Keck 1

Governing Nuclear Security Through Government Networks Zachary Keck This paper seeks to apply Anne Marie Slaughters (2002; also see, Slaughter 2005) concept of transnational governmental networks to the issue of nuclear security in the post-Cold War era.1 In particular, I examine the role of government networks involving nuclear scientists from the national laboratories in security nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons usable material during the post-Cold War era. The analysis centers around a case study of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program in the former Soviet Union (FSU), with additional analysis on its expansion to include areas outside the FSU starting in 2003. I find strong evidence to support many of Slaughters claims about the benefits of government networks compared with traditional international institutions. The transnational laboratory-to-laboratory networks allowed the U.S., the Soviet Union, and the Newly Independent States (NIS) were able to organize themselves relatively quickly to an urgent problem and remain flexible in order to deal with unique characteristics of the each weapon-usable nuclear site. Later new informal laboratory-to-laboratory networks were created to deal with a diverse set of relationships and circumstances that existed between the U.S. and other nuclear weapons and fissile material producing states. At the same time, these networks exhibit few of the critiques of government networks that Slaughter responds to in her article. As I discuss in more detail below, while these scientific networks working on nuclear security are pursuing a specific and somewhat narrow goal, they are merely one part of a broader array of transnational networks and international institutions that focus on nuclear issues defined broadly. Far from displacing traditional international institutions, these lab-to-lab networks are usually implementing goals set by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and in fact do so working in close cooperation with the IAEA and other traditional institutions. While there are some issues with transparency and accountability, these issues are caused more by the sensitive nature of nuclear security rather than the form of organization theyve devised to carry it out. Put differently, traditional international institutions would be no more, and probably less accountable and transparent than networks in addressing the same challenges. The decision to focus on lab-to-lab networks and their work on the CTR Program was borne out of both practical and analytical considerations. At the most basic level, the prominence of the CTR Program and nuclear security summits has resulted in them being documented to a degree that is uncommon for the work of government networks. By drawing on the rich government, NGO, and scholarly literature on these cases, I am able to more thoroughly investigate them without conducting the type of primary research that would otherwise be necessary. Moreover, the subject matter makes sense for studying government networks in that nuclear safety is an issue that traditionally falls to national regulatory agencies but has increasingly taken an international character due to the transnational nature of the threat. The issue of nuclear security and these case studies are intellectually stimulating in a number of other ways. Nuclear security is intriguing in being, paradoxically, both an easy and hard test case for government networks. It is an easy test case for government networks in that it is an issue that is likely to enjoy wide support both within and across governments. To be sure, some states may object to giving up their indigenous enrichment and reprocessing capabilities, while others may be concerned about the national security implications of allowing foreigners to visit sensitive nuclear facilities. The degree of concern over nuclear theft also varies among different nations. Nonetheless, the basic goal of preventing non-state actors from obtaining nuclear weapons and weapon-useable nuclear materials is likely to be nearly universal among states in a way that issues like transnational justice and
1

Nuclear security is defined in different ways by different individuals and organizations. This paper adopts the International Atomic Energy Agencys (IAEA) definition, which defines nuclear security as the prevention and detection of, and response to, theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, illegal transfer or other malicious acts involving nuclear material, other radioactive substances or their associated facilities (IAEA 2007).

Keck 2

international financial issues are not. The excessively technical nature of the subject matter also lends itself to the type of technocrats that compromise government networks. Indeed, as discussed more below, the focus on lab-to-lab networks is especially appropriate given the collaborative nature of scientific inquiry and the deep-seated tradition of transnational scientific collaboration. On the other hand, nuclear security is also a hard test case in that, unlike the issues that Slaughters article discusses, it is a hard politics issue. Broadly speaking, these types of issues are traditionally the domain of Realists, who emphasize the competitive pressures of the international system and the disincentives for inter-state cooperate. Moreover, when states do undertake cooperation in these hard political issues, it is likely to be carried out in a formal and centralized manner where states can carefully define the rules and nature of the cooperation, monitor cheating, and assess the relative gains or losses they derive from cooperation. In fact, few areas of cooperation can be considered more formal and centralized than the Cold War arms control agreements between the Soviet Union and the U.S. The fact that the post-Cold War has seen government networks and informal cooperative mechanisms increasingly used to address nuclear issues suggests that globalization has fundamentally altered the types of nuclear threats that states are most concerned about. The rest of this paper proceeds as follows. In the next section I give a brief overview of the general role of scientists in nuclear weapons issues from a theoretical and historical standpoint. This includes briefly reviewing U.S.-Soviet scientific cooperation and exchanges during the Cold War. The third section is devoted to conducting an in-depth case study of the role of lab-to-lab networks during the 1990s implementing materials protection, control & accounting (MPC&A) upgrades at nuclear sites in the FSU as part of the Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Program. The fourth section then examines the Obama administrations nuclear security agenda, which centers on biannual heads-of-state summits. The fifth and final section evaluates these case studies against the supposed advantages and disadvantages of government networks identified in Slaughters article. II. Scientists and Nuclear Weapons Policy While difficult to quantify, scientists have an obvious and important role to play in nuclear issues. Although policy decisions are made based on political considerations, with nuclear issues political calculations are informed in no small part by scientific matters. For instance, while a leader may determine that the threats facing his or her country warrant acquiring a nuclear weapon, if the country greatly lacks the scientific and technical means to build one the leader may decide to pursue alternative policies for dealing with these threats. Even if a leader decided to pursue nuclear weapons despite the odds, the amount of success s/he achieves in this effort is largely a function of the countrys scientific expertise and ability to mobilize it. Science is arguably of greater importance to arms control agreements. The example of the Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) of 1963 illustrates this dynamic. The LTBT prohibited all nuclear tests except for ones conducted underground. The initial impetus for a test ban treaty was the much greater yields produced by hydrogen bombs, the testing of which had brought issues like radiological fallout and other environment concerns into the mainstream public consciousness for the first time. The public outcry that ensued pressured the nuclear powers to explore a test ban. Science also defined the scope of the treaty they concluded. Specifically, the reason that the LTBT did not proscribe all nuclear testing is because the detection capabilities at the time were not advanced enough to allow states to distinguish between an underground nuclear test and an earthquake without conducting on-site inspections, which the Soviet Union refused to allow. Subsequent scientific advances, some coming as early as the 1970s (Barth 2006), in detecting underground nuclear tests, as well as ensuring the reliability of nuclear weapons without actually testing them, helped facilitate the signing of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996, although it has yet to be ratified by enough states to come into effect.

