administrations and congresses alike led this civilizing project to extend the benefits of law to the control of weapons of mass destruction. Indeed, what could be a higher calling for the sake of civilization as we know it.

The main points of this seeming detour are that weapons of mass destruction are incompatible with the civilization the United States (and others) have strived to foster; rule of law is an essential end and means of this civilization; our efforts to prevent and roll back proliferation will be more durably successful if they rely on and strengthen law-based policies. In other words, treaties are not the problem. The problem is how to strengthen everyone's determination to enforce them.

The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the conventions on chemical and biological weapons enjoy clear international legitimacy. This stems from the fact that they were negotiated through widely represented processes and, most importantly, were ratified by individual states party. The strength and legitimacy of these treaties can be seen further in the near universality of their membership. We concentrate on non-adherents to international law, as we should, but perhaps more important are the vast, vast majority of adherents. Of 191 countries in the world, only threeIsrael, India and Pakistan-have not joined the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty. The current known and suspected violators of this treaty's central injunction against acquiring nuclear weapons are North Korea, Iran, and perhaps Libya. More indicative of the legitimacy and effectiveness of this law-based regime is the number of states that gave up nuclear weapon programs or capabilities in order to come into compliance: Argentina, Brazil, Belarus, Kazakhstan, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Taiwan and Ukraine.

The legitimacy and wide adherence to nonproliferation treaties represents a great source of strength that the United States and other forces of civilization should use adeptly to strengthen enforcement of the norms and laws that the vast majority consider vital to civilization. Neglect or denigration of these treaty regimes needlessly dissipates the potential strength they offer us. Indeed, our capacity to rally others to add their strength to ours will grow or weaken in direct proportion to the political capital we invest in international law and regimes generally.

Other states and societies resisted U.S. leadership in the run up to the Iraq war in part because the U.S. seemed in the preceding five years to denigrate international cooperation and treaties that others valued. The list is well known and includes: the International Criminal Court, the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the ban on antipersonnel land mines, the biodiversity treaty, a verification mechanism for the Biological Weapons Control Treaty, the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty. Specific arguments could be made against each of these treaties, but the cumulative effect of U.S. positions suggests an aversion to international regimes that could require actions that the U.S. otherwise would prefer not to take. One response by others is to say, "fine, then we will withhold our cooperation when you ask us to do things we would prefer not to." (This resistance can be seen in the difficulty we find in rallying other states to volunteer police and other occupation forces or to contribute to post-war construction efforts).

STRENGTHENING THE NONPROLIFERATION REGIMES: THE MIDDLE EAST, THE PERSIAN GULF, RULE REFORM, AND COALITION AGAINST NUCLEAR TERRORISM

The WMD nonproliferation regimes need to be strengthened. Existing rules need to be revised; new rules or initiatives need to be undertaken; enforcement needs to be made surer. To accomplish this vital tightening and strengthening, leading states in the international community must join with the U.S. Fear of U.S. unilateralism or retribution may induce some states to cooperate, but the sustained cooperation needed to enforce nonproliferation rules will be more likely if others perceive that the U.S. is committed to abiding by terms and procedures of cooperation as elaborated through international treaties and institutions, even if at times we would rather do otherwise.

To this end, we should frame the intervention in Iraq as an initiative to begin creating the conditions for a zone free of weapons of mass destruction in the Middle East. This is a principal objective of parties to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty; we could be doing much more to proclaim and demonstrate that the disarmament and removal of the Saddam regime in Iraq will serve the goals and objectives of the NPT, the CWC and the BWC. Indeed these treaty objectives could not be achieved without fundamental change in Iraq's governance. To the best of my knowledge, the U.S. has not made any effort to relate the initiative in Iraq to the objectives of treaties that the rest of the world actually says it cares a great deal about. We have missed an opportunity to say and demonstrate that we care greatly about international nonproliferation treaties and that the removal of the Saddam regime and

its capacity to produce weapons of mass destruction should enhance significantly the prospect of achieving universal adherence to these treaties.

