Desutter Opens DFF Forums to Address U.S. Efforts to Control Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction
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Assistant Secretary of State for Verification and Compliance, Paula DeSutter, opened DFF’s Congresssional Defense and Foreign Policy Forums to address the topic: “Are Our Old Concepts of Verification Obsolete?” A former professional staff member of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence who worked for Senator Jon Kyl, DeSutter is the central person at the State Department to oversee whether arms control, non-proliferation agreements and commitments are being observed.
“When the United States makes a determination that a country is in violation of its international obligations it is only after a rigorous and time-consuming and sometimes contentious interagency process and inter-department process,” she explained. “We try to make sure that we are right; our determinations are not political judgments.” No other country does this kind of thorough, rigorous assessment.
There are two kinds of noncompliance: intentional and unintentional.“The problem comes with intentional noncompliance. We know from the history of arms control, we know from the history of verification, that some countries enter into agreements without ever intending to fully comply with their obligations,” DeSutter said. “There has to be a cost to violating an agreement. If a country has intentionally violated its international obligations and there is no cost or consequence, you can anticipate further and future violations by that party, and you would have encouraged additional noncompliance on the part of other countries.”
Many times countries will believe that their participation in organizations like the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons or the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) will be the end of their work. There is a contribution that can be made by the IAEA, as in Iraq with their on-site inspections, but on-site inspections are not the same as verification. “The problem is that on-site inspection can only tell you what’s happening at the time and the place of the inspection,” DeSutter explained. “It’s not going to tell you what’s happening elsewhere or at other times.”
In the situation with Iran, the United States believes that Iran for several years has been in noncompliance with its obligations under Article 2 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty that obliges non-nuclear weapon states not to seek to acquire nuclear weapons or nuclear weapons capabilities.
“Our European allies have sought to take a different approach and they really believe that they’re doing a good job of trying to rein Iran’s program in, get a handle on it, slow it down,” she explained. “We’re a little skeptical that this will be successful. But there are steps and procedures that are called for by the IAEA statute and they ought to be followed.”
“In the case of North Korea, when North Korea expelled the IAEA inspectors, this went to the Board of Governors and it was reported to the Security Council, “ she said and the result has been the six-party process. “North Korea needs to make the kind of decision that Libya made: to make a strategic decision to give up its weapons program. We’re looking for complete, verifiable, irreversible dismantlement. We’re looking for them to walk away from that program. We think that’s possible. We think that would be the best decision that they could make.”
In the case of Iran, “Our view is that time has helped Iran too much. We believe that when the statute says in the case of noncompliance, the Board of Governors will find noncompliance and refer it to the Security Council,” said DeSutter, that procedure “must be followed...Otherwise the credibility of the process is undermined.”
In the case of Libya, Colonel Qadhafi made a statement explaining why he gave up Libya’s nuclear weapons program. Part of his reason was that he found that these weapons don’t make you safer, they make you less safe. “I don’t know what decision the North Korean leadership will make. But again, we hope that they’ll follow the Libya model,” she said.