convenience be
beneficial to PSI? Well based on growth tonnage of millions almost
one-third of the entire shipping industry is registered with just
ten Flags of Convenience countries.
Let's see; how am I doing on time? Okay, all right; three years
as I said is a relatively short amount of time for an international
initiative to take-hold; however some officials in the US Government
act as though PSI was created last week and no other country has
heard of it. So if countries were reluctant to sign up for PSI how
have US officials thought to convince and assuage their concerns--mostly
through an educational process. One official commented there
was an education process. No sovereign Government is going to say
that we're not interested in helping but there's a great in knowing
what we were asking them to sign to, so I think the hurdle was sort
of an education process. That's been accomplished mainly through
dialog; question and answer forums appear to have been successful
in alleviating concerns of prospective member States. Were there
ever ways to ease their concerns besides dialog? One of them apparently
was an actual example of successful interdiction; countries are
keener to be associated with successful enterprise. And in that
regard, the Libyan interdiction is often cited.
However, it should--it should also be cited that countries often
sign onto PSI for reasons other than interest or concern about proliferation.
One Cracow Initiative official pointed out that a lot of Governments
decide to sign-on to PSI when they're--because what they're really
interested in is benign forms of military cooperation with the United
States and other countries that are possible. A lot of countries,
militaries become supporters of PSI because they like the idea of
being engaged in exercises with the United States, Australia, Japan,
and Italy. It's not--an opportunity they might not otherwise have.
I think we all know that the PSI is without a formal structure,
but a structure(less) coalition who leads. The leadership role of
the US in PSI is not specifically detailed. One of our main objectives
has been the negotiation and signing of the bilateral ship-boarding
agreements and there has been some fair degree of success in that.
The agreements we've had were Liberia, Panama, and a number of Flag
States revealed the power of the United States diplomatically and
economically even within the voluntary initiative. But there's always
the flipside to these things and as one legal observer noted, this
in part reflects the new desire for flexibility of action to avoid
the constraints of multilateralism; he writes PSI is reflective
of a shift of the US foreign policy toward a more flexible approach
to collective action that avoids both ad hoc unilateralism and institutional
multilateralism. What DOD State Director Policy Planning Richard
Haass has characterized as a la carte multilateralism involves coalitions
that will vary in size and composition depending on the issue at
hand with the only constant being that the coalitions are formed
and led by the United States.
As the sole superpower militarily speaking of course, the US has
a political, military, and hopefully economic muscle to bend an
arrangement like the PSI to its own ends--at least in the view of
some observers. One of the ironies of contemporary international
politics is that the Administration's evidently--evident willingness
to use force unilaterally and preemptively provides it with heightened
influence in multilateral negotiations.
Now I think I'm going to skip over the section on the UN Security
Council Resolution 1540 and--.
Moderator: You've got five minutes.
David Isenberg: Five minutes, okay. Let me just speak a
little bit about actual interdiction. Although PSI includes land,
sea, and air interdictions, literature tends to focus on the maritime
aspect. As one official commented a lot of our publicized exercises
have involved the maritime aspects of PSI, but was quick to
add that we've been concentrating on all three. He also said that
there were still ongoing discussions regarding how to properly and
safely undertake air and land interdictions. I must assume that
these discussions must still be ongoing because we did query the
Army, the Air Force numerous times and we just heard nothing--either
they didn't know about it or they can't speak to it--maybe a combination
of both. We were told by people we interviewed that somebody is
doing something and I assume that's the case but how, where, when,
etcetera we still don't know--at least not--not at my end.
Evaluating therefore the effectiveness of overall interdictions
is difficult given the secrecy or void around such activities. As
one official commented the most noted cases of interception at
sea was the BBC China carrying centrifuges to Libya. Many analysts
have suggested this interdiction contributed to Libya's decision
to abandon its programs; however I think it should be stated this
case predates PSI and stems from previous efforts to track and uncover
the Khan network. One official emphasized the most exemplary
thing this Administration did and probably the most exemplary thing
I've ever done in counter-proliferation was the AQ Khan network
and that was done with a great deal of coherence and leadership
and coordination and secrecy and lots of international support.
And the PSI wasn't anywhere near involved with that; you could argue
that PSI was stimulated by it; you could argue that the shipped
stopped on the way to Libya was attributed to PSI action, but we
didn't need the PSI to stop it.
Again, I'm not trying to negate the PSI; it can't really hurt
but it doesn't function as a counter-proliferation strategy in the
21st Century. At times when you see proliferation networks increasing
in their sophistication, a network--destruction of strategy is really
the only effective way to do that. You can do that corroboratively
using the international consensus that has been around PSI principles,
but we already have UN Resolution 1540. I'm not against international
resolutions--very helpful; we've got the new one on North Korea
and the PSI is an important supporting policy but we've created
this sort of smokescreen to mask the fact that we didn't have that
sort of coherent strategy on proliferation. I can tell you we certainly
didn't have it on North Korea.
Others such as the Polish Government have taken a strong supportive
role ever since and like--and like to paint a rosier picture of
PSI. One Polish official is quoted as saying that around twelve
illegal shipments have been seized in the past three years by countries
that back an international scheme to halt the spread of WMD. Those
figures are backed up by more recent public declarations by the
State Department. I see I'm just coming in my last minute here,
so I'm going to skip ahead a little bit.
Let me just go back to ship-boarding agreements. Have they enhanced
the US interdiction efforts? It's hard to say for sure but they
have allowed the US the potential at least to interdict in a timely
manner a very large percentage of the world's commercial shipping
fleet. You know I might note since Steve was talking about intelligence
earlier and going back to my Navy days it always struck me that
in a sense PSI was perhaps a little bit window-dressing at least
in the maritime realm. I mean if you've ever actually traipsed around
a ship and I have a few in my day, there's an awful lot of hiding
spaces. If you're not talking about some massive piece of equipment
it's--it's virtually impossible to find anything on a ship if you
don't already know where to look. And if you know where to look
of course then you could interdict something on a ship before it
gets on the ship or after it's been off-loaded off the ship and
further on--on its course to its ultimate destination. So this is
just a personal opinion--and in that sense I always thought the
maritime aspect or the maritime interdiction aspect of PSI was a
little bit oversold.
Finally I'll just say that the US has some obvious countries in
mind that it wants to get aboard with regard to PSI. Obviously one
very important one since a lot of proliferation is centered around
is China. China is a very powerful actor, growing economic and military
profile; without the full support of China behind PSI other neighboring
Asian countries appear reluctant to join. But because China is heavily
dependent on Middle Eastern oil and gas it's reluctant to cede interdiction
rights to the US or allied navies that could potentially be used
to interrupt the delivery of key energy supplies. Also China appears
wary of the US motivations behind PSI and often says it sees it
as another tool for extending US hegemony in its own regional setting.
And I think with that I'm probably at my limit and I'll stop here.
Moderator: Thank you David; Richard....
Richard Love: Good morning; can everybody
hear me okay--yeah? Steven thanks--Ian for inviting me. Steven I
had asked that no matter what I'm doing with five minutes left to
go could you punch me in the arm or something because I do want
to get to some questions.
I have three objectives in this presentation; the first is since
we have such a diverse crowd to try to put PSI into some context.
The second is to briefly outline the threat that we face today and
may face in the immediate future. The third is to talk about the
challenges that PSI is facing--these growing pains as a more than
60-nation activity; what the stressors are on the participants.
Finally, if there is time for Q&A and I hope that there's at least
five minutes, I'm prepared to talk about how the Department of Defense
is organizing to meet the interdiction mission. Does, for example,
PSI equal the US interdiction strategy or is one a subset or the
other?
These are my views and mine alone; they don't represent National
Defense University, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, DOD
or the US Government. As such I'm going to go through my prepared
remarks and then we'll turn to your questions. Ambassador--I have
some answers I think where PSI fits in and Sharon I think there
is a way to see this as a different model, but you will find that
I may be as equally as skeptical in making my own argument.
Dollars and guns are no substitutes for brains and willpower.
Dwight D. Eisenhower offered this perspective on security in a radio
audience in 1957. And in preparing this presentation I found myself
returning to Eisenhower's message; who has the brains and the willpower--the
proliferators or us? The stakes are high; combating the proliferation
of WMD is clearly a priority of this Administration as well as the
global community. However the threat environment we face today is
not solely from rogue States, be they nuclear possessors or aspirants
or even from committed terrorists operating global networks. It
also includes trans-national criminal organizations supporting these
networks and even legitimate multi-national corporations that unknowingly--or
in some cases knowingly--ease finance and transfer. Who has the
brains and willpower to best exploit the global marketplace and
its infrastructure?
Given the complexities of interdiction, the dangers of non-State
nuclear hopefuls, the dual use nature of many of the technologies,
you know is this an aluminum tube or an aluminum tube? You know
when do we get excited about it? And the tools to combat weapons
of mass destruction from PSI to the global initiative to combat
WMD terrorism to the UN Security Council Resolution 1540 or Ambassador
Joseph's new call for an Intelligence PSI--even with all that are
we going to be able to stay one step ahead?
So let's go back a few years to the late 1990s and put this all
in context. All of us can remember a time when there were two primary
communities dedicated to combating WMD right? There was the nonproliferation
community favoring traditional diplomatic approaches based on developing
norms, standards, and standards through international compact. Nonproliferation
the primary area for combating WMD for some 60-years is State-based
and consensus driven. Now starting at about 1993 with Les Aspins'
Defense Counter-Proliferation Initiative here in the United States,
a different community began to develop. Counter-proliferation is
operational in nature and seeks to develop capabilities and plans
so that if [Emphasis Added] diplomacy fails we are surprised. We
have options including military options that are on-hand to protect
and defend against weapons of mass destructions.
Counter-proliferations components from active defense, threat
reduction, passive defense and interdiction were and are not without
controversy. These two communities existed and evolved. And I would
argue far too exclusively as communities of, by and for themselves
and not as an integrated priority of a unit--unified strategy. So
why did I encounter--engage on this history lesson--because I think
today's proliferation threats lie at the seams, the intersection
between nonproliferation and counter-proliferation. To overcome
these threats we require diplomacy, arms control, and also the operational
capabilities and concepts of operations, in short solutions that
effectively combine nonproliferation and counter-proliferation tools.
Now what might tomorrow's proliferation threat look like? Well
it might look a lot like today's. We need only consider the AQ Kahn
network, unprecedented scale, Iran, Libya, North Korea, unprecedented
content--uranium enrichment, centrifuge know-how, equipment, precursors,
nuclear weapons design, unprecedented use of outsourcing--utilizing
the private sector, Malaysian machine shops, effective network--Dubai-front
companies, meetings in Casablanca and Istanbul with Iranian colleagues,
connections in Germany and Holland, Malaysian and Philippine agents,
detours through Sri Lanka with Chinese and London connections; and
let's not forget they had a help desk right? I mean the Kahn network
offered 24-hour technical assistance to customers and even had nice
color brochures right advertising centrifuges and other components
for sale available to prospective clients at arms fairs. And for
those of you who are quick, when the AQ Kahn network started to
break in the media and you go to the Khan Research Labs website
you could actually see the brochure there on the web, right? Help
desk--that's the threat we're facing. So weaving official State
activity with private commercial practice, Khan Research Labs moved
globally and indeed Khan made what something like 13 trips to North
Korea through about the June 2002 timeframe making distinctions
between public and private--rather irrelevant. We need tools that
are not constrained by boundaries. We need plans that include multi-national
partners. We need architectures that have buy-in from the private
sector. And we need concepts that are well-exercised not solely
at the tactical level but also at the diplomatic level. We need
to explore the scenes. Think about how a thoughtful or even a clumsy
adversary could frustrate our efforts. We need to prioritize and
plan for the most likely but be ever mindful of the worst case scenario.
So where does PSI fit in? Well PSI was designed with a specific
purpose in mind; it is a tool that was designed to fight State-based
proliferation. Specifically it was developed to hedge against an
explicit gap in the global combating proliferation scheme highlighted
by the So San interdiction in December 2002. You get the intelligence
right; you track a ship that is changing flags on the high-seas
for 30 days, and working with an ally you interdict and board a
ship on the high-seas and you find exactly what you're looking for--and
then you let it go. This I think sends the wrong message to Pyongyang
and others in the proliferation game. Now there are some out there
who say that even if we let it go we sent a nice message to the
North Koreans that we could track them and we could interdict them
at will. I--I don't put a lot of credence in that argument.
PSI is the first attempt to get at the seam between counter-proliferation
and interdiction--counter-proliferation in the nonproliferation
community. WMD elimination which is an effort here in the United
States that I can speak to is another. PSI as has been mentioned
is an activity and not an organization; it has no secretary, no
professional corps of civil service practitioners and no return
address. It is designed to be flexible, tailor(able), responsive,
event-driven, and members through the statement of principles are
encouraged--not required--but encouraged to strengthen and enforce
their own nonproliferation laws, participate in interdiction exercises
and assist when called upon with interdiction operations. It is
a partnership that raises the costs and risks of proliferation and
as such is not only an interdiction tool but one with deterrence
value. It is a tool that brings together diplomacy, law enforcement
and military might; it operates at the seam between nonproliferation
and counter-proliferation and while ultimately dependent on self-policing
policies after three years can claim some notable successes.
I think it was earlier this summer that Secretary of State Rice
noted there had been eleven PSI interdictions. Every time a statement
I run to my Power Point slides and update it right--incrementally.
Others put this number at between twelve and twenty-four depending
on who you talk to. Now I'll leave it to the others to flesh out
the BBC, China, and Libya and the intelligence trail; instead I
want to focus on the challenges the PSI as a successful (global
initiative) is facing and will likely face in the future. You know
just because someone says an interdiction was a PSI interdiction
doesn't make it so.
The first issue is obvious and well-cited by critics; can an activity
designed to deter and defeat rogue States--North Korea--adjust to
the non-State proliferation threat? And my answer to this is certainly
yes; it can and will play a vital role in the non-State proliferation
prevention. However, let's not forget that the strength of PSI is
in interdiction--not in terror financing or an intelligence integration.
Intelligence and financing while critical to PSI are not its core
mission; its core mission is interdiction. Now it remains to be
seen whether the fundamental and underlying mission of PSI will
shift to include greater prevention missions, so the jury is still
out on that.
My second issue is fundamental; should PSI seek new missions--intelligence
for example? Well I think that answer depends on whether there are
better suited avenues for others to take on that mission area. What
are the other candidates out there? Should PSI take up the mission
or should it participate and be informed by other organizations'
activities or initiatives better positioned to understand the nuances
of the particular threat area?
When considering new initiatives such as the global initiative
to combat nuclear terrorism, I am pulled to keeping PSI more narrowly
focused on interdiction operations. Now that is not to say as Undersecretary
Joseph said in June 2006 that tools to interdict proliferation
payments are not needed--they clearly are. But should that be
addressed as a core component of PSI? You know when thinking about
it does that require different skills and expertise and draw on
a different talent pool better suited for a separate but linked
initiative? It should be noted that the intelligence breakout group
of the OEG, that's the Operational Experts Group that meets periodically--are
trying to balance the intelligence requirements of interdiction
operations with the need to safeguard sources and methods and trying
to determine the lines between operational intelligence, strategic
intelligence and where interdiction intelligence needs to be. How
do you share it for example?
Third, considering the sheer size of participating States should
PSI opt for a more formalized structure? Is there a growing need
for a secretariat? There could be no doubt that with over 60 States
participating the call itself--the call list itself is probably
hard to manage. I think one of the benefits of having conferences
such as this one to explore these sorts of viewpoints could lead
to a more rigorous organization. At the same time you know the hallmark
of PSI would be lost with a secretariat. Flexibility, tailor(ability),
responsiveness, and the ability to efficiently self-organize based
on a specific threat; those are the strengths of PSI. I think many
of those threats would be in jeopardy if you did institute a secretariat
based format.
Finally, how can PSI be approved? Well PSI as an interdiction
that is boarding ships is well-exercised. There is--there is now
a cadre of international practitioners highly-skilled in the art--in
other words, the counter-proliferation side of things is going well.
I have concerns on the nonproliferation side of the house--at the
diplomatic and strategic level. While the OEG is looking at capacity
building and industry outreach, this remains at an early stage.
I think it's an important component of PSI and my belief is that
in effectively building partners' operational capabilities and translating
that into interdiction operations we will see enormous dividends
in the future. Likewise, the private sector--the shippers, transporters,
financiers--in other words, those engaged in multimodal trans-shipping
are central to breaking the proliferation network and their participation
critical to mitigating non-State threats. I have no doubt that the
other panels will shed light on these and other issues; so in conclusion....
As we meet the deadly and immediate proliferation threat let us
not substitute the brains and willpower we will need merely with
dollars and guns. So thank you Mr. Chair; I'll be more than happy
to take any questions or angry comments or unsolicited personal
attacks--whatever you guys have in mind; so--.
Moderator: Thank you Richard and thank you again David;
we have intentionally left ample time for discussion sensing that
there would be need for such, so let me turn the floor over to you.
I will recognize you in the order in which I see your hands and
will do my best to not limit my peripheral vision. So please I'll
be happy to start.
Richard Love: Well PSI is many things to many people fortunately
or unfortunately; what constitutes a legal versus illicit shipment
I think is what you're getting at? And--and the answer to that in
many ways is dependent on who is doing the interdicting? There is
no secretariat to put out a list of you know banned articles or
band dual use assets, but what we do have is an international regime
that does ban certain things and depending on the--the degree to
which a particular State feels that there's an interdiction need
they can interdict it. There's an Operational Expert Group on legal
matters which gets at a lot of the things that David was talking
about that's trying to figure out what would constitute a legal
versus illicit list. As such it is up to the parties to share the
proper intelligence and to make the proper determination but as
such there is no list.
Question: [You're saying] that PSI is [inaudible]--is linked
to this [inaudible]?
Richard Love: I--I--. No; there is a linkage to those because
that is the criteria for establishing for example a legal versus
illegal interdiction. I would note however that if you're talking
about you know the Australia group or whatever, you know if you're
talking about more than 60 nations, not all of them have signed
up to those principles, you know. They're not--they don't match
up perfectly with all the--what we would consider the technological
control regimes.
David Isenberg: Just one quick thing; I think Richard touched
on it. There--there is--as far as I know there is no strict PSI
equivalent to say the CWC where you have various schedules setting
forth what is and is not prescribed. It also strikes me that one
potential problem for PSI is that since WMD is not contrary to what
a lot of people think just about the nuclear issue; I mean it's
the full panoply which--which gets you back into the same sort of
dilemma you faced with regard to say Iraq and the aluminum tube
issues, you know like something could be dual purpose and you don't--unless
you have 100-percent absolutely perfect intelligence you could make
a serious mistake--not to mention set off an international incident
by interdicting something you thought was which wasn't, you know.
And I just think that's a problem.
Moderator: Thank you; as we go around the table I just asked
you all to remember that we do have microphones available; so when
you make your comments or questions please take the handhelds to
do it through.
Question:
Richard Love: The silence is deafening isn't it? Two--two
thoughts; the first one is that just be--let me just reiterate just
because someone says that there has been a successful PSI interdiction
doesn't mean that it was a successful PSI interdiction. As far as
metrics, my second point is that OSD came to me two weeks ago and
said here's what we'd like to do. We'd like to get--generate some
lessons learned on PSI interdictions; we'd like to build that into
an education and training module. We'd like to send that out to
the combatant commands; we'd like to you know really be able to
capture the success--the successes we've had and I asked one question--well
do you mean the interdictions or do you really mean the exercises?
And the answer was well the exercises of course; we can't talk about
the actual interdictions. What--are you nuts? [Laughs] As
far as--that probably was a little too flip but as far as proposing
metrics, I think that what we're doing right now is taking quite
a simplistic view on gauging the success of PSI. We're looking at
numbers and numbers of States that are--that are signing up and
we're looking at the number of exercises that are quite robust and
do cross--do more than just maritime interdiction. The [time] you
know the one in Poland tried--air interdiction and there's been--I'm
sorry that was a ground interdiction and there have been a couple
of air interdiction exercises. Have I successfully avoided your
question? [Laughs]
David Isenberg: Let me just add one thing to that; I mean
this all reminds me of the question that Secretary Rumsfeld famously
pondered in respect to Iraq which I think a lot of people here know
which is you know how do we know essentially that we're winning
you know; how do we know that what we're doing is you know in terms
of killing jihadists in Iraq isn't outweighed by the recruitment
of new ones for example? And I think the problem here is that the
so-called metrics that we have to date are not really measuring
success; they're measuring inputs. You know they are measuring how--as
he--as Richard just said--how many exercises have we conducted,
how many countries have signed up, if people are feeling particularly
eager and optimistic, how many interdictions have we actually done
to date--depending on who you're talking to will depend on which
number you're looking at but these are all inputs; they're not outputs
and outputs are what you're talking about and I don't think--I'm
certainly clueless as what is a good measure of an output. I mean
I would think the ultimate--or the optimal output would be some
certainty that the overall trafficking and actual or attempted proliferation
is diminishing but how do you measure that? I don't know.
Moderator: Thank you
Question: It can't simply be that you get out there and
say well 80 nations support this when there's no good way you know
saying what that support entails. I mean PSI has gone from something
that had you know a statement of principles, core members, and then
the State Department inexplicably got rid of the concept of core
members because some nations felt that--that was discriminatory,
so I guess I would just ask if you could elaborate more on what
you believe or--or measure as a deterrent value?
Richard Love: Well deterrence can also be measured in how
your adversary views a particular initiative and one thing that
can be said about PSI is that it is attempting to strengthen the
legal authorities under which interdictions on the high seas can
be conducted. It is also supposed to be an--an activity where intelligence
can be shared; so if you're a potential proliferator that didn't
exist before--right? There was no--okay; fair enough; I know what
you're going to say. It didn't exist as formally as it does today.
Question: But I would argue unless you have other information
that there are no formal--maybe [inaudible]--there are no formal
mechanisms for sharing intelligence and what's more we may share
intelligence with a few of our good allies but when you're looking
at 70 or 80 nations I mean this is one of the problems with--that
I see when you seek a country like China or India to join PSI, how
much intelligence are you really going to share with those countries?
Question: And to add to that what's the new legal authority?
Richard Love: It's just trying to strengthen the legal authority
to do ship-boarding in areas that are within your territorial waters
or under your flag. It basically just reemphasizes what is conventional
law of the high seas anyway and it is based--since it's based on
self-policing activity you know as I think Sharon is arguing is
there really anything there? Is there anything new? I think the
effort to strengthen legal authority in a much more robust way outside
of the traditional UN mechanisms is new. You know I do think that
is a difference and I do think Ambassador Goodby to kind of get
what you asked initially--where does it fit in? Well it's a different
model than we've had in the past. And if you pay attention to Ambassador
Joseph's comments and some of the moves by the State Department
out of their new WMD Terrorism Office for example, I think you can
see this PSI model now being moved in different--into different
arenas. As I--as I kind of said in my comments, really the question
is do you expand PSI to include other things because you've already
got a bunch of nations signed up or do you go for new initiatives
and keep them narrowly tailored? There are advocates on both sides
of that; for example OSD views all interdiction as PSI--period.
Right; PSI is not a subset of interdiction--PSI is interdiction.
There's another side of the--of OSD that kind of feels that--that's
just not true--that there is something broader, that there are covert
operations, that we've always been doing these kinds of interdictions,
that there is nothing new there. Well I've hogged the mic long enough;
David do you have any thoughts?
David Isenberg: Well I was just bemused to hear your depiction
of DOD as--as a faction of DOD thinking that all interdiction is
PSI because I would think with just a little thinking about it that
would clearly not be the case. I mean you have this whole group
of people within DOD, you know whose only thought of interdiction
is interdicting cocaine coming up from South America you know, which
you know may be devastating but it's not proliferation as we have
defined it or anywhere else that I know of. So you know I think
that would be kind of ridiculous.
Richard Love: I've got to follow-up to your comment. For
those of you who aren't aware your narcotics discussion point is
rather well taken. For about 10 to 15 years in OSD there was the
debate on what is counter-proliferation and nonproliferation; you
had two different directorates that were set up. You had the Office
for Counter-Proliferation Policy and Office for Nonproliferation
Policy. You had a Deputy Undersecretary who was supposed to kind
of arbitrate between the two. Under DOD and OSD's new reorganization
they are going to take this issue set, combating WMD and putting
it under the Office for Counter-Narcotics and Global Issues. So
rule number one right, when you get here to Washington is to say
who has the money and who is paying? And does rhetoric actually
meet action?
Question: Richard, let me ask you a question based on that
comment. Government bureaucracies reorganize themselves for lots
of different reasons and sometimes one of those reasons is to as
delicately and politely as they can shift responsibility from one
office to another. Is it your sense that this sort of reorganization
implies that DOD is downgrading the counter-proliferation initiative?