Going further in this vein, we know that proliferation occurs in regional clusters, and that Iraq was a major stimulus of WMD proliferation in the Middle East and Persian Gulf. Iran and Israel's interests in acquiring nuclear and probably chemical weapons stem at least in large part from Iraq. The U.S. is now concentrating intensely on Iran. We have gotten the attention of Iranian leaders of all stripes; they fear U.S. power and intentions. Signs emerge that Iranian leaders would be interested in an accommodation with the U.S. that would include, on their part, at least some of the steps the U.S. has long demanded. But Iranians also have major strategic concerns that are not unreasonable and that the U.S. has not sufficiently addressed. These concerns would obtain if no Ayatollah held any power in Iran. Chief among them is whether the U.S. plans to dominate Persian Gulf political, economic and security affairs for the indefinite future? If the currently mixed Iranian government made "concessions" demanded by the U.S., would Washington pocket them and then still seek to overthrow the government? If that is the case, Iranians ask, then "why make_concessions?" Importantly, conservatives and reformers alike ask these questions. Reformers with whom I have spoken do not worry that accommodations between the U.S. and the current government of Iran would undermine the course of true democratic reform in Iran; rather, they say it would help. What worries them is that the U.S. will push its coercive diplomacy too far into Iran and stimulate nationalist stirrings that will hamper the cause of reform. Iranian nationalists of all stripes do not want to be taken advantage of by the U.S. (and Israel, as they see it).

If the antagonists in the Middle East need a road map, the antagonists in the Persian Gulf need a navigational chart. They need to know the intentions of all regional actors, including the U.S., and whether rules can be agreed to limit the threats and capabilities they might array against each other. If the U.S. is not forever to be the military occupier of Iraq and the wider region, some sort of regional security system must be negotiated. This is vital in its own right, but also to global security and nonproliferation. Why has no effort even been discussed publicly to initiate a regional security dialogue of Persian Gulf states and the U.S. (as the invited protector of several of these states)? If it is because we now prefer to act alone and at our sole discretion, rather than effect rule-based systems, then history suggests the cost in treasure and insecurity will mount over time.

Among the questions that should be put on the table in a Persian Gulf dialogue are the following:

• What feasible policies would Iran have to adopt to prompt the U.S. and its protectorates (Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and now Iraq) to grant Iran the prominent place in the Gulf that its size and history warrant?

• Under what conditions would the U.S., and its protectorates conclude that the American military presence in the region could be reduced dramatically, as Iranians wish?

• How do the U.S. and Israel, as possessors of weapons of mass destruction, propose to reassure Iran that it does not need such weapons for its security? • How do Iran and the U.S. propose to help establish new security relations between post-war Iraq and Iran, recalling that Iraq in 1980 started the brutal eight-year war with Iran and attacked it with chemical weapons?

• In a world of enforced norms against terror, how can Iran be integrated into the international political economy if it does not explicitly recognize Israel's existence? If Iran does explicitly recognize Israel, how will it gain?

These questions are too important to ignore. The U.S. should propose an initial, non-negotiating forum for officials and highly informed scholars from all of the Gulf states, and the U.S. and the U.K. to address them.

Iran-like North Korea and Iraq when it was building its Osiraq nuclear reactor-also highlights the need for major reform of the nuclear nonproliferation regime's basic rules. The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was negotiated in 1968. It reflects the spirit of Atoms for Peace, the belief that nuclear power was the apogee of human technological prowess and would provide electricity too cheap to meter. If nuclear power represented modernity and economic development, then all countries should be entitled to acquire nuclear technology, as long as they accepted monitoring to verify their commitments not to acquire nuclear weapons. Thus the rules of the NPT allow Iran, North Korea, and other states to acquire capabilities to enrich uranium and produce and separate plutonium. As long as the state follows the limited requirements of transparency and monitoring, and cannot be proved to be seeking nuclear weapons, it is entitled to acquire weapons-usable capabilities. Such

a state need not demonstrate that these capabilities are necessary or economical for civilian purposes.