Keck 3

Policymakers reliance on scientists expertise inevitable gives the latter a degree of influence over policy. This influence is by no means decisive in every case. Nonetheless, scientists have in some cases had an important influence over countrys nuclear policies. The proliferation literature has often cited scientists and science bureaucracies as catalysts for the pursuit or foreswearing of nuclear weapons. In his seminal history of Indias nuclear weapon program, George Perkovich (1999) focuses on the pivot role of Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha, a Western-educated nuclear scientist who created and led Indias nuclear program from its inception in the late 1940s through his death in 1966 (see also Sublette undated). According to Perkovichs account, it was Dr. Bhabha who pressured Indias more pacifist-leaning political leaders to authorize a nuclear weapons program. Scott Sagan (1996/1997) addresses the role of scientists in nuclear proliferation from a more theoretical standpoint. Specifically, Sagan outlines a domestic/bureaucratic model of nuclear proliferation that consists of nuclear scientists from the national laboratories forming a pro-nuclear weapon coalition with members of the military leadership. Once formed, this pro-nuclear coalition signals out and engages sympathetic politicians, or pressures/manipulates anti-nuclear leaders into changing their position. On the other hand, scientists also have a rich tradition as non-proliferation and arms control advocates. In fact, arguably the first nuclear arms control advocates were the very same physicists working on the Manhattan Project, which developed the first U.S. nuclear bombs during WWII. Physicist Niels Bohr, for instance, lobbied Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchville to include Joseph Stalin in the Manhattan Project in order to improve the chances that nuclear weapons would be put under international (UN) control after the war. Similarly, J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, was the author of a U.S. government report that form the basis of the Baruch Plan, a 1946 US proposal to the UN calling for the most sensitive aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle to be put under international control (Holloway 2012). Following the invention and testing of hydrogen bombs in 1952, leading scientists took on non-proliferation advocacy with even greater urgency. Particularly notable was the 1955 Russell-Einstein Manifesto denouncing nuclear weapons that was signed by eleven leading scientists and public intellectuals. This manifesto would lead to the first Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs being held in 1957, which in 1995 was awarded with the Nobel Peace Prize. The role of scientists as arms control advocates was by no means limited to the Western world. Of particular importance on the Soviet side was Andrei Sakharov, a renowned physicist who led the Soviet Unions program to develop a hydrogen bomb, before becoming an outspoken critic of the Soviet Union regime and the nuclear arms race. Even after his vocal dissent of the Soviet regime led to his imprisonment in the late 1970s and early 1980s, Sakharov continued to speak out against nuclear weapons, including having friends and colleagues sneak out an open letter to American physicist Sydney Drell on the dangers of Thermonuclear War, which appeared in Foreign Affairs while Sakharov was still a prisoner (Sakharov 1983). Sakharov and Drells transnational cooperation was hardly unique in their field. Scientific inquiry by its very nature involves collaboration. As communication technology improved, this cooperation increasingly took place across national borders with information being exchanged through publications in professional journals and organizing international conferences. The result is an accumulative process where a crucial discovery in one area of the world is quickly incorporated into the work of scientists worldwide, soon spurring new breakthroughs from those latter scientists. Nuclear science has always embodied this transnational ethos. Reed and Stillman (2009, 12) note that the top seventy nuclear discoveries and innovations in the five pivotal decades between 1897 and 1948 came from scientists working in nine different nations, spanning three separate continents. Even the Manhattan Project, despite being aimed at producing a national nuclear weapon, was a multinational endeavor. Indeed, Reed and Stillman (2009, 13) survey the national origin of the leading scientists on the Los Alamos technical staff during the Manhattan Project,

