Carter's Bungled Promise

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC

Carter's Bungled PromiseAuthor(s): Michael BrennerSource: Foreign Policy, No. 36 (Autumn, 1979), pp. 89-101Published by: Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLCStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148208 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 08:33

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, LLC is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extendaccess to Foreign Policy.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 188.72.126.47 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 08:33:41 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=wpni

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1148208?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Dunn/Brenner

fidence: The appropriate nonproliferation policies for these areas are more difficult to formulate, and key countries will be making decisions affecting their nuclear weapons programs that will depend most heavily on com- plex domestic and international developments over which American foreign policy has only limited influence. The chances are great, there- fore, that nuclear weapons capabilities will be developed in one or all of these regions in the early to mid- 1980s.

To avoid a more extensive erosion of the proliferation regime when that happens, American policy will have to focus on build- ing proliferation firebreaks. If specific initiatives to that end are formulated now, the prospects for successfully holding the line against the spread of nuclear weapons in the 1980s will be enhanced. But even with such prudent contingency planning, the United States may eventually find itself faced with the prospect of having to live with the consequences of the nuclearization of some long-standing conflicts or rivalries.

Proliferation Watch (2)

CARTER'S BUNGLED PROMISE

by Michael Brenner

Three administrations in the short span of five years have taken their turn at untangling the knotted strands of American nuclear nonproliferation policy and at regaining a measure of control over the increasing availability of nuclear technologies and fuels. Jimmy Carter has had the conviction and courage to tackle the issue frontally. He deserves laurels for virtue and heroism, but fewer commen- dations for skillful performance or congratu- lations for anticipated success.

Despite its ambitious initiatives, the Carter

MICHAEL BRENNER is an associate professor in the graduate school of public and international affairs at the University of Pittsburgh.

89.



administration has won only grudging and qualified praise from advocates of an aggressive American effort to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. This reticence is a silent commentary on the lack of coherence and finesse that has marked administration strategy since its troubled inception in early 1977. The string of errors and omissions that ac- companied the policy's formulation and presentation have bedeviled the more impressive subsequent effort at winning wide international acceptance.

The tribulations experienced by Carter's nonproliferation warriors can be ascribed in part to the problem's stubborn resistance to formula answers. But they also reveal much about the current infirmities of Washington policy making and about the costs of Carter's failure to bring expectations and capabilities into reasonable alignment.

The campaign to keep plutonium out of commercial channels while putting the global regime for regulating civilian nuclear technologies on a firmer foundation spotlights some of the Carter administration's chronic disabilities in foreign policy. Fine-line strate- gic plans, deftly manipulated execution, and well-prepared diplomatic campaigns have never been American trademarks. For all its dedication and ingenuity, the administration's conduct on nonproliferation policy does not suggest a drastic change of government personality. Failure to resolve inter- necine conflicts on key portions of the strategy tightened already severe time pressures. Pro- tracted delay in following through on the administration's promise to assist foreign governments with their waste management problem and to guarantee the supply of uranium fuels, has weakened a key incentive for winning acceptance of a plutonium moratorium. Finally, the diplomatic swing from harsh exhortation to ultrapragmatism squan- dered vital political capital and precious time.

Egregious Mistakes

The most anguished, and valid, criticisms leveled at the administration's performance

90.



Brenner

come from those who honor its objectives and are sympathetic with its policies, yet have found the implementation of its programs disorganized, poorly timed, and too often self-defeating. The most egregious mistakes were committed in the confused first months after Carter's inauguration in January 1977. The administration has never fully recovered the ground lost by its initial failings.

Three features of Carter's policy draw the most quizzical reaction. One is the uncer- tainty over what exactly Washington wants done with plutonium. Since the president's statement of April 1977 laying out the major lines of his administration's position on nuclear proliferation, it has never been entirely clear whether the United States was asking the world to abandon plutonium completely as a reactor fuel or merely seeking a moratorium of indefinite duration on its use while the terms and conditions for its safe employ- ment could be worked out internationally.

[Carter's] mistakes and inadequacies have added obstacles to a course already strewn with pitfalls.