Richard Love: Well I certainly hope not since the President
of the United States came to NDU in 1994 and said the greatest threat
that the nation--that the United States faces is WMD in the hands
of terrorists. I guess I would ask whether the Department of Defense
is kind of living up to that challenge. Now I will say that another
way of looking at this is to think through--think about it as being
institutionalized within DOD; for example strategic command has
the integrating and synchronizing combating WMD mission now. I don't
think anybody is really clear on what integrating and synchronizing
out in Omaha is going to have to do with the combatant commands
in Europe or the Pacific to conducting interdictions, but perhaps
this is more of an opportunity to take advantage of you know as
David said what are--you know what is the breadbasket of counter-narcotics?
You could argue it's interdiction. What is the breadbasket of combating
WMD? Perhaps that's interdiction too so maybe there's some synergies
to be leveraged there. I remain a skeptic.
Question: Thank you very much. After hearing your speeches
I learned that I know so few about PSI. I--I thought that my understanding
was--was better really but my question is--so thank you for that--the
US signed up some ship-boarding agreements and--and did these agreements
really add some value to the successes even though that you said
that they're not in fact successes--practically measured? Or, did
these agreements only have the value of telling the world that the
US signed these agreements with the countries that have the majority
of commercial vessels in the world?
David Isenberg: Well I go back and forth on that point
myself and I don't conclusively come down on either side but I think
at least in part it refers a little bit to the issue that was raised
earlier in terms of what is the deterrent value of this. You know
and I think the signing of a ship-boarding agreement is in effect
a sort of potential victory or it's a potential deterrent success
in that it does announce to the world and potential proliferators
that one route for egress for you is at least potentially cut-off
if only because these countries represent a disproportionate share
of the potential maritime trafficking vehicles that you can use.
Now at the same time for reasons I stated earlier, I'm a little
skeptical about how much of a success that is in real life because
as I said, unless you have perfect intelligence the idea of actually
carrying out an interdiction on you know the container ship for
example out at sea, you know and effectively finding something especially
if it's not some massive piece of equipment that would be used for
some nuclear program for example would be [inaudible] small. So
depending on you know who--who is actually reading an announcement
may be less than impressed, but you know I'm willing to give it
the benefit of the doubt at least at this stage and say it could
be a useful measure. I'm not sure how much more I want to go beyond
the word could; I have no way of quantifying it.
Moderator: I can't-- thank you.
Question: I think this goes back to the question of inputs
and outputs; what do we think is the limiting factor today on interdictions?
Is it that we don't have enough countries signed up for PSI, is
there a lack of legal authority, or is there a lack of knowledge
or maybe consensus on a particular--maybe that's another issue;
is there a consensus on actually executing a--an intervention? I
mean here we have--I think we've just sanctioned you know a number
of companies including some Russian companies where you wouldn't
exactly expect the Russians to--and if the Russians you know oppose
this--you wouldn't expect the Russians to then interdict their own
companies selling stuff to Iran. So there's this extra issue of
consent but I imagine that the real limiting factor is--is the question
of intelligence, right? It's not as if there are operations going
begging for lack of--because we--you know lack of a participating
State? Is that people's understanding?
David Isenberg: Well from my view in a word yes; we--you
know I did everything but you know offer to sell various agencies
in the intelligence community my future first-born in terms of trying
to get them to provide a speaker for this event you know. Negroponte's
office, the Office of Director of National Intelligence, CIA, DIA,
Intelligence components--Army, Navy, Air Force, etcetera, you know
and it's like [Laughs]--yeah good luck with that son. So that tells
me two things--either you know they're as clueless as I am or you
know they had something going and they just don't talk about it,
but I think given the number of countries you now have signed up
to PSI and traditional concerns about--among intelligence agencies
about how far they can trust somebody in the intelligence service
of another country, the idea that you're going to have an effective
mechanism set up for sharing operationally useful intelligence seems
to me to be rather fantastic and I just don't think they have it.
So I think in clear--from my viewpoint intelligence is clearly the
stumbling block.
Question: You're suggesting that we have the intelligence
but we can't use it?
David Isenberg: Well I'm not even sure I would go that--I'm
giving them the benefit of the doubt and saying they may have it.
I'm not sure I would say that; I think--and I should add we also
tried very desperately to get someone from the shipping industry
here because you would think after all you know if you're talking
about maritime interdictions the shipping industry itself would
be an invaluable source of intelligence. And what I found out from
talking with people in the shipping industry was that--PSI what;
who--? I mean what is this PSI you speak about? And you know it's
a stranger from a strange land; we don't know anything about no
stinking PSI. It's just you know--it's irrelevant to them and I've
talked to a number of shipping experts like down at Hampton Roads
you know it just doesn't come up; you know maybe somebody once upon
a time going to a maritime conference heard somebody utter the words
Proliferation Security Initiative but that's about it. You know--you
know of all the issues that they concentrate on from--from port
security to you know to protecting your ships out at sea, you know
PSI just isn't in it.
Richard Love: I'd like to just offer a couple of thoughts;
the first one is that PSI is absolutely constrained by its ability
to exploit intelligence period. But I think it's important to draw
a distinction between strategic level intelligence and intelligence
that is focused at the operational level. So for example, at the
strategic level when you're dealing with other policies, when you're
balancing interdiction against the global war on terror, when you're
considering allies like Yemen in the global war on terror for example
that's one kind of intelligence, okay. Another kind is the operational
level intelligence which is sharing the intelligence information
to do an interdiction. What do you need to tell the allies? There
are two things here; I think our tactical level to operational level--intelligence
sharing, once the strategic level has been made to interdict is
great. Okay; that's what we test. What we do not test are the strategic
level breakpoints. So that's first; I had another point but I got
so wrapped up in this comment that I forgot what it was; so--.
Moderator: Can you pass the mic?
Question: Thank you; I mean our discussion so far has evolved
around the PSI maritime initiative and as far as I understand the
sort of preliminary conclusion is that you know the jury is still
out with regards to its effectiveness. But could the panelists also
speak to--to the PSI more broadly because I mean the intention is
also that--that it should be a tool to interdict--make interdictions
also on land and--and in the air. So could you speak to you know
your views on the prospects of also making this effective in those
spheres so to speak?
Richard Love: Good question; I think everybody tends to
like to do the things we do well. We've been doing maritime interdiction
for a while; it's vastly more difficult to get a Leer jet traveling
at 40,000 feet that's going to cross international boundaries you
know in a matter of a couple of hours if not a couple of minutes.
There have been a number of air interdiction exercises; I'm sure
you--you may very well be aware of them--if not participated directly
in them. What the air component does is basically take a maritime
interdiction structure and try to compress it. And one of the--one
of the challenges I think PSI is going through today is to look
for another model. Is there something special; is there something
unique about air interdictions that require you to breakout of the
traditional maritime model that basically PSI was organized around?
Quite frankly that model is not out there yet; okay. And when you're
dealing with trans-modal transportation that does cross land, air,
and sea I guess the question becomes sort of like one of my comments,
you have to prioritize, so where do you think you can have the most
success? They're trying--they're doing these exercises; my own assessment
of some of the exercises that I've seen is that they really struggle
with the time dimension. How do you make a decision to do an air
interdiction, which is not pulling a ship over--it could be downing
an aircraft or shooting it out of the sky and that's where the intelligence
component comes in; how sure are you that you know what's on that
plane, what the intentions are of the people who put it on that
plane, and where it's going? And if there's--if there's a gap in
your knowledge, which there inevitably will be the risk of making
the wrong decision with catastrophic and front-page news headlines
becomes greater.
David Isenberg: It's occurred to me and this is just my
own personal speculation that the reason you have not done so much
on ground and air interdiction is in fact dependent on what you
think the particular WMD threat is. Many people of course will say
the highest threat of course is a specter of a nuclear weapons program.
If it's a nuclear weapons program and materials and equipment is
being delivered for that it's probably going to go by sea because
a lot of it is massive. If you're talking about chemical or biological
weapons then are a lot easier things to do--then send it by sea,
but it also is a lot harder and more difficult to interdict. I mean
if you've got somebody transporting a pathogen you know and they
were doing it by land, coming in over a border that would be virtually
impossible to detect no matter--or interdict no matter how many
ground exercises you do. So there may be people thinking well why
bother; I mean it would be almost certainly an exercise in futility--maybe
a little better luck with air, maybe if somebody was planning on
transporting some chemical precursors by air that might be a possibility
but again I think you would still have same kind of reasoning. So
I think in large part they do maritime interdictions for the same
reasoning about the old joke about you know why is the drunk looking
for his keys on the other side of the street where the streetlight
is when he dropped them on the other side--because it's easier to
do and I think you know in large part that's the way they do maritime
interdictions.
Moderator: We're at break time but I think we can take one
more question or comment before we go that far.
Question: Yes; since I'm listening to you I would like
to understand what is a maritime interdiction and what is a--what
is in your view the law enforcement of the military framework for--for
in order to practice or to complete maritime interdictions? To--to
be more specific, when we are speaking about the ground or air interdictions
we can refer to territorial borders. So that--and to national lows,
but when we are speaking about maritime interdictions this is supposed
to be an action on open seas. Some of them--you know that the open
seas begins at 12 nautical miles from a seashore--from the coastal
shore, so everything is further than 12--12 nautical miles--depends
on international laws at sea. So PSI--is PSI a matter of law enforcements
or a matter of military actions or both in your views?
Richard Love: Both.
Question: Yes; thank you for this very--now this is very
important. As you know probably--just a comment, all the maritime
interdictions we have completed through more or less international
agreements and I make--and one example is narco-traffic actions
in the Caribbean regions. Those interdictions are based on law enforcement
actions--even if it's with military means, the decision making process
is based on the law enforcement authorizations and this is why when
the US Navy has to complete a maritime interdiction against suspected
boats, he--the Navy ship has to go to the others with a US Coast
Guard detachment because this is about law enforcement and they
respect more or less the international more than this--the international
laws. So is PSI--has to go further for--to the--to what the military
means and this is a key point for the future and to get--to get
some more agreements, international agreements through maritime--for
the maritime interdictions. What's your views--what are your views?
Richard Love: Well I think you asked two questions here;
the one question was are we relying on territorial waters, are we
looking for kind of free navigation on the high-seas issues--flag
in question, those kinds of issues? No problem. PSI was originally
designed to be more of a territorial--waters compact; that's how
it initially started because as you know the sovereign nation has
great latitude in conducting interdiction within its territorial
waters. With the bilateral ship-boarding agreements the idea is
to do sort of what we did with--what the United States did with
counter-narcotics--have pre-existing compacts in place with States
who--who have a majority of the flag ships worldwide that provide
for lack of a better word reciprocity but we know it's not reciprocity
although it kind of looks like reciprocity--for the US with the
Coast Guard, I mean that's an important consideration to conduct
interdictions under criminal auspices--not just national security
auspices.
David Isenberg: I guess I would only add I think a lot
of people probably have the wrong idea about the way the interdiction
process works and maybe they watch too much television. Yes, we
have bilateral boarding agreements, but that doesn't mean that you
know the US Navy frigate comes charging up, you know and sends over
you know an armed squad and a cutter and suddenly a search party
boards and starts searching. Even with the agreements the United
States is essentially in a position analogous to the domestic law
enforcement where police have to go before a judge you know and
lay out their case so they can get a warrant and go in and search
a premises of something suspect. And it's not all that dissimilar;
I mean the United--as far as I understand the process you know if
there's a ship that the United States wants to interdict it basically
has to make its case with the country under--under whose flag that
ship is flying. Now presumably they're more inclined to say yes,
you can go ahead by virtue of having a boarding agreement with the
United States but it's not assured. In any event it's going to take
a few hours between the time that the request is made--at a minimum
before they get back to the United States and say yes, you can go
ahead and do it. So depending on what might be in the cargo they
could just as easily jettison and get rid of it, so in that sense
I--you know I think the interdiction is more likely to be a failure
than a success. But I--that's getting a little bit away from your
question; you know I simply think that the process is such that
the United States does not have a clear in-road you know. It's--it's
bound by having to ask and it cannot do anything unilaterally on
its own.
Moderator: Thank you. I think we've reached the end of
this first panel. And I think that the day is fairly launched. There
will be opportunity for further discussion during the break and
I'll see you all in 15 minutes. Thank you.
Session 2-Maritime Counter-Proliferation Measures
and the PSI: A Coherent Whole?
Moderator: We're moving onto the second
part of our program today and as I told our speakers here, today
at this point we are now going to start talking about the SUA. Now
contrary to what you may think, the SUA is the Convention for the
suppression of unlawful acts against the safety of maritime navigation
and the Protocol for the suppression of unlawful acts against the
safety of fixed platforms, known as a SUA Protocol.
Now we have as a topic of course Maritime Counter-Proliferation
Majors and the PSI: A Coherent Whole? and this relates to questions
that were coming up this morning about how does PSI relate to pre-existing
arrangements? We have an expert on this subject, Leah Kuchinsky
who has studied this issue quite substantially and written about
it. She has also had a lot of hands-on experience in public affairs
I noticed, working for a public radio station in Charlottesville,
and she also to my mind did something really amazing in her dissertation
at the University of Virginia where she produced a thesis on a unified
theory of nuclear proliferation, something that even--even Einstein
couldn't do but I hope we hear something about that. I will introduce
Ian, who will be the other speaker, although he needs no introduction
but Leah why don't you go ahead and tell us about SUA.
Leah Kuchinsky: Okay; well first of all
thank you very much for that very kind introduction. As you said,
my name is Leah Kuchinsky and I'm working with Sandy Specter at
the Monterey Institute Center for Nonproliferation Studies.
David Isenberg has asked me to address the relationship between
PSI and other maritime Conventions and initiatives and I'm going
to briefly review a few of these other initiatives and Conventions,
including the Container Security Initiative. I'm going to talk about
the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea Briefly as well as SOLAS.
But I'd like to spend most of the time today talking about SUA and
the amendments that were made to it in the fall of 2005 to the SUA
Convention and SUA Protocol because I think that out of all the
other maritime Conventions and initiatives listed here on the agenda,
SUA's mission is perhaps the most similar to that of PSI. And yet
there are some important distinctions between them that I'd like
to discuss. And as I talk, the graphs that I've handed out, which
are these two hopefully will become clearer and more meaningful
to you, and I'm happy to answer questions about them at any point.
Okay; the session this morning focused extensively on PSI and
for those of you who might not know, PSI at this point includes
bilateral boarding agreements with several States including Belize,
Croatia, Cypress, Liberia, the Marshall Islands, and Panama. And
these States are important because they produce or oversee a majority
of the shipping that goes on; specifically Panama I think flags
about 20-percent of all commercial vessels on the ocean. And the
reason I bring that up and point that out is because in--in comparison
to the States that have signed onto the SUA Convention and SUA Protocol
the amended versions, PSI is actually covering a much greater majority
of shipping at this point. SUA--the SUA Conventions, the amended
version and the Protocol as well actually haven't come into effect
yet and we'll talk about that in a little bit as I continue. But
right now PSI is really the only game in town when it comes to doing
introduction of WMD.
PSI can apply to the high seas when bilateral boarding agreements
between States have--have agreed to include the high seas. When
you look at this document here you can see that in the beginning
PSI was arranged to apply to internal waters, territorial zones
and contiguous zones as well. And exclusive economic zones as one
of the earlier speakers mentioned--actually one I think was mentioned
earlier can start up to 12 miles off of the coastline and usually
they extend about 200 miles. So they are considered in terms of
PSI part of the high seas but as I said, depending upon the particular
details of whatever bilateral arrangements are arranged between
two States sometimes the high seas may be included as well.
And if anyone has any questions particularly about you know what
these different terms mean please let me know but they are demonstrated
pretty well here. Contiguous zones which fall outside of territorial
zones can be between two and twelve miles usually.
All right; the next Convention I want to talk a little bit about
is the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. It deals with concepts
such as innocent passage where it's allowed and the important concept
of freedom of the seas--in other words which state has jurisdiction
and where--and where ships may be interdicted. On the high seas
it holds that ships may only be interdicted when there are clear
illegal acts occurring such as piracy, slave trade, illegal broadcasting--at
this point the trafficking of psychotropic--illegal psychotropic
or narcotics is also considered something that can be interdicted
on the high seas because of the 1988 Vienna Convention. Under the
UNCLOS, States can also be--are--ships can also be interdicted when
they're not clearly displaying a nationality; in other words, when
they're not flying a flag that's clearly identifiable or when you--you
actually are invited onboard for whatever reasons. As I mentioned,
under PSI there might be an instance or an arrangement under which
States could be invited to board and in that way PSI would be applicable
to the high seas.
Let's see here; SOLAS, the International Convention on the Safety
of Life at Sea--this includes regulations on safe shipping, on what
happens when ships are in distress and how to mark dangerous goods.
It's generally regarded as the most important of all international
treaties concerning the safety of merchant ships. The first diversion
was adopted in 1914 in response to the Titanic disaster. The Convention
itself was adopted in 1960 however and is considered the first major
accomplishment of the IMO. It was amended in 1974 and many changes
have been made since then. One of the most important actually addendums
is the ISPS Code which is alluded to here on this graph, the International
Ship and Port Facility Security, which I'm going to talk about next.
Specifically SOLAS deals with ship construction, fire protection,
life-saving equipment, radio communications, safety of navigation,
carriage of cargo, this type of thing. The ISPS which was--the ISPS
Code added in 2002 and which went into effect in 2004 assigns Port
Security Officers and Port Security Plans, Ship Security Officers,
Ship Security Plans--really talks about the management of the safety
of ports and ships and it's designed to create cooperation between
Governments and the shipping and port industries. For instance,
when a Government raises a threat level this would have repercussions
for the ISPS Code and--and how ports react in dealing with that
raised threat level, and really also to provide a very standardized
methodology for security assessments.
Okay, quickly the next initiative I'm going to talk about is MTSA,
the Maritime Transportation Safety Security Act, and the reason
I have a line connecting these two here on the graph with equal
signs is because in a sense MTSA is the domestic version of ISPS.
It's--it's the US domestic equivalent and pretty much establishes
the same thing; it's designed to prevent US waterways from terror
attacks; it requires vessels in port facilities to conduct vulnerability
assessments and develop security plans that include passenger vehicle
and baggage screening and to develop security patrols and restricted
areas, access control measures, surveillance, and also requires
the establishment of coordinating committees among Federal, Local,
and State Agencies to collaborate on emergency plans.
Okay, the next thing is the Container Security Initiative. It's
important to know that about 90-percent of world trade is done through
cargo containers, and so there is an obvious mutual benefit among
States and keeping weapons or WMD from proliferating in this way.
It was launched in 2002 by the United States Customs and Border
Patrol and its purpose is to increase security for cargo containers
that are entering the United States.
There are four core elements to CSI. The first is to use intelligence
and automated targeting to flag the highest priority cargo and make
sure that this high-priority cargo is inspected before it ever reaches
the United States--that it's actually inspected at the point of
departure. This will allow for smoother, faster reception at US
ports. Another core element is to use non-invasive scanning technology
and also to use smarter, tamper resistant containers--in other words,
containers that are easier to tell when they've been broken into
or changed or perhaps filled with or--or removed certain items since
they departed whatever point they were coming from. As of March
2006 there are 44 CSI ports. You--the United States actually sends
Custom Border Patrol Teams over to these ports where they act as
observers during cargo scanning and inspection. They're not allowed
to take part in the actual scanning and checking of the cargo themselves
but they're allowed to be there as observers and liaisons.
It's estimated that once there are 50 CSI ports, 90-percent of
cargo container shipping will be covered. There are offers of reciprocity
when it comes to this program. So far I believe only Japan and Canada
have taken the US up on this; in other words, allowing the Japanese
and Canadian officials to be present at US ports and to be looking
at cargo leaving the United States headed for Japan and Australia,
so if one of your questions is does this work the opposite way there--there
is a possibility of reciprocity but at this point the Container
Security Initiative is really focused on the US in preventing deadly
cargo from entering the United States.
Now there are some problems associated with this initiative and
we can talk a little bit about it during the question and answer
session but one is the issue of different levels of security existing
at different ports. There is no standardized--while there are certain
standards that the United States expects countries to meet if they
want to become a CSI port each agreement with a country is an individual
bilateral agreement, and so the kind of degrees of intelligence
sharing and specific provisions inherent with each--within each
bilateral agreement is not always the same from port to port. So
there is the issue of different possible levels of security with
these ports. Also, the US does not pay for these countries to receive
non-invasive inspection equipment as--as far as I can tell from
the research I've done and that creates a problem as well because
obviously different countries have different capacities for providing
the fund--the funds and you know the experts to be present at the
ports and actually doing the scanning of the cargo.
Let's see; one other actually program under the Container Security
Initiative is known as CT-PAT, Customs Trade Partnership Against
Terror--or Partnership Against Terrorism and this is a program in
which companies can promise the United States Government to institute
higher security standards on their own and when I refer to companies
I mean companies in charge of you know--who are going to be shipping
cargo and in exchange they can get expedited shipping. In other
words, their shipping is not slowed down significantly when they're
trying to put things out to sea and one figure that I came across
estimates that actually only about 11-percent of these countries
who are checked up on were followed up on in the sense that it was
verified that they actually instituted the additional security standards
that they said they would. So that's problematic as well.
Okay, now we're going to talk about what I'm really excited to
talk about here which is SUA. This--this handout I think would be
particularly for you guys; it's in the black folder. I'm going to
be going through it. Okay, so what I'm going to be addressing are
the amendments to the SUA Convention and the SUA Protocol. They
are two different treaties essentially; the SUA Convention is short
for the Convention for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against
the Safety of Maritime Navigation. And the SUA Protocol is shorthand
for Protocol for the Suppression of Unlawful Acts against the Safety
of Fixed Platforms; so when you see Protocol think platforms, but
I'm just going to refer to them as convention and Protocol.
As I stated earlier, the UN Convention of the Law in the Sea holds
that parties may not interdict ships on the high seas except if
they share the same State flag, if the vessel is sailing without
displaying a State nationality or refuses to confirm its nationality
or if an illegal act is clearly occurring aboard the vessel--piracy,
slave trade, illegal broadcasting, you know illicit drug trade and
that's important because the changes to the SUA Convention and SUA
Protocol which were originally drafted in 1988 get to these very
principles. The--the original SUA and Convention--SUA Convention
and Protocol were written in the spirit of understanding but it's
in the common interest in those States to suppress terrorism at
sea. And--and as most of you probably remember, the Achille Lauro
incident, the SUA Convention and SUA Protocol were written in direct
response to that. Just briefly, the Achille Lauro incident occurred
when PLO terrorists hijacked and Italian cruise liner. Egypt intervened
at some point to get to the ship to sail to Egypt and was going
to provide passage for the terrorists from Egypt to Tunisia I believe.
The aircraft carrying the terrorists was interdicted by United States
Fighter Pilots while it was in air--in the air and forced to land
in Italy on a NATO Base and I think the US Military Forces who were
there were actually--ended up being surrounded by Italian Military
Forces and there were lots of conflicting claims to jurisdiction
over what to do with the terrorists, how--how to handle them, and
what's important is that in terms of the US' claim to sovereignty,
an American--an elderly American citizen was killed. He was thrown
overboard, a wheelchair bound citizen and that's probably the image
that sticks with a lot of people. So the SUA was in direct response
to that.
The 1988 SUA Convention outlaws and permits interdiction on the
high seas to prohibit the seizure of ships by force--so another
words hijacking; acts of violence against persons onboard ships,
you know shooting them and throwing them overboard; or the places
of devices onboard a ship which are likely to damage or destroy
it you know--a bomb. These principles also applied to the 1988 SUA
Protocol, which as I said earlier deals with the safety of fixed
platforms, for instance and oil rig--so in other words blowing up
and oil rig--that kind of thing. Both the Protocol and the Convention
contain explicit prosecute or extradite provisions and that's all
to avoid the intense dispute that resulted after Achille Lauro.
What's interesting is that during the first 12 years of its life
very few States joined either the original SUA Convention or SUA
Protocol, but by 2002 67 States had signed the original version
and by the end of 2004 another 49 States had joined. As of June
2006, 136 States were party to the Convention--the 1988 SUA Convention
which represents about 92-percent of world tonnage and 126 parties
to the 1988 SUA Protocol which is about 87 and a half-percent of
world tonnage. And this is important because I'll explain as I--I'll
explain later, the amendments to the SUA Convention and SUA Protocol
were made in the aftermath of 9/11 and as you can tell membership
to the original Convention and Protocol jumped after 9/11 and you
also see those resulting amendments made.