Keck 4

and find that 25% came from the U.K. and Canada, 21% from the U.S., 21% from Germany/Austria, 17% from Hungary, and another 17% from other European countries. Soviet-U.S. scientific collaboration also took place throughout the Cold War, which would lay the foundations for the CTR Program discussed in the following section. The initial impetus for these exchanges was the signing in January 1958 of the Agreement between the United States of America and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics on Exchanges in the Cultural, Technical, and Educational Fields. On the U.S. side, much of the cooperation was carried out by the National Academy of Sciences and implemented by the National Research Council (NRC), whereas the Soviet Union carried out through the Academy of Sciences of the USSR (ASUSSR).2 In 1959, even as the Berlin Crisis was straining relations between the two countries, NAS and ASUSSR signed their first two year agreement formalizing science cooperation. Between 1961 and 1979 ten additional agreements were signed between NAS and ASUSSR. The nature of the cooperation between the Soviet Union and the U.S. during the Cold War was limited to research, usually carried out through student and scientist exchanges (Schweitzer 2004). Still, this forged the personal relationships and cultural understanding that would be critical to advancing the laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation that helped secure the Soviet Unions nuclear arsenal after the Cold War. III: The Cooperation Threat Reduction (CTR) Program. Out of necessity, U.S.-Russian scientific collaboration expanded enormously almost immediately following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. U.S. Senator Sam Nunn (D-GA) was crucial in initiating this cooperation. During the Soviet coup attempt against Mikhail Gorbachev in August 1991, Nunn happened to be in Budapest attending an Aspen Institute conference. At the invitation of a Soviet political scientist he had long known, Nunn traveled to Moscow from Budapest to observe first-hand the historical proceedings that followed the coups failure. While in Moscow he took a meeting with Gorbachev whom he had also long known, during which time he asked Gorbachev whether he had retained control of the Soviet nuclear command-and-control system during the coup. When Gorbachev demurred on this question, Nunn was sufficiently frightened that he returned to Washington determined to make securing the sprawling Soviet Union nuclear complex a top priority (Rhodes 2010, 127). This was not unreasonable. Indeed, the Soviet state that was quickly disintegrating boasted the largest nuclear weapons and materials stockpiles at the time, which it kept widely dispersed across what was about to become four independent countries. According to later estimates, in 1991 the Soviet Union held, 30,000 nuclear warheads, bomb material for 60,000 more, 40,000 metric tons of chemical weapons, missile-ready smallpox, and tens of thousands of scientists who knew how to make weapons and missiles but didnt know how to feed their families (Nuclear Threat Initiative 2012). Still, much like the Marshall Plan before it, while the CTR would eventually be widely celebrated, it encountered strong political resistance when first proposed. Nunn initially tried to secure funding for the program by proposing an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of FY1992 (which was already in conference), but the idea of funding the Soviet nuclear complex ignited so much opposition from his colleagues that Nunn withdrew it (Rhodes 2010, 133-137). Although the political winds changed soon thereafter 3, and $400 million of initial funding

2 3

Later the Russian Academy of Science. Interestingly, one of the key figures that changed Congresss mind was then-Harvard Professor Ashton Carter, who had recently co-authored a book (with Kurt Campbell, among others) entitled Soviet Nuclear Fission: Control of the Nuclear Arsenal in a Disintegrating Soviet Union. Carter gave a presentation on the book to Senators Nunn and Richard Lugar (R-IN), who were terrified by what they learned from Carter. Subsequently, they asked Carter to brief more members of Congress who reacted with the same sense of panic. This new sense of panic, among other things, allowed for the bills adoption (Rhodes 2010, 133-135). Among the members of Congress whose mind would change during this time was Representative Leon Panetta (D-CA), who initially opposed Nunns amendment but would come to support the CTRP. Today Panetta and Carter serve as the secretary of defense and deputy secretary

