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Current
and Future Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation Threats
Senate Committee on Government Affairs
Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation and Federal
Service
Testimony of James A. Lewis
Center for Strategic and International Studies
November 7, 2001
Mr. Chairman, let me thank you and the other members of the
Committee for the opportunity to testify on the effectiveness of
export controls in curbing the proliferation of material and
technology used for weapons of mass destruction.
Through the 1980s and 1990s, the U.S. created an extensive export
control architecture. Export
controls became an important tool to slow the spread of sensitive
technologies to states of concern.
However, over the last decade, two major developments have
changed the significance of export controls for national security.
First, a far more complex security environment has replaced
the tidy Cold War alignment of friends and foes.
International security is now complex and unpredictable.
Second, the global economy has evolved in ways we did not
foresee when the U.S. established its export controls.
The result is that export controls grow less effective every year.
This is particularly true for dual-use export controls.
The principle reason for this is the continuing economic
development and integration of countries around the globe.
Fewer obstacles and lower costs for international trade
mean that industries and production are increasingly
international. The
volume of international trade has tripled in the last fifteen
years. Improvements
in communications technologies make it easy to transfer data and
ideas around the world in a few seconds.
Container ships and jumbo jets have made transportation
cheap and easy, allowing millions of tons of cargo and millions of
people to travel around the world every year. These changes have significant implications for U.S.
security, particularly for counter-terrorism and for
nonproliferation.
Business and science have become more international and more
collaborative. International
research and development alliances among corporations has
increased eight-fold since the mid 1980s.
Companies place plants or development centers in different
countries or even different continents.
They move their research and development ideas rapidly
among these facilities to gain competitive advantage in a global
market place. Scientific
capabilities have also diffused around the world, as more
countries build scientific and research institutions and as
scientists find that they gain an advantage from research
conducted by multinational teams of specialists in different
countries.
For nonproliferation, these changes make it harder to deny access
to technology, especially as much of the technology needed for
weapons of mass destruction does not need to be particularly
advanced. Proliferators
can use industrial equipment from the 1970s or even 1950s to build
weapons of mass destruction.
Determined nations, such as Iraq, Iran or North Korea will
be able to continue their WMD programs despite export control
efforts. Iraq
exemplifies this best, for despite the most restrictive sanctions
regime in the world, it has been rebuilding its WMD programs.
Multilateral Regimes and Nonproliferation
While export controls have become less useful, the Missile
Technology Control Regime, the Australia Group and the Nuclear
Suppliers Group continue to make positive contributions to
security. The
characteristics that make the regimes more effective are:
-- They have strong multilateral support, so a denial by one
country will not be “undercut by another.”
-- There is broad consensus to prevent exports that contribute to
WMD proliferation.
-- They focus their efforts on specific chokepoint technologies.
-- They have good mechanisms for information sharing and consensus
building on projects of concern.
These characteristics are a good test for measuring the
effectiveness of national export controls.
In an era of economic globalization, a single country’s
export controls will be ineffective unless it focuses on key
technologies and other nations follow similar practices.
Export controls can remain effective in an era of economic
integration and globalization only if they focus on technologies
that are not widely available in the world market and if they have
a high degree of multilateral support.
A fourth regime, the Wassenaar Arrangement, demonstrates the need
for focus and cooperation. Unlike
the three nonproliferation regimes, the Wassenaar Arrangement is
ineffective. There is
little consensus among Wassenaar members on its mission or on what
technologies are crucial for control.
As a result, we can no longer prevent countries from
acquiring many items on the Wassenaar control list.
However, Wassenaar has little to do with nonproliferation.
It focuses on controlling conventional dual-use
technologies. Many
of these technologies are not key WMD technologies and not
controlled by other countries for proliferation purposes.
Items on the Wassenaar List that are useful for WMD are
already controlled by the three nonproliferation regimes. This is because when the Wassenaar Arrangement was
established, our allies insisted that any item or technology for
weapons of mass destruction be moved from Wassenaar control lists
to one of nonproliferation regimes.
The result is that for WMD, Wassenaar controls are
redundant.
“Catch-All”
Controls
Wassenaar controls are also redundant for nonproliferation if a
country has effective “catch-all” controls.