Okay, the amendments actually passed in October 2005 at the IMO
Review Conference. The UN requested that the IMO reassess the safety
of shipping after 9/11 and to make sure that it would not be playing
a role in any kind of future incidents of catastrophic terrorism
and the United States unfortunately newly familiar with catastrophic
terrorism was asked to take the lead role in making amendments to
SUA.
The shortcomings of the original SUA Convention and SUA Protocol
included the fact that although they were aimed to stop piracy and
terrorism at sea by establishing and defining various violent offenses
as I mentioned earlier, they did not prohibit acts of terrorism
committed with the ship itself. In other words, using the ship as
a weapon to run into a harbor or to blow up in a harbor, to detonate
a nuclear bomb in a harbor; they also did not outlaw acts that did
not necessarily endanger the safe navigation by the ship directly
such as releasing biological, chemical, or nuclear substances from
the ship or from a fixed platform.
Additionally, the SUA Convention--the 1998 SUA Convention did
not prohibit transported suspected terrorists as defined under any
of the 12 UN Counter-Terrorisms Conventions some of which only came
into force in 1988 nor did it prohibit shipment of WMD and associated
delivery systems and related items including some tool-use equipment.
Now what did these new amendments of the SUA Convention and SUA
Protocol do? Well they expand the list of punishable crimes and
suspected offenses; so they attempt to address these kind of gaps
in the original version to include the use of a ship or fixed platform
to intimidate a population or compel a Government or international
organization including when a ship or platform is used in a manner
that can lead to cause death, serious injury or damage and that--that
provision there is actually known as the Terrorist Purpose Provision.
Additionally it outlaws WMD and missile related cargo smuggling.
It defines punishable offenses as those committed with a terrorist
purpose on the part of the offender or knowledge that the material
being transported is WMD or going to be used for the production
of WMD.
An official I spoke with at the State Department hailed the amendments
to the SUA Convention as making it the first International Criminal
Convention that outlaws the transport of certain dual use items
under certain conditions. You know so that's another significant
achievement.
The new Convention also--I'm sorry; the amended Convention also
contains what is known as the MPT Savings Clause which insures that
nothing in the amendments shall affect the rights, obligations,
and responsibilities of any of the parties to the new amended Convention.
And it does not give them any greater or any lesser rights or obligations
under the MPT than they previously had. We'll talk about it a little
bit later but this is one of the reasons India and Pakistan have
refused to join onto the amended Conventions.
Additionally, Article 8 of the SUA Convention--the amended SUA
Convention creates an enhanced ship-boarding regime that greatly
expands upon the very vague provisions that were included in the
original version. They are very detailed instructions now included
in the--the amended SUA Convention that talked about the process
of--of ship-boarding and how you go about it and most of it's drawn
from other preexisting Maritime Conventions such as Conventions
governing drug interdictions. And additionally there's an article
that contains provisions that protect the rights of innocent seafarers.
I believe one of the questions on the agenda is about how PSI or
SUA affects the shipping industry--commercial shipping and apparently
for a while there was intense disputes between representatives of
the shipping industry and proponents of the amendments, but they
were satisfactorily resolved in the end and actually some of these
International Unions of Seafarers have endorsed the new SUA amendments.
Okay, in terms of the crucial limitations on what SUA can achieve,
the difficulty here is that the parties who did not sign the original
1988 SUA Convention, and I have a list of those parties if anyone
is interested, such as Iran and North Korea, will likely be the
States of chief proliferation concern in the future, as they are
now and strengthening SUA by amending it does not increase the likelihood
that North Korea or Iran are going to be bound by it. The State
Department however maintains that the vessels of third-party States
used to ship these--these--on these proliferators' behalves are
the real concern and so for instance North Korea doesn't have a
formidable commercial fleet, so interdicting North Korean commercial
ships is not the point; it's interdicting third-party States ships
that North Korea maybe is using to either send or receive illicit
materials. So it is realistic that the State Department has argued
to try to bring third-party States into the enhanced SUA regime.
Another difficulty is that while unlawful transport of WMD is
prohibited by the new amendments to the original SUA Convention
it's not possible to observe illegal cargo stored away in the hull
in the same way that it's going to be possible to observe piracy
occurring on--on the deck of a ship or slave trade or something--something
of that manner, though I--I know that experts who deal with interdiction
and WMD and--and the like might know--know about the kind of technology
that the United States possesses and--and they have shared with
other countries in terms of being able to pick up radiological traces
or traces of certain other kinds of illicit materials you know--in
other words, something that you could point at a ship and you would
be getting some kind of data back and that would obviously be observable
without having to see it on the deck of the ship.
The Coast Guard also says that there are specific fact patterns
that exist that would in fact allow interdiction prior to being
given permission to board and this is pretty interesting. If there's
an eminent threat, if there is a need for self-defense against an
American Military Unit at sea or to the United States itself there
also--there's a whole catalog of kind of curious behavior that ships
can exhibit at sea that will raise the attention of the Coast Guard
and tip it off that perhaps this is a ship they want to look at
a little more closely.
Successful interdictions are most likely to result from good intelligence
which I think is something that was said before and reporting--not
necessarily a sea captain's hunch about a curious looking ship,
thought it's going to be important to have flexible arrangements
that allow a hunch of a sea captain which may be correct and in
some--some instances to be pursued. But in general the--if the intelligence
is not accurate it becomes much harder to catch proliferators. Now
criticisms of the amendments has passed; I said earlier that India
and Pakistan did not want to join onto the new Conventions because
of the MPT Savings Clause and--and in particular since the new amendments
do not permit the transfer of equipment or material used in the
production of vessel material to States that lacked comprehensive
international safeguards which India and Pakistan don't possess
as members of the MPT then the two States have objected to it as
discriminatory and refused to sign on. So failure to achieve--I'm
sorry; and the next point is that failure to achieve specific limited--specific
limited timeframe under which signatories must--must respond to
request support or otherwise forfeit their right to refuse boarding
was not achieved. So in other words, in a hypothetical scenario
in which the US sees a ship on the high seas and has reasonable
grounds to suspect that it's involved in one of these offenses under
SUA and it requests with the flag State aboard you know the flag
State can respond as soon as it wants, it can--it can respond not
at all, and that's part of the problem; I mean hopefully the flag
State would say either yes, no, you know let us get back to you
in a couple of hours, or we'll send someone out there ourselves--one
of our own fleet to take a look at it, or we'll allow a third-party
State to come and board but not you--but the bottom line is that
SUA doesn't put any kind of mandatory requirements of response on
any of its--its State parties so that's kind of a gray area and
I think a problem with SUA.
Additionally, in terms of--well actually I should say one of the--one
of the suggested provisions within SUA, one of the things that the
SUA provisions suggest is that States tell the--the UN that they
would like to agree to kind of blanket permission to go ahead and
board that they're allowed to institute that if they'd like to;
additionally they can agree to a four-hour timeframe, they can kind
of put kind of self-imposed limits on themselves, give themselves
four hours to agree to respond to a request to board or otherwise
forfeit the right, but those are only suggestions. They're not mandatory
provisions or requirements within SUA. And I think that the United
States and--and several other countries have really been pushing
for strong mandatory timeframes and limits within States need to
respond but unfortunately it--it didn't happen at this Review Conference.
Now in terms of the current status of the amended Conventions
it still remains to be seen if new amendments--if these new amendments
will become as popular as--as the original Conventions which as
I mentioned before have covered a large portion of shipping and
tonnage, because at this point Australia, Austria, France, Finland,
Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Turkey, Bulgaria, and the United States
have signed on since February 2006; that's 10 States and they've
only signed subject to ratification. It's not likely that the amended
Convention or Protocol will enter into force within the next year
because new amendments are only activated--the new amendments are
only activated 90 days after the date on which 12 States have signed
it without reservation as to ratification and acceptance or approval
or have actually deposited an instrument of ratification. And the
amended SUA Protocol does not come into force until ratification
from three States which are also party to the SUA Convention. I'm
sorry I mean the Protocol requires ratification from three states
which are also party to the SUA Convention but it cannot come into
force until the amended SUA Convention is already in force. So it's
not likely that we will see either of these come into force within
the next year. One official I spoke to at the Justice Department
suggested two to three years was a more realistic expectation.
And finally, I would say that the requirement for individual State
parties to criminalize the expanded list of offenses in the 2005
SUA amendments may also spell more delays. In other words, national
law will have to be changed in several countries before they want
to--before they're allowed to become a party.
And in conclusion, since 2002, by which time those States had
signed the original SUA Convention there was only one case of actual
interdiction under SUA rules that resulted in successful prosecution.
We can talk about that case a little bit more if you want; so this
statistic combined with principles of freedom of the seas and the
volunteering nature of the regime which I've just described means
that the future outlook for success or failure of SUA is a little
unclear and--but I think regardless, the increased attention to
the issue of enforcement via the ship-boarding regime is--is a major
step forward. And just to try to tie this back to PSI and--and in
a pretty quick fashion, I'll just kind of highlight for you now
the differences between the two. We talked about how they're related.
Okay, the question on the agenda says how does PSI fit within
SUA? And I think the question should actually be interpreted the
other way around. If anything I think it's a question of how SUA
fits within PSI and from what I can tell the relationship is more
of a complimentary relationship than--than one fitting neatly under
the other. First of all they arose from--they each had their own
different impetus; the SUA amendments came first after--in the aftermath
of 9/11 and the UN edict to the IMO to recess the safety of shipping.
PSI came a little later in 2003, I think after the AQ Khan Network
becomes known and after the frustrating So San incident; that was
embarrassing for the Bush Administration. But PSI focuses on WMD
proliferation while the SUA focuses on preventing terrorism, though
it also outlaws illicit WMD transported. I think SUA has a broader
counter-terrorism focus. And as I said earlier, because SUA is not
enforced yet, PSI--the PSI bilateral arrangements right now are
really the only game in town.
Let's see; I think there's an emphasis on the idea that PSI does
not require--it operates within existing legal authority; it does
not require any new legal authority and obviously SUA is an international
Convention and you know it took years to pass these new amendments
because we had to get all the States onboard, it had to work its
way through the IMO. So there's another sort of contrast between
the two. And I think that one of the things that the Undersecretary
of State Bob Joseph has mentioned is to talk about how we can link
interception of WMD materials under PSI to kind of taking down the
financial networks of WMD proliferators. I think that's also a unique
aspect of PSI and I don't think you find any kind of similar talk
about doing that with SUA.
So at this point that concludes my--my official comments; if anybody
has questions about these graphs I think they were explained--thank
you--in the context of the talk but as you can see there's overlap
in this Venn Diagram here between SUA and PSI. I have CSI touching
the SUA and PSI rings because CSI is not--it's obviously designed
to--to intercept illegal, dangerous, illicit, you know WMD coming
into the United States but it's not an actual interdiction initiative
or Convention in the same way that PSI and SUA are. It applies only
to ports. And then kind of outside floating around you've got the
over-arching principles established by the UN Convention Law of
the Sea, which I talked about earlier, including the principle of
you know high seas--Freedom of the High Seas and Safe Passage and
that sort of thing. You've got SOLAS, Safety of Life at Sea and
its addendum, the ISPS Code which as I said is--is very similar
to the NTSA, the domestic initiative. And again, the--the differences
between PSI and the SUA put into kind of visual illustration. But
that concludes remarks and I'm happy to take questions from you.
Moderator: Thank you very much Leah; I think your presentation
will generate a lot of questions. I think first though we will want
to hear from our other speaker and then we can address both of them
at the same time. I don't think I need to address--rather give an
introduction to Dr. Ian Davis but as you know he is our host--he
is the Co-Executive Director of BASIC. He has been very, very active
in the field of non-proliferation for several years and he's written
a--a very, very good paper which I recommend to all of you. It's
identified in his biography here; it's called Sailing into Uncharted
Waters: the Proliferation Security Initiative and the Law of the
Sea. It's a basic research report of 2004; it's where I learned
everything I know about the subject except for what I've learned
today. So I recommend it all to you and Ian, please--.
Ian Davis: Jim, thank you very much for
that kind introduction. I should say that--that research report
was written with an international lawyer holding my hand, which--which
probably accounts for its strength.
I want to discuss the linkages between open registries and illicit
trafficking of WMD on the high seas. As we found this--in the panel
discussions this morning, security interests in maritime areas are
not a recent development. It's evident by the long-held concerns
related to piracy and narcotics trafficking and it's rather self-evident
in the aftermath of 9/11 the security of maritime transportation--like
the security of international civil aviation--it's the subject of
intensive scrutiny. I think the main concerns are three-fold; first
the possibility that the terrorist groups might once again attack
shipping but on an even greater scale than the October 2000 attack
on the USS Cole or the attack on the French oil tanker MV
Limburg off the Yemen Coast two years later. Second, it was
feared that terrorists might employ a ship as a vehicle to launch
an attack on a target such as a port or another ship possibly using
a weapon of mass destruction; and third the terrorist groups would
attempt to exploit weaknesses in the global sea container system
and use international shipping as a means to transport individuals
or weaponry, in particular nuclear, chemical, biological, and radiological
devices in preparation for a terrorist attack. And I guess it's
the third scenario that is the more realistic one and is the one
that--that the PSI in particular and the SUA Convention--the amendment
to the Protocol to the SUA Convention is designed to forestall.
Leah expertly outlined the whole raft of new national and international
measures and initiatives which were introduced to counter these
potential threats to maritime security and the safety navigation
and the one that I've been interested to learn a little bit more
about which she didn't mention which was a new national approach
to strengthen the offshore maritime security which was introduced
by the Australian Government on December of 2004 and this was an
Australian Maritime Identification Zone and I hope in the presentations
in the afternoon we'll learn a little bit more about that particular
initiative. One of the things that struck us at BASIC was that--and
it was an issue that seemingly had escaped the international attention
was the role of Flag States themselves. The PSI for example retained
traditional deference to flag State authority on the high seas.
In other words, apart from certain special cases which are defined
in international law, vessels on the high seas are subject to no
authority that of the State whose flag they fly. Since the early
days of sea-going vessels flags have served to identify a ship's
nationality. All ships must be registered and must fly the flag
of the country where they are registered and obey the maritime laws
of that country. Those laws are specific to the flag State but in
general they are influenced by international laws that have been
accepted and ratified by the flag State.
It has been said for example and I quote--the color and design
of a piece of cloth tattered or fresh, well recognized or obscure,
carries with it the theoretically complete legal system of the originating
State and establishes almost all the relationships the ship will
have with her crew and the outside world. So we therefore set
out to explore the importance of flags and especially open registries
often referred to as flags of convenience and the trafficking
of WMD and whether tied to regulations were desirable and feasible
as a means of enhancing the PSI. Now this was an area six months
ago that was completely new to me and I didn't realize what sort
of kind of worms I was opening when I started to look at this issue
and it may be helpful to give just a little bit of a background
on the origins and nature of open registries.
The--it's true to say the open registry system did not emerge
in its current format until the early--the earlier 20th Century
but the practice of using foreign flags has existed for several
centuries. The custom is generally recognized as originating in
Europe in the 16th Century when English merchant ships flew the
Spanish--flew the Spanish flag in order to bypass Spain's monopoly
on trades of the West Indies.
By the 19th Century many ships navigating the Eastern Mediterranean
employed foreign flags as a means of gaining protection for the
most powerful navies operating in the region. By the early 1920s
however ship owners began to employ foreign flags on their vessels,
not for motives of trading or naval protection, but increasingly
for economic reason. By World War II flagging out had become customary
in international shipping as US companies in particular sought to
reduce operating costs and achieving even greater profit margins.
The rapid expansion of the open registry system during the latter
half of the 20th Century is largely attributable to the enormous
economic benefits that convenience flags offered both the ship owners
and States willing to set up an open registry. I mean I'm sure we're
all aware that one of the most profound aspects of globalization
is the volume of international trade facilitated by--by a complex
global transportation system. Ninety-percent of the world's goods
are moved by cargo ships and US ocean-born trade was worth $800
billion in 2003. The open registries account for about 20-percent
of vessels and nearly 50-percent of gross tonnage in the global
shipping market today.
While the maritime transport system has been a critical component
of the global economy with the limited fees and flexibility of open
registries allowing greater profits there is a downside to this
arrangement. Ships registered under those flags generally have the
worst record for losses at sea, higher rates of accidents, and often
exploitative working conditions for the seamen. And some of the
most catastrophic oil spills particularly in the--in the 1960s and
1970s also involved vessels registered under flags of convenience.
However, pressure for tighter controls has brought some positive
changes to the open registry system in recent years and the case
here of Singapore for example is illustrative. In 1966, Singapore
set up a closed shipping registry restricting the registering of
vessels of those owned only by Singaporean citizens. Three years
later it opened it up its registry to foreign ship owners, establishing
the country as a flag of convenience ostensibly to get proper training
for its seafarers.
In the early 1980s however Singapore passed new national merchant
shipping regulations which converted the country's open registry
to what some described as a quasi flag of convenience. Now quasi
flags of convenience offer some of--some or all of the advantages
of a traditional open registry but differ in that--in that the State
hosting the registry already possesses or has the ability to develop
the administrative machinery to effectively impose national or international
regulations on their flag ships. So like flags of convenience, quasi
flags of convenience do not tax corporate profits and require only
a registration fee and annual tonnage charges. However, they do
enforce strict regulations on ship manning, safety, and management
and stipulate that all owners must be identifiable for liability.
In the case of Singapore registration is now restricted to ships
owned either wholly or in part by Singaporean nationals and companies
based in Singapore accompanied by a disclosure of the owner's identity.
In addition, ship owners wishing to register their vessels now have
to produce evidence of the vessel's seaworthiness and Singapore
has also ratified the SOLAS Convention which protects safety at
sea and the MARPOL Convention that seeks to prevent accidents leading
to maritime pollution.
Now since the emergence of Singapore as a quasi flag of convenience
other small nations such as Bermuda, the Bahamas, and Gibraltar
have set up similar registers. And in addition just to complicate
things further and an attempt to halt the steady decline in ship
registration in traditional maritime nations, countries like the
United Kingdom and Norway have set up so-called captive registries
in the Isle of Man in the case of the United Kingdom and the Norwegian
International Shipping Registry located in Bergen in the case of
Norway. Likewise here the aim is to attract ship owners back to
traditional registries bartering some of the benefits of convenience
flags.
So in short what you have is--is a--we have a much greater diversity
within the registry system. We have an attempt to raise standards
among some of the flags of convenience States and within the closed
registries there's been a further deregulation. So what does all
this have to do with WMD trafficking and what--to what extent do
flags of convenience increase security vulnerabilities and make
it easier for terrorists to smuggle drugs, people, contraband, and
arms critical to financing their operations and also potentially
the transport of illicit--of WMD materials? Well it certainly appears
to be the case that these newer flags of convenience States such
as Cambodia and until recently Tonga that have the most poorly regulated
registries. Within the last four years ships registered in both
countries have been the subject of investigations regarding their
suspected involvement in the--in illicit activity generally. Indeed
the Tongan registry was closed down in June 2003 following repeated
incidents of weapons trafficking onboard its flag ships. Similarly
in June 2002 the French Navy seized a Cambodian flagged vessel reportedly
on suspicion of narcotics smuggling. One of the key security aspects
is that ship owners are not usually obliged to disclose their identities
when registering their vessels in flags of convenient States, so
therefore they're able to minimize liability in the event of a problem
occurring onboard one of their ships. Owners can hide behind front
companies known as brass plates and remain anonymous, an advantage
offered by both Liberia and Cambodian registries. And in the absence
of effective regulatory measures, ship owners can rapidly acquire
and dispose of their vessels in second-hand markets. Apparently
in the bulk shipping sector this is--this level of flexibility is
critical as the timing of fleet expansion or reduction is critical
to their business success.
Whether--and a lot of this is conjectured of the States because
again many of these areas it's very difficult to get a handle on
some of these issues but it would seem to me that the poorly regulated
open registry system also produces an environment that is attractive
to those engaged in illicit trafficking of controlled goods including
WMD related materials, technology, and equipment. Flags of convenience
States like Cambodia that do not require disclosure of identity
or conduct, intrusive background checks during ship registration
provide a degree of protection against detection for the would-be
trafficker.
Shipping registered in--in flags of convenient States have also
been involved in several smuggling incidents involving both State
and non-State actors. But non-State actors in particular--apparently
convenience flags have played a role in a range of criminal and
terrorist activities. Most significantly, the Al Qaeda network has
allegedly used vessels operating--operating under the Tongan and
the Cambodian flags of convenience as a means of transporting individuals,
weapons, and explosives.
After the capture of Al Qaeda's alleged maritime strategist in
November 2002 for example, US officials claim it had identified
approximately 15 cargo ships registered in various flags of convenience
States that have been used to support the networks of activities
around the world. And during the trial of the suspected perpetrators
of the August 1998 US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania it
was revealed that a vessel controlled by Osama Bin Laden was used
to deliver supplies to the bombers.
Now all of the evidence is by no means conclusive; one conclusion
that can be drawn is that the Al Qaeda network has successfully
exploited lax regulatory procedures in flags of convenience States
and may at one point had successfully exploited regulatory procedures--may
at one point have controlled several vessels registered under more
than one convenience flag, although there is no publicly available
evidence that its alleged fleet of vessels has been involved in
illicit trafficking of WMD related materials. It is also known that
the AQ Khan network has made use of flags of convenience flagged
vessels to transport nuclear equipment and technology. We know this
because of the interception and seizure of the BBC China, a German
owned vessel registered in Antigua and Barbuda, and other flags
of convenience States.
Although knowledge of the means by which the Khan network transferred
shipments is still incomplete it--it seems to me it's entirely plausible
that cargo ships flagged in convenience States played a major role.
For example, in 1994 and 1995 centrifuge components manufactured
in Malaysia were transported by cargo ship from Pakistan to Dubai,
a major transportation point for the Khan network and onto Iran,
one of Khan's major customers. But whether flags of convenience
vessels were employed in this case it is unclear.
Incidents of State use of flags of convenience registered shipping
for illicit trafficking have also occurred. We know Korea is one
of the main culprits. In April 2003 for example, a North Korean
owned freighter, the Pong Sui was intercepted and brought
into Australia's territorial waters on suspicion of being involved
in narcotics smuggling; after conducting searches of the ship the
Australian authorities seized 125-kilograms of heroin and arrested
the crew and the ship's captain. Again the Pong Sui was registered
in Tuvalu, another flag of convenience State. And of course the
So San interception was another North Korean owned vessel
which was registered in Cambodia. So there's kind of a pattern here
and the evidence--you know there isn't a large amount of anecdotal
evidence for it but sufficient to--I would suggest that--that it's--you
know the evidence is clear enough that registered--that FOC registered
ships have been employed both--by both State and non-State actors
for a range of illicit purposes. The fact that the US Government
has been keen to agree to bilateral boarding arrangements with several
key flags of convenience States is also illustrative I think not
only of the high percentage of international shipping that is registered
under those flags but also the potential security threat posed by
convenience flags. The US Government has assessed that there may
be up to 50 ships registered under flags of convenience that are
directly controlled by [inaudible] crime rings and terrorist networks.
And frequent changes in flags of convenience registration make tracking
these ships and identifying their owners far more difficult.
So what does all this add up to; what are the kinds of conclusions
we've reached so far? I'd stress at the moment we--we--most of our
work has just been trying to get a handle on the extent of the problem
you know how the different flags of convenience registries work
and as conclusions at this state are pretty tentative we're planning
to do further research and analysis and get out and do some interviewing
to try to get a stronger handle on the nature of this problem. I
mean essential to this issue as in many others in the post-9/11
world is--is have we got the right balance between competing economic
and security interest in dealing with this issue? The shipping out
industry for example will argue that the flexibility provided by
open registries enhanced the competitiveness of products in world
markets and bring a variety of quality goods to our homes at low
costs. Since we were unable to--to get a representative of the shipping
industry here I'll give you a quote from one of their magazines
which stuck out in my mind and it said your VCR was carried from
Hong Kong for about $1 ocean shipping service from Asia; added about
40-cents; the price of the sneakers you're wearing and it cost 3-cents
to put that bottle of German beer in your refrigerator.
Now already the--in terms of broadening the scope of the PSI the--the
high-level political meeting that was held in Warsaw in June this
year has--has talked about strengthening efforts to interdict financial
transactions between proliferators and suppliers and the kind of
black market networks and--and illegitimate businesses and front
companies that--that make trafficking possible. And it seems to
me that in the context of looking in that environment you have to
take another look at the role of open registries and Flag States.
And my conjecture would be if it could be shown that tighter regulation
of open registries would--could significantly enhance the prospect
of keeping the majority of shipping WMD free and that the cost of
so doing would be a doubling in the transportation costs it seemed
to me that an extra three-cents on the bottle of a German beer coming
into the United States might be a price worth paying.