The U.S. is now leading a charge in the International Atomic Energy Agency to find Iran in non-compliance with its NPT obligations. The impression has arisen that the contention centers on the uranium enrichment plant at Natanz. Yet, the allegations the IAEA is investigating are that Iran undertook pilot-scale enrichment at another, secret facility without notifying the IAEA, and may not have accounted fully and accurately for uranium-hexafluoride gas it received years ago from China. But under current rules Iran is entitled to have facilities to enrich uranium and produce and separate plutonium as long as it follows procedures for notification and monitoring. Thus Iranian officials, such as Vice President Reza Aghazadeh, argue forcefully back:

Our people and authorities always ask why Iran which has acceded to different nuclear treaties and safeguards agreements and has rendered all sorts of cooperation as demanded by IAEA and while its nuclear activities, as attested by the official reports of IAEA inspection teams are peaceful, still remains subject to various international pressures and restrictions. Meanwhile countries which possess weapons of mass destruction and refuse to accede to treaties such as NPT are left on their own without being asked to be accountable for their nuclear conduct.1

Clearly there is a giant loophole in the NPT that needs to be closed before other states try to use it. (Egypt, Algeria, South Korea, and Turkey come to mind, and three of these states are U.S. friends, not bad guys). The rules need to be reformed. Given the surfeit of existing uranium enrichment and plutonium production and separation capabilities in the world, no additional states need acquire such capabilities that are inherently proliferation sensitive. States like Iran that already have invested in acquiring capabilities that we reasonably want them to forego should be compensated and should be guaranteed the nuclear fuel services they need for civilian purposes. Fair-minded people rather readily could devise arrangements to utilize already operating, internationally reliable fuel-cycle capabilities to provide cost-effective fuel services to states like Iran. The challenge is to negotiate reform of the underlying rules. Space does not allow detailing all the interest groups and states that would resist such reform. Unmistakably, though, the U.S. will need the cooperation of the United Kingdom, France, Russia, China, Japan and probably Iran and other states to effect this reform which is vital for global security.

So far I have suggested needed initiatives to strengthen regional security in the Middle East and Persian Gulf and to reform the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Another priority-maybe first in order of “doability”—is to persuade all states possessing nuclear weapons materials and weapons to implement state-of-the-art security measures to ensure that terrorists cannot get their hands on these things.2 Currently, knowledge of best security practices is not systematically shared. There are not agreements or programs to make state-of-the-art security procedures and technologies available to all possessors of nuclear materials and weapons-items such as vault locks, infiltrator detection systems, security cameras, and other anti-theft technologies. Care must be taken not to violate Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty rules against sharing technology or know-how that would enhance other states' weapons capabilities. That said, improving every relevant state's capacity to secure sensitive nuclear assets is vital to protect the world against terrorism.

Forming a "coalition of the nuclear material possessing" is not only an anti-terrorism imperative. It also offers a way to engage India, Israel and Pakistan in cooperative international nonproliferation efforts. These three states currently stand outside the NPT. This should not be allowed to impede cooperation with them to promote the common global good by doing everything humanly possible to secure their nuclear "assets." Such cooperation should be a minimal obligation of states that possess nuclear weapon materials.

Senator Lugar, writing in the Washington Post, set the ideal objectives for the initiative I am suggesting: "every nation that has weapons and materials of mass destruction must account for what it has, safely secure what it has (spending its own money or obtaining international technical and financial resources to do so) and pledge that no other nation, cell or cause will be allowed access or use."3 Imple

1H.E. Mr. Reza Aghazadeh, “Iran's Nuclear Policy," speech given at IAEA Headquarters, Vienna, May 6, 2003, p. 9.

2 The U.S., U.K., France, Russia, China, Israel, India, Pakistan, Japan, Germany, Belgium, South Africa, North Korea-with perhaps one or two other European states that holds small amounts of highly enriched uranium or separated plutonium.

3 Senator Richard G. Lugar, "The Lugar Doctrine," Washington Post, December 6, 2001.

menting even this relatively modest agenda will require exceptional diplomacy and international cooperation. The necessary standard-setting and implementation cannot be achieved through coercion or diktat.