Washington participates actively in the International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation

(INFCE), whose multilateral efforts to design a technological base for future development of nuclear power carry no principled bias against the recycling of separated plutonium. The Carter administration initiated that review and is thus honor-bound to accept its conclusions, which might well vindicate plutonium by declaring that safe, economical operation of reprocessing facilities is feasible. Washington has also given its assent to the reprocessing of large quantities of Japanese spent fuel in Great Britain and France. Yet it continues to proclaim that commercial reprocessing entails a grave and intolerable proliferation risk-one that led Carter to moth- ball the multibillion dollar plant at Barnwell, South Carolina, in support of his call for a worldwide halt to plutonium recycling.

91.



Administration thinking is anchored to the idea of maintaining the distinction between the recycling of plutonium in light water reactors (LWRs), which it opposes, and in breeder reactors, which it finds condition- ally acceptable. LWRs, now in worldwide use, are less susceptible to major modification of their procedures, and their appetite for reprocessed fuel might well outpace the nego-- tiation of organizational and technical means for making plutonium more difficult to di- vert. Breeder reactors, on the other hand, will not be commercially available for at least a decade. To support recycling in LWRs would clear the way for widespread and inadequate- ly controlled use of plutonium. To opt for breeder reactors would buy time for international acceptance of safer models for structur- ing nuclear fuel systems.

While this approach is logically persuasive, there is reason to question whether in practice such a fine distinction can be maintained since separation of plutonium will occur in both cases. Furthermore, current reprocessing con- tracts will make plutonium physically available in substantial quantities well before commercial breeders are in operation.

Confusion has been compounded by administration statements suggesting that a completely new fuel cycle can be developed as an alternative to the present uranium-plutonium cycle. But in fact technically knowl- edgeable officials and advisers realized from the start that the only feasible goal was to modify the existing fuel cycle in ways that would enhance its resistance to proliferation.

A second disappointment is Washington's failure to bring forth the specifics of the prom- ised incentive program of fuel assurance and nuclear waste-management proposals. From the outset, the administration sensibly com- bined its campaign to halt the spread and use of plutonium with a package of incentives addressed to the legitimate environmental and economic needs of countries interested in reprocessing. But it has experienced singular difficulty in hammering out firm programs to offer other governments. Carter's April 1977

92.



Brenner

statement contained an affirmation of Ameri- can concern for their worries about supply reliability and spent fuel disposal. At the in- augural meeting of INFCE in October 1977, the president spoke more specifically of an international fuel bank that would provide for an assured supply of nonsensitive nuclear fuels on a timely, adequate, and reliable basis in the event of a temporary breakdown of existing supply arrangements. He also reit- erated his pledge to help with waste storage.

Concrete offers, however, have been slow in developing. At the front end of the fuel cycle, with regard to guaranteeing the supply of low-enriched uranium to countries that depend on external sources, prospective plans remain the subject of delicate discussions with supplier states and no specific program has yet been laid before consumers. At the back end of the cycle, the search for safe, effective means to handle reactor waste has made somewhat more progress. The accumulated waste of

Japan (and a few other countries) may find a home on American territory outside the con- tinental United States. What has not surfaced is the kind of hard American commitment- of means if not geography-that would make possible a general program for global waste

management. Incentives were not just a marginal item

on the nonproliferation agenda. An attractive

package would counteract some of the bitter- ness created by the brusque American call for a reprocessing moratorium. In addition, it would help restore a modicum of confidence in the United States as a sympathetic patron of civilian nuclear power. The protracted delay in getting the incentive program off the drawing board denies Washington both

leverage and credibility. A third major defect of Carter's non-

proliferation effort is the continuing irritant of obscure and severe export licensing procedures and conditions. Here the administration shares blame with an assertive Congress, which legislated a madcap system that dis- tributes decisional authority among the executive, the legislative, and the semi-inde-

93.



pendent Nuclear Regulatory Commission

(NRC). That cumbersome arrangement was codified by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Act of 1978. The law's discouraging com- plexities, constraints, and anomalies survived in the face of the State Department's forceful effort to convince Congress of the need for simple procedures and straightforward stan- dards. Characteristically, the administration's good intentions fell victim to its internal dis- unity and uncertain tactics, as opposition from its own hard-liners on export licensing helped undercut the lobbying campaign.