I'd like to be able to come back to you in six months time with
some more detailed analysis and some potential ideas about how the
regulatory approach might well be tightened. There have been--many
people have looked to this over many years; in particular the International
Transport Federation have been looking--you know have had a campaign
on flags of convenience since the 1940s and periodically a number
of States have got together to try and tighten the regulations.
And given the economic interests I'm now under no illusion that
any regulatory tightening will be quite a challenge but I leave
it there for now and look forward to some questions.
Moderator: Yeah; okay, well thank you very much. I might
just ask you to make a comment--you both said the third question
[inaudible] would be what impact does the PSI have on the commercial
shipping industry? And I take it your answer is probably not much
and--and worth the price but can you make any comparable comment
about the SUA and those kinds of activities you were talking about?
Leah Kuchinsky: I believe that there is a provision within
the amended SUA Convention that speaks to any damages that might
be caused during an interdiction and kind of the claims that a commercial
business could make if any of their cargo was damaged or if their
business of shipping their cargo was significantly slowed. And I
understand that those specific provisions are very explicit and
very strong and that was one of the reasons that ultimately some
of the--the ship managers and seafarers were placated with the SUA
Convention amendments as--as they were written. I don't actually
have them in front of me but it's understood that the United States
has a very good strong reputation of following through on--on doing
what it says it's going to do when it comes to these types of issues
on paying for any damage that's done or disruption of business.
Moderator: Okay; thank you, so you're--both of you say that
economics should not be a major factor in these various Conventions?
Ian Davis: Can I just respond to that as well, Jim? I think
in terms of the PSI the impact has been you know negligible, but
I think in the maritime security measures the response from the
shipping industry has been slightly different. Again I wouldn't
like to put words into their mouths but I've got a document here
in front of me which was a report from a cargo and supply chain--Security
Trans Conference here in DC in July and in the conclusions some
of the--and this may not reflect the shipping industry opinion across
the board but the--the belief among some of the respondents said
that was terrorism is greatly exaggerated and is already corrupting
the industry and another speaker said if we're not careful our overreactions
to 9/11 become--could become a greater threat to the American economy
than Al Qaeda. So you can see that the--there is certainly some
economic tensions in this discussion.
Moderator: Who--who was the author of that--I mean the publisher?
Ian Davis: This is--this is the Eye for Transport Organization;
it was the 5th North American Cargo Security Forum Conference
here in Washington.
Moderator: All right; well the floor is now open and we
have about 30 minutes--not more than that before we have to break
and I see one hand already.
Question: Yeah; Jim [Inaudible] of the Heritage Foundation
and I mean I'd like to make a comment on the broader aspects of
the economic security in the maritime domain. Though--though it's
true that the transportation cost is a very small component of the
overall cost of an item, the argument that the shippers would make
is that--that's a very, very competitive environment and their per
unit profits are--are really razor thin on the orders of cents per
unit. And so even a--a marginal--and it's a very, very competitive
area, so even a marginal increase in cost significantly impacts
their profit and their--and their business model. So they are very--they
are very sensitive to operating costs and so that says two--one--two
things--is one is if you do something it really has to almost be
universal and create a level playing field otherwise it's very,
very difficult for anybody to absorb that and not--in a sense become
non-competitive. The other--the other point is okay then if you
use okay let's make it a level playing field so everybody has to
absorb the cost, so in a sense nobody gets a competitive advantage
and you don't shift this to the other and then the problem you have
is--is you wind up is--you know WMD--potential WMD traffickers are
such a miniscule percentage of global trade that you're imposing
a global-wide cost on a system when the odds are 90.99999-percent
that any one shipment doesn't have WMD in it, you know and it's
like you know--instead of just stopping people that speed on the
street we just stop every car. You know and so how do you--and so
that becomes a difficult thing to justify when you're putting a
cost in the 99.9-percent of the system that's not a problem. And
so what you really wind up with is two--what I found is two things--is
the only--the--the security initiatives that work best in this domain
are things that you can make a business case for. If there is something
that you can do that reduces liability that increases asset visibility
that--that you know addresses some other safety or security or business
concern and it also has a security spin-off on it then you've got
a much better prospect of having that be adopted. And then the other
I think is--is the advantage to things like PSI as opposed--as opposed
to some kind of universal you know keep--you know WMD free cargo
like--kind of like fair-trade coffee is--is it focuses the resources
on the people that you think are the trouble as opposed to the 99-percent
of the shippers that you don't; so that's my only--.
Moderator: Good; well thank you--very helpful. Any comment
from either of you?
Ian Davis: Yeah; just briefly, I mean I don't disagree with--with
any of that really. I think we--you know I wasn't trying to make
light of the sensitivities of--of shippers and operating costs and
I do think measures need to be universally agreed. It's an argument
you also hear about you know you're persecuting 99-percent of those
that are--are operating within a system, but you hear also in other
areas of arms control, for example arms export controls, you know.
You--you face people who want to ex--have to go through this regulatory
process to export something so it's--it's--and you know getting
the balance right there between the deregulated system and the system
that provides a level of you know support for an arms control and
national security agenda is a difficult balance to--to achieve.
I think what it does mean is that if there is any effort to look
at whether we've got the balance right we do need to include shippers
around the table and--and lessons from many arms control agreements
or those when that's happened that worked the best--I think about
the Chemical Weapons Convention for example which used--maybe the
Bilateral Weapons Protocol--is not a good example of that because
that didn't quite work out but certainly the shippers need to be
there.
Leah Kuchinsky: Yeah; I would just respond to your--to your
very wise comments by pointing to the--the CT-PAT, the Customs Trade
Partnership Against Terrorism; I don't know if you're--if you're
familiar with it but you know I think that's probably a model of
what you're talking about where you create business incentives for
companies to abide by security standards and initiatives that the
Government has you know that get expedited cargo--their cargo is
expedited when it's--when it's being shipped out. So I think that's
an example of--of what you're talking about.
Moderator: Which agreement are you talking about?
Leah Kuchinsky: It's--it's a part of the Container Security
Initiative; it's called CT-PAT.
Question: Yeah; I mean CT--that's actually separate from
CSI. It's a separately administered program.
Leah Kuchinsky: Okay.
Question: And the interesting thing about CT-PAT--Consumer
Trade Partnership Against Terrorism is it's a US initiative and
it's basically that companies voluntarily agree to adopt a range
of security practices that--I mean the good news about CT-PAT is
there has been a flood of companies that have been applying for
CT-PAT membership and there does seem to be a--a--some liability
benefits in that there does seem to be a willingness on part of
insurers to--to credit that. The--the bad news about CT-PAT is there--there
is very little effective auditing in the program, so--so whether
companies are actually adapting these practices and being consistent
with them and whether those practices are actually useful or not
that--that's kind of the thing. So the regime--it's a good--it's
a voluntary regime; it's a good idea. It's got--it's got a lot of
growing to do yet to actually be effective but--but it is a case
where--where people perceive there's a business benefit to being
a CT-PAT member and so they--they rush to sign up.
Moderator: Yes; please stand.
Question: Just a couple of thoughts about maritime security
which is an area that we've spent some time on in my current position;
in Latin America and the Caribbean they'll charge a shipper about
$50 a scan for a container and that--that's the--the cost to have
it done at a particular port. We look at these programs, rather
than using the analogy of the cop stopping the speeder, we look
at it more in terms of automobile insurance. It's an insurance policy.
The--the penalty for not carrying the policy if there were to be
a catastrophic incident in the US port would essentially be to close
down world container trade for a fairly significant period of time.
By way of an example, in I think 2003 there was a strike on the
West Coast ports in the United States; the strike lasted six days.
It closed container traffic over the Pacific for some weeks in--in
the same way an automobile accident even after the cars are removed
from the road will stop traffic for a while. That's the sense that
we look at--at it and the--the--one of the advantages that shippers
tell us essentially is that by taking the--improving their own security
they're improving their marginal effectiveness against pilferage
and other things that have a direct commercial effect on their activities.
Leah Kuchinsky: Well I agree with your comments and I--some
of the research I did revealed--revealed the same sentiments--the
idea that having these kinds of scanning measures in place really
would be a source of reassurance I guess in the event that some
kind of catastrophic event did occur. You know you could reassure
the public by saying look; we have these--we have these you know
kinds of provisions in place and--and that way global shipping--container
shipping would not have to grind to a complete halt. You could still
rely on--on certain types of measures that you had in place. I think
on the flipside, people might question or lose confidence in--in
the measures that were in place.
Question: Yeah; and one very quick thing I--I made a note
and then I didn't read it. I think that James is completely right
about auditing that as a major gap in these issues and I think that's
true across the board on security assistance programs that--that
we look at. There is very little follow-up to see if they're actually
working.
Moderator: Could you expand on that for me a bit? Auditing
of--what would be--?
Question: Auditing of the effectiveness notionally for example
the training program; we rarely see anyone go back six months later
to see what effect the training has had on--on the people who have
been trained. I think the true--the--it's true across the board
in other kinds of activities--sometimes you're dealing with Intel
where the information is not accessible but where it is accessible
there just doesn't seem to be much of a consistent effort to determine
what's actually been done with it. You give people material and
it tends to disappear sometimes.
Moderator: Does PSI do that kind of auditing on a bilateral
basis from time to time or--? Do you know--does anybody know? No;
nobody knows--okay. [Laughs] All right; any other questions--yes?
Question: Thank you--two questions if I may; the first one
relating to--to the commercial interests--as far as I know and please
correct me if I'm mistaking. I'm looking at you from the State Department,
but as far as I know the US set up a fund to cover liability issues
in relation to--to interdiction operations, so if I'm not mistaken,
my question to you is if you know if other countries have--have
set up similar funds? And my second question in relation to the
question of jurisdiction and the high seas--again I'm going to--to
say something so if I'm wrong, please--please correct me. But as
far as I know the--the US has certain laws that--that gives the
US authority to--to inspect or interdict a ship if the goods on
that ship originates from the US even if the ship you know belongs
to a third--third party or a third--third country. And again if
I'm not mistaken, do you know if other countries have enacted similar
legislation? Thank you.
Moderator: Matt, would you like to have the floor to answer
that question?
Matt: I--the second question I can't--can't answer; I just
don't know the--the [inaudible], and you know will find out from
one of our lawyers. When it comes to--to providing compensation
for--in--in circumstances related to Americans there is--there is
the US Government and understands wherever there is--there is a
claim or there is a process of [inaudible].
Moderator: What--what does that apply to, Matt?
Matt: Hmm?
Moderator: That fund applies to what?
Matt: In--in cases where commercial shippers want to apply
when they--they feel that there has been some sort of damage or
commercial problem related to--to an interdiction whether it be
WMD related or across the other areas that--that the US Government
does interdictions.
Leah Kuchinsky: And I can just speak to that a little bit
as well. I don't have the details, but like I said before, the claims
provision--the SUA's one in front of me--but to answer your question,
the US does have a very strong reputation on that issue of responding
to those claims and following through and an expert at the State
Department that I spoke with,--I'm sorry, the Justice Department,
you know explained that the fact that the US has a very strong reputation
on--on handling those claims and following--following up on them.
Moderator: Okay;
Question: I just have two questions. Have there been any
claims against PSI related to [inaudible]?
Matt: I don't know; the State Department doesn't process
those and isn't involved in that process.
Question: And you don't have any--?
Leah Kuchinsky: No; I don't have any information on that
and--and--.
Question: Amazing.
Moderator: Has this answered your question or do you want
to follow-up there?
Question: Well I guess my question was more--you know not
so much about US roles--all the countries have enacted similar arrangements
both [inaudible], and so [inaudible], a greater authority to your
country you know where the goods originally--[inaudible].
Moderator: Does anybody around the table from various countries
know the answer to that? I take it the answer is nobody knows.
Ian James: We--we actually have the special provision in
our export law that says if there is an agreement among the various
Government agencies to seize a good which is being regarded as being
critical for proliferation reasons we can try to do so. Nevertheless,
we will have to have the cooperation for example; we have a good
aboard I believe it was an Italian ship going to [Cairo] off of
the [Suez] Canal and we requested the Egyptian authorities to cooperate
with us to get the thing from the ship that we wanted to not go
to the country where it was heading to. This went smoothly but nevertheless
without the cooperation of the Egyptian Government we wouldn't have
been able to do that. And the ship followed our requests, so you
have to have the cooperation of the ship's owner or agency that
runs that ship.
Question: I think Leah had a very sort of important point
that was in there and I wanted to make sure I understood properly.
Leah Kuchinsky: Okay.
Question: The SUA Convention now has 136 member States
and that's--and it's about a significant percentage of shipping
if I remember.
Leah Kuchinsky: This is a significant percentage of members
of the IMO; I mean there are 166 member States in the IMO and--.
Right; it covers--.
Question: So that's--so the--the basic Convention is well--is
well--was well populated?
Leah Kuchinsky: Yes.
Question: Okay; and--and the protocol as well. So now the
question is--but those--the basic Convention doesn't have the--doesn't
provide the authority to board--to go after WMD; that's in the subsequent
amendments?
Leah Kuchinsky: That's correct.
Question: All right; but the subsequent amendments become
effective I think you said--all that is required is that 12 States
that are parties to the Convention actually ratify the amendments.
And then it becomes binding on--on everyone; is that the--?
Leah Kuchinsky: Well it will become--my understanding is
that they have signed the--the 10 States who have signed now are
subject to--no, I don't believe it will become binding on everyone.
I think the other States will have to sign on in the way that they
had to--to sign onto the original Convention. It will become binding
in the sense that it will go into effect for the States that have
signed on. Right now they've signed on subject to ratification which
means they're going to probably observe it as if it were in effect,
but my understanding is that it's--.
Question: Okay; so in other words, it becomes effective
as to those--as effective against no one formally until at least
12 sign?
Leah Kuchinsky: Right.
Question: And when 12 sign then this new version is binding
on them and the old--the old version is binding on the others?
Leah Kuchinsky: Right; uh-hm, right because you wouldn't
want to kind of alienate those who don't want to sign onto the new
one but are still signed onto the old one and it--.
Moderator: Do the people who have signed onto the amendments
get any privileged treatment in terms of passage of trade at one
place or another?
Leah Kuchinsky: No, not--not that I'm aware of; I think
from my conversations with people at the Coast Guard and the State
Department and the Justice Department the idea is that once you
have this Convention--or this amendment in place and it's in effect
people will be seen as--as good States. I mean it will be seen as
a good thing to have joined onto this amended, tightened SUA Convention
and it's going to be something that eventually if you're not a member
of it you know you're--you're kind of slightly I suppose looked
down on. The idea is that--and yeah it's a voluntary regime but
the idea is that the more people that join it you know the more
powerful it becomes and it's something that States who want to be
respected as--as good, mature States who care about you know the
safety and security of shipping do. But I don't--I'm not aware of
any specific--.
Moderator: But you know [inaudible] of what we've been
talking about it sounds to me as though the idea of incentives could
be fairly important and it doesn't sound as though from what you
all have said as though they're being employed enough to really
attract people into it. Can you comment on that?
Leah Kuchinsky: Well I mean it's--
Moderator: I'm talking economic incentives.
Leah Kuchinsky: Yeah; I mean it's an interesting idea.
I--I--and in all the research that I did and conversations that
I had I don't recall any specific discussions about economic incentives
in SUA.
Ian Davis: I mean I would say it was the security incentives
that are getting people to sign up to it.
Moderator: Yeah; that's there but a lot of people think
it's not that important you know.
Ian Davis: Yeah, yeah.
Moderator: two finger--?
Question: Yeah; I was just going to say I wonder if we
could incorporate this back into Resolution 1540--if the State has
the requirement to control all of its WMD assets through export
controls, through domestic security measures and the rest, perhaps
this is a--kind of an element that should--you know is included
in this; in other words your vessel is going overseas--I'm sort
of reaching here, but it's an extension of your jurisdiction and
your authority and you may want to--maybe there's an obligation
to take every step that would reinforce suppression of WMD terrorism
even if it's physically external to your State. So I--maybe that's
a way to give this a second basis for sort of--to promote this--this
Convention; it's not an incentive but it might be--if you--if you
captured it within 1540 or if--and perhaps that would be a way of
encouraging States to--to join.
Moderator: Yeah; any other--yes, go ahead?
Question: I have a follow-up question on this issue. What
is the level of [inaudible] in the State that under these [inaudible]--of
the vessel carrying WMD? I mean I can think of a scenario where
in several years once these amendments go into effect the United
States could arguably try to halt every vessel that comes out of
a North Korean harbor so long as that vessel is flagged by a signatory
to these amendments simply on the proposition that a significant
portion of North Korean trade involves illicit materials and therefore
it would not be unreasonable to stop every North Korean vessel.
Leah Kuchinsky: That's an excellent--
Moderator: Level of evidence for interception?
Leah Kuchinsky: Right; that--that's an excellent question
and one that I struggled with and had to ask again and again of
these officials and I got different answers sometimes, but essentially
the definition of reasonable grounds which is the term that's used
in the SUA--amended Convention--it's--it's not made explicit within
the text of the amended SUA Convention but it's akin to the concept
of reasonable suspicion in the United States, so it's defined as
less than probable cause--some quantum of evidence less than 51-percent
but it's apparently similar to the level of suspicion needed to
conduct a [Terry] stop which I guess the lawyers in the room would
be familiar with--with that concept. An official at the Justice
Department told me that in practicality reasonable grounds amounts
to whatever the flag State to be boarded wants it to be. In other
words, it's up to the country seeking to board to satisfy the flag
State. And if the flag State is not satisfied they can say no; that's
not reasonable. You know I'm sorry; there will be no boarding.
Question: The boarding State still has to acquire permission
first though from the flag State?
Leah Kuchinsky: Oh yes--oh certainly, right, right; and
I think--I'm sorry if there was confusion in the context of my earlier
remarks. Like--like I said, it's suggested within the SUA--the new
SUA that States should self-impose like a four-hour timeframe in
which they must respond either yes or no or otherwise forfeit their
right to not be boarded or that they should provide blanket permission
to always board under SUA. But those are just suggestions; I mean
otherwise the idea that sovereignty of the flag State still stands
on the high seas, I mean that's upheld within SUA and so that certainly
is upheld.
Ian Davis: And at it's a minimum it just--it just increases
the--the range of offenses over which the United States and others
can actually ask permission of Flag States.
Moderator: Yes?
Question: Just out of curiosity, which was the successful
interdiction that was carried on under the SUA rules--you mentioned
that there was only one?
Leah Kuchinsky: Uh-hm; there was only one and I actually
recommend an article written by Brad [Kieserman], Chief of the Legal
Operations Group at the Coast Guard, who has done a little bit--well
done a significant amount of work on--on SUA but he cites a March
2002 case in which the US Coast Guard intercepted a ship that was
staffed with a People's Republic of China crew and they intercepted
it off the Coast of Hawaii and discovered the murder of two of the
crew by--by the cook onboard and they were prosecuted in the United--and
the murderer was prosecuted in the United States, and that was under
the original SUA Convention. So it was you know causing injury to
someone aboard a ship as one of the--the conditions that I mentioned
earlier.
Moderator: Didn't like the food huh?
Leah Kuchinsky: [Laughs]
Moderator: Yes?
Question: Sorry to take the floor again; I--I realize we're
breaking for lunch soon. Just a quick question to Leah and more
of a point of clarification really; you highlighted that India and
Pakistan have refused to--to sign onto the 2005 amendments because
of the--NPT Savings Clause.
Leah Kuchinsky: Right.
Question: Is that point also relevant to--to Israel given
Israel's you know status as a non-NPT member?
Leah Kuchinsky: I do not believe that Israel signed the
original SUA Convention. I'll check for you--no; Israel did not
sign the original SUA Convention or SUA Protocol, so whereas Pakistan
did and let's see if India is on here as well. I'm sure it is if
it was at the--at the Conference--and India did as well; so the
question there was an issue of are these States that are already
observing the SUA Convention, the 1988 version, going to you know
sign onto the new amended Convention, the strengthened the Convention
as well, and they decided not to whereas Israel never agreed to
the--to sign onto the original Convention, which--which is interesting
considering the implications of the Achille Lauro I think originally
the plan was to highjack the Achille Lauro and take it to Israel
and then attack Israeli civilians there but anyway that's kind of
tangential.
Moderator: Further comments--questions? I have one maybe
and we can end up with this; it's kind of a lead into the next session
too I think and that is this morning when I first started hearing
what you all were saying I was very strongly in favor of the view
that there was a serious need for further integration of all these
various efforts. You came up with you know circles and your diagram
and I would have thought yes, those circles ought to be coalesced
into one. Now I--I hear people saying that perhaps there is some
advantage and specialization if you will and that perhaps the integration
of all of these things is not necessarily the right way to go. I
would have been Sandy a fan of putting all the things on the 1540
and trying to operate it in some coordinated way from that vantage
point but I'm not so sure that everybody is coming to that same
kind of view that I instinctively came to as I came here this morning.
Do either of you want to comment on that? We can discuss it this
afternoon, which is probably more on that subject.
Ian Davis: Yeah; just--thanks Jim--just an initial reflection
on that. I think it really depends on the different aspects of the
PSI and of the different maritime security arrangements that--at
kind of an operation level I think sometimes you--you go with what's
best. I think you know there are attempts to get closer integration
within particular alliances through something NATO. NATO already
conducts interdiction operations and maybe they'll be doing bilateral
arrangements with other countries in different regions to try and
get the operational side of things tighter. I think when it comes
to the legal side and maybe some of the politics of it again it's--it's
partly a question of kind of harmonizing legal--different legalized--legal
approaches maybe with--again within regional [inaudible] you know
with the EU and within other regional actors. So I think--I don't
think I have a kind of clear answer to it really. I think it really--my
short answer at that stage and maybe it--it will be a little bit
clearer by this afternoon is that it depends--it really just depends
on what aspect of it you're talking about.
Leah Kuchinsky: Yeah; I would say that I think overlap
is--is useful because you know if perhaps you can't get them under
one of these initiatives or Conventions you can get them under something
else. And also if you think about it when you look at this graph
here you want to make sure that in every section of the ocean--I
mean high seas, exclusive economic zone, territorial, contiguous--wherever
that you've got something covering this issue, something kind of
following you know so if they're on the high seas they're covered
by SUA; if they're in territorial, contiguous--wherever you know
you have them being dealt with under PSI. You know and then you've
got CSI kind of I guess as a last resort if the--if the item actually
gets to port and it wasn't you know examined at the point of departure.
So I think overlap can be useful but--but at the same time there
are--as much of a general threat as there is--when it comes to WMD
proliferation there are different ways specific narrow ways in which
these threats can be addressed and I think that--that everything
we've got out there right now is useful. It will be interesting
to see what happens when SUA comes into effect and if it--if it
is very effective and if it is popular as--as a tool of WMD proliferation.
Moderator: Any--any other comments?
Question: I'm not sure how CSI actually helps since it
only searches cargo coming to the United States.
Leah Kuchinsky: Well that's true; I guess if you're looking
at it from a US-centric perspective I mean protecting the United
States and our borders and our--and our nation from having a nuclear
weapon smuggled into the United States, but--but from an objective
perspective in terms of stopping proliferation where generally--you're
right. I mean like I said there are--have been offers from the US
of reciprocity but most States have not taken--.
Question: In terms of interdicting threats coming to the
United States to find a weapon in a shipping [inaudible] scenario
is pretty plausible, so I'm not really sure it's protecting us in
any way.
Leah Kuchinsky: Okay, okay.
Moderator: Items are likely to be carried by a terrorist
in a suitcase; don't you think so?
Question: Right.
Moderator: Yeah; I think so. Now should we have a luncheon
announcement about how we do this?
Ian Davis: Yes; I understand we--there should be lunch
provided outside. I believe it's just--just out back here and you're
very welcome to join us for lunch. It's--we have an hour's break
for lunch before we reconvene here at half past one.
Moderator: And don't murder the cook. [Laughs]
Session 3-The PSI, States of Concern and 'The
Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism'
Moderator: Please--we're ready to get
started with the next exciting session in our roundtable today.
This will be Panel Three or Session Three, which I'm particularly
excited about formally titled The PSI States a Concern and the
Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. If you've looked
at the agenda you'll see what we are addressing here which is to
what extent is the PSI targeting specific trading routes between
States of concerns, what role might the PSI play if sanctions are
imposed on Iran, how critical is good intelligence, the effectiveness
of the PSI, and how does the Bush/Putin global initiative to combat
nuclear terrorism add value to the PSI?
