In 2004, Secretary of Energy Spencer Abraham announced a newinitiative to retrieve fresh fuel of Russian origin and spent fuelof U.S. and Russian origin from research reactors around the world.The initiative also seeks to convert HEU to LEU in applicableresearch reactors. The media welcomed this announcement as asignificant deproliferation step. But the amount allocated to thisdrive, $20 million over the next 18 months, is far too small tohave a significant impact.

Changes in the way North Korea is treated are an important casein point. Initially, North Korea was allowed to use its HEUreactors in line with the NPT, and the communist nation'scompliance with the treaty was verified via inspections. In 1993,North Korea announced that it intended to withdraw from the NPT,after due notice, which it was entitled to do under the terms ofthe treaty. However, there is no provision that says it must giveup its HEU reactors once it breaks with the treaty, which is afatal flaw.

In response to North Korea's threat to withdraw, PresidentClinton initiated a deproliferation approach by negotiating withNorth Korea to freeze all nuclear activities in exchange for thedevelopment of new reactors with fuel that could not be weaponized.Once the new reactors were completed, North Korea was to dismantleits old reactors and send its fuel rods out of the country toprevent their reprocessing into plutonium. For the next ten years,North Korea remained a party to the NPT, although its nuclearambitions were not quelled. The new reactors were never completed,and in 2003, North Korea announced it was leaving the treaty andthrew out IAEA inspectors.

The Bush Administration initially rejected Clinton's approach toNorth Korea and seemed bent on forcing this member of the Axis ofEvil to disgorge its nuclear arms and submit again to IAEAinspection, that is, building on the old NPT concept. However,following the difficulties in Iraq and the realization that theNorth Koreans may already have at least one nuclear weapon, theBush Administration shifted to seek deproliferation along linessimilar to the Clinton Administration. True, so far it is unclearwhether the deproliferation negotiations with North Korea willsucceed, although the haggling seems mainly to be about tradeoffs.One thing is clear enough: Controlled maintenance has failed.Deproliferation is the order of the day.

The GSA and the United Nations

A full implementation of a deproliferation strategy may wellhave to draw on some exercise of force, when all else fails, andwhether such an approach can be legitimated. One hopes that muchcan be achieved by offering nations strong incentives to give uptheir nuclear arms programs and to replace HEU with other sources.However, at the end of the day, there is no denying that even inthe case of Libya, the removal of Saddam played a role. In thedealing with Iran and North Korea, the threat of force clearlylooms in the background. The PSI involves the boarding of ships ininternational waters by armed forces to verify they are notcarrying nuclear materials, which is a coercive act. It is hard tobelieve that if the Taliban and its allies were to take over thegovernment of Pakistan, the United States and its allies wouldsimply stand by and allow them to appropriate that nation's nucleararms. The same may well hold for any failing state that has HEU andfor which there is reliable intelligence that it is making thesenuclear materials available to terrorists. (I grant that given thegrave failure of intelligence in the last years, it would be verydifficult to rely on it to justify another military intervention,but this does not mean that there are no situations in which itwould become necessary and justified.)

Much has been made out of the need to engage in "legitimate"action, which is often interpreted as consulting and working withallies and the United Nations, a good part of what Joseph Nye calls"soft" power. Sometimes disregarded in this context is theoccasional need to undergird soft power with hard power. The UnitedNations often acts as a key legitimator in the international arena,but it does not and cannot command the hard power required to backup its resolutions. If the United States (in Haiti, Somalia andLiberia), France (in Ivory Coast), Britain (in Sierra Leone),Russia and NATO (in Kosovo) or Australia (in East Timor) did notprovide the muscle, UN resolutions would have been of littleconsequence.

Fortunately, the United Nations seems to be moving in the neededdirection. Security Council Resolution 1540, passed in 2004, callsfor member states to criminalize WMD proliferation, securesensitive materials in their own borders, and enact exportcontrols. Thus there are at least some indications that the UN isconsidering deproliferation, not just controlled maintenance.

But why would the major powers behind the GSA, especially theUnited States, be concerned about the resolutions of the UnitedNations (or perhaps another global body formed around, say, theCommunity of Democracies)? Seeking approval and taking into accountthe views of such a body is far from a visionary notion. In a worldwhere ever more people follow the news and are politically active,the perceived legitimacy of one's actions has become surprisinglyimportant. Acting without UN approval in Iraq cost the UnitedStates dearly in terms of military support from allies, the sharingof financial burdens and public support at home. In one year, theBush Administration was forced to move from declaring that theUnited Nations was on "the verge of irrelevancy", to repeatedlyseeking a UN endorsement for its presence in Iraq, in order tolegitimate the delay of elections and to work out the transition toa self-governing nation.

To the extent that more member states of the UN aredemocratized-a much-predicted trend-the voice of the GeneralAssembly will be more compelling. And if the Security Council wereto become more representative of today's global power structure(say by adding India, Brazil and Japan), its resolutions would holdmore weight. Thus, the United Nations may well become an even moreimportant source of legitimacy than it currently is. True, onewould have to expect an "antagonistic" partnership between the UNand the great powers comprising the GSA. Yet without the powerinvested in the GSA, the United Nations is toothless. And withoutUN prescriptions, the GSA's use of force will often be consideredillegitimate. That is, both sides may well take each other moreinto account while still trying to follow their own lights, thusjointly fashioning a better administration for the globe than ifeach were on their own.

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