Bolton & Sudan's WMD

John Bolton has used his public speeches to accuse other countries "a confluence of nefarious motives" (a favorite phrase) in order to advance the cause of American security; protecting the national interest and that sort of thing. But Bolton's litany of offenders in his speeches was also designed to legitimize certain doctrinal goals; namely, arms control policy paralysis combined with rhetorical belligerency. While many have focused on how Bolton cited quasi-intelligence, this is a longish post focusing more closely on why Bolton used it the way he did and the rhetorical strategy with which he did so.

John Bolton and the Sudanese threat

In an aside, Laura Rozen points to this Boston Globe piece, citing Bolton's inflated threat assessment of Sudan's bioweapons program:

In November of 2001, John Bolton announced at a biological weapons treaty conference that the United States was ''concerned about Sudan's growing interest" in biological weapons, and suggested Sudan was among five nations believed to be pursuing germ warfare.

But Bolton's claim, made two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, went beyond what the CIA was publicly asserting in reports to Congress -- merely that Sudan ''may be interested" in biological weapons. Later CIA documents dropped Sudan from the list of nations believed to be interested in biological weapons, and the State Department apparently never repeated Bolton's claim.

The same old story. Bolton's then-deputy:

But Bolton's inclusion of Sudan among states that were pursuing biological weapons programs surprised many American arms control specialists at the time, including Bolton's former deputy, Avis Bohlen, then the assistant secretary of state for arms control.

''I don't think that it was commonly believed that Sudan had a growing interest in biological weapons," Bohlen said in an interview this week. ''That was not part of the working assumption."

In a 1 November 2002 speech to the Hudson Institute, Bolton again mentioned Sudan, threatening it and Syria in the same breath; full transcript:

We are also concerned about the activities of some states not party to the treaty including Syria and Sudan. The Administration believes it is critical to put such states on notice. Should they choose to ignore the norms of civilized society and pursue biological weapons, their actions will not go unnoticed.

Nyet to doveryay, no proveryay

But more important than inflating the Sudanese threat was the context of Bolton's doing so. The November 2001 speech was given at the Fifth Conference Review of the 1972 Biological Weapons Convention (BWC). The Bolton speech was designed to justify castrating the BWC Review in order to keep the convention