Now before I get started I would note--as I sort of mentioned
earlier in the day, I did desperately try--I really did desperately
try to get someone from the intelligence community to come and speak
at this. I did go around to the Public Affairs Offices of all of
the different intelligence components, at least the ones that are
overt, and plead with them--you know I would have thrown myself
at their feet if I knew where they were to go to. And I couldn't
do it; I couldn't get them to come; I'm sorry about that. I'm sure
it says something interesting about them and intelligence and PSI
but I'm not quite sure what that is. But regardless we do have two
excellent speakers to address this issue and since somebody from
the intelligence community isn't there we'll just use their time
and perhaps let them go on a little bit long than some of the others.
The first speaker is going to be Mary Beth Nikitin--did I pronounce
that right? Okay; she is a Fellow in the CSIS International Security
Program Center for Strategic and International Studies where she
concentrates on issues related to preventing weapons of mass destruction
proliferation and terrorism. She is Coordinator of strengthening
the Global Partnership Project, a consortium of 23 research institutes
in 18--count them--18 European, Asian, and North American countries,
working to build political and financial support for G8 efforts
to reduce the dangers of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons.
She's been involved with many projects including the Congressional
Proliferation Prevention Forum, heading off of Iranian Nuclear Weapons
Capabilities project, the Changing [Face] of Proliferation, and
the South Asian Nuclear Risk Reduction Center. She has worked at
the UN Department for Disarmament Affairs and at the Center for
Nonproliferation Studies in Monterey where she was the Program Associate
for the Nonproliferation Education Group in International Organizations
and Nonproliferation Projects and received her Masters Degree at
the Monterey Institute of International Studies and Bachelors from
Dartmouth College.
After her, will be speaking to my left--not to conflate with ideology--.
Chuck Peña, who obviously I know personally, is a Senior Fellow
at the George Washington University Homeland Security Policy Institute.
He is also a Senior Fellow with the Coalition for Realistic Foreign
Policy, Senior Fellow with the George Washington University Homeland
Security Policy Institute and Advisor on the Straus Military Reform
Project. He's the author of the recently published book, which I
had the pleasure of reviewing--Winning the Un-War: A New Strategy
for the War on Terrorism, which I highly recommend; co-author
of The Search for WMD: Nonproliferation Intelligence and Preemption
in the New Security Environment; and co-author of Existing
Iraq: Why the US Must End the Military Occupation and Renew the
War against Al Qaeda. He's a very prolific researcher and writer;
he is an analyst for MSNBC Television, was an analyst for
Global TV in Canada and Channel One News during the
Iraq War. He was previously the Director of Defense Policy Studies
at the CATO Institute and has over 20 years experience as a Defense
Policy and Program Expert and Senior Manager. He's also had a variety
of Government clients including OSD, Program and Analysis and Evaluation,
Ballistic Missile Defense Organization, JSC, DARPA, Defense Threat
Reduction Agency, Air Force, Army, Navy, Department of Homeland
Security, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The other
areas that he's worked on are almost too numerous to enumerate,
so in the interest of time I'll just skip over them and ask Mary
Beth to go ahead and give her presentation. I will note when it
comes time to question and answers, just please wait for the microphone
to come to you so we can get the fullness of your remarks and all
of your acoustic glory.
Mary Beth Nikitin: Thank you very much
to David and Ian for inviting me to speak today. When I got the
call asking to talk about how the global initiative fits into PSI,
I thought good question because I had a lot of people already calling
me asking what the global initiative [Laughs] to combat nuclear
terrorism is and so it gave me a--a good opportunity to look into
this and to find out what has happened since it was announced in
July by Presidents Bush and Putin at their bilateral summit. Many--I
thought--I--I was hoping I wouldn't have to say that it was just
the one thing the US and Russia can agree on right now--that nuclear
terrorism is a bad thing. [Laughs] And I think I will be
able to flush it out for you and while there are no answers yet
on how this is all going to work out and how these ambitious goals
laid out by the Presidents are going to be implemented, we can at
least some forward movement.
The real architects I should mention of this initiative are Undersecretary
of State Robert Joseph and Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak,
and they're both personally very committed to this initiative and
I think that does give hope for the success of it. And it's clear
that this message--the message coming from Bush and Putin as a bilateral
initiative, called global but so far it's still--it's--it was presented
bilaterally was that Russia and the US are no longer looking at
the nuclear threat as coming from each other but clearly now have
said it's coming from terrorists--potential terrorists. So that's
very important for a bilateral relationship with Russia I think.
And this initiative was part of the package--really the positives
of this bilateral summit were all nuclear. The US and Russia agreed
to start negotiations on a civil nuclear cooperation agreement and
also to work on the spent fuel repository in Russia. So this of
course is the strategic aspect of the summit that came about.
And it really is by many analysts including distinguished Senator--former
Senator Sam Nunn as well as Graham Allison and others, people have
all said that this is really the first comprehensive approach to
tackling the nuclear terrorism threat and many people on the outside
have been recommending such an approach for some years, so there--there
was an initial reaction of--of hope and applause and you know let's
see how it really gets done.
So I will try to just first explain the structure and you can
kind of make some comparisons to--to PSI as we go and then talk
about the goals and then--and give you some thoughts on--on what
the problems are and what I think is the--on the right track right
now.
Well just like PSI this--this initiative which I--I recommend
in addition to the fact sheet that was in your packet. If you're
interested reading more really the most definitive publication so
far is--was a speech by Bob Joseph on July 18th at the Capitol Hill
Club. Other than that we are kind of going by Wade Boyd's good work
as well. [Laughs] But we should be seeing more information
coming out.
Anyway they describe in this speech--Dr. Joseph describes this
as a flexible framework to prevent, detect, and respond to the threat
of nuclear terrorism. And I think they probably learned some lessons
from the way that PSI was presented at first and sort of the gut
reactions countries had to--to that approach. And this time around
enhanced cooperation is really emphasized in capacity building,
none of which is objectionable. And like PSI although with a little
different wording you do have a group of initial partner nations--not
core members as was called [Laughs]--and these partner nations
are supposed to agree on a Statement of Principles which the US
and Russia presumably also would like to keep as close as possible
to the Presidential statement and so they--they are working on--the
State Department is working now with Russia to secure agreement
on the State of Principles and then they'll have a kickoff conference
sometimes--it was supposed to be this fall but it may be later than
that. It's not clear yet when the Statement of Principles will be
announced and the initial working groups will be formed and some
sort of more definition will be given. The International Atomic
Energy Agency will be an official observer. That's as much definition
as I could get before this talk unfortunately but I think that--that's
something we'll explore later.
As far as the legal basis I think this--perhaps I would say was
also a lesson from the PSI experience. In these documents it's very
clearly laid out what the legal basis will be for this global initiative.
It says you know not exclusively but in large part the International
Convention on suppression of acts of nuclear terrorism is--is the
legal basis as well as the convention on physical protection of
nuclear materials and UN Security Council Resolutions 1540 and 1373.
And so this I'm just going over the--the structure of it now but
I think that's important that they laid out from the beginning that
countries will already have legal--legal commitments to the work
under this initiative.
And one distinguishing factor from PSI is that the focus of this
initiative is really on the internal actions of States--what's going
on within their borders and their--and there's a phrase that keeps
getting repeated officially as layered defense in-depth, so [Laughs]
I would translate this really to think you could think about it
as it's the inter-agency that they want--they want to--all of these
aspects and goals of this global initiative to prevent nuclear terrorism,
this is recognizing that you can't do--you can't do it without all
the different layers of interdiction and law enforcement and materials
protection--all working together. And this really is the most important
part of this initiative and you know it's kind of well why didn't
we do this before? Sometimes it seems like but--but I think it's
important that--that's there at least in the strategy for it.
So you--if you look at the fact sheet, really the important part
of this summary is the top--the top six bullets, right toward the
top. Under background there's a lot of information including about
PSI, about what the US has done and--I mean clearly it--it has a
purpose in--in coming up on 9/11 for the Administration to show
all the things that's done on counter-proliferation etcetera and
but for the global initiative specifically it's those--those top
six bullets.
Now prevention under the Prevention Agenda, they--it emphasizes
accounting, control, and physical production of nuclear material,
radioactive sources and nuclear facilities. This excludes safeguarding
nuclear weapons or nuclear facilities or materials that are used
for military purposes. It also lays out--they also lay out as one
of the ambitions to have a national nuclear material information
database. In other words, each individual country would make sure
they knew what their nuclear stocks were, where it all is, and then
there would be some sort of way to coordinate and share that--that
information as needed with others.
That really highlights one of the aspects of this which is inspiring
individual countries to take responsibilities for what they have
in their--within their borders, which is similar to 1540 in some
ways as well. Next, detection is a very big emphasis of this initiative
and I think when I was talking with officials this kept coming up
as what would distinguish it--that you know the--the prevention
side is covered by some of the threat reduction programs, the global
threat reduction initiative, the cooperative threat reduction programs,
theoretically the global partnership against the spread of WMD,
whereas this global initiative would take it one step farther and
really help share knowledge about detection to suppress illicit
trafficking of materials. And the goal is to create interoperable
and complimentary ways of detection, so I--I would conjecture that--that
would mean a lot of intel(ligence)-sharing hopefully and at least
best practices. But the other interesting thing about the detection
part of this is that you know also mentioning like the new PSI Conference
stated that there be a focus on funds, trafficking of--of you know
funds transfers that would allow for this trafficking and also cyberspace--how
to prevent the trafficking of information about nuclear weapons
expertise and--and design etcetera through cyberspace, so that--that
is probably one of the most mysterious parts of the initiative but
one that would be very interesting to see how--how countries can
really share information. Now I know that Russia--Russia very focused
on that aspect.
Then the next big category would be mitigation and this is another
I guess it's fairly new although I believe some of you probably
have other things so you could contribute on what NATO countries
have done together already, but this is about emergency response
and consequence management, joint exercises and planning with the
goal that each country would develop its own capability to the extent
that they would need to and I think you know for partially self-interests
the US would want that to happen so that we or other--other nations
who are very prepared wouldn't need--need to help you know--would--we
would automatically help others but it's better to have the--every
country focused on what would happen if--if such a catastrophic
event would occur.
And--and then the--there's another section called Technical
Means: The Cooperation to Develop Technical Means; so I--I leave
that to further interpretation but I--I think that--that is certainly
is part of the intelligence collection and border detection capabilities
etcetera that we already see very advanced in Europe but where could
it be elsewhere in the world. Then law enforcement, I think that
this is a crucial part--we mentioned earlier with PSI that perhaps
in the end any interdiction has to involve law enforcement, so the
same with the trafficking issue. How do you bring the real people
on the ground at the borders etcetera, Customs, law enforcement--and
this is the same challenges that we see with the export control
implementation but this--it has a special focus on nuclear terrorism.
So they say--the language uses all measures possible for law enforcement
and enhanced forensics--technologies, developing that together.
And then there's national legal frameworks part which you've see
the bullets; I mean that--that is of course very much tied in with
the 1540 requirements that--what--if traffickers are caught that
you'll be able to prosecute. And that's another one of those well--it
seems very obvious but it's a--we're still not there yet kind of
thing.
So another interesting--so that's kind of the basic structure
and basic goals, and I'd just like to highlight a few other things
and then I will pass the floor over to our colleague, in the--in
Dr. Joseph's speech on July 18th he also--there's a long section
where he talks about transformational diplomacy and how this which
of course is Secretary Rice's initiative and I would say that--and
you know he--he makes an argument that this global initiative is
part of that; I really say it's--it reveals a trend that perhaps
is characteristic of PSI in some ways; as well it's really tailored
diplomacy. You know we hear about tailored deterrents now all the
time; I think this is you know one of the things that doctor--oh
who is it from NDU--who is it from NDU [Whispers]--Dr. Love--sorry;
that would have been easy to remember--what he said was you know
that the beauty of PSI basically is this flexibility and the ability
to--to yeah--to tailor your bilateral action with the crisis at
hand, and so you see some of the same language in this speech saying
that strategies should--the strategies for this global initiative
should fit the conditions facing that partner country. So it's really
you know--this is very characteristic of the whole different approach
to--to nonproliferation ultimately but you know the--you have great
ambitions to tailor everything but can you do it without the--the
basic commitment across the board at a multilateral level and I
think what's we're really challenged with in this field right now.
Anyway [Laughs]--and then he also mentioned that this initiative
should be the platform for implementing the Nuclear Terrorism Convention--again
a reference to the multilateral instrument that already is there.
And I'll try not to repeat myself which I did in my notes [Laughs]--yeah;
and okay so the specific relationship of PSI and this global initiative,
I think most people I have spoke to envision that PSI is a part
of a global initiative and we heard that earlier this morning already.
In other words, the global initiative will fill gaps in the Proliferation
Security Initiative and it's really focused on the operational and
on the technical challenges of combating the nuclear terrorism threat.
PSI is focused on trade whereas a global initiative is focused on
pathways of nuclear proliferation that lead to terrorist end use.
This is from the speech again; I think there are a lot of things
that have to be unpacked still in this language but basically a
global initiative is focused on each individual country's capacity
within their borders as--and interoperability across borders to
exchange information and as well as bolstering commitment to the
material protection, to--to detection emergency response attribution
and criminal justice. They also--the Presidents also said that there
should be a six-month reporting mechanism for this initiative so
we'll see what form that takes--whether it's just bilateral statements
or something move involved to be--to be seen.
So a few concluding thoughts; at CSIS we designed--well in the
winter of 2004, a nuclear terrorism scenario exercise called Black
Dawn and we did that to--with a prevention agenda in mind. And because
at that time there was a hugely noticeable gap in threat perception
between the United States which seemed to be absolutely obsessed
with WMD terrorism and even our closest allies in Europe who were
skeptical toward the fact of this happening not to mention the rest
of the world, who did not feel it to be a threat to them, and so
part of that exercise was--was on laying out the steps, the scenario
in other words--the steps that terrorists would take, what information
you would be getting, intel(ligence); you know what could you do
to interdict after a material had been stolen etcetera with the
ultimate message that you know the best--the best solution will
be securing the material at the--at the source? But part of that
exercise too--the things that we--that really participants got a
lot out of and we have presented this in Brussels, with [Solana]
as one of the co-hosts and then to the NATO Parliamentary Assembly,
the EU Parliament and then in Moscow to a private briefing for Russian
officials and the most--the biggest benefit our participants seem
to have gotten is being across the table from someone you know who
they don't talk to normally. In other words, this interagency aspect--the--the
WMD you know nuclear scientists sitting in the same room with the
intelligence analysts and/or the counterterrorism people; in other
words that these connections just agency to agency were really important
so--and I think that what--the two really positive things I got
and hopeful with parts of talking to some of the officials in the
US Government who are tasked with this global initiative is that
they are--they are structuring this to have interagency between
countries. In other words, you know not just the Foreign Ministry
officials talking to each other but to have a wider set of experts
there from each country. So I mean it hasn't happened yet presumably
but this is a very positive trend and it will be interesting to
see how that will actually happen.
The other thing is the whole threat perception aspect. You know
the big question is how much will countries if they're going to
join this initiative what will be their motivations? Do they see
this as a serious threat? Do they think that this--this is just
part of being a good nonproliferation citizen or you know are there
other things that they're worried about and so apparently there
are going to be briefings--threat briefings from--that countries--all
countries are going to be giving so that you get different perspectives.
In other words, maybe some--you know maybe [Jordan]--okay this is
not from the [Jordan] Government but you know [Jordanians] are worried
that there is something being trafficked through their territory
if something happened accidentally or they'd be liable further down
the road. In other words, what are the different countries worried
about and then they can focus on those things and--and make a positive
contribution.
Now of course with this list of extremely ambitious tasks there
are a lot of questions; one will be a momentum. As someone who has
been following the G8 Global Partnership I can assure you that it's
possible for the momentum [Laughs] to--to kind of wane after
a couple of years or for the original purpose which for example
that the G8 was to combat the spread of WMD terrorism--and prevent
terrorism that has kind of evolved really to--it has kind of stayed
rather; it has not evolved to that point. It's still really an international
cooperative threat reduction for the former Soviet Union. And so
what will happen with this initiative? How will it become really
global and not just a bilateral basis? And I think one thing will
be the right approach consensus building. Getting the legal basis
clear and articulating to other countries what their role can be
and--and I think that the US Government will be wise to give the
International Atomic Energy Agency more of--you know a leading role
in this and to not always have it be a--sort of more of an afterthought
you know and--because I think the IAEA's legitimacy for the--for
much of the world is very--very much underestimated sometimes by--by
us. So [Laughs] that's my plug for the IAEA; and I think
that they have an expanded mission both on interdiction and you
know interviewing AQ Khan network people who are involved in that--you
know the sort of expanded role of the IAEA, we need to bring their
people in from the beginning on this nuclear terrorism problem as
well because I think there's a lot of knowledge to be shared through
them.
Next, you know is this going to be a bureaucratic immobilizer
or is it just one extra layer, one more initiative, you know? Most
people just sigh and say okay one more global initiative. From the
people that I've talked to and--and in the US Government it does
seem to have at least people saying you know what is my agency's
role in this? You know and this is what many people on the outside
were saying for years is that there's high level support you know
that you needed to get the bureaucracy kind of kick-started and
so it's still to be determined what you know the US and Russian
Governments clearly have their Presidential commitments but what
about the rest of the world and how that works? Really it's too
early to judge but something like this is--is needed and I'm not
sure it will be--will be possible to measure success [Laughs]
because you know this summer I was writing a book chapter for an
assessment that we did kind of collectively at CSIS on Five Years
after 9/11, and it was a painful group edit process but one
of the things that other editors kept sticking in was they wanted
to say we've been successful in preventing nuclear terrorism and
I--I--I just argued to take that out because I think that you know
until you know--until you're no longer here, it will be impossible
to stay. I think this is a struggle that we just have to keep doing
and we can't ever say we've been successful. So I--I--you know we'll--we'll
continue to monitor it--monitor it. Thanks.
Moderator: Thank you very much for that presentation. I
think you have brought some much needed light to a subject much
like Winston Churchill said about the Iron Curtain--something that's--well
we all know what his statement was and up until now I found this
initiative rather [inaudible], so hopefully we'll be able to poke
a few holes and shed some light on that.
I know we'll have--I'm sure we'll have a lot of questions; I know
when we--when we turn to the question and answer session. Now we
have Chuck Peña who I'm looking equally forward to and Chuck why
don't you just go ahead?
Chuck Peña: Thanks David; thanks for the
kind introduction and Ian, also thank--thank you for inviting me
to speak. I'm used to going across the pond the other way to--to
speak at--at BASIC events and so it's really nice to be able to--to
do that here without having to take a--a six-hour--six-hour flight
to--to London.
David made the mistake of saying I'm--I'm an analyst for MSNBC
and also made the mistake of saying we might have some extra time
to talk. The worst thing you can do is giving a talking head more
time to talk and an open microphone but I will do my best to--to
keep my remarks relatively brief. I want--I want to touch on this
question of--of intelligence; it was raised this morning on--on
several occasions and by--by way of full disclosure, my day job
is working for a consulting company where we have exclusively US
Government clients, not--I'm not working with intelligence community
clients but we do have intelligence community clients. I--I need
to say that I'm not here representing either my company or the United
States Government but simply in some of my other capacities.
This--this question of intelligence is--is important because I
think you know with all the rhetoric and everything surrounding
PSI in--in particular but also just in more generally nonproliferation
and--and counter-proliferation efforts intelligence is everything.
You--you cannot act unless you know something; you can't act on--on
what you don't know and there's a lot at stake here with--with PSI
if you look at it in terms of economic value just represented by
containers. I know Jim you said that you don't think that they'll
smuggle in--in a container and you know we--we have no idea how--how
they might do anything but--and I'm sorry if I'm repeating some
stats that were mentioned earlier this morning because I had a meeting
so I was a little bit late getting here, but 50-percent of the value
of US imports to the United States come via 16,000,000 containers
annually--5.7 million come via sea containers. In 2003 the last
year I was able to get some consistent statistics there were 5,000,000
loaded truck crossings from Canada representing over $116 billion
in commerce.
The--the problem here as I think others have alluded to is that
you know you can't screen all of these things. You would just bring
the--the economy to a grinding halt and so how do you--how do you
do that? PSI is--is one attempt to have a more tailored approach
but like everything you know what matters is the--where the--the
rubber meets the road so--so to speak how do you get this done and
you can't get it done without--without good intelligence. If you
don't know where to look, I mean this is literally a needle in the
haystack type operation, and so there are basically two kinds of
intelligence that we need to be concerned with and one is human
intelligence--what do our spies tell us about what's going on in
the trafficking of--and I'm going to focus on--on nuclear material
because at least in my book, my bias is there's only one weapon
of mass destruction and that's a nuclear weapon. I mean chemical
and biological weapons are nasty but unless it's a contagious pathogen
they don't cause mass destruction whereas even a sub-kiloton nuclear
weapon causes pretty massive destruction in terms of physical damage
and--and people killed.
So with--with human intelligence the problem is one, do you have
enough spies in all the places that you--you want to spy on to--who
can report back to you; and then what's the reliability of--of your
source? You know they--you can get information but how good is that
information? Certainly if you're talking about potentially having
to inspect containers or vehicles whether they be ships, trucks,
or airplanes and you can't inspect all of them but somebody tips
you off that maybe there's a nuclear weapon in a particular container
you--you want to be pretty certain that--about that. I mean the
last thing you want quite frankly are more curveball sources telling
you about all the WMD being trafficked around--around the world.
I mean that would bring the economy to--to a grinding halt. The
other problem with human intelligence is the ability to confirm
it; you get it from one source but is one source good enough? Is
one source enough for you to take action? Is it actionable intelligence?
And that's a problem; it is the ability to confirm what somebody
tells you. Is--is that true; is it misinformation put out there
deliberately to deceive you so that you look in one place while
the--the actual material or weapon is being transported via a different
manner? The other is the timeliness of--of human intelligence--how
quickly can--can that intelligence get back to you and--and by the
time you get it can you take action on it or is it you know two
weeks old and--and so the information was where you know the material
was in Point A but now it's had two weeks to transit from Point
A to someplace else and so you may have some idea that it--it's
on a truck for example but the truck has now had two weeks to drive
someplace--to an airport, to a seaport to hand it off to another
mode of transportation. So you need the human intelligence but there--there
are real shortcomings to relying completely on--on human intelligence
especially if you're talking about exercising limited resources
for interdiction of--of--of ships or planes or--or trucks or--or
whatever as they are--are transiting from Point A to Point B.
So the other--the other form of intelligence that--that we rely
on is technical intelligence--our ability to--to gather data via
technical means; ideal--in a perfect world you combine human and
technical intelligence to give you a--a better picture and intelligence
is not a science--it's an art and so you know there's never something
as--as a 100-percent certainty or in George Tenet's famous words
a slam dunk. There is no such thing like that in the intelligence
world. So the--the technical thing is something actually I've--I've
been focusing on and it--it's a real problem; so if you've got--you
know you've got this thing called the Proliferation Security Initiative
but you want to--you want to be able to target it, you want to be
able to tailor it, you want to know where to go, well you've got
to be able--and if you have limited or no human intelligence about
you know the--the possible--or where the materials or a weapon may
be moving around then you have to rely on technical intelligence
you know so how do I--how do I detect whether or not there might
be a loose nuke somewhere in the world transiting potentially find
its--its way to the United States or some--some other country? And
this is a huge challenge; despite what we might see in the movies,
we--we don't have the same capability that--that Hollywood attributes
to us. And part of the--so the question then becomes what is it
you're really trying to detect. I mean that's--that's an important
question and--and the--and my answer although I'm not sure that--that
we would get consensus agreement on this is that you really are
trying to detect weapons grade plutonium or highly-enriched uranium.
Leah I think you mentioned you know something about radiation detection;
well there's--a problem is that we have the ability to detect radiation,
but weapons grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium are very
specific and most of the detectors that are out there, and I'll
get into this a little bit, are really good at picking up radiation
sources, but really bad at distinguishing those sources from what
would--what I would consider to be the threat which is you know
plutonium or highly enriched uranium. And the--the operating contexts
for this is that there are lots of natural sources of radiation
that are being shipped around the world every day--just two--kitty
litter and toilets. Ceramic tiles are a great source of natural
radiation and they set off these detectors that--that are--that
you know Customers and other people have all the time because all
the detectors are doing is detecting a radiation source; it's not
discriminating what that radiation source is. And--and so the--the
technical challenge is to build detectors that can discriminate
between say kitty litter and weapons grade plutonium and highly-enriched
uranium. There is at least one detector technology that can do that;
there may be--that I'm aware of--there may be more. High purity
germanium which is of course expensive to--to product; it's actually
a manmade crystallization process. It--literally they grow this
stuff in labs and they use it in detectors and without going into
all the technical detail it's spectroscopy and it can--and by looking
at peaks and valleys it can distinguish weapons grade plutonium
and highly enriched uranium which have specific signatures from
all this other radiation that--that a typical radiation detector
can--can detect.
