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Interview with US Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf, January 30

John Wolf, US Assistant Secretary of State for Non-Proliferation, interview with Jacquelyn Porth of the US State Department's Washington File, January 30.

Question: Recently President Bush requested a new comprehensive strategy to prevent proliferation. How are you involved in that, what are the elements of that strategy, and when might it be unveiled?

John Wolf: The elements are still being worked on but the strategy will deal with non-proliferation, counter-proliferation and consequence management and will look at a broad variety of tools that can be applied. In this administration, non-proliferation policy and coordination is being chaired at the White House. The National Security Council is taking the lead, but formulation is part of an interagency process. A lot of elements will be wrapped up in a new broad strategy, but we are not waiting. We don't need the program to know who the players are. We don't need the cookbook to know what the recipes of success are, and we have been very active in international regimes like the MTCR, the Australia Group, the Nuclear Suppliers Group and the Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technology in terms of accelerating their work. We're working on strengthening the IAEA's capabilities on safeguards to prevent nuclear terrorism.

We have a whole set of policies vis-à-vis the nuclear Materials, Protection, Control and Accounting program in Russia, and we are working to compress the time needed to accomplish the program's objectives. We are going to do it faster, we hope, by a significant margin, depending on the Russians. We have a series of things we are doing on plutonium disposition with Russian plutonium production reactors. We have a new fix to safeguard 300 tons of spent fuel including three tons of pure plutonium in Kazakhstan.

We have an aggressive set of initiatives under way on export controls, including in Central Asia where we are using supplemental funds for individual country plans. We have a bio-warfare initiative that will complement those that we previewed at the fifth Biological Weapons Review Conference. We shortly will preview with allies a series of BW countermeasures dealing with some of the domestic and international trade issues both in terms of practices and equipment. These are things that are moving forward. And there will be more to come. Then we will have to court Congress to provide the increased funds that the United States needs, and we will also expect our allies and friends to pony up more than they have heretofore. The countries where non-proliferation is a problem will also have to take on some of the burden-sharing responsibility.

Question: What are your top policy and program priorities as the newly installed assistant secretary of state for non-proliferation?

John Wolf: Getting a handle on plutonium - what exists out there. We want to protect what exists and stop the production of weapons-grade material that is still being produced. We want to safeguard plutonium and highly enriched uranium. We want to move down the food chain. We need to initiate and implement a rigorous set of measures aimed at biological and chemical weapons trafficking and capabilities. We need to pay close attention to issues in South Asia. We need to augment export controls. We need to strengthen some of the international regimes as well as measures that we do bilaterally.

Question: The US and Russia passed a key milestone in December 2001 when the level of strategic nuclear weapons on both sides dropped to 6,000, fulfilling obligations imposed by the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Talks. What does this say about America's commitment to nuclear non-proliferation and do you think enough attention has been given to this milestone?

John Wolf: I think it is more important that Presidents Bush and Putin have signaled their intention to further cut the number of deployed strategic warheads and to do it in a concerted and quick fashion. When countries look and ask whether the United States is upholding its part of the nuclear non-proliferation bargain, the answer is: we sure as heck are. We are dismantling warheads and we are cutting up delivery vehicles and we are now going to dramatically slash the number of strategic warheads. It's good to achieve the December milestone, but the big news is the Bush-Putin announcements made in Crawford, Texas about what we intend to do. So if you are asking how does that reflect on our non-proliferation priorities - we are upholding our commitment under the NPT.

Question: Does the US plan to reaffirm the importance of the NPT in any fundamental way in the coming year?

John Wolf: We have done it and we will continue to do so. It is a bedrock, fundamental part of US national security policy. We are absolutely committed to it and to its full implementation. ...

Question: With President Bush's announced intention to withdraw from the 1972 ABM by summer, some critics are accusing the US of paving the way for the proliferation of weapons in space. How can the US act to defend itself, on the one hand, without raising the prospect of a race to weaponize space on the other?