THE ENFORCEMENT CHALLENGE: NORTH KOREA, IRAN, AND BEYOND

This last section turns to the challenge that seems to preoccupy the U.S. today: enforcing nonproliferation norms and rules on states that seem intent to violate them.

We know from theory and practice that civilized law enforcement must be by-thebook and non-selective. Actors are not arrested and prosecuted without probable evidentiary cause that they have violated specific laws. And law enforcement is not supposed to be selective. All laws, not just some, are to be enforced. All violators, not just some are to be prosecuted. Failure to live up to these injunctions undermines the legitimacy of whichever jurisdiction we are considering. Over time, doubts about legitimacy lead to instability, disorder and resistance against the enforcers. The recent and ongoing Iraq experience remains ambiguous in its effect on future enforcement of disarmament and nonproliferation norms and terms. (The looting of nuclear facilities and dispersal of dirty-bomb materials into unknown hands, and removal of valuable files, may also have exacerbated the proliferation danger itself). The two other major cases "on the docket"-North Korea and Iran-are different from Iraq and each other, as administration officials rightly insist. Yet, one of the differences is the unavoidable need for cooperation in dealing with them, and this is where the Iraq experience may affect outcomes.

North Korea poses a rather cut-and-dried case. No one doubts that it has violated central norms and treaty provisions. Unlike with Iraq, the nature of the threat and the accuracy and motivations behind U.S. arguments are not disputed. This and other factors have helped the U.S. to persuade key regional players China, South Korea, Russia and Japan to cooperate somewhat in pressuring North Korea not to act more rashly. One can argue that this cooperation is greater than it would otherwise have been if the U.S. had spoken and acted as if it did not want or need cooperation, and instead would "handle" the challenge by itself militarily.

Using a law-based model, North Korea represents a hostage crisis wherein the hostage takers-the DPRK government-have agents outside the "house" who pose tenable threats to disperse dangerous weapons in ways that we might not detect. Moreover, if the hostage takers blow up the house, the human and financial costs of the catastrophe and its aftermath are greater than the surrounding posse feels it can bear. Not only would a collapse of government in North Korea pose enormous economic and human liabilities to South Korea, China, and the U.S., it would also exacerbate the short-term proliferation danger. Iraq, and before it, the collapse of the Soviet Union, showed that major proliferation messes occur when the controls of authoritarian governments are lifted off weapons of mass destruction inventories, facilities and scientists. Dangerous weapons and materials are left there for the taking; insiders may escape with these weapons or materials; scientists and engineers may sell their know-how, all before a new order can be established. We have not yet found ways to seamlessly impose replacement controls over these dangerous materials and people. The gap between destruction of the old regime and organization and emplacement of the new would be dangerous in North Korea.

Faced with this excruciatingly frustrating, indeed outrageous, hostage-like crisis, law enforcement tries to tighten the cordon, keep calm, and negotiate an outcome that keeps North Korea from threatening international peace and security. This negotiation will go best if the negotiators include people the hostage takers know and rely upon (i.e. China), and the co-negotiators are willing to present a unified front. Indeed, the more pillars of the community who are willing to be part of the posse, the better. Good cop/bad cop only works when the two cops share the same fundamental objectives. The negotiation with North Korea obviously is influenced by the potential use of force, but the law enforcers and the hostage takers know that they will lose much if it comes to a shoot out. (Waco comes to mind.) Better to negotiate an outcome that may spare the hostage takers the death penalty if at the same time it spares the rest of the community the dangers and costs it is not prepared to bear. Iran actually is a much tougher case than North Korea or Iraq. The U.S. rightly is pressing the IAEA to investigate whether Iran has met absolutely all of its notification and inspection requirements under the nonproliferation treaty and related safeguard agreements. But the bigger problem is Iran's seeming interest in acquiring nuclear weapons, and the role that otherwise permissible uranium enrichment and plutonium separation facilities could play in this acquisition.