But they're--they're expensive and even they have limitations and--and
let me talk about that in terms of you know again how do you implement
something like the Proliferation Security Initiative? How--how do
you do that on--on the ground and--and so the--what you're trying
to do is detect small quantities of stuff in very large containers.
These--these plants--plant containers that we have in the room are
probably big enough to put enough WPG or HEU into constitute so
that somebody could build you know a--a nuclear device. And then
you have to--then you put that thing inside a container. Now what--what
is a container? Well a container could be a truck or actually a
container could be a--a box or--or a bunch of boxes inside a truck.
If you look at sea shipping they use what they call a 20-foot equivalent
unit to measure containers and a TEU is 20-feet long by 8-feet wide
by 8 ½-feet high and an average container is two TEUs.
So imagine you know a planter like that inside a big container
and you're trying to--you're trying to scan that essentially to
find the source of--of radiation that is a threat source of radiation
as opposed to some other natural source or--or--and these detectors
are great when you can get pretty close to the source--a few feet,
maybe a few--a few meters, but once it's inside a large container
and then surrounded by lots of other stuff, legitimate commerce
stuff, some of which may be naturally emitting radiation and therefore
making it more difficult to--to find the signal, you have--you have
a big problem because you--you can't--you can't detect it. And then
you take a container like that and you put it on a ship. Some ships
can carry 15,000 containers, so imagine trying to find a planter
that size inside a ship that has 15,000 containers and that is--that
is a huge technical challenge. We--we can build radiation portals
that trucks and cars can drive through and they can--they can sort
of detect radiation. I don't--I know one company that is trying
to build these high purity germanium detectors and incorporate them
into actual radiation portals where you drive--drive through so
that it can detect weapons grade plutonium and highly-enriched uranium.
The problem is that they're very big, they're very expensive, and
you know if you wanted to put these around just--just the US borders
it would be horrendously expensive at least--and then of course
if you're talking about putting them around in other countries around
the world, which is what you would want to do with PSI is put these
detectors in--with every country that is cooperating with you. You
want them to have this capability so that you would kind of know
what it is you're looking for and when you need to take action based
on--on what the detectors tell you.
You can build--you can build them for vehicle traffic--land vehicle
traffic but to the best of my knowledge nobody has built one where
you can sort of drive a ship into port and it you know goes through
the--the portal and the portal you know--a light goes off and says
hey we got--we got a bomb on--onboard. They--you know you have to
take the containers out and then you probably have to individually
scan containers. So again highlights the--the need for intelligence;
you need to know what you're looking for. You need to know that
you have a suspect container onboard a particular ship and--and
you have to get to that container rather than trying to--can you
imagine trying to scan 15,000 containers as they unload a ship at--at
port? It can be done; it's a time-consuming process and I would
bet that there are a whole lot of people involved in the chain of
custody of those containers who would not be terribly happy knowing
that their shipments are being delayed because of--of a scanning
process, which is why with PSI we can't look at everything. I mean
it's--it's a tailored--it's a targeted program. We cannot scan the
millions of containers that--that come into the United States anymore
than we can--we can have every single truck and car that enters
the United States via Canada or Mexico drive through a radiation
portal.
I mean it--it just takes--it takes time and--and then you multiply
that by the--the millions of people that transit across the borders
in--in any given year. So the--the problem, the technical challenge
decides just the ability to do it--you can do it but then you--you
have this problem of well okay if you're looking at countries of
concern and they're probably not going to let you set up shop inside
this country is my guess you've got to be able to do it via other
means probably airborne means; we don't have that you know eye in
the sky capability just yet of--of putting the stuff up in satellites
and letting it look down at--at the earth and saying oh wow; I found
it--I found a Coke-can size of--of HEU you know sitting someplace
where it probably shouldn't--shouldn't be sitting, so we need--need
to do something about it. I mean that would be the perfect situation;
if you had that kind of capability I mean you could implement something
like PSI you know pretty easily is had the ability to just scan
from above a port of--if you could scan a ship as it's in transit.
I mean if you could do all of this stuff perfectly with very low
false positives, PSI would be relatively easy although probably
very costly to implement and so that--that seems to me when you
look at you know trying to--to scan things--be able to see what's
going on inside a country of origin or a country of concern that
maybe you know shipping stuff out that you don't want shipped out,
you've got all the potential transit points in other countries that
legitimate shipping and--and air traffic goes through and those
are--those are concerns and PSI is looking at all of these things
and--and I'm not--actually what I am describing is--is in essence
how PSI is intended to work.
You've got the transit itself from over there to over here and
then you've got over here. Well in a--or in some other country where
maybe it's being shipped to, not necessarily to--to detonate as--as
a weapon, the problem is we have very limited ability to detect
what's going on in all of those instances. We have the technology
to be able to--to do it under fairly I don't know controlled conditions
where you know you have--you can go up to a truck and with a hand-scanner
you know scan the cargo and then empty the cargo out and--and scan
individual boxes; you could scan you know containers coming--coming
off of ships but we can't--we--we- don't have the ability to do--do
it widespread, so when you look at what you need to be able to take
action--action being actual interdiction or--or another--as the
Defense Department might want to do--destruction of--of a device
you know there's--there's so much stuff flowing whether it's by
sea, air, or land that we can't scan that we--we can't look at that
we have no idea what's in it. And so then when you look at something
like PSI and I--I'm supportive of the concept of--of PSI; I think
it's the right kind of approach for the US Government to take one
has to also be realistic and that--there are huge, huge holes in--in
something like PSI and it's all driven by intelligence--either human
intelligence, reliable human intelligence to tell you, you know
which shipments are the ones you need to go look at because you
can--we can't inspect all of them or technical intelligence that
helps you, you know ping in all sorts of places around the world
to know--to know where--what you're looking at.
Only a very small percentage of the--the cargo traffic is--is being
inspected in any way, shape, or form in some sort of rigorous fashion
with technology that--that allows you to have a good idea of whether
or not there's--there's an actual threat--threat source onboard.
The rest of it goes through scott-free, so the--the real problem
is of course that--that 95-percent or 90 to 95-percent of stuff
that isn't being checked, what is the likelihood that what you're
really worried about is on that and not on the--not on the things
that--that you're looking at simply because you don't have enough
knowledge to know to look throughout somewhere else into the--in
that 90-percent that--that you're not looking at. And that--I think
that highlights you know what the--what I call the long--long pole
in the tent and--and the real problem for--for PSI as--as it moves
forward is how--how to get better intelligence so that the focused
efforts of--of PSI are actually focused on--on the right things.
I mean so I'll just leave it at that.
Moderator: Okay; thank you Chuck--very intriguing presentation.
It's going to generate a lot of questions I'm sure. We're now in
the question and answer session of this panel. It's my prerogative
to ask the first one; after that well just raise your hands and
wait for the mic to come to you if you don't have it in front of
you. I'm going to address this question to you Mary; I noticed in
the handout from the White House regarding the initiative when they
talk about cooperative efforts, the very first point is as follows.
Improve accounting, control, and physical protection of nuclear
material and radioactive substances as well as security of nuclear
facilities--. Now this sounds to me very much like what the
United States Government has been doing for over a decade with the
Cooperative Threat Reduction Program, i.e. Nunn-Lugar. How if at
all is this portion of the initiative different from what supposedly
is going on in Nunn-Lugar and if it's not, are they just taking
Nunn-Lugar and claiming it as their own?
Mary Beth Nikitin: Okay; sure--well the--actually Nunn-Lugar
is dealing with military facilities and military materials--nuclear
materials for military purposes in large part. And it was explicit
that this initiative will cover--will not cover military facilities
or materials, so that is the big difference and that was one of
the big gaps. If you look at the map and--and Anthony--where I can't
forget Anthony--[Laughs] Report that they come out with every
year Securing the Bomb, this year that was their big emphasis
actually that you know we have made more progress; you know maybe
we've made as much progress as we're going to get with the Bratislava
Initiative, with--between the US and Russia and the new 2008 deadline
to secure nuclear material and weapons there. Although that's--that's
I think very debatable.
Really we have to think about everywhere else in the world and
how do you motivate countries to make sure standards are up to par
at all levels of facilities and this relates to something that I've
neglected to mention actually and I meant to which is the global
threat reduction initiative which is looking at HEU powered research
reactors around the world. And presumably that will be part of this
first bullet point--in other words getting that material out but
it's not explicit so I hope that helps.
Moderator: Thank you--questions? Just pass the mic up this
way, please.
Question: Thank you--thank you very much. I thought that
was very informative, both of you. It seems to me that what you're
saying, Charles especially is that without significant improvements
in detection that PSI cannot be very effective. It may be a general
deterrent in some fashion to make it really work you have to do
something about detection. Now there is a Bill in the Senate now
which may or may not pass this week about expanding the capacity
of the US to deal with container security. There is a Bill sponsored
by Senator Lugar and Senator Obama about providing some funds among
other things; it provides funds for improving detection capacity
overseas. And there is a third Bill sponsored by Senator--I'm sorry,
Representative Don Lundgren of California about kind of a deadline--expediting
matters, so that things will happen more rapidly. So you have quite
a bit of Congressional pressure to do something about detection
including providing funds for it; you have the President's initiative
in St. Petersburg with President Putin which as you said is focusing
on detection.
Now I would think that the next logical thing would be in terms
of implementing the--the Putin/Bush initiative to focus mainly on
detection and to try to find some way of linking detection to PSI.
For example, and this would be a an [inaudible] of everybody around
the table probably there's--if there are 60 countries that have
signed on to PSI wouldn't it be a logical thing to talk with each
of them about improving their capacity to improve detection and
providing funds in those cases where it may not--may not have the
funds to do this with? Now Charles you were fairly pessimistic about
the ability to do much in this area but you know of course that
the mega-ports initiative. I gather that the--in the situation in
the Rotterdam it's going very well? You know about the DOE's second
line of defense which strikes me as being on the right track; why
wouldn't the--the big push be to put more funds, more energy into
this aspect of it as a way of really making PSI work? Could you
comment on that general thesis please?
Chuck Peña: I think part of the answer is--is bureaucratic
politics. You have two organizations that have now been asked to
deal with this detection problem. DHS through the Domestic Nuclear
Detection Office or DNDO and DOD through the Defense Threat Reduction
Agency have--both have been asked to--to deal with this problem
of nuclear detection and creating architecture, and quite frankly
they're not talking much to each other. They're both off on--on
separate tracks; DOD of course is interested in this to protect
military things less--not unconcerned but less concerned about dealing
with the civilian problem and DNDO can't get DOD to help--help them
figure out you know how to not duplicate everything that DOD is
doing.
So there--you know on the one hand there is a push for creating
better detection and creating an overall system architecture for
it but as unfortunately happens so often in Government you have
two different bureaucracies working--working the same problem and
not--and you know we--we're still stove piped. I mean we're stove
piped in the intelligence community; we're stove piped in DOD and
even DHS is stove piped and all of these agencies are stove piped
from--from each other. So until you--until you fix that larger bureaucratic
problem I think what you're going to end up with are you know efforts
but none of them managing to achieve anything close to what--what
was hoped because nobody is willing to take advantage of--of what
other people in Government are--are doing and make you know a synergistic--take
a synergistic holistic to the problem. And so you'll end up doing
this piecemeal I'm afraid.
Question: Isn't there something called the Center for the
National Counter-Proliferation Policy in the White House now pursuant--I'm
sorry; is there not [Laughs] a Center for National Counter-Proliferation
Policy or Nonproliferation Policy in the White House pursuant to
the 9/11 Commission's recommendations and if so, isn't that the
place where the stove piping ought to be brought to an end?
Chuck Peña: Now I don't know; how do you--how do you fix
Government? I mean it--in theory right; I mean you've got Centers--you've
got Centers--. I mean I--I suggested something really audacious
the other day which was why can't Secretary Chertoff and Secretary
Rumsfeld just talk to each other about some of these things? And
I was you know met with--literally the room was like are you kidding?
And--and I said well I mean you know we're talking about high-level
problems; they're the guys that are in charge of each of their respective
departments you know if--they're the ones who are the--you know
who can--who can do this and who can make this happen. And so yeah,
you can--you can have another office inside the White House; you
can create another Commission; you can do all sorts of stuff but
eventually takes somebody who is in charge to make it happen and--and
that's just not happening.
Mary Beth Nikitin: Thank you; I just wanted to address
the question about aid--kind of assistance and what has been learned
from the PSI experience and how that would translate into this new
global initiative. I did hear from the officials that I spoke to
that--that's one of the ideas, that when they're looking for these
initial partners that they're trying to have some sort of geographic
representation and they're trying to choose leaders in each of the
areas of the world who are wanting to sign up to it anyway and that
the idea would be some of these countries who have already participated
in PSI exercises would then help as they could other with expertise
or with financial assistance--some of the smaller countries. So
that is being thought of; and I think it's also you know--in some
ways it's--it's part of the vision for 1540 and what they're unable
to do with 1540 so far because of the way the Committee is being
set up and being limited in their action. And so if you know the
preference is sort of this ad hoc case-by-case basis well you know
you just have to be a little bit busier I guess [Laughs]
about it, but perhaps it can happen some how.
Question: Okay; this question is for Charles. I was wondering
if you can tell us a little bit more about how close we are to achieving
the technological capabilities to do some of these--these more advanced
scanning techniques. I mean I know that tracking the paths of ships
deviating from sea lanes is important and is a factor and a fact
that is often looked at as curious and suspicious. So obviously
we've got you know the satellite technology that we need, but I'm
just interested in hearing more and also wondering if you could
comment on the targeting mechanisms that are currently in place
for this five-percent of cargo that is looked at.
Chuck Peña: The technology issue I mean sort of just like
missile defense, another subject that I've dealt with, I mean it's--it's
a question of science. I mean they--they can make--they can grow
germanium. The question is--you know it's one thing to build a handheld
detector where I can walk right up to a person or a vehicle and--and
you know scan the wand or whatever and then there's the power source
for this stuff. It--when you're talking about small units where
you know an individual is operating it and--and like at a security
checkpoint or something like that the--the technology is there.
I mean there's no question about that. What happens is when you
try and have larger applications the--it's the--a lot of it has
to do with the power source. You've got to build larger power sources
and--and they have to be you know on continuously and then the other
problem is standoff. I mean if you want to be able to do this at
almost you know any sort of reasonable standoff, meaning you know
you fly a helicopter--I mean you could see how PSI would be great
if you could fly a helicopter over a ship as it's you know transiting
across the ocean--or plane, ping it and say I've got a source onboard--onboard
that and we need to you know do something about it. We don't have
that--that--part of that is because the power source required is
so large that you can't fit it or--or put it onboard on an aircraft
or it takes a very large aircraft to do that. We certainly can't
do that via satellite just yet, but I mean that would be the goal,
I mean to be able to do this from you know lower [orbit] or geo-sync--whatever
orbits you--you think are necessary. So that is--that's just a question
of scientists keeping you know--continuing to work until they get
some sort of breakthrough that--that allows them to either miniaturize
the power sources or--. I mean they can do--they've done this I
mean where they--they have build mobile detectors where they claim
they can detect things like in an urban environment. It requires
an 18-wheeler to put all the panels and power into it, so you know
it--it--size and weight are just--are just constraints.
When--when you talk about the targeting you mean how we make decisions
to--for--for PSI, you know where--?
Question: Right; like you--essentially which--how you decide
which cargo to inspect and how that priority--?
Chuck Peña: I don't know; we've got a representative from
the State Department and I don't speak officially for the Government,
but I can tell you I mean some of the early discussions on PSI that--that
I was asked to--to attend, I mean obviously you have countries who
are concerned and so anything emanating from those countries becomes
you know higher up on the--on the list. There's specific transit
points that--that you're concerned about in terms of how easy is
it to you know offload and on-load? You look for suspicious behavior
like crews changing and--and the like but you know the--the problem
is that if you can't contain it--if you can't be sure that you can
keep it inside the source country and the source country may not--not
always be Iran or North Korea. I mean we're--we make that assumption
that they're the ones that are going to proliferate while other
countries may inadvertently proliferate if--if we're talking about
theft of material. And so if you can't be assured of containing
it inside you know the source then you--you are into this sort of
best educated guess of you know where--where to look next once you
assume it's beyond a border that you wanted you know to keep it
in and that's--that's why intelligence, both human intelligence
and technical intelligence are--are so important so that if you
know it's outside of the borders you have some direction do I go
north, south, east, or west you know to look for this stuff?
Question: But if I could just do one brief--.
Moderator: Okay briefly.
Question: Okay; I guess do you think that the five-percent
statistic that you mentioned, that you focused on--do you think
that you are perhaps at all overstating the case by focusing that
statistic if we think about the fact that even though there are
millions of cargo containers coming to the United States every year
percentages of those cargo containers are going to be imported by
a much smaller number of companies perhaps and if we've got a company
that has got a good record on you know importing cargo containers
and--and safety and security and that kind of thing that maybe the
five-percent statistic is distorting the reality at all?
Chuck Peña: Well I guess it would depend on--on what security
procedures, private companies, and--and shipping companies are instituting
and implementing. If they're--if they're really good security procedures
maybe you--you get a little more or you feel more comfortable that
the Government itself doesn't need to be as involved because you
know of--for example, if Fed Ex is screening every single box for
you know highly-enriched uranium then maybe I don't need to--to
worry about it. But as far as I know we don't have commercial companies
doing that because it's really expensive for them to do--cost prohibitive.
Question: I would just like to urge a little bit of caution;
before you throw more money at this or reorganize the Government,
for me the bottom line is even if you had the capability would you
want to do it? There's a reason why we've always focused on the
first line of defense, the source of--of these materials at mostly
Russian and former you know States of the Soviet Union and that's
because it's easier. I mean that--that's the point where you can
really track the stuff. I don't think it's reduce(able) to high
purity germanium detectors mostly because I think it's a whole lot
more likely that terrorists are going to use radiological dispersion
devices--right; they're not going to use weapons grade--it's a lot
harder to get weapons grade plutonium or HEU. The second thing is
you can shield that stuff and anybody who gets as far as getting
their hands on weapons grade plutonium or HEU is going to shield
it. Your high purity germanium detectors aren't going to help you
[Laughs] there; what you're going to detect is you know heavy
metal, lead containers--whatever around this stuff, so it--it's
a much more complicated and as much as I'd like to see the day when
we can fly helicopters over ships and find that stuff [Laughs]
I don't think it's possible.
The other point I'd like to make is personnel; even if you had--even
if you had the--the technology, the power, all that stuff you solved
the technical problems--you would need to have machines that were
idiot proof okay. Not only would you need a low number of false
positives but you know let's face it; we don't have physicists manning
customs sites and when you go to the Port of Baltimore as I and
several of my CRS colleagues have done and you quite questioning
well what do you think these radiation detectors really do and what
are those dosimeters, do you understand--? You know you have to
have a green light, red light, and then even then you would need
to have the personnel who would understand what you know the signals
that they were getting. And just one little technical quibble; I
think in--instead of--I see technical intelligence as different
from monitoring. I think what you're talking about is monitoring
when you have these you know monitoring stations set up and the
technical intelligence is really what's going to help you target
what you know--you're talking about [inaudible], all that stuff
that--that gives you clues about what you might want to look for.
One other comment to--to Mary Beth on this--on the global initiative;
it seems to me that the IAEA was already traveling down this path
in terms of bringing--. I--I attended a conference a year and a
half ago where they did bring law enforcement and first responders;
we had somebody from the New York City Fire Department come and--it
was an international conference in France--in the context of--I
forget what it was--actually physical protection and--and the context
of the Convention, so I think there's been some good stuff--good
cooperation going on and maybe this US/Russian initiative is going
to sort of push that a little bit further forward.
Chuck Peña: I wouldn't disagree with you; I mean once you're
chasing this stuff around in the countryside I mean you're--you're
fighting a battle where the odds are--are definitely against you.
So if you can't keep it locked up at the source this is at best
a second line of defense if not the last line of--of defense. So
you get--you get no argument from--from me on that, but I would
just say that if--to the extent we're going to pursue this as sort
of--I call it the gray area between nonproliferation and counter-proliferation
because it--in theory what PSI is still about is preventing something
from getting into somebody's hands that you don't want them to get
it, you know. There are--there are--I think just people need to
understand the real limitations of it and what the--what the real
drivers are. It's not the--policy is not the problem per se that
you know even if you--the problem is your actual ability to--to
do it and--and what are the things that constrain your ability,
so I think we're largely in agreement on that.
Mary Beth Nikitin: Yeah; thanks. I mean that's one of the
points I guess that needs to be made is that there--there has been
work done already and I think you know like with the Global Threat
Reduction Initiative, many came to the conclusion that--that was
repackaging. I think this time it is slightly different because
it's just so comprehensive; there hasn't been anything so far. But
what the--I think the real test will be how to make it global. I
mean it's called the Global Initiative--not the Bilateral Initiative,
and so bringing all these--this knowledge together. And I think
one disappointment that was not really emphasized in these documents
is the security culture at the facilities and again this whole idea
that it's really about the human beings who are guarding the things
and as well as components at companies and all these other knowledge
sets that are needed and not just the material and--and how that
can become more part of the strategy and a lasting part of it--will
be a challenge.
Moderator: Okay; let me just--since it came up earlier,
let me invite Matt if you're so inclined--do you want to take a
moment to address this issue that Leah brought up about how does
the USG go about making decisions on targeting?
Matt: The PSI related to decision making from--. Every
element in the PSI is made by the regular National Security decision
making process, so you know centered and coordinated by the NSC
and obviously the State Department, the Defense Department and other
departments depending on the case all feed into it and the decision
is made--decisions related to the PSI are made through that process.
Moderator: Does that answer you question?
Question: Yeah; I mean I--I--the reason I brought up the
five-percent and asked you about you know overstating the [inaudible]--I
read an article in the--. I read an article in which someone called
it the Port Security--the five-percent myth and--and they were claiming
that when you hear that statistic used it overstates the case a
bit but I wanted to--to just hear you reaction and--and see what
the official reaction was about how those decisions are actually
made. And I think--I mean I'm sure if I went online and looked or--or
called someone at the Coast Guard or Custom and Borders Protection
they could probably give me some more details, but thanks very much.
Moderator: Okay; other questions? Yes? And we have it coming
straight to you.
Question: Thank you; maybe I would like to--to talk back
to the--the issue of intelligence because I think in every maritime
situated business intelligence is one of the primary tools and not--not
technically but the first point is the problem to the--the problem
of intelligence sharing between nations. And this is about trust
and this is about reciprocity--two things we--we just talked about
a little this morning. Technically or from the operational standpoint
at sea and the--on wide spaces, if we want to detect something suspicious
first of course we need--of course technical, but not only satellites
or aircraft or--or a combination of many, many tools technically
speaking like [NASA] and the US--the usual [NASA] tool for example
and this is exactly what we do with the US in some region of the
world to--to fight against drug trafficking, so first we have to
listen to the--to the broadcast and we have also to get some pictures
from the sky of course in order to know where are the assets.
An asset is going to be a ship, a plane, a go-fast and this is
true for every kind of trafficking though. A [dhow] in the Indian
Ocean--a [dhow] is a smaller boat--a wooden boat, very famous in
the Indian Ocean; we use those so the--sometimes we have to track
sailing boats, fishing boat, so this is very complicated to--but
we need broadcasting, satellites, air assets from the technical
standpoint but we need those--so a lot of human intelligence. If
we know that is not as you said, sir, it's not only--it's not always
very, very able but there is--there are techniques to use in human
intelligence and at the end of the day most of the successful interdictions
came from human intelligence because very often only the--the teams
on the ground can detect, identify, and foresee when, where, a target
of interest is going to--to go from the port of a sea or from an
airport or from a location by the ground--by land.
So and what you said in the perfect world we would have a combination
of many intelligence assets and this is--this is I think--one point
I agree totally with you--so we--we need a combination of assets--not
only technical. Of course we can imagine to have some helicopters
over--over some ships in order to detect [normally from a] [inaudible]
point but this is not enough because as you said Madam there is
a possibility to protect the radiation from leaving the boxes. But--but
anyway from my small experience at sea I can--I can imagine that
we need to--to boost technically and--the intelligence from a technical
standpoint and from the [human]. But at the end and for my conclusion,
what--how could you--and this is a question--how could you imagine
to boost and to foster the--the intelligence sharing between nations
in this kind of global initiative because this is a key point in
my view?
Chuck Peña: I guess it would help if we could get really
good intelligence sharing just inside our country first before we
work on intelligence sharing across nations. I mean that's--that's
a political problem right; that's a problem that Presidents and
Prime Ministers are the ones who--who need to work--work out you
know breaking down the--the barriers. It's--there--there--although
I guess there's a lot of intelligence sharing through the you know
so-called old boy network just career professionals who have been
in this business forever and they just talk to each other right
because that's what--that's what professionals do but that's informal;
it's not formalized right and so the question is how do you--how
do you do that and--and certainly I agree with you 100-percent.
