Transcript

Session 1 - October 16, 2002

Security Challenges in the New Reality

“Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction in a New National Security Strategy”

The Honorable Robert G. Joseph, Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director, Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation and Homeland Defense, National Security Council

Pfaltzgraff: … I want next to turn to Dr. Robert Joseph. This topic is, of course, a logical outgrowth of what Steve has already told us when he mentioned weapons of mass destruction. We asked Dr. Joseph to talk about the topic, “Countering WMD in the New National Security Strategy.”
Bob Joseph is Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Proliferation Strategy, Counterproliferation and Homeland Defense in the National Security Council. He previously was the Director of the Center for the Counterproliferation Research at National Defense University. He is a person whom I have known for more than 20 years and, in fact, I should add that I first met him when he came up to teach for an academic year at the Fletcher School more than 20 years ago, as a matter of fact.

So we have known each other for a long time. So it is a great pleasure and an honor to welcome Bob Joseph as our next speaker.

Joseph: Once again, it is the late Bob Joseph. Bob, thank you very much for that very generous introduction and the kind invitation to be here today. It is a pleasure to take time away from the office and come and listen to others on the key issues that you have identified for this conference.

Last month the President released the first National Security Strategy Document of his administration. It differs substantially from his predecessors in two fundamental ways. First our strategy rejects the long-standing and what I believe to be false dichotomy between power and values. From the very first paragraph the document emphasizes the goals of universal human rights and the President’s personal commitment to promoting political and economic freedom as the appropriate model for national success.

In this context the document acknowledges the unparalleled political and military strength of the United States and emphasizes the need to use this strength, not to create unilateral advantage but to promote a peace and security that can improve the conditions of all societies. But perhaps the greatest difference that this document presents from those of the past is in the description of and the prescription for defending against today’s threats.
Here the impact of the events of September 11th are very clear. The war against terrorism and against terrorists with global reach and, indeed, perhaps weapons of mass destruction is a new type of war that requires us to think differently about or enemies and to harness new tools and methods to defeat them. But the origins of the administration’s strategy for dealing with contemporary threats and especially weapons of mass destruction in the hands of both rogue states and terrorists pre-date September 11th.

In his first major address on security policy, given at the National Defense University in May of 2001, the President outlined the need to move beyond cold war approaches to security, both to defend against new threats and to seize new opportunities for peace. The President, in that speech, could not have been more explicit with regard to the need for new concepts and for new tools for dealing with the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

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While the NDU speech was often mischaracterized by critics as all about missile defense, it was much more than that. It was a call to move beyond the cold war thinking to take into account contemporary threats that do not represent simply lesser cases of the old Soviet model. Rogue states represent qualitative different types of threats. Compared to the Soviet leadership, their leaders are more risk prone.

Their leaders view weapons of mass destruction differently than the Soviet Union had perceived them. These weapons are viewed by rogue states as weapons of choice, not as weapons of last resort. And so deterring and defending against these threats will be more difficult than in the past with the Soviet Union. There are no mutual understandings with these states. There are no effective lines of communications with them.

Moreover, the dynamics of deterrents are much different than in the cold war. Remember that we wanted to keep the Soviet Union from expanding outwards. Our new adversaries want to keep us out of what they consider to be their regions, to deny us the ability to come to the assistance of our friends and allies in these vital regions if they are attacked.

By their own calculations, these leaders believe that they can do this by holding a few of our cities hostage. This is not about a quest about a first strike capability against the United States as we knew it in the old days. Rather, our new adversaries seek only enough destructive power to blackmail us so that we will not come to the help of our friends who would then become the victims of aggression.

The NDU speech also emphasized the goal of changing fundamentally our relationship with Russia. A major part of that speech stressed the opportunity for historic change in our relations. The President made very clear that he intended to change the basis of our relationship from mutual vulnerability to mutual interests, from confrontation to cooperation. And it was in this context that the President called for an end to the 1972 ABM Treaty, a treaty that not only prevented us from defending ourselves from new threats, but also prevented us from establishing a new and positive relationship with Russia.

Today, after having withdrawn from the ABM Treaty, we do have a different relationship with Russia. We have created a partnership against terrorism in which Moscow does not object to the stationing of American forces on territory of the former Soviet Union. We have signed an historic arms reduction treaty. And, even more importantly, we have agreed that future treaties are no longer necessary because we do not threaten each other.

We have agreed on a much-expanded Russian participation in NATO. Those who predicted that the sky would fall last December, and there were many of them, when the President announced our withdrawal from the ABM Treaty, couldn’t have been more wrong. There is no arms race. There is arms reduction. There is no confrontation with Russia, only more cooperation including our missile defense.

Four months after the NDU speech, the war on terrorism was forced upon us. From the beginning this war has had an important WMD element. This element has grown in importance as we have learned about Al Qaeda’s growing interest in acquiring from rogue states and other sources chemical, biological, and radiological weapons for attacks on us. This threat of terrorists armed with weapons of mass destruction, is made more clear when one compares the list of states seeking WMD with the list of states that sponsor terrorists.