Keck 5

was approved for the CTR Program for FY 1992, the defeat of Nunns initial amendment was emblematic of the political environment that inhibited action on securing the former Soviet Unions (FSU) nuclear weapons and weapon-useable materials in the years ahead. It was in these initial years when political conditions were inhibiting progress on the CTR Program as a whole that laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation became especially important for alleviating the threat. The lab-to-lab work would take place primarily under the Material Protection, Control, and Accounting (MPC&A) component of CTR. The MPC&A aimed to provide security upgrades to sites around the Soviet Union that housed nuclear weapons and weapon-useable material (highly-enriched uranium and plutonium). While the actual safeguards implemented are decided based on the nature of the nuclear sites themselves, MPC&A programs in general are geared towards providing security upgrades to selected nuclear facilities, promoting consolidation of nuclear materials in central sites, and improving nuclear materials accounting procedures (Nikitin 2012). 4 Initially, MPC&A was divided into two parts: the government-to-government program that was led by the Department of Defense (DOD) on the U.S. side and tasked with carrying out the actual nuclear security upgrades, and the laboratory-to-laboratory program that was run by the national laboratories under the Department of Energy (DOE) on the U.S. side, and was originally limited to doing only purely scientific experiments about MPC&A. Despite this limitation along with the nearly non-existent funding5, the laboratory-to-laboratory program made rapid progress in securing Russia and the Newly Independent States (NIS) nuclear weapons and material sites from the programs inception in the early 1990s through the middle to late 1990s, when progress began to slow for reasons discussed below. The trajectory of this program-- from being one of the only successful parts of the CTR Program initially, to obtaining much less success in later years despite greater political support and fundingnicely illustrates the advantages of government networks. As Talmadge (2006, 3) concludes in her history of the lab-to-lab MPC&A program: Although this initial work received scant funding, the program flourished largely because of low-level, lab-to-lab contacts among a transnational network of American and former Soviet scientists. The program had high-level political support in both countries, but central government control and formal negotiations were relatively minimal, allowing true partnership and a joint decision-making process to emerge between technical experts from the two countries. Rapid results in securing nuclear materials soon followed. The initial success was driven nearly entirely by the scientists themselves who, building off the relationships they had forged during the Cold War and their shared identity as scientists, didnt encounter the initial startup issues that other aspects of the CTR Program did. Although initially confined to pure science cooperation, the scientists quickly signed a number of framework agreements outlining the types of activities they would pursue. This culminated in the January 1994 signing of a landmark umbrella agreement between the Los Alamos and Arzamas-16 national laboratories that authorized a wide variety of activities they could jointly pursue. By contrast, the more formalized gov-to-gov network led by DOD (and including the State Department and DOE) fell victim to interagency disagreements within the U.S. government, and the deep-seated mistrust that existed of defense respectively. Later in the 1990s both (along with Kurt Campbell) would hold various positions in the Clinton administration. 4 MPC&A was the system used in American laboratories during the Cold War to protect against external and internal threats of theft of nuclear weapons and/or nuclear weapon usable materials. The Soviet Union, in contrast, hedged against external threats by making its nuclear sites in closed cities that were heavily guarded, not located on Soviet maps, or even known of to ordinary citizens. Moscow countered potential internal threats through the closed city system as well as the presence of the KGB, strict personnel standards, and the threat of harsh penalties to protect these sites from insider threats. The political, social, and economic changes that accompanied the dissolution of the Soviet Union made continuing this system impossible, leading Moscow and other FSU states to look towards systems like MPC&A that could be implemented in a non-totalitarian state. 5 Of the $400 million Congress initially authorized for all of the CTR, the MPC&A program received $10 million or about 2.5%. (Talmadge 2006, 6).

Keck 6

between Russian and U.S. bureaucrats from the Cold War. It took a year-and-a-half of negotiations before the first agreement was reached in September 1993. Unfortunately, that agreement was limited to a model upgrade to a civilian nuclear site that only housed low-enriched uranium (LEU), not the HEU that is actually used in nuclear weapons (Stern 1996). Hopes that this initial deal would pave the way for another one covering a nearby HEU nuclear site were not realized, and in 1994 DOD and DOE began empowering the more successful lab-to-lab program to separately negotiate and implement MPC&A upgrades. This began a two-year-process where the entire MPC&A program was streamlined and put under the purview of DOE (Talmadge 2006).6 MPC&A progress began almost immediately thereafter. Part of this was again due to the strong personal relationships between the scientists themselves. Another factor that benefitted the program was that the persons involved with the negotiations, the scientists, were the same ones who had the necessary expertise to actual implement the MPC&A model upgrades. That is not to say there was no political oversight; it just wasnt overly burdensome in the beginning. The scientists initially got their political superiors to agree to allow them to carry out MPC&A negotiations under the same framework that they had signed in January 1994. Moreover, the scientists on the ground developed a practice of devising detailed work plans for each nuclear site amongst themselves before involving the political leaders in the process. Once a consensus plan had been reached for a particular site, the scientists from both sides would simultaneously present it to the relevant authorities from their respective government. This allowed them to avoid any interaction between the government officials who deeply mistrusted each other. Furthermore, presenting the political leaders and bureaucrats in Moscow and Washington with a final, detailed plan that drawn up by technical experts on the ground made it difficult for those leaders to reject the plan (Talmadge 2006). Thus, while the lab-to-lab cooperation had political oversight, the work was done without formal diplomatic negotiations, which allowed it to proceed more quickly and with greater flexibility. Indeed, construction on a model upgrade at a building in Arzamas-16 began two months after the lab-to-lab program was given MPC&A authority. Three more site agreements were reached throughout 1994, and by the end of that year construction was almost complete for a model upgrade at a highly sensitive but poorly guarded HEU-site in the Kurchatov Institute, the same kind of site that the gov-to-gov network had failed to reach an agreement on despite years of negotiations. In January 1995, the MPC&A safeguards had been completely installed in Arzamas-16 (Phillips & Auguston 1996). The scientists deftly harnessed these initial achievements to increase political support for their work. They did this by giving political leaders from both sides on-site demonstrations of the newly installed MPC&A system at Arzamas-16. Among those who took part in this demonstration were U.S. Congressmen, Russian security officials, the Russian Minister of Atomic Energy, and the U.S. Secretary and Deputy Secretary of Energy. The demonstrations impressed these leaders who in turn became active supporters of the lab-to-lab MPC&A work (Phillips & Auguston 1996). Consequently, by the beginning of 1998 agreements had been reached and MPC&A work had begun at about 50 civilian and military nuclear sites throughout Russia and the NIS, which at the time was believed to include all the sites that housed weapons-useable nuclear materials (Doyle 1998). In 2000, the U.S. and Russia also signed a further agreement to begin carrying out MPC&A work on Russias nuclear submarines (Arms Control Association 2000). By 1997, however, the pace of the lab-to-labs successes began to slow, in large part due to its own initial success. As one of the only parts of the CTR Program achieving any results initially, the lab-to-lab cooperation garnered increasingly attention and support from political leaders, who in turn drastically increased its funding. Thus, whereas MPC&A got $10 million in its first year (FY 1992) and the lab-to-lab cooperation got a mere $2 million in funding when it entered into MPC&A upgrades in 1994 (Phillips & Auguston 1996, 75), MPC&As budget had skyrocketed to nearly $115 million in FY1997 and $140 million by FY 1999 (Perry 1999).
6