John Wolf: The President has made clear that we need a defensive capability that is able to deal with the risk that comes from rogue states or terrorist groups possessing weapons of mass destruction and delivery vehicles. And frankly, after September 11 it should be clear that if they've got them, then they will use them. US deployment of a missile defense system is like buying an insurance policy. September 11 struck a blow against the world economy that can be measured in terms of hundreds of billions of dollars - maybe more. And actually the damage is most severe against those that are least capable of enduring it: the developing nations. Our economic problems turn into a tidal wave in the developing world - not our doing, but as a consequence of the lack of demand within the developing economies. So if you realize that four aircraft crashing into three buildings in New York and Virginia and the Pennsylvania woods can cause that - just think what would happen if a rogue state or a terrorist group were to attack with a weapon of mass destruction. That's why a defensive capability against such a circumstance is a pretty reasonable idea.

Question: The chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee [Joseph Biden] has suggested that the administration's announced intention to withdraw from the ABM Treaty may put pressure on China to produce additional nuclear weapons, and that in turn may place pressure on India and Pakistan to develop further weapons. What do you think will be the short and long-term effects?

John Wolf: In the absence of facts one can say a number of things. In point of fact, China is already building more missiles, but our defensive missile capability is not aimed at China and it's not aimed at Russia, it is aimed at rogue states. And India and Pakistan have to understand that a race forward toward more missiles and better nuclear weapons is not the real answer to a stable equilibrium in South Asia. They are going to have to deal with their problems on a political level. That's what we hope will happen. ...

Question: With negotiations to strengthen the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention suspended for a year, how do you expect the US will work with friends and allies to attempt to bridge the gap between the US position on how to improve it and that of other delegations?

John Wolf: We are going to work with them. And we have a number of ideas that we expect to discuss with our friends and others on things relating to trafficking - bilaterally and multilaterally. Some of those ideas will be a complement to the measures described at the BWC Review Conference in Geneva. So there is a whole package of ideas, and you may find that in all of that it creates a common international sense of purpose. Meanwhile, you've got to get the substance right. So we're working on substance. Form ought to derive from the substance and not the substance from the form. We have to organize to accomplish real things as opposed to meeting to meet. In this administration, we like to know we are doing something real that can be accomplished rather than just meeting to talk. ...

Question: What will be on your agenda with the Israelis?

John Wolf: We'll probably talk about proliferation issues in the region around Israel. There is a lot that is going on.

Question: How would you gauge US concerns about Iranian proliferation activities?

John Wolf: They are a threat to our friends in the region and they are a real threat to US armed forces that are located adjacent to the region - and not just to our military forces, but to those of other NATO countries.

Question: How would you like to see the IAEA's nuclear inspection system strengthened and how likely is it to occur any time soon?

John Wolf: IAEA safeguard responsibilities are a fundamentally important part of the NPT and of the world's efforts to protect fissile material and to develop civil nuclear power programs in a responsible way. A country's obligations under the NPT, and in some ways the IAEA's responsibilities, can be described therefore as statutory - they are not voluntary. So I guess we worry that IAEA's budget has not enabled it to continue to grow at the same rate as nuclear development. We think that the IAEA is doing a good job, and we think the situation is still in hand, but the agency is going to have to grow as the nuclear business expands and as more countries adopt additional protocols. IAEA responsibilities are going to grow even more than they have in the last 8 to 10 years. So we want to be sure that the IAEA continues to have rigorous and comprehensive safeguards and continues to reassure the world community that programs are safe and that apparently peaceful programs are not somehow concealing covert moves toward nuclear weapons capabilities. ...

Question: Is there a segment of thought within the administration that formal, international treaties to thwart the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are somewhat passé?

John Wolf: No. We are going to be vigorous. We put aside ones that we didn't think could be successful or which put at risk US vital national interests. We are members in good standing of the NPT, BWC and CWC as well as international arms control regimes like the MTCR, the Australia Group, the NSG, and Wassenaar that advance non-proliferation objectives and help ensure a safer world with less risk from weapons of mass destruction and their delivery capabilities. It would be nice to say we were stopping the trafficking, but it goes on. But we are making a dent and clearly we are going to try and make a much bigger dent through increased bilateral and multilateral efforts.

Source: Interview - key official says US is committed to non-proliferation, US State Department (Washington File), January 30.

© 2002 The Acronym Institute.