The lists are virtually identical. And it was for this reason that the President committed in his December speech last year at the Citadel, not to allow the world’s most dangerous regimes and terrorists to acquire the world’s most dangerous weapons. It is why the President tasked Dr. Rice and Governor Ridge to work together to develop a comprehensive national strategy to combat weapons of mass destruction.

And this is the strategy that is outlined in the National Security Strategy Document. This strategy has three principal pillars. The first is counter proliferation, to develop and deploy the capabilities to deter and defend against the full spectrum of WMD threats. We must insure that key capabilities, detection, active and passive defenses, and counter-force capabilities are integrated into our defense and homeland security posture.
Counterproliferation must also be an integral part of the basic doctrine, training, and equipping of our forces as well as those of our allies to insure that we can operate and prevail in any conflict with WMD-armed adversaries. Counterproliferation can no longer be a specialty or an afterthought. The threat to the homeland, to our friends and allies, and to our military forces abroad, will not allow this luxury.

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The second pillar is strengthened nonproliferation against the spread of WMD to rogue states and terrorists. The President’s National Security Strategy puts new and needed emphasis on counterproliferation. But that does not mean that we will reduce our effort to prevent rogue states and terrorists from acquiring WMD materials, technology or expertise in the first place. The President has expanded nonproliferation and weapons reduction assistance to the states of the former Soviet Union asking more for this purpose in the FY ’03 budget-- request than ever before. The president also successfully proposed to his G-8 colleagues, the global partnership against the spread of weapons and materials of mass destruction under which the United States has pledged $10 billion dollars for nonproliferation assistance over the next 10 years. The need is too great for the United States alone. We welcome our partners’ commitment to take on a fair share of this burden. Our nonproliferation efforts also mean enhancing in meaningful ways multi-lateral, nonproliferation treaties and regimes.

That includes strengthening the nuclear nonproliferation treaty, through increased funding for the International Atomic Energy Agency and promotion of the additional protocol. It does not include signing up for arms control for the sake of arms control. At best that would be a needless diversion of effort when the real threat requires all of our attention. At worst, as we discovered in the draft BWC Protocol that we inherited, an arms control approach would actually harm our ability to deal with the WMD threat.
The third pillar is effective consequence management to respond to the effects of WMD use, whether by terrorists or hostile states. We must develop and maintain the ability to reduce, to the extent possible, the potentially horrific effects of WMD attacks at home and abroad. Doing so is essential in its own right. We also believe it will increase our ability to deter such attacks by persuading our enemies that they cannot achieve their desired objectives.
Finally, the National Security Strategy is clear-headed about what the contemporary WMD threat may require militarily. Given the immediacy and potential magnitude of the threats, and the value our enemies place on weapons of mass destruction as weapons of choice, we can no longer rely on a reactive posture. We must, if necessary, act pre-emptively. We will not do so in all cases.

And our use of force will be deliberate in measure to eliminate a specific threat to the United States, our friends or allies. The best summation that I know of the administration’s approach to combating WMD is in the President’s introduction to the National Security Strategy Document. It reads, “The gravest danger our nation faces lies at the crossroads of radicalism and technologies. Our enemies have openly declared that they are seeking weapons of mass destruction and evidence indicates they are doing so with determination.”

“The United States will not allow these efforts to succeed. We will build defenses against ballistic missiles and other means of delivery. We will cooperate with other nations to deny, contain, and curtail our enemies’ efforts to acquire dangerous technologies. And, as a matter of common sense and self-defense, Americans will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed. We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best.”

“So we must be prepared to defeat our enemies’ plans using the best intelligence and proceeding with deliberation. History will judge harshly those who saw this coming danger but failed to act. In the new world we have entered, the only path to peace and security is the path of action.”

Thank you very much.

Pfaltzgraff: Thank you very much, Bob, for this outstanding overview and the focus that you placed on the new national security strategy and weapons of mass destruction.

Question-and-answer period
Kitfield: My name is James Kitfield, from National Journal Magazine. I’m curious about this doctrine of pre-emption and whether it is going to be consistent with building the multi-lateral co-ordination that we just heard our last presenter talk about. It seems to me that there has been a lot of concern overseas about the superpower taking unto itself this doctrine of pre-emption and whether that sort of negates the sort of world order we set up with the United Nations Security Council, etcetera.
Could you just address this issue? I know you have heard these concerns yourself. Is pre-emption something that we are taking unto ourselves because of our unique position, or is that a doctrine that we suggest everyone else in the world can also adopt and get behind or is it going to make it more difficult to build these coalitions given this doctrine?
Joseph: Well, I think it is clear that states have always had the right to take action in the face of imminent danger. Pre-emption has always been a tool for states. In the past, when we thought about imminent danger, we thought about armies mobilizing and navies and air forces preparing to carry out acts of war. That concept, I think, has to be updated in light of the threats we face. In particular, the threat of weapons of mass destruction and the potential consequences, particularly given the fact that many of our adversaries will be targeting, not military forces alone, but also our civilian populations.
The consequences of an attack, the magnitude of potential victims, is such that we simply can’t wait until that occurs before we protect ourselves. Pre-emption is one measure. It is one tool in the broader strategy that I’ve described. It is one that has gotten a great deal of attention. But I think it has got to be looked at in the context of the threats that we face and as it is described in terms of the parameters in the National Security Strategy Document.

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