“Catch-all” controls apply to any export when the
intended recipient is a proliferation-related entity.
The U.S. created its “catch-all” control, known as EPCI
(Enhanced Proliferation Control Initiative), in response to Iraqi
efforts in 1990 to acquire U.S. equipment for WMD production.
EPCI allows the U.S. to stop shipments of any item going to
questionable end-users for proliferation related purposes.
It allows the U.S.
to impose licensing requirements on exports and reexports of any
good and technology where there is a risk of diversion to WMD or
missile proliferation. This
remains an important part of U.S. export controls.
EPCI also gives the U.S. the authority to “inform” an exporter
that a foreign entity is ineligible to receive U.S. goods without
prior approval. The
informing process can occur through a letter to the U.S. exporter
or through publication of an entity or list of entities in the
Federal Register Notice. Once
listed, exporters must obtain a license before selling to these
entities. This authority also remains essential.
Finally, EPCI requires exporters to screen potential sales to
avoid transfers to WMD programs.
Exporters must apply for a license whenever they ‘know or
have reason to know’ the export could be associated with WMD-related
activities. Screening
is the least effective part of EPCI because of changes in business
practices and because of problems in sharing information with
exporters. Finding
ways to increase information sharing and refine EPCI screening
would make U.S. export controls more effective, and continuing the
U.S. effort to encourage more countries to adopt strong catch-all
controls would make multilateral nonproliferation efforts more
effective.
Problems for Nonproliferation Export Controls
The distinction between Wassenaar and the WMD regimes has
important implications for U.S. export controls.
Many recent debates on export controls have been over items
that fall under the Wassenaar regime, such as satellites, machine
tools and computers. Other
countries would not regard these as proliferation-related.
Our difficulties in moving from Cold War technology
controls to a nonproliferation export control system have hampered
efforts to make export controls more effective and have drawn
attention away from the larger problems that confronts
nonproliferation export controls.
These larger problems result from the evolution of the
international security environment.
WMD-related export controls are part of a larger
nonproliferation strategy that uses diplomatic pressure and
sanctions to persuade potential WMD producers to end their
programs. Export
controls, by slowing these programs and making them more costly,
give time for diplomacy to work.
This approach was developed in the early 1990s and it has
met with considerable success.
A number of countries abandoned their WMD programs in light
of the combination of diplomatic pressure and export controls.
However, a small core of determined nations continued with
their weapons programs irrespective of diplomatic pressure, export
controls or sanctions.
We now need to reconsider the original diplomatic rationale for
WMD export controls in dealing with these nations.
Export controls still slow WMD programs and make them more
costly, but they will not stop them.
In one case, North Korea, a new approach that used economic
incentives and a broader effort to address fundamental security
issues seems to have paid off.
However, India and Pakistan have been able to develop
nuclear weapons (and in India’s case, long-range missiles), and
Iran and Iraq continue to pursue the acquisition of WMD. We cannot rely on export controls and sanctions to stop these
programs, and one of the challenges for the U.S. will be to find a
new approach to nonproliferation.
In addition to facing these very difficult problems in the old
nonproliferation paradigm, we face new problems with “non-state
actors” who seek to acquire WMD.
These are principally terrorist groups and they pose a
serious challenge to current nonproliferation controls, which were
aimed at countries and large government programs.
Nonproliferation is now more than an arms control problem to be
approached in the traditional diplomatic and military context. This means less emphasis on traditional nonproliferation
activities, where foreign ministries agree on licensing policies
and demarches and more emphasis cooperation in law enforcement and
intelligence. Export
licensing will be less important for dealing with efforts by
terrorist organizations to acquire WMD.
Most WMD export controls focus on exports of production
equipment and capital goods.
Terrorists are unlikely to acquire these items.
Terrorists will not be applying for licenses and they may
not even try to export material.
A more plausible scenario is that terrorists will attempt
to acquire WMD-related materials in the country where they intend
to use them, bypassing all of the current export control
mechanisms.
For example, while most countries have strong export controls in
place for the export of spent nuclear fuel, it is not clear that
all of them have taken the necessary steps to safeguard this fuel
from theft. A terrorist organization could steal spent nuclear fuel and
use it to build radiological weapons.
These weapons do not require the extensive infrastructure
and investment needed for nuclear arms.