A Ticklish Chore

Still the world's principal supplier of fuels and materials, the United States is seeking to get a firmer grip on the international nuclear market. In doing so, the administration has pursued two goals: to reassure customers about the availability of crucial enrichment services, and to close loopholes in export licensing procedures by setting tighter stan- dards. Reconciling these objectives suggests the exercise of squaring a circle. In theory, a flexible, case-by-case approach held out the promise that Washington could have its cake and eat it too. A couple of basic conditions, however, would have to be met.

First, the executive badly needed the ad- ministrative leeway to make selective decisions about what a given situation dictates. Re- strictions imposed by statute deny the executive that latitude, as does the autonomous authority of the NRC over the issuance of export licenses. The Non-Proliferation Act pinches the administration severely from both sides.

Second, the United States needed to implement an adroit diplomacy responding to the particular interests and sensitivities of nuclear consumers. The ticklish chore of renegotiat- ing nuclear exchange agreements, to which the administration was already committed, had been exacerbated by the clumsiness of its early approaches to major foreign governments. The bill of particulars drawn against Carter's nonproliferation diplomacy is a long one. It includes the desperate and futile ap-

94.



Brenner

proaches to West Germany and Brazil to block their multibillion dollar nuclear deal;

inadequate consultation before Carter's early policy statements; and an insensitivity to the consequence of several major foreign policy demands-on economic policy, arms sales, human rights-hitting U.S. allies all at once. Some of these faults have been corrected, their effects mitigated, and sounder approaches taken under the joint stewardship of Ambassador-at-Large Gerard Smith and Joseph Nye, Jr., deputy to the under secretary of state for security assistance, during INFCE and the array of bilateral talks on the revision of cooperative agreements. How- ever, the lingering skepticism about Ameri- can intentions and distress at Washington's inconstancy remain.

Muddy Waters

The Carter style of government was most visible, and its greatest costs incurred, during the preparation of Presidential Review Mem- orandum 15 (PRM-15), which was meant to serve as the analytical foundation and battle plan for the administration's nonproliferation campaign. Organized in late Jan-

uary 1977 with a presidentially decreed dead- line of March 21, the review group-led by Nye's small office in the State Department- quickly found itself mired in bureaucratic

game playing and intellectual confrontation. A principal cause was the chief executive's failure to make up his mind as to who should be in charge of what. Although Nye's team was designated as the head office for drafting PRM-15, Carter never gave Nye the backing he needed to ride herd on the exercise. Other

participants-and they were legion-felt no

qualms about procrastinating, insisting on

organizational prerogatives, and resisting any effort to make the group behave as a policy task force rather than a study group.

The president muddied the waters even further by intermittently offering advice or instruction to various parties, including ju- nior staffers in his executive office, without bothering to pass the communications

95.



through a central clearinghouse. Sharp lines of cleavage existed between antinuclear purists in the National Security Council (Nsc), the Domestic Council, and the Council on Environmental Quality-who pushed for total war against plutonium and an export embargo on those countries that stood against them-and the pragmatic moderates repre- sented by Nye. This meant that these privi- leged conversations with the president would

help cripple the process of collective policy making. The upshot was that on the eve of his keenly awaited policy announcement, the task force presented Carter with a report lack- ing the focus and structure of a lean options paper that could serve as the basis for presidential decisions. While effective in laying out the case for a nuclear fuel cycle evaluation, its greatest shortcoming was the lack of crisp alternatives on the key issue of plutonium recycling.

In a poignant irony that was typical of life at the upper reaches of government, Car- ter's dramatic overture on nonproliferation was eventually authored by a team of hold- overs from the Ford administration assem- bled by James Schlesinger, then Carter's energy secretary-designate and already a re- spected and trusted presidential adviser. None of them had been involved in the review laboriously undertaken by the interagency task force. None had even seen it. Yet their draft was accepted by the president with only minor modifications. The official policy makers did have one last crack at the working draft, but time was too brief to shape and win presidential approval of an alternative product of their own manufacture.