This need for a multitude of--of intelligence sources and one of
the problems of the United States has been despite all my talk about
detectors is our over-reliance on technical means for intelligence
and--and not having enough human intelligence to help corroborate
and confirm what we--what various sensors are--are telling us. But
you know how--how do I--how do we make that happen you know internationally?
I mean clearly you know the United States and Great Britain are
pretty good at sharing most intelligence--probably not all of it
but we're not really good--you know our relationship--it all depends
on the relationship we have with--with Governments and sometimes
that depends on the personal relationships of--of leaders of--of
those Governments. And so you know one of the things that I've argued
for is that--is to take a--a--the approach of net-centricity and
data fusion that the Defense Department is so fond of for military
operations and look at how you use that same philosophy for intelligence
as it relates to this--the problem of proliferation and--and PSI.
How do you share all of that within all the arms of Government that
need to know what's going on and how do you share that across borders
because it can't just be the United States.
For PSI to work it cannot be the United States acting alone; it--it
has to be a program where whether it's voluntary or whatever that
other countries are participating in and part of that means intelligence
sharing and that--that is going to be a big bureaucratic problem
that I think only political leaders are going to be able to solve.
Moderator: Are there any other questions? Yes, Robert?
Question: To read from the schedule I'd like to ask what
role might the PSI play if sanctions are imposed on Iran?
Moderator: Glad I'm just a moderator.
Chuck Peña: I'll tell you one of my concerns early on with
PSI is that it is a de facto sanction regime. You could use
PSI to impose sanctions without ever formally imposing sanctions.
I mean it's not that that's what it was intended to do and I'm not
suggesting that we--we and the member countries would necessarily
do but there's nothing that prohibits PSI being used in a sanctions
like manner. So you know by extension if sanctions are imposed on
Iran I would imagine and again I'll defer to an official Government
position from the State Department that PSI would be an integral
part of a sanctions regime against--against Iran that you would--.
Question: Suppose they use their own ship?
Chuck Peña: Well I mean again I'm not--I'm not a lawyer
so I don't understand the legalities of--of interdiction but at
some point if you know--regardless of the ships that are being used,
if--if the PSI program is taken to the extreme, you know you interdict--you
interdict their ships right because you've imposed sanctions; so--.
But I--I think there--there is a correlation not a one-for-one,
but I think PSI can be used in a sanctions-like form so I don't
see any reason why it wouldn't be part of an overall sanctions regime
if we choose to impose one on Iran.
Question: As far as I can tell, PSI--there's a gap in PSI.
It's not going to cover Government-owned aircraft, ships, or any
of that stuff. And if you interdicted something that--I mean I'm
not a lawyer but wouldn't that be an act of war if you're [Laughs]--?
The--the other thing is that the--the question posed is a little
odd; you know when--when we're looking at sanctions now with respect
to Iran most likely we're going to look at sanctions that are--even--even
though the cause is for proliferation reasons they're not going
to be proliferation you know--we're not going to be controlling
more widgets; we already control widgets. When Iran was called into
non-compliance with its NPT obligations the Nuclear Suppliers Group
met and they said okay we're not going to sell them anymore nuclear
related stuff, so you know when you look at the range of sanctions
that the UN Security Council was considering it's not gee, we're
going--. I guess one of them--one of them is we're going to restrict
more dual-use--I can't actually remember the list, but I'd be interested
since you wrote that paper [Laughs] on Iran, why don't you
come?
Ian Davis: Yeah; we put a background paper together on
this. Part of it will depend on the--the nature of whatever is agreed
and what authorization is given by any UN Security Council Resolution.
I mean at the moment you're right, the Nuclear Suppliers Group prohibits
the widgets related to new technology going to Iran but only amongst
those members States, the ones outside that you know it's still
as far I'm aware a legitimate part of trade for other States to
supply these things. That could change depending on the nature of
the UN authority. I mean so there's--there's the technical part--well
it's the legal side of things which I think does need to be sanctioned
at the UN level and then there's the actual aspects of you know
what types of routes potential you know continuation of illicit
trafficking to Iran--what kind of routes would they take and you
know what--which countries would they go through, and you know--you
know how can you try to close those off? And we've tried to set
out some of those in our paper and it--it appears to us anyway just
as a first look as I said earlier, this is one of our papers that's
work in progress and I very much welcome feedback even now or via
email or telephone or whatever, but it does appear to be a limited
utility in enforcing a sanctions regime, but then that's always
been the case about enforcing sanctions. And any sanction regime
is really only as--as likely to be only as effective as the kind
of moral case for making it in the first place and the--the support
of countries to kind of enforce it. And you know South Africa was
probably one of the better examples but there are a few others that
I'm aware of.
David Isenberg: We have time for just one more question--.
Question: It will be very short and just to point out that
the--the recent non-aligned summit meeting, they had 119 votes supporting
Iran's right to develop peaceful nuclear power, so I think that
it's fair to say the--the political will to enforce anything stronger
right now is weak and the picture of what Iran is doing sufficiently
clouded--that if countries wanted to ignore that--what their--what
they've taken on under PSI, they would find that they had sufficient
justification in their own eyes to do so.
Moderator: All right; unless somebody has a really quick
question in the remaining three minutes, I would call this panel
to a close. I would ask you to thank our panelists for their presentations.
If anybody has anymore questions, please take advantage of the break
to go up to them and ask them then; otherwise we will reconvene
for the final panel at 3:15 and encourage you to go out and get
your final coffee of the day. Thank you very much.
Session 4-Strengthening the PSI: US and International
Perspectives
Moderator: Well I'm Jim Leonard and I'm
stuck with the job of chairing this final session here but fortunately
we have some competent speakers here so my part can be absolutely
minimal and everything I know about this I learned after I picked
up the book and listened to the speakers. We've had excellent speakers
before. I will make one preliminary remark. I'm on the Board of
BASIC, which is why I'm here and I was particularly impressed by
Ian Davis' discussion of the open registry system and the problem
that Flags of Convenience that--I won't say they create but they
certainly open possibilities for illicit activities of various kinds
and not only in the WMD field but for drugs and smuggling people
and you know a whole--whole load of criminal activities of various
sorts. And it seems to me that it would be appropriate for the international
community led by the United States because it will be very obvious--make
obvious in a moment--led by the United States to try to start a
real reform of this open registry system. I recognize it would take
years and it would be a real upheaval and the maritime industry
would be very unhappy with it, but I just want to leave a question
which I don't expect people to address here but now, but is there
really any reason in the world except the economic reason why the
open registry system should persist? Is there any--is there any
possible security advantage to this system of Flags of Convenience?
I can't see it and I--it seems to me on the contrary that it is
an invitation to abuse and if those of you who are not--I don't
expect Governments of course to address this question--certainly
not here today but those of you who are from various research organizations
and so on, if you're interested in working with BASIC on this subject
why we certainly would be very grateful to get in touch with not
just Ian, who is over at the other side of the water, but Steven
who is right here in Washington and let us know your thoughts on
it and what could be done. With that word of introduction let's
go to the subject.
As some of you may know I am not a strong supporter of the current
US Administration but I do think the PSI is one of the better things
that this Administration has done and its strengthening it is really
very much on the agenda. And my only grumble really as a result
of listening to what went on here earlier today is that I'm afraid
that the strengthening is not going on fast enough and firmly enough
with enough steam behind it to really meet with the problem. So
that--that basic question, can the strengthening of the PSI be further
sped up and intensified is what I think I would hope our speakers
today will address. I'm not going to go through their biographies;
you can read them in the poop sheet that's been handed out here,
but they have all got an excellent background on the subject that
we're dealing with here and we're going to ask Jofi Joseph who has
worked both in and for the Government in many capacities but who
is completely independent at the moment to start us off.
Jofi Joseph: Great; thank you Ambassador.
I'm going to spend my time today focusing on the first two questions
that are outlined for this panel and then I'll leave the views of
our key partner countries to our Embassy colleagues. Before I get
into the perspective of the Congress and PSI let me preface those
remarks by saying that I did serve on the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee until March of 2004, so I was in an official Government
capacity for approximately the first year of the implementation
of PSI. Since that time I've still kept abreast of the issue and
I keep in touch with my former colleagues on the Hill but just keep
in mind that I'm--I'm not speaking in any former representation
for the Congress or any particular member.
The key point when it comes to how Congress views the PSI is that
the PSI is an initiative that was only conceived, developed, and
implemented by the Executive Branch without any Congressional input.
Members of Congress and their staffers who follow arms control and
nonproliferation issues learned about PSI the same way as the rest
of you--from reading the newspapers. There was no advanced briefing
by the Administration for Congressional staff or members on the
PSI prior to the June 2003 announcement.
Moderator: That's why it's so well done.
Jofi Joseph: [Laughs] Perhaps; in fact the first
briefing that SFRC staff, the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
staff received on the PSI occurred in March 2004 and a colleague
informs me that in the subsequent two years the Committee has received
a couple of additional briefings at which time the Administration
officials have gone into more detail on the types and numbers of
interdictions that have occurred under PSI to a greater degree because
of the ability to share classified information than has been publicly
released to date. The House has been somewhat more active on PSI;
I know that the HIRC staff received an initial briefing on PSI in
the fall of 2003 and in fact subsequently a HIRC Subcommittee held
a formal hearing on PSI in June 2005 with Assistant Secretary of
State Stephen Rademaker as a formal witness.
But the bottom line when it comes to the Congress is that while
the Administration has been receptive to requests for further information
and additional details the Executive Branch has not asked the Congress
to buy into the PSI in any form or manner. As Administration officials
see it the PSI will continue to operate successfully without any
need for formal Congressional authorization or a cent. So why has
the Congress been kept at arm's length when it comes to PSI? In
my personal opinion I do not attribute it to excessive Administrative
secrecy or a desire to expand Executive Branch powers as may be
the case in perhaps other policy realms, but rather it's because
successful implementation of the PSI simply doesn't need Congressional
activity to succeed. The Executive Branch does not require any additional
statutory authority to proceed with PSI; interdictions that occur
on land, sea, or air outside the United States do not fall into
the realm of domestic law and establishing an over-arching international
framework for the policy when it comes to PSI and conducting practice
military exercises are fully within the customary responsibilities
of the State Department and the Defense Department and don't need
any Congressional approval. As the Administration probably proclaims
time and time again, the PSI is an activity and not an organization
and hence the Senate was not called upon to ratify any sort of formal
treaty when it comes to the PSI nor has Congress been asked to pass
any sort of implementing legislation on PSI.
And finally an important point, the Administration has not requested
any specific funding for PSI implementation, so the Congress has
not been able to exercise a voice through its traditional power
of the purse. Instead, the Administration has relied on an existing
department and agency budgets to carry out PSI, although one must
assume that the numerous military exercises that have been held
to date have not been inexpensive but there hasn't been any sort
of specific request for additional funds--that's just been taken
out of hide.
Let me know move onto my next point which is how does the Congress
view the PSI in terms of policy? I would argue that the views of
Congress largely break along the same lines that it does in the
expert nonproliferation community that closely follows this--this
issue. Those inclined to support the Administration's Foreign and
National Security Policies contend that PSI is an innovative, effective
policy tool that is appropriately designed for the 21st Century.
They applaud the fact that PSI utilizes flexible coalitions that
is minimizes unnecessary treaty constraints that it's adaptable
to changing circumstances; they're fully in favor of PSI and view
this as another bold initiative by the Administration to break away
from the pre-9/11 mindset and apply new thinking to--to new problems.
Those on the other hand who are less favorably disposed to this
Administration's National Security strategies while they view PSI
on its own terms as a welcome and positive development they are
also concerned that the Administration is not doing enough to fully
exploit the potential of PSI due to several ideological hang-ups.
For example, a number of Democratic members in the House of Representatives
have introduced legislation in this current Congress that call upon
the Administration to make various adjustments on the edges of PSI.
One popular idea is to expand the geographical scope of the initiative;
for example calling upon the Administration to convince countries
like China and South Korea to formally join the PSI. Congresswoman
Ellen Tauscher has introduced a Bill that would call upon the Administration
to formally introduce a resolution in the UN Security Council that
would authorize PSI under international law as well as authorize
specific funding for joint PSI training exercises. The recent Bill
that was passed by the House of Representatives that provided an
initial authorization for the US/India Nuclear deal included a statement
of policy that the United States should seek New Delhi's full participation
in the PSI.
So there have been a number of ideas that members of Congress
have pushed forward to expand, strengthen, further develop PSI but
at the same time there is a large--largely universal agreement that
this is a good initiative; people simply have differing ideas on
how it could be further strengthened. But in addition to trying
to tinker at the edges of the approach there is some skepticism
in the Congress and again this primarily comes from the Democratic
caucus in both the Senate and the House that objects to some of
the rhetoric that comes from this Administration when it comes to
the PSI. There's a sense here that the Administration is perhaps
engaged in an excessive self-congratulation when it comes to PSI.
Successful interdictions have occurred for decades before the development
of PSI; as we've discussed earlier today one can make the argument
that these types of interdictions would have continued to have occurred
even if there never was a PSI. You know a more fundamental point
is that I think all members would agree that the PSI is an important
initiative. Those who are skeptical of the Administration would--would
argue that they're concerned that the PSI is being touted as a substitute
for an effective nonproliferation policy when in fact it should
be seen as one tool of an overall--of an overall approach. So I'm
going to make this following statement and it's going to be deliberately
exaggerated for rhetoric but the--if the United States cannot reach
a negotiated agreement with Iran and North Korea in the nuclear
program, if we can't reach an agreement and compliance protocol
to strengthen the BWC, if the NPT Review Conference doesn't produce
any progress in its five-year plenary session all of that is okay
because we have the PSI that will stop proliferation in any instance.
Again I'm exaggerating there; but there is a concern that you know
PSI continually gets trotted out by the Administration to defend
its nonproliferation record when in reality again is that it should
be viewed as simply one component of an effective multi-based approach.
Let me turn quickly to the question on what the future of PSI
holds. In my mind one of the fascinating questions that confronts
the PSI is what will happen when the Bush Administration departs
office in January 2009? Undeniably the intellectual and energy and
focus for this initiative has come from this Administration, specifically
the Officer of the Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security and the two occupants of that office in this
Administration, John Bolton and Bob Joseph. I don't think there's
any danger that the PSI is going to go away in 2009; I think in
nonproliferation circles this initiative has assumed the status
of motherhood and apple pie--everyone is in favor of it, but I do
think there's a real concern that the next Administration whether
it be Democratic or Republican will invest less intellectual focus
and energy on PSI and allow the momentum that it has accumulated
to date to perhaps wither away. I think that is perhaps a natural
function as a new Administration comes in that has different priorities,
that has different people in place, that PSI may be viewed as something
that--all right, the former Administration was gung-ho on and we'll
continue implementing it but we're not going to spend the precious
diplomatic resources and time that the past Administration did;
and in my opinion that would be a real setback for the US Nonproliferation
Policy.
So in my opinion I think it would behoove the current Administration
to consider further institutionalizing the PSI both at a domestic
and international level to help insure that the PSI moves forward
successfully once it departs office. And I believe that they can
accomplish this objective without creating a gargantuan bureaucracy
or drafting a binding international treaty that they have so far
ruled as out of bounds, and to do that I have two modest recommendations.
The first one is to establish a permanent PSI secretariat. The
existence of a permanent staff can provide some institutional memory.
Now I'm not arguing that the PSI should adopt something like the
Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, OPCW, which
is a large bureaucracy that needs to exist because it's continually
carrying out inspections of dual-use chemicals and facilities. But
perhaps a more reasonable model lies with the missile technology
control regime, which as everyone knows here is dedicated to limiting
the spread of missiles and--and [inaudible] vehicles. The French
Foreign Ministry of--Ministry of Foreign Affairs carries out point
of contact functions for the MTCR and distributes working papers
to all members, hosts monthly expert meetings, and on an annual
basis you have a different MTCR partner that hosts the annual plenary
session. In my mind perhaps this combination of a small informal
secretariat based upon the MCTR model combined with regular meetings
could be an appropriate model for the PSI.
My second recommendation is to--and this is a domestic recommendation
is for the Administration to consider establishing a specific budget
line for PSI activities. I would recommend that the Administration
when it brings out its FY-2008 budget request next January should
include a specific line item with new additional funding for the
support and sustenance of PSI. An appropriate vehicle for this new
funding could very well be the [NADR] account, the Nonproliferation
Anti-Terrorism De-mining and Related Programs account that currently
is under the 150 account which already provides budgetary authority
for the State Department to fund other nonproliferation initiatives.
And I see no reason why the PSI cannot be an initiative added there
to give it some sort of institutional legacy. And that's all I have;
thanks.
Moderator: Thank you very much. [Glad you endorsed] your
point about a secretariat; the Administration keeps saying and I
think it's genuine that they want to strengthen the Biological Weapons
Convention and that is the one achievable thing on which they could
get behind with regard to the Biological Weapons Convention is to
get it a secretariat, small--very small and very cheap, so that
there is continuity to the efforts to carry it forward.
I've negotiated an agreement here that we'll just go down the
line along here and our--the Deputy Chief of Mission of the Polish
Mission here in Washington is the next speaker, Mr. Flera.
Woijciech Flera: Thank you very much;
how Poland views the future development of the PSI--let me start
by saying that so far our assessment is that--as my colleagues said
it's quite a good initiative and even if it's only one element of
nonproliferation that are felt. But quite a lot has been achieved
[inaudible] for years--in fact that PSI has boosted global efforts
of the interdiction of proliferation concern; PSI States have improved
our capacity to interdict such shipments; network of those States
largely expanded; [now] institutionalized and voluntary character
of the initiative has appeared at least so far to be appropriate
and the activities of the PSI brought concrete and practical results
which is particularly important especially if we--if we take into
account that some other international organizational structures
under--are undergoing certain kinds of crisis.
As you know there was a high-level political meeting in Warsaw
this year before summer recess to take stock of what has been achieved
and what is more important to look into in the future, and what
we have learned during the process and preparing the meetings and
during the meetings--I think that can be summarized basically in
two points.
We see that there are two general taskings crucial for further
development; these are outreach activities and needs to increase
countries' [personal capabilities]. First outreach activities--at
the very beginning it seems that there were some doubts concerning
PSI. There were views expressed that PSI would be limited to only
a small group of countries, and today we can say that PSI has proved
successful in a sense that there is quite a significant number of
countries from all continents representing different religions,
cultures, political, economic systems that cooperate. This doesn't
mean that it's already successful; we should continue promotion
of the initiative and also from that perspective this high-level
meeting in Warsaw was important. In short the growing concerns of
the international community as to the recognition of threats posed
by proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and to [inaudible]
those threats; it also stressed the need for constant cooperation
among PSI partners and the need to work with those nations that
have yet to indicate their support for the PSI.
Lessons learned showed--the entire experience showed that outreach
is more efficient and convenience when it's driven by a group of
countries and not only by one of them. In that context it's worth
to emphasize that PSI today in our view is not a single country
effort but a global or mostly global initiative.
Our experience also showed that there is still some deal of misunderstanding
towards PSI in some countries and this is another reason why we
should continue our promotion activities and these misunderstandings
concentrate around two issues; I suppose they were discussed earlier
during this session--this is legality and complexity. Legality is
one of the cornerstones of PSI activities. But now we'll review
the statement of interdiction--interdiction principles makes it
clear that the PSI does not in any way conflict with international
law or State sovereignty and is dependent upon States exercising
their national sovereignty and observing international laws and
frameworks. The issue of PSI complexity although can be solved when
we acknowledge [international recognition] of the initiative that
allows countries to participate using their own capabilities and
on different levels of engagement.
One element of the discussion about outreach activities is the
question of international organizations. In our view, increased
outreach efforts should be directed towards them in order to keep
them informed what PSI is and how it can be used. There is a big
difference in fact in terms of international recognition between
PSI today and how it looked like two or four years ago. Just to
mention a few examples--PSI was incorporated into the United--United
Nations Security Council Resolution 1540; NATO in 2004 voiced strong
support for PSI and each partner to supporting and implementing
the PSI objectives; the European Union and its member States in
June 2004 committed themselves to contribute to the PSI; again the
UN Security--the United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan in
Madrid last year during his speech indicated PSI was one of the
very important instruments that has to be used by the international
community, so there is the development of signing this [inaudible].
And there is another value in attracting attention towards PSI
from international organizations that have practical tools and expertise
to fight weapons of mass destruction proliferation and trade. But
at the same time, in our opinion we have to remember that the Cracow
initiative is first to follow a Government to Government effort
and international organizations will not be definition involve in
any sense any operational aspects of PSI activity.
Discussing [culture shock]--to this I think we should also stress
the importance of private transport, trading and shipping companies
as a target for our activities. Raising awareness of an industry
concerning threats caused by illegal weapons of mass destruction
transfer can later translate to improvement of our security. Developing
ways of exchanging information between Government and private sector
could be very useful when there is a need for rapid action and that
was also a part of the discussion during the high-level political
meeting in Warsaw.
Now a few words about the second issue that is a need to increase
country suppression of capacities; PSI proved to be a great tool
for that kind of actions and you have seen that in Poland. By preparing
and taking part in exercises, Poland was given an opportunity to
learn about its own capabilities and I believe we [view that as
important]. Just to say at the very beginning of Poland's participation
in PSI that there were full Governmental agencies cooperating and
not without problems. Today you have around 15 which cooperate on
a daily basis. These developments of national [inaudible] capabilities
in fact does not require any additional funding; that was also our
experience. It's rather based on learning how to use effectively
already existing resources. And there is an additional value in
it--because procedures we learn during exercises can be used in
situations other than stopping illegal weapons of mass destruction
to transfer.
In summing up, it should be stressed that the strengthening of
the initiative requires a certain balance between those two tasks--outreach
activities and the need to deepen and enhance operational capacities.
Thus the processes should be developed in parallel; in our opinion
that can be achieved. For example, by enhancing regional cooperation
where more experienced countries can show their lessons learned
with new participants in a more systematic way, PSI in our view
should also keep its operational and known diplomatic character.
At the same time the diplomacy is still needed--it's always needed--to
broaden the understanding of the PSI.
Deterring trafficking shall remain a priority of PSI. The open
nature of the initiative will be [greater rated] and the contributions
from countries that share PSI concerns, principally the [inaudible]
count. PSI should be seen as a global endeavor of an inclusive nature
based on as to why there's possible cooperation between States.
The geographical balance and original diversity are assets which
needs to be preserved, and that's my [inaudible] set. We also think
that PSI is an activity--not an organization and it should remain
so for the near future. Progress achieved during these three years--the
most threats--the main lines of the PSI are now well established
and that several directions of action can be pursued separately
but still in mutually enforcing [inaudible]. And to further strengthen
the PSI kind of strategy guidelines like one given by the high-level
political meetings remains necessary. Thank you.
Moderator: Thank you very much. Mr. Flera made I think a
very important point there that what is learned in dealing with
the problem of weapons of mass destruction is also a useful procedure
and lesson for other illicit activities and I think particularly
of drugs which really are--they're not--it's not extremely unlikely
as Jim Goodby that there will be a nuclear bomb in a particular
container. It--the drugs are that omnipresent in international shipping
and what is learned in working on PSI with regard to WMD can also
be useful in the war against drugs. Thank you--Mr. Kane?
Tim Kane: Thanks very much Ambassador;
I'll be brief. In large part my comments are going to echo those
of my Polish colleagues but I wanted to go very briefly through
Australia's involvement in the PSI because it--it partly explains
our strong support for the initiative but also gives some definition
to our thoughts on the way ahead for the PSI.
We've been a participant and key driver since the initiative's
inception in 2003. We believe it's a practical and effective response
to the new challenges faced by the Asia Pacific region and the world.
As a member we share the common goal of preventing the spread of
weapons of mass destruction. We've hosted two PSI meetings; the
second plenary in Brisbane in 2003 and an experts' group meeting
in Sydney in 2004. We led the first successful interdiction exercise,
Operation Pacific Protector in the Coral Sea in 2003. We held a
subsequent exercise, Operation Pacific Protector '06 off Darwin
in April this year. We actively participate in the initiative's
Operational Experts' Group.
PSI for us dovetails with our other nonproliferation and arms
control efforts including our chairing of the Australia Group and
our active role in promoting the implementation of the Comprehensive
Nuclear Test-Band Treaty. I'd like to stress that for us certainly
PSI is seen as a supplement not a replacement to existing international
nonproliferation mechanisms such as the NPT. The PSI addresses weaknesses
in the global system, weaknesses that proliferators will inevitably
exploit. As Kofi Annan said, the PSI can fill a gap in our defenses.