Later it was returned to the Defense Department but carried out by the Nuclear Security Administration Agency.

Keck 7

With this increase in funding came greater scrutiny of the lab-to-lab networks from career civil servants in DOE. The greater funding convinced these mid-level bureaucrats, reasonably enough, that the degree of autonomy the scientists were afforded could lead to a situation where a scandal at one nuclear site could jeopardize congressional and public support for the MPC&A program as a whole. Additionally, the DOE officials believed the MPC&A program need to implement centralized organization and uniform procedures and planning7 if it was going to secure long-term funding from Congress. The individuals within DOE who harbored these concerns saw an opportunity to act on them during the transition from the first to the second Clinton administration in the winter of 1996-1997. Key support for the lab-to-lab program had come from political appointees at senior levels of DOE, many of whom decided to return to the private sector at the conclusion of Clintons first term in office. As the personnel turnover was underway the DOE bureaucrats asserted control over most aspects of the lab-to-lab program, including negotiating the frameworks and work plans for MPC&A upgrades at each site. After doing so they created a unified set of guidelines for MPC&A work that was difficult to square with the uniqueness of the different sites.8 Besides more formalized negotiations, the program was also hampered by the fact that negotiators were once again the political and bureaucratic leaders from Russia and the U.S. who deeply resented and mistrusted one another (Talmadge 2006). These new circumstances help explain the MPC&A programs slower rate of progress from the late 1990s onward. For example, in 1998 DOE announced that all MPC&A work in Russia and the NIS would be completed by 2002 (Doyle 1998). In March 2012, the Congressional Research Service stated that the new estimated wrap-up date was the end of FY 2012, at which point Russia would assume full responsibility for the program (Nikitin 2012). Nonetheless, the CTR Program in general, and the MPC&A component in particular are still considered remarkable successes. Among the achievements of the broader CTR Program are: 7,619 strategic nuclear warheads deactivated; 902 intercontinental ballistic missiles destroyed; 33 nuclear submarines capable of launching ballistic missiles destroyed; 24 nuclear weapons storage sites secured; Transforming the nations with the 3rd, 4th, and 8th largest nuclear weapons arsenals into nuclear weapon-free countries (Kaszynski 2012).9

IV: The Proliferation of Nuclear Security Perhaps the greatest symbol of the programs successes is that both were expanded to countries outside the FSU in 2003 when Congress passed the Nunn-Lugar Expansion Act. This was done partly because of the growing concern over the threat of nuclear terrorism following the 9/11 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. It also corresponded with the discovery of the AQ Khan transnational proliferation network, which sold nuclear materials, infrastructure, and expertise to countries like Iran and Libya. Although important progress was made between the passage of the Expansion Act of 2003 and George W. Bush leaving office in January 2009, nuclear security efforts took on greater significance when Barack Obama assumed
7

The different laboratories involved each handled their own activities with minimal interaction between them. This allowed for flexibility in the ways in which with each specific nuclear sites nuclear security models were strengthened. 8 The specific MPC&A safeguards installed at each site was previously determined by a number of factors including its location, type of nuclear work being done, type of materials present and in what form, among other factors (Phillips & Auguston 1996). 9 The 3rd, 4th, and 8th largest nuclear weapon arsenals follow the dissolution of the Cold War belonged to Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Belarus respectively.