The document prepared by the outsiders conformed roughly to the president's specifi- cations as communicated by Schlesinger. However, it could not fail to be a less than perfect match to the plans and strategies being devised by the administration's principal nonproliferation officials. They were uneasy (and the purists especially upset) about the president's accommodating and understand- ing attitude toward West European and Jap-

96.



Brenner

anese reprocessing of plutonium. Other ob- servers were struck by the contrast between the boldness of its declared objectives (the core of the Carter nonproliferation position) and the blandness of its tone. It was a strain to reconcile the declaration of war on plu- tonuim with the affirmation that allies, who saw nuclear power as their only real energy opportunity, had a "perfect right to go ahead" with their reprocessing plans or with Carter's plain statement that Washington's decision to cancel Barnwell and the Clinch River breeder project did not "imply that we prohibit them or criticize them because of their need for reprocessing."

The administration has never fully recovered the ground lost by its initial failings.

The conciliatory voice the world heard on

plutonium recycling was not the one that had dominated the internal administration

dialogue (nor the one other states had ex-

pected to hear), although it was much closer to views held in the State Department than to those in the Executive Office of the Presi- dent. The manner of its last-minute compo- sition explains some of the disparity; hurried consultations with foreign leaders during the two weeks preceding the presidential announcement explains the rest. State Depart- ment officials had made an initial round of visits in February when the policy was still in the formative stages. It was the later pres- entations of a seemingly finished product that

prompted the strongest reaction. Hostility was met in some quarters; sympathy in few. Most government heads were peeved at the last-minute notice and vented anger about the new administration's hard line. This spirited criticism was largely responsible for evoking the deferential Carter remarks about the rights of other states to plot their own nuclear fu- tures and stifled any suggestion of a worldwide war on plutonium. This compromising attitude carried the president beyond the de-

97.



fensible soft sell of his policy to a veritable abandonment of an American right to influence what foreign governments did with U.S.-supplied fuel. The president gave more ground than he had to, more than his own officials (moderates as well as purists) had wanted, and more than his own policy per- mitted. The inevitable and quick reversion to a tougher line had the predictable result of raising hackles again while discrediting the genuine concessions he was prepared to make.

Easy Targets

The drafting of the April statement was not the only instance when the administration was found to be at odds with itself to the detriment of its policy ends. High tolerance for intramural differences helped defeat administration attempts to win congressional acceptance of more flexible provisions on export licensing in the Non-Proliferation Act. While official State Department spokes- men were testifying strenuously that the most effective nonproliferation policy is not necessarily the one with the most stringent conditions on exports, the NSC and Domestic Council staffs were encouraging congressmen to write uncompromising, nondiscretionary language into legislation giving the United States a veto right over foreign reprocessing, and to reaffirm the considerable powers of the NRC. On two occasions, attempts by State Department officials and sympathetic senators to loosen procedural rigidities in the pending legislation were sabotaged by staffers who in- tercepted communications and issued contra- dictory statements of administration views. In the end, the moderate, official administration interest fared relatively badly in the legislative outcome.

It is too early to pass a verdict on the Carter nonproliferation policy; the final results will not be in for years. Even then it will be impossible to estimate with complete confidence the degree to which U.S. policies influenced actions by other governments. Moreover, the Carter administration was burdened by a heavy legacy of misguided programs and

98.



Brenner

absent-minded policies left by earlier presi- dents. Nonetheless, one can fairly say that its own mistakes and inadequacies have added obstacles to a course already strewn with pitfalls. The errors have been elementary, but no less serious for that.

For the crucial period encompassing the

policy's development and presentation, the White House never quite succeeded in effec-

tively coordinating its policies and its strategy to implement them. Ambiguous policy, in-

consistently applied, hurt the nonproliferation campaign on every front. Leverage with Congress was lost and legislative opponents given easy targets to shoot at. Foreign governments were unnecessarily offended and confounded by Washington's penchant for confrontation and contradiction. Most important, internal dissonance denied the administration clear reference points against which to measure performance. When each

player supplies his own criteria, it is exceed- ingly difficult to evaluate results and to decide

why success is or is not being achieved- much less to make the necessary corrections.