Australia is also an initial partner of the global initiative
to combat nuclear terrorism, and it's important to note that this
new mechanism will imitate the successful PSI model. Much of the
PSI's success in our opinion relates to its action-oriented purpose;
it's not encumbered with bureaucracy; there is no treaty and no
secretariat. There is a great emphasis on doing.
Support for the PSI within the Asia Pacific region is crucial
to the success of the initiative. Asia Pacific countries account
for some 43-percent of total world exports, of goods and services;
more than half the world's annual merchant fleet--tonnage, passes
through straits in the region. Some of the world's largest and busiest
airports are also located there.
Now for the way ahead; Australia strongly favors consolidation
of the PSI to build on the impressive progress to date. This should
encompass encouraging all States to endorse the statement of interdiction
principles as a tangible demonstration of commitment to eliminate
trafficking in WMD. Australia places particular emphasis on building
support in the Asia Pacific region and we will continue our outreach
efforts in this area. We will continue to pursue operational capacity
building through the Operational Experts Group and regional exercises.
We'd like to see the initiative put emphasis on streamlining cooperation
and increasing information sharing. We will continue to explore
ways in which the PSI can be utilized to enhance the broader scheme
of global counter-proliferation mechanisms. We'd also like to see
member countries focus on their domestic legislation and make any
necessary minor amendments that might be required to enhance cooperation.
We also think that the PSI should be an evolving mechanism; that's
inevitable because the challenges that we face from proliferators
will continue to evolve as well, so from our perspective PSI members
shouldn't fear innovation within the PSI, particularly given the
initiative's emphasis on practicality and not being overburdened
with bureaucratic structures.
They're the extent of my comments; as I said they were brief but
it's more really now to pass to my colleague from State.
Moderator: Thank you; Matt would you like to give us the
wind-up talk? We all got recommendations for the US Government;
here's your reaction.
Matt: Well thanks for the opportunity to--to
speak today. I'd like to speak briefly on where we've been with
the PSI and what the US Government sees as--as highlights for the
future. I think we've gone over with our last two presenters a quite
of the bit PSI waterfront. So I'll try to be brief so we can get
in all of your questions and hopefully at least some answers.
Many of the questions I've heard today through the discussions
have gone to the point of what the PSI is, how it's different from
what came before, and how it fits into US National Security strategy
and the US strategy to combat WMD. The way I see it is that the--the
US Government and its partners are working to build a--a web of
barriers to proliferation and the PSI is--is one tool to that end.
Despite the success of the nonproliferation regime we see continuing
proliferation activities and the PSI aims to stop that trafficking
and WMD and related items. There are 78 countries now participating
in the PSI and we continue to urge other countries around the world
to participate. There is--there is one tier and one criterion for
participation which is a question that I think came up earlier.
The one criterion is endorsement, so political support for the State
of Interdiction Principles; at the--at the outset there was a core
group of nations that--that helped stand up the initiative and about
a year ago that group was disbanded. There was a question about
that as well. It had done the work of standing up the initiative
and the initiative was ready to proceed on the basis of one tier
of membership. The 78 participants in the PSI share political supports
for efforts to stop WMD trafficking to and from States and non-State
actors of proliferation concern. They work within their Governments
to improve their own capacity to stop WMD trafficking as opportunities
arise; they participate in exercises like some of the ones Tim talked
about and they may cooperate in actual PSI interdictions.
The PSI is--as we stated is a coalition of national actions. PSI
participants are working through the exercises to help each other
but each participating country is working to apply their own national
authorities including in conjunction with the international legal
authorities and in cooperation with other like-minded States to
bring effective pressure against the proliferation trade. So the
question is where do we go from here? In the--in his June 23rd speech
at the PSI high-level political meeting which Poland hosted in Warsaw,
Undersecretary Joseph outlined four areas. The first was further
development and the creation of tools to interdict payments between
proliferators and their suppliers. Last June President Bush signed
Executive Order 13382, which strengthened US authorities in this
area. Second, Undersecretary Joseph urged all PSI participating
States to work to broadening global participation along the lines
that both of my last two colleagues outlined. The third is to--that
PSI participants work to sustain the political commitment to the
PSI. We need to keep doing exercises and keep focusing on the things
that we've been focusing on and make sure that--that all the energy
that's been--that's been put into the initiative by the 78 participating
States doesn't wane. The fourth area Undersecretary Joseph laid
out was working to develop solid information and suggested courses
of action to respond to proliferation activities. We talked at length
in the--the last panel about intelligence issues. Undersecretary
Joseph said we need to consider how we can do more to build the
kinds of partnership it will require to exchange information and
recommendations for action in a timely way. To do this we need to
sensitize and invigorate the attention to proliferation related
activities our enforcement personnel across a range of disciplines
including financial regulators, customs officials, consular officers
and traditional law enforcement officers. You'll notice that--that
this is a broader definition of--of intelligence and this is an
area that--that we're--that we're working hard on.
I'd like to thank everybody for their--their time and all the
thought they've put into something that--that--that we at the State
Department have been putting an enormous amount of time into. Glad
to take along with the rest of the panel any questions and try to
answer them the best I can.
Moderator: Thank you very much. I'd like to start the questioning
just by asking Mr. Kane if he--he spoke particularly about the Asia
Pacific area, and this is an area where there are three very important
countries that are not members of the PSI--India, Pakistan and China.
Are there particular measures you could recommend to a US audience
that the United States whether it's the Administration or the Congress
could do to help to encourage each and all three of these countries
to join the PSI?
Tim Kane: Yeah; thanks Ambassador. I should say that we
have been working very closely including with the United States
and other PSI member countries on outreach programs in the Asia
Pacific, in particular with Southeast Asian nations to encourage
them to participate in the PSI. We've had discussions certainly
in China; India and Pakistan are not--I know it's been raised with
them, but I think the initiative's emphasis on outreach has been
very effective and indeed has seen several countries join this year,
I know before the meeting in Poland. So I think continued emphasis
on outreach and a good example of that is joint representations
in capitals has proved effective, so that we would certainly emphasize
as an important part to encourage a broader membership including
of those three countries.
Moderator: Is the NPT Savings Clause--is that the principal
obstacle in the case of India and Pakistan?
Tim Kane: Well I think probably met in a better position
on India; I know that the Indian Government has raised previously
potential complications in regard to the SUA as reasons for you
know being reluctant to participate in the PSI. So that's--.
Moderator: Yeah; in some ways getting the ratification
of the SUA, the amendments and so on is--if anything--even a prior
task before further expansion in the CSI. Well we're open for questions
and comments. Are there some here? Ian, did you want to--?
Question: Thanks; my question is really to all of the panelists
but maybe the most to Matt because you mentioned the fact that you--and
it's on the issue of intelligence sharing. We saw in the last--we
heard in the last panel--this is one of the particular problems
that the PSI faces, particularly in human intelligence. I'm also
concerned with the technical stuff pertaining to human error that's
most important. The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities
of the US, re-WMD issues in March 2005 highlighted this as a particular
problem--that it was difficult even to get that interagency cooperation
within the United States, and now you're talking about a broader
intelligence cooperation required you know in--in new areas. You
mentioned things like the financial regulatory system. Are we trying
to run ahead before we can walk and do we need to kind of get you
know stronger interagency cooperation in the key areas that--that
the PSI was initially set up to--to tackle you know rather than
looking to move into these areas--new areas?
Matt Stumpf: My view is that--that I don't think these
areas are--are new; it's that they're out there and we need to make
sure that--as we're addressing the proliferation threat that we
use all available information and we need to think of all the possible
ways we can--we can get some--we can get this information so I don't
think it's new; I don't think it's run before--walk before you run
situation. I think it's a--just a new focus that we need to--to
look at.
Question: Thank you; I wondered--this is sort of coming
from ignorance. I'd like to know more about the exercises and how
you know--because the--the strong emphasis on the operational side
it's natural that the exercise would be really at the main focus
of PSI and I'm wondering how--how are these exercises structured
to--how much is being simulated? In other words to what extent you
know do you start with intel-reports or do you just start kind of
with the military people--if I'm asking that clear; I'm not sure?
And then the next question is with Indonesia joining PSI what implications
does that have for--what do you see that having for the Straits
of Malacca and I would just be very interesting in hearing your
thoughts on that?
Matt Stumpf: Let--let me answer just the second part first
and then our colleague from Poland will answer the first one. Indonesia
is not yet a PSI participant; we continue to discuss that issue
with Indonesia.
Woijciech Flera: Well basically as far as the first question
is concerned, from the point of view of a [inaudible]--as you know
I'm a [inaudible]--a personal sense but it's improvising somehow
the preparation to the exercises. Basically you have to--and maybe
I will do that under example of the latest exercise that was conducted
together with Denmark and Sweden in [inaudible] in September on
the Baltic Sea. First that you need an idea and general agreement
with some partner countries that you will make certain things together
and then you are developing scenarios that there is a kind of shipment
that you have to interdict. And then according to scenarios you
have to think what services of different countries will have to
be involved and you have to cooperate, and then there are some preparatory
meetings. We follow countries and all services involved; this is
discussed and the final phase is just the exercise on the sea when
in this particular case the border guards of Poland and the Russian
Federation were involved in interdiction and their information came
from services from Denmark and Sweden to the Polish counter-intelligence
services, so you know it's a real time simulation based on scenarios--quite
probable scenarios that was quite well prepared in advance. So I
think it's quite well simulated to a real situation. Thank you.
Comment: I just want to echo a point that David made in
his paper in his talk this morning, which is one reason perhaps
why the PSI is so universally popular is that smaller countries--their
militaries may view the PSI as an excellent opportunity to engage
in direct contact with the US Military which they would not be afforded
in other venues and vehicles. I mean the example of Indonesia, I
would imagine that one of the strong potential draws for Indonesia
to eventually join the PSI is that we still have a number of restrictions
in direct Indonesian mil-to-mil contacts due to various human rights
issues and PSI may be an excellent opportunity for the Indonesian
Military to in fact begin to reach out to the US Military to the
backdoor so to speak, so I think the--the military exercise is--it's
an open question as to how effective they are in terms of actually
preparing nations to engage in these types of interdiction operations.
I--I simply don't know the answer but it may be one of the key reasons
why PSI is so popular because it does allow for that direct contact
with the US Military.
Moderator: Please?
Question: This is a question for Tim Kane. You mentioned
that Australia would like to see streamlined cooperation under the
PSI and I'm wondering are--are you talking mainly about logistical
cooperation--streamlining of that or are there other kinds of issues
you're referring to when you speak of streamlining cooperation?
Tim Kane: Good question; what it means--I think what we
have found from the exercises is that everyone from Customs to the
equivalent of Department of Homeland Security, once they observe
they learn as they observe and we're all learning from each other,
so if some of that can be streamlined and cooperation increased
I think it's going to add a lot of value to the PSI. So it's really
I was--really more aiming at--at that side of it because that's
feedback that we--we get OEG meetings for example, the real value
in that.
Jim Leonard: Did you have a question?
Question: I have a question regarding the emphasis on increasing
information sharing since you know one of the main themes today
has been the need that the success of PSI depends on the intelligence.
I was just wondering--one, what specific proposals are there to
increased information sharing if people want to stay away from creating
a secretariat or more formal channels for sharing information? How
do you address that--the goal or achieve the goal of increasing
information sharing? And I'd also be interested in kind of asking
representatives of Governments who are participants in PSI going
to one of the issues raised by Jofi do you have dedicated funds
or budget pots for the PSI or are you kind of following the US model
where no specific budget allocation is made for implementing PSI?
Matt Stumpf: Intelligence related to the PSI is shared
through existing channels so any effort in that regard is--is to
strengthen those channels and make sure that the relevant information
passes through them. I'll leave the other question to other colleagues.
Woijciech Flera: On the budget we don't have separate budget
lines for PSI exercises. It's just in the regular budget.
Question: Is Australia the same way?
Tim Kane: Yeah; look as far as I'm aware--I can't really
speak on behalf of the Defense Department. They may have a separate
budget for exercises to do with the PSI; that I don't know. But
our--from the Foreign Minister's point of view it comes out of our--our
normal budget, so it's not specific funds as such.
Jim Leonard: Ian?
Ian Davis: Can I just ask a question about transparency?
One of the things that's come up through today is kind of the lack
of evidence about interdictions and about how--how the whole thing
operates and it's shrouded in a certain degree of secrecy in which
one could understand that's required to protect sources and you
know getting the balance right. Here it's pretty difficult but clearly
there have been more details given on certain interdictions when
it's been possible that--that--you know to correct political capital
out of that release of information for example--the centrifuges
which were captured on the way to Libya because it made you know
sense to put that out in the open. So if it was possible to do that
in that case there's an argument that suggests that perhaps more
information could be provided on how the PSI operates more generally
which would--given that there isn't a secretariat and there isn't
budget lines and the difficulty of keeping momentum going, just
keeping the thing in the--in the public domain and pubic eye would
also help to support the PSI in addition to help groups like BASIC
keep tabs on it. So the question is then you know is this going
through increasing transparency?
Tim Kane: Well certainly I think I mentioned on intel-sharing
it's free; it's very--it's very difficult because the whole point
and indeed it's reflected in the Statement of Interdiction Principles.
If you're going to share that information well then by every nature
of the fact it's got to be held very tightly. So it's a very difficult--a
very difficult question I think and certainly I'm not aware of any
plans to change that way of operating for those very valid reasons
I think.
Jofi Joseph: I think everyone is in favor of greater transparency;
I'm just not sure whether you can develop any hard and fast rules
that would help promote that objective. I mean I take your point
on whether certain interdictions have been released because it's
of greater political capital--that may be the case, but I think
every Administration can be accused of declassifying facts that
are to its liking and covering those that are not.
Jim Leonard: David?
David Isenberg: Yeah; this is a question for Jofi. You mentioned
in your presentation that one of the reasons Congress or that the
Executive Branch doesn't approach Congress on the PSI issue is that
effectively Congress is not involved; there is no permission that
it needs to secure from Congress, it's not treaty etcetera, but
I am wondering if--if Congress is not involved does it need to be
involved and who is making the decisions on budgeting and finances
for PSI? I mean it has to consume some money even if only for say
training exercises; the Pentagon hates spending money for missions
which are not originally within the Pentagon. I can't see the State
Department, you know like funding the Defense Department Obviously
some reprogramming has to be involved somewhere and who decides
all that?
Jofi Joseph: You have to remember that I work for an authorizing
committee and not an appropriating committee, so I'm somewhat getting
beyond my depth here. My sense is that you know these types of exercises
while they're expensive in terms of dollars that you and I can relate
to, in the grand scheme of the DOD budget they're miniscule and
certainly when the Senate and House Appropriations Committee set
the DOD budgets they don't have to provide explicit authorization
for every individual exercise that the military participates in.
I think that's simply a case where those types of issues are--are
left to the discretion of--of the services. You raise an interesting
question in terms of who exactly is deciding what types of exercises
are occurring and what countries are--are being involved and maybe
that's a question that Matt can--can answer in terms of how these
exercises you know who is the group of people who are deciding all
right this year we're going to do two naval exercises, one air exercise
and one land exercise? That's a question I don't have an answer
for.
Matt Stumpf: There--there are essentially two processes
that relate to the--the exercise planning process. One is an international
multilateral PSI process. The operational experts group which was
the group that was alluded to in the first panel of 20 countries
does a number of things. They meet quarterly to work on behalf of
all PSI participating States--excuse me--to do a number of things
and one of them is plan exercises.
When it comes to the US participation in the exercises and--and
how that's funded and--and it's the same interagency process that--that--that
occurs on all the PSI issues, the interdiction, sub-[PCC] takes
up these issues and it's coordinated you know with the--with the
relevant departments by the--by the NSC.
Question: Thanks; if I may ask another question. I wonder
about the other 111 I guess depending on the count--countries who
are not yet members of the PSI. Are they--what sort of--could you
characterize the objections they're giving? I'm sure there--there
are a small handful that are obvious that are protecting their own
supply networks, but I'm sure there are very many others who are
kind of on the learning curve and trying to figure out what their
role might be. I'd like to hear that from some of you who have done
outreach to those questions and if you would talk about which countries
are highest on the priority to get on the boat to use a mixed metaphor?
[Laughs] Thanks.
Matt Stumpf: The--the process of getting new countries onboard
with the PSI is--is sort of--is an education process. You know we--the
very first thing we send is the--the Statement of Interdiction Principles
which outlines what the commitments are, you know the--to become
a participant in the PSI one endorses the Statement of Interdiction
Principles, so we suggest that they look at it. And the very first
question is usually in my experience at least, okay this is well
and good but what are you really asking us to sign up to? They say
well this. And so we work through those questions; our Polish colleague
before mentioned the question of legality which is a question that
comes up in a lot of our interactions and we just work through those--those
problems. When it comes to priorities for outreach a significant
percentage of global commerce, transit through areas like the Malacca
Straits, the Suez Canal, the Middle East and the Gulf--the Persian
Gulf as well as major air routes that crisscross the globe, their
participation by States sort of along those routes is--is our--is
our priority. We continue to engage with States in Asia which is
a particularly important region and as Tim outlined before, as well
as in Latin America and in Africa, this is truly a global initiative
and that's how we conceive of our outreach.
Jofi Joseph: Now I'll tell you who I think the two countries
that should be at the top of our list for gaining membership in
the PSI and that's China and South Korea. Our Chinese Embassy Representative
has already departed but my understanding is that those two nations
have resisted joining the PSI because they're concerned that it
would be viewed as--by the North Koreans as essentially a defacto
blockade and they don't want to risk further inflaming the environment.
Personally I think that's--that's an unfortunate decision in the
part of those two nations because apart from Iran obviously North
Korea is--is the world's greatest proliferation problem and something
like PSI really should be dedicated to monitoring the traffic into
and out of North Korea.
Moderator: Very good; well I think we're drawing to a close
here very clearly. More questions--be glad to entertain them; otherwise
I would suggest that we express our appreciation in the usual way
particularly for our two Co-Directors who have pushed this forward
but even more particularly for David Isenberg who has done all of
this phoning except what Chris [Lindborg] did and put the whole
program together including the efforts to get those who are not
here today. So thank you David--thank you very much.
[Applause]
Ian Davis: Jim, part of the agenda was
that we were just going to make some concluding remarks and--.
Moderator: Oh I'm sorry.
Ian Davis: And I was going to invite my new Co-Executive
Director to begin those concluding remarks--Steven.
Moderator: My apologies...
Steven Monblatt: Yeah; thank you Ian and thank you all
for the patience and the contributions. Let me give you a sense
of some of the issues that I took away from the day; one of--as
a newbie to the field, one of the ones that I think probably most
struck me was that in the whole area of nonproliferation and counter-proliferation
there is more to do than has already been done. And with that in
mind, the thought of gaps which has come up in many of the--the
discussions seems to be inappropriate--rather I look at what we
have are kind of islands of activity and relative effectiveness,
many of which Leah pointed out for example in her presentation and
these islands are surrounded in--by a sea of bureaucratic indifference,
inertia and suspicion. I think that--that it was very telling to
me that David couldn't find points of contact in the offices that
are responsible for this program in different parts of the US Government.
I think Ian's whole presentation on the problems of open flags are
symbolic of what we have to--what we're facing and if we really
have islands of effectiveness what we really need to do is bridge
these islands before the metaphor breaks down entirely.
I think we have a strategy for PSI; I think the strategy is stated
more or less succinctly which is to solicit support from as many
countries as we can, for the application of the six principles--to
interdict suspicious shipments in their waters according to the
national laws. I think we have tactics; that's what all of the training
that we do is about--is--is perfecting these tactics and practicing
them but what's missing I believe is an operational--set of operational
principles and guidelines to link the two. That might be one of
the bridges that my metaphor leads me to. There are only a finite
number of ways out of North Korea; there are only a finite number
of companies who produce sorts of materials and technology that's
required to create a nuclear weapon. You don't find it in the Sharper
Image catalog; there are only a finite number of banking institutions
with the relationships and resources to move the money around to
do these sorts of things. And an operational strategy would take
this into account but take into it--would look to the countries
that would most explicitly state where our priorities are in terms
of countries to solicit as--as Matt did and countries that maybe
are less relevant to this. And this is where we get to the--a conundrum
that I see; our ability to develop these sorts of--and implement
these sorts of operational plans is kind of the best argument that
I've heard for developing the kind of structure or secretariat that--that
Jofi advocated, yet the very informality of PSI is part of its attraction
to so many of the countries that are participating in it.
I--I think Charles' points about intelligence and the questions
that have been raised about intelligence sharing are all extremely
valid; and I don't see how we will ever share in any form intelligence
among 78 countries. Intelligence-sharing, there are procedures that
are developed over time among individuals and different services
to share intelligence and changing those habits--those--those trust
relationships is going to be extremely difficult to do, so I guess
where--where that leaves me is that while it might be a--in terms
of Administrative efficiency a good idea to try and develop a structural
solution to these issues, it's not politically likely to happen
and we need to think carefully about the political costs of trying
to build that kind of a structure. I don't want to go to the cliché
if it isn't broken don't fix it but I do want to go back to the
idea of seeing pragmatically of what can we do to strengthen the
procedures and techniques that we already have in place. I think
there's a lot that can be done but I think we need to recognize
squarely that if my analysis is right we face a real dilemma. Some
of the things we need to do probably do require some sort of a structure,
yet the political cost of developing that structure may be more
than we'll be able to pay in the--in the current environment--that's
my comment and thank you all.
Ian Davis: Steven; thank you very much. Just a few points
to add to that; I think--I mean I'm an optimist when I view the
PSI. What I've heard today confirms my feeling that the PSI is actually
maturing into a useful and pragmatic and accepted counter-proliferation
measure but it's important to keep it in perspective as several
speakers have mentioned, you know interdiction is really located
in the last resort end of the spectrum which means the other layers
of control and discipline have failed and it's--it's really in the
nature of last resort measures that they can be effective in exceptional
cases, but cannot be relied upon if the exceptions become too numerous.
In other words, the availability of the capability as demonstrated
by the PSI in no way downgrades the importance of the wider integrity
of the nonproliferation regime which is the point that Jofi Joseph
made, you know. I think ultimately the nonproliferation architecture
had served us pretty well and you know part of the strategy or the
main part of the strategy in fact is about strengthening that and
also addressing issues to do with vertical proliferation amongst
existing nuclear weapon States.
I would also add that as Steven has suggested the intelligence
gather and--and interagency intergovernmental problems with intelligence
sharing are crucial to this and need to be ironed out. I think also
ambiguities in relation to the issue of what we mean by WMD and
especially dual use items is particularly problematic and needs
further--further work. We set a number of recommendations in our
2004 Report on the--on the PSI, many of which I think still remain
relevant including the need to expand the membership and particularly
this is obviously an area that all the Governmental speakers have
stressed as something that's happening. I think there's also scope
to expand the PSI to cover other forms of illicit trafficking. You
know we've also heard that you know these--these issues are interrelated
with narcotics trafficking, with other conventional arms trafficking,
small arms trafficking, and it seems to me if you're having a policing
mechanism for the high seas then it ought to be used to--to control
other or used to circumvent the trafficking of other controlled
goods as well.
Obviously one of my hobby-horses is this idea of the Flag States
as Jim suggested; I would very much welcome hearing from potential
participants and partners to work further on that particular issue.
The--you know the technical measures in addition to the sorts of
things that Charles was talking about you know regarding measuring
signature from radiological devices, there's also been develops
within the IMO on international maritime tracking systems with global
coverage and I think that would be a crucial component to develop
for the PSI. And then--and again another favorite basic hobby-horse
is increase Parliamentary and Congressional oversight of these sorts
of activities tied with a little bit more transparency than maybe
we're getting at the moment. But even if expanded and enforced,
the PSI at the end of the say is not a silver bullet to stopping
proliferation; it needs to be developed in concert with other ways
to curb WMD proliferation and strengthening enforcement capabilities
of other multilateral policing agencies--the IAEA, the OPCW, and
attempts to develop verification protocols for example in the biological
field, and in harmonizing and [fortifying] international criminal
law--there's whole rafts of different aspects that--that really
need to be looked at in this area, but I--I certainly got a lot
out of today's roundtable; I hope you all did as well.
I'd like to just conclude by thank you for taking the time to
join us today; we will be circulating some further information--analysis
on this issue and we'll be certainly keeping in touch. Like Jim,
I'd like to also thank my two colleagues, David and Chris who put
a lot of effort into pulling this together. I should thank our funders
as well, the UK Economic Social Research Council for making this
happen; the staff here at Carnegie for allowing them to use their
facilities and despite the acoustics being a little bit problematic
it's always nice to come here and I think that's probably--just
to thank all our speakers who've contributed to the discussion today.
So thank you all very much; thank you.
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