17 July 2004
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Today the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security, a comprehensive approach to the challenges of nuclear proliferation in a post-9/11 world. The core principle, universal compliance, addresses the limitations of the current system of nuclear “haves” and “have-nots” by posing a new balance of obligations that would apply to all states—those that have signed the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) and those that have not—as well as non-state actors.
The report, released in draft, was written by George Perkovich, Joseph Cirincione, Rose Gottemoeller, Jon B. Wolfsthal, and Jessica Mathews, all of the Carnegie Endowment. Based on a series of international consultations, it will be finalized after a review by top experts worldwide, then released in January 2005 to the new Bush or Kerry administration.
“This strategy answers the question the world would ask the day after a war or terrorist attack involving nuclear weapons: ‘What should we have done?’” says Jessica Mathews, president of the Endowment. “Recent U.S. presidents have stated that nonproliferation is a top security priority. This report says what to do, if we took this threat seriously. Our approach is unique in addressing the entire nuclear system. We don’t just answer the easy questions.”
The strategy synthesizes innovative approaches of the Bush administration with elements of the traditional treaty-based regime, then adds many new ideas. New initiatives and key themes include:
Create no new nuclear states.
- Ban new, national production of weapon fuels—highly enriched uranium and plutonium.
- Guarantee nuclear fuel services or other energy assistance to states that give up nuclear material production activities.
- Negotiate UN Security Council resolutions clarifying punishment for states withdrawing from the NPT.
Introduce tougher measures to prevent nuclear terrorism.
- Create a Contact Group to Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, with envoys designated from states that possess stockpiles of nuclear weapon-usable materials. The group would establish and implement state-of-the-art security over all nuclear weapons and materials.
- Criminalize undeclared transfers of nuclear materials, equipment, and know-how by states, corporations, and individuals.
- Develop international guidelines for the use of force against emerging proliferation threats.
Devalue nuclear weapons.
- Forbid research, development and testing of new types of nuclear weapons.
- Engage all states that have nuclear weapons and/or material stockpiles in the technical details of how they would verifiably eliminate nuclear arsenals and secure all fissile materials, as obligated under the NPT.
- Establish Indian, Pakistani and Israeli obligations to adopt nonproliferation and disarmament commitments undertaken by the U.S., Russia, the U.K., France, and China.
The report and a two-page summary are available online at www.carnegieendowment.org/strategy. The authors will discuss the report at the opening of the two-day 2004 Carnegie International Non-Proliferation Conference on Monday, June 21 at 8:30 am at the Ronald Reagan International Trade Center located at 1300 Pennsylvania Avenue NW. Send requests for print copies of the report to pubs@carnegieendowment.org.