Similarly, security measures at many U.S. and foreign
laboratories are not adequate to prevent the theft of dangerous
biological samples. In
the U.S., samples of some pathogens like smallpox are kept under
very tight security, but samples of others, like anthrax, are
housed in research laboratories across the country with minimal
safeguards. International
cooperation, and domestic security measures may be as important
today for nonproliferation as export controls.
As part of the reorientation of U.S. security policy since
September 11, nonproliferation must become a part of the larger,
integrated system of homeland security and the response to
terrorism. The nonproliferation regimes can still make important
contributions by identifying WMD-related items that need
additional safeguards and by coordinating the development of
effective and mutually reinforcing security measures.
They can also provide a forum for the exchange of
information on common threats, between law enforcement and
internal security agencies as well as diplomatic and intelligence
agencies. WMD-related
technology transfer should form a part of a larger homeland
defense policy. Effort
to ensure that WMD does not fall into the hands of terrorists must
become part of a multilateral defense against terrorism, and the
support we have received from our allies since September 11 could
be channeled into reinvigorating cooperative efforts to deal with
WMD proliferation.
“Deemed Exports”
The larger counterterrorism and homeland defense effort also has
implications for “deemed exports.”
A “deemed export” occurs when a person comes to the
United States and learns something.
Students coming to the U.S or other countries to study and
do research at universities and labs have been a problem for
nonproliferation for many years.
The automatic response is to ban foreign students or
require that they all be licensed.
This would be a fiasco.
Hundreds of thousands of students enter the U.S. every
year. In almost all
cases, our intelligence agencies have no information about them,
not because of any failure in collection but because these people
have never been anything other than legitimate students and there
is no information to collect.
A license review based on no information is open to
question as a protective measure.
Expanding “deemed export” controls can also have a hidden cost
for the U.S. One of
the sources of U.S. technological strength is that many of the
best minds in the world are attracted here to learn and to work.
The benefits we receive from having these people here
outweighs the potential cost of technology leaks.
This was the conclusion that the Reagan Administration came
to in National Security Decision Directive 189, and this decision
should remain the core of our policy.
Most “deemed export” licenses are for information
technologies, not proliferation-related technologies.
The challenge is not to try to find some way to keep using
export control techniques developed for the Cold War, but to think
in terms of a larger approach to homeland security.
Immigration control is among the most serious
vulnerabilities revealed by September 11.
Greater international cooperation in immigration
control and improved screening and tracking processes for foreign
visitors is one of the imperatives for Homeland Defense.
As the U.S. improves immigration screening, it may want to
rely less on export licensing to govern technology transfer in the
U.S. Export licenses
should only be required when positive information is developed
regarding proliferation-related risk.
Our current practice, which is to let people in with a visa
or license and then ignore them, is no longer supportable
Building Strong Nonproliferation Controls
Export controls can still play a role in nonproliferation and
national security, but this role is shrinking.
Building an export control system that will serve
nonproliferation and national security in the 21st
century will not be easy. The
consequences, however, of failing to reform could be costly.
In looking at how to move ahead in export controls and
nonproliferation, we may want to consider the following:
--The U.S. needs to reexamine the fundamental approach to
nonproliferation export controls (buy time for diplomacy”) that
we have taken for the last ten years.
--We would benefit from strengthening nonproliferation regimes by
expanding their role to include not just diplomatic and arms
control functions, but additional law enforcement and
counterterrorism functions as well.
--The U.S. should seek to find ways to use the strengths of the
three nonproliferation regimes to support efforts in homeland
defense and counterterrorism.
--Trying to control access to items that are widely available on
the global market wastes time and resources without slowing WMD
programs. U.S. export
controls will be more effective if they focus on the items listed
by the three nonproliferation regimes.
--Work on deemed exports should focus less on licensing and more
on a broader solution to foreign visitor screening system that
includes nonproliferation information as part of the process.
-- Effective nonproliferation export controls can be built with
the lists and procedures of the three nonproliferation regimes,
the use of catch-all controls and improved immigration procedures.
Finally, in considering how to adjust export controls to better
support nonproliferation after September 11, we must be careful in
assessing whether new measures cost more, in both civil liberties
and long term economic and technological strength, than the
benefits they provide.
Thank you.
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