Keck 8

office. The Obama administrations focus on nuclear security was part of a larger nuclear initiativeinitially called the nuclear springthat also included signing a Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) with Russia, reaffirming the United States commitment to pursue nuclear disarmament, a renewed effort to ratify the CTBT, deemphasizing the role of nuclear weapons in Americas national security strategy, and stronger diplomacy (both positive and negative) with Iran over its nuclear program. Still, the issue of nuclear securitywhich included, among other things, the consolidation of weapon-useable nuclear sites by converting HEU nuclear reactors around the world into ones that used LEU, MPC&A upgrades at remaining weapons-useable nuclear sites, and a verifiable fissile material cut-off treaty (FMCT) -- took on particular importance for the Obama administration in light of the presidents view that nuclear terrorism posed the single biggest threat to U.S. security, both short term, medium term and long term, a line that was repeated in different formulations countless times in administration speeches and key documents like the nuclear posture review (NPR) (Obama 2010). Since eradicating terrorism was deemed impossible, and non-state terrorist groups were seen as incapable of independently producing weapon-useable nuclear material, securing existing fissile material stockpiles around the world was considered to be the most direct method of eliminating the threat of nuclear terrorism. Towards that end, in April 2009, a mere two months after taking office, President Obama delivered a speech in Prague that, among other things, called for a FMCT and the establishment of an international nuclear fuel bank, and announced a new global initiative to to secure all vulnerable nuclear material around the world within four years (Obama 2009). These and other nuclear security goals were later incorporated into a UN resolution that was endorsed by the Security Council during a meeting that President Obama personally presided over. Next, the administration organized a historic nuclear security summit that was held in Washington, DC in April 2010 and attended by 47 nationsincluding 37 heads of statesas well as delegations from international and regional organizations like the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the G-8, and the European Union (EU). The summit produced numerous bilateral and multilateral nuclear security agreements along with a non-binding, voluntary communiqu and supplemental work plan agreed to by all 47 nations that affirmed the importance of nuclear security and pledged to work towards and support various measures to strengthen it. Working level followup meetings to track progress were also announced at the summit, as was another heads-of-state summit to be held in Seoul, South Korea in 2012. Given the MPC&A case study above, it would be reasonable to conclude that the high-level political scrutiny nuclear security has received during the Obama administration would have hindered actual progress. While its premature to make any conclusive statements on the success or failure of President Obamas nuclear security agenda, preliminary assessments suggest that significant progress is being made. For example, while expressing concern over sustainability of some efforts, an analysis by Harvards Project on Managing the Atom concluded, the four-year effort to secure nuclear materials can be considered a major success: many of the worlds highest-risk nuclear stocks are either receiving significant security improvements or have been eliminated entirely. The risk of nuclear theft and terrorism is lower as a result of these efforts (Bunn, Harrell, & Malin 2012). The same report went on to note that around 80% of the four-year goals set at the 2010 summit had been reached by the second heads-ofstate summit in Seoul two years later. Does the Obama administrations nuclear security agendas success therefore invalidate the importance of working through networks? Not at all. To the contrary, the progress that has been made serves to reaffirm the importance of government networks. The major benefit of holding the high-level Washington security summit is that it forced leaders in 47 nations to review their countrys nuclear security practices and sites. Furthermore, the 37 heads-ofstates attending the summit in particular did not want to arrive in Washington without having major accomplishments to announce. They therefore directed their subordinates to find achievements and realistic aspirations they could bring with them to the summit. These subordinates often undertook this work in close consultation with their counterparts in the United States, Russia, and other nations attending the summits.

Keck 9

The initiatives and programs that were announced at the summit varied significantly. That being said, they were generally couched in broad enough terms to allow transnational government networks significant flexibility in implementing them. For example, many bilateral and multilateral agreements were signed at the initial summit pledging countries to cooperate with the U.S. or others in carrying out MPC&A upgrades at all their weapons-usable nuclear material sites within a country by a certain date. In other cases, countries agreed to cooperate with the U.S. or others in converting all their nuclear reactors that ran on HEU into ones that used LEU. Much of the details regarding implementation were left to the government networks to work out amongst themselves based on factors like the type of work they were doing, the current conditions of the sites they were working on, the national regulations that had to be adhered to during this work, the kind of relationship between the two countries, and the personal relationships that developed between the technocrats on the ground. Indeed, governmental organizations, NGOs, and the media have frequently criticized the nuclear security summit and the Obama administrations nuclear security initiatives more generally for their ambiguity. To cite just one example, Government Accountability Office (2010) reports have repeatedly warned Congress that the Obama administrations initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear material within four years, lacks specific details concerning how the initiative will be implemented, including the identity of vulnerable foreign nuclear material sites and facilities to be addressed, agencies and programs responsible for addressing each site, planned activities at each location, potential challenges and strategies for overcoming those obstacles, anticipated timelines, and cost estimates. It has then urged the Obama administration to centralize its efforts within the National Security Council (NSC) to rectify what it sees as a deficiency. But, as one particularly insightful NGO report suggested, the decentralization and ambiguity appears to be intentional: The Obama administration has carefully avoided offering any specific, public definition of what it hopes to accomplish during the four-year effortsa fact that has generated some criticism (Bunn, Harrell, & Malin 2012). Instead, it generally used the first nuclear security summit to get leaders to sign onto various goals, with the two follow-up summits in 2012 and 2014 in place to ensure that they would make a strong effort to meet these goals. The nuclear security summits also worked in close consultation with international institutions like the IAEA, and the U.N. The 2010 joint communiqu, for example, reaffirmed the essential role of the International Atomic Energy Agency in the international nuclear security framework, while also making note of the contributions made by the other multilateral institutions including the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism and the G-8-led Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials (Office of the Press Secretary 2010a). Meanwhile, the work plan that augmented the communiqu called on states to recognize and support numerous UN initiatives including the Convention on the Physical Protection of Nuclear Material, International Convention for the Suppression of Acts of Nuclear Terrorism, and the United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1540 (2004) (Office of the Press Secretary 2010b). At the same time, a major benefit of the nuclear security summit was that it allowed countries that are not party to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to participate. The NPT forbids any nuclear-armed countries besides the initial five10 from being parties to the treaty. While intended to discourage countries from seeking nuclear weapons, this provision has resulted in nuclear-armed states like Pakistan, India, Israel, and North Korea existing outside the treaty and its larger framework. In contrast to critics of government networks, introducing this new international nuclear forum has allowed the international community to actually expand the scope of its nuclear security activities, with Pakistan, India, and Israel all actively participating in the 2010 Washington Summit.