The U.S. rightly has tried to persuade Russia and other states that Iran is in fact seeking nuclear weapons, and therefore should be stopped through collective action.

87-494 D-3

We need others to cooperate in trying to block further flows of equipment, materiel, and know-how to Iran's nuclear and missile programs. But if the U.S. concluded that Iran could by itself do the rest of the work needed to acquire nuclear weapons, is there any other "supply-side" way to stop it?

The answer to this question depends in large part on whether military options exist to negate or significantly delay Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons and whether the U.S. could undertake these options without allies. This question cannot be answered without access to highly classified material. Yet if we lack conclusive evidence to support our argument that Iran has a secret uranium enrichment plant that already has done at least pilot-scale enrichment that would clearly violate Iran's NPT obligations, we also lack adequate information to target such a facility (or facilities). In all likelihood, U.S. and allied intelligence could identify targets whose destruction would slow down Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons (the uranium conversion plant comes to mind), but for this to make strategic sense we would have to believe that during the time thereby bought, Iran would become less determined to acquire nuclear weapons. We would need to believe that such an attack would not stimulate countervailing asymmetrical attacks (i.e. terrorism) against U.S., Israeli and other friendly interests. We would need to assume that such an attack would not lead to major Shiite counteractions against the U.S. in Iraq. We would also need to believe that an attack on Iranian facilities without international mandate would not worsen the United States' overall political-security position in the Persian Gulf, the Middle East and the world more broadly.

Even if all of those assumptions could be made reasonably, we would still be faced with the long-term issue of dealing with the seventy million people of Iran. Would a U.S. military attack on Iran's nuclear capabilities increase or decrease the likelihood that the Iranian people and current or prospective government would integrate peaceably into the international community of norms and institutions the U.S. seeks to foster? Anyone with experience in Iran will attest that even the most democratic, internationally minded Iranians speak frequently and bitterly about the U.S. role overthrowing the nationalist Mossadegh government in 1953. Nationalist antagonism against the U.S. government-not the American people-remains after fifty years. Discussions with today's reformers in Iran, including leaders of civil society, suggest that widespread affection for the American people and the principles for which the U.S. stands would be lost if the U.S. acted coercively against Iran. For, many Iranians think it is unfair that Israel and Pakistan are allowed to have nuclear weapons and even receive U.S. aid, while Iran is denied even the "peaceful" nuclear technology to which it is entitled. Among other things, this nationalist frustration over U.S. nuclear double standards could mean that even if the current leaders of Iran's security and intelligence and judicial apparatus were displaced, the successor government would be intensely nationalistic and opposed to the U.S. government. Such a nationalist government should not be expected to abandon interest in acquiring nuclear weapons.

This analysis pulls us back to the "demand-side" of the equation. We need to persuade Iran's current and future leaders that they will gain more by trading their problematic nuclear facilities and ambitions for greater integration into the international political economy. I have written a paper outlining a strategy to accomplish this objective, which I have provided the committee.

Here I would add merely that the U.S. needs to internationalize the current effort to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. International pressure and cajolery are vital to affecting Iran. To increase the pressure, the U.S. needs to persuade Russia, the United Kingdom, France, and China that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would pose a threat to international peace and security, and that the U.S. seeks a cooperative, peaceful path to persuade Iran not to pose such a threat. Doubts over the soundness of U.S. intelligence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction may be obviated by the international community's apparent surprise over the recent "discovery" of Iran's facilities at Natanz and Arak. Russia, for one, seems to be reconsidering its reliance on Iran's prior claims that it was not seeking nuclear weapon capabilities. France has said that in the wake of Iraq it wants to be more proactive in combating proliferation. Concerns that the U.S. will take violent nonproliferation enforcement into its own hands provide an opportunity to motivate other major players to work cooperatively through established mechanisms to enforce global adherence to nonproliferation norms. The message from international community leaders should be that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons would be a threat to international peace and security, especially given Iran's non-recognition of Israel's right to exist, and its support of terrorist organizations. Such a message would establish a predicate for UN Security Council action in the event Iran were to acquire nuclear

weapons.