The president has been his own worst

enemy in more ways than one. Perhaps the

greatest liability for nonproliferation policy is his habit of grabbing onto some detail of

policy and worrying it like a bulldog while basic questions remain unsettled. Carter

probed into the possible technical adaptations to plutonium separation while the overriding issue of how much reprocessing by allies could be tolerated was the object of interminable bureaucratic wrangling. He personally de- tailed elements of a fuel assurance package, but by not deciding how he wanted the program organized or who should do it, left its fate to oversized and undermanaged inter-

agency committees. Finally, too many Executive Branch offi-

cials have shown an unbecoming willingness to press their own version of proliferation truth and to defend parochial organizational interests at the expense of policy coherence and credibility. Carter has been particularly ill-served by presidential staff who often have

99.



aggravated the situation by ignoring procedural responsibilities, as occurred during the lobbying over the Nuclear Non-Prolifera- tion Act, and in defining the U.S. position on fuel cycle alternatives. The NSC and Do- mestic Council secretariats should, above all else, be custodians of the integrity of the policy process. Carter's misfortune was to popu- late them with aggressive advocates who act as protagonists on controversial issues.

The valiant and persevering struggle of the Carter administration to reimpose order on international nuclear energy flows is a positive mark on its foreign policy record. Its chances of achieving success commensu- rate with its worthy objectives could have been enhanced by greater attentiveness to effective planning and intricate strategy. Above all, Executive Branch agencies and of- fices must be disciplined to minimize the costs of fragmentation. To this end, there is no alternative to presidential leadership that is as forceful in making subordinates play by the rules of orderly government as it is in staking out a position on tough issues. Disci- pline, in turn, is impossible to achieve without a readiness to make unequivocal choices among various goal priorities and means. At some point, the elaborate process of delibera- tion and debate must be brought to a halt. Only when the chief executive has declared himself on matters of internal dispute is there a hope that White House staffers and agency officials can be brought into line and kept there. A government that has mastered itself and knows its own mind will have met the key conditions for pushing back the time horizon in which it operates. An administration will have won for itself a margin for diplomatic maneuver with domestic as well as foreign protagonists. It will be in a position to combine leverage and persuasion in more artful and effective packages. It thus will have gained partial protection against the unforeseen, neglected, or unsettling development of the sort that has mortgaged so much of the early Carter nonproliferation policy to chancy improvisation.

100.



Brenner/Nye

The need for a disciplined government is made imperative by the legislative and tech-

nological constraints on administration policies, as well as by the intrinsic limitations of

Washington's influence abroad. Tight organ- ization and clear purpose would enable the Carter administration to do three things crucial to reaching its nonproliferation objectives: to strike unambiguous deals with for-

eign governments that say exactly what is and is not acceptable on plutonium reprocessing and the transfer of nuclear materials; to offer specific plans for establishing programs on an international basis to handle reactor waste and to insure the supply of low- enriched uranium fuels; and to define the conditions under which multinational nuclear facilities would conform to nonproliferation criteria. Were Washington prepared and able to make reasonably confident decisions on these matters, it could yet realize its early hope that the military atom could be geographically contained.

Proliferation Watch (3)

WE TRIED HARDER (AND DID MORE)

by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Policy analyses that focus on the messiness or messianism of President Carter's style frequently miss the point on substance. Without endorsing Michael Brenner's ac- count of the Carter process, it is important to focus on three substantive questions about

nonproliferation policy raised by Brenner and Lewis Dunn: What should American

objectives be? Are current policies advancing those objectives? Where do we go next?

With time, technology spreads and the number of countries with nuclear explosive

JOSEPH S. NYE, JR., professor of government at Harvard University, chaired President Carter's interagency committee on nonproliferation from 1977 to 1979.

101.



Carter's Bungled Promise

Documents

Transcript of Carter's Bungled Promise