10

The nuclear weapon states NWS in the NPT are the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, and China.

Keck 10

In fact, at the Washington Summit India announced the creation of a regional nuclear energy training center with a nuclear security division (Nikitin 2012).11 V: Conclusion In sum, both cases offer strong support for Slaughters advocacy of government networks. The lab-to-lab network was able to quickly organize following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Once empowered to participate in the MPC&A, the networks proved adaptable enough to make rapid progress in installing nuclear security features in the most sensitive civilian and military nuclear sites in the FSU. Their success was largely based on personal relationships, their shared identity as scientists, and their mutual goal of preventing the theft of nuclear materials. Notably, more formalized negotiations at higher political levels did not enjoy such success in helping to secure the FSU nuclear complex, despite both countries having a strong interest in this outcome. Therefore, government networks, and in this case the lab-to-lab network, was able to enhance the power of the states in dealing with a globalization type issue. The basic model has now been expanded to deal with similar problems outside the initial area of operation. On the other hand, the case studies provide almost no support for the critiques of government networks that Slaughter responds to in her article. While the lab-to-lab network was pursuing a narrow goalinstalling MPC&A upgrades at FSU facilitiesit was doing so as part of a larger effort that aimed to achieve a globally important goal. Furthermore, the CTR Program and the MPC&A component were later expanded to include nuclear sites worldwide. In any case, these specific case studies exist amid a large array of political leaders, bureaucracies, government networks, NGOs, businesses, and traditional international institutions that carry out a variety of important nuclear-related work from nuclear power and nuclear safety and security, to non-proliferation and disarmament. Government networks may not be the most effective type of organization to deal with all of these issues, but the case studies demonstrated that in some areas they are superior to these other forms of organization. Relatedly, the government networks from the case study do not appear to be displacing more traditional international institutions. Although this might have been true during the initial CTR Program, by the time of the first nuclear security summit the IAEA and other institutions were actively participating alongside the government networks. Furthermore, in many cases the nuclear security summit was aimed at gaining support for IAEA programs, and all times the work of the government networks was broadly consistent with the goals of the IAEA. The charge that governmental networks lack the transparency and accountability that democratic societies expect of their governments, while not completely unfounded, is largely unjustified. To the degree the critique is valid it is more due to the nature of nuclear security rather than the networks themselves. The highly technical work requires that those involved in it have a large degree of flexibility so they can carry out programs tailored to the specificities of the nuclear site and country they are working in. Moreover, the sensitivity of nuclear security and fissile materials require a large degree of secrecy. Despite the GAOs objections, it would not be in the publics interest if the U.S. publically announced the names and locations of the nuclear sites around the world it had determined required MPC&A upgrades because they were currently vulnerable to external theft. It matters little if government networks or bureaucracies are the ones engaged in the MPC&A upgrades. With these limitations in mind, in both case studies the government networks were held reasonable accountable and transparent. At all times the networks were operating under frameworks that their political superiors had agreed to, which could include certain limitations. Moreover, various governmental organizations like the GAO and CRS, as well as NGOs conducted assessments of the problems while they were ongoing. In fact, Los Alamos itself published first-hand accounts of the work it was doing during the initial phases of its MPC&A work (Phillips &
11

Japan, South Korea, and China also announced the creation of similar centers during the summit (Nikitin 2012). Notably, these centers and other initiatives like the establishment of ongoing bilateral nuclear security working groups appear designed in part to institutionalize transnational government networks.

Keck 11

Auguston 1996), and the organization that now carries out the MPC&A program, the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) has continued this practice through press releases, speeches, official testimony, and reports. At the follow-up nuclear security summits most countries have also submitted progress reports detailing the work they had engaged in over the last two years. Finally, as DOEs assertion of greater control over the lab-to-lab cooperation during the second Clinton administration demonstrates, too much accountability and transparency comes at the cost of effectiveness. Thus, some sort of balance needs to be struck between how much accountability is imposed on these networks.

Bibliography
Arms Control Association. (2000, October). DOE, Russian Navy Sign MPC&A Agreement. Arms Control Today. Barth, K.-H. (2006). Catalysts of Change: Scientists as Transnational Arms Control Advocates. Osiris, 21: Global Power Knowledge: Science and Technology in International Affairs, 182-206. Bunn, M. (April 2010). Securing the Bomb 2010: Securing All Nuclear Materials in Four Years. Cambridge, Mass & Washington, D.C.: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University, and Nuclear Threat Initiative . Bunn, M., Harrell, E., & Malin, M. B. (March 2012). Progress on Securing Nuclear Weapons and Materials: The Four-Year Effort and Beyond. Cambridge, Mass: Project on Managing the Atom, Harvard University. Doyle, J. E. (1998, March). Improving Nuclear Materials Security In the Former Soviet Union: Next Steps for the MPC: A Program. Arms Control Today. Government Accountability Office. (2010). Comprehensive U.S.Planning and Better Foreign Cooperation Needed to Secure Vulnerable Nuclear Materials Worldwide. Washington, D.C.: Government Accountability Office. Holloway, D. (2012). The Vision of a World Free of Nuclear Weapons. In C. M. Kelleher, & J. Reppy (Eds.), Getting to Zero: The Path to Nuclear Disarmament (pp. 11-27). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. Hollway, D. (1994). Stalin and the Bomb. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. International Atomic Energy Agency. (2007). IAEA Safety Glossary: Terminology Used in Nuclear Safety and Radition Protection. Vienna, Austria: International Atomic Energy Agency. Kaszynski, M. (2012). The Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program: Securing and Safeguarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Washington, DC: American Security Project. Los Alamos. (1996, Summer). Los Alamos and Arzamas-16: the "Sister Cities" Relationship. Los Alamos Science, 24, 44-47. Nikitin, M. (March 7, 2012). Securing Nuclear Materials: The 2012 Summit and Issues for Congress. Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service. Nuclear Threat Initiative. (2012). The Nunn-Lugar Vision. Washington, D.C.: Nuclear Threat Initiative. Obama, B. (2009, April 5). Remarks by President Barack Obama in Prague as Delivered. Retrieved from White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the_press_office/Remarks-By-President-Barack-Obama-In-Prague-AsDelivered

Keck 12

Obama, B. (2010, April 11). Remarks by President Obama and President Zuma of South Africa before Bilateral Meeting. Retrieved from The White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarkspresident-obama-and-president-zuma-south-africa-bilateral-meeting Office of the Press Secretary . (2010b, April 13). Work Plan of the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. Retrieved from White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/work-plan-washington-nuclear-securitysummit Office of the Press Secretary. (2010a, April 13). Communiqu of the Washington Nuclear Security Summit. Retrieved from The White House: http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/communiqu-washingtonnuclear-security-summit Perkovich, G. (1999). India's Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation. Berkeley: University of California Press. Perry, T. (1999, Winter). Securing Russian Nuclear Materials: The Need for an Expanded U.S. Response. Nonproliferation Review, 84-97. Phillips, J. R., & Augustson , R. H. (1996). Russian-American MPC&A Nuclear Materials Protection, Control, and Accounting in the Russian Federation. Los Alamos Science, 26, 72-83. Reed, T. C., & Stillman, D. B. (2009). The Nuclear Express: A Political History of the Bomb and its Proliferation . Minneapolis, MN: Zenith Press. Rhodes, R. (2010). The Twlight of the Bombs. New York: Random House. Sagan, S. (1996/1997, Winter). Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of the Bomb. International Security, 21(3), 54-86. Sakharov, A. (1983, Summer). Open Letter to Sidney Drell: The Dangers of Thermonuclear War. Foreign Affairs, 1000-1016. Schweitzer, G. E. (2004). Scientists, Engineers, and Track-Two Diplomacy: A Half Century of U.S.-Russian Interacademy Cooperation. Washington, DC: National Academies Press. Slaughter, A.-M. (2002). Governing the Global Economy Through Global Networks. In D. Held, & A. McGrew (Eds.), The Global Transformations Reader: An Introduction to the Globalization Debate, 2nd Edition (pp. 189-203). Malden, MA: Polity Press. Slaughter, A.-M. (2005). A New World Order. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. Stern, J. E. (1996, Winter). U.S. Assistance Programs for Improving MPC&A in the Former Soviet Union. Nonproliferation Review, 17-32. Sublette, C. (n.d.). Dr. Homi Jehangir Bhabha. Retrieved from The Nuclear Weapons Archive: http://nuclearweaponarchive.org/India/Bhabha.html Talmadge, C. (2005, March). Striking a Balance: The Lessons of U.S.-Russian Nuclear Materials Cooperation. Nonproliferation Review, 1-34. Taubman, P. (2012). The Partnership: Five Cold Warrirors and Their Quest to Ban the Bomb. New York: HarperCollins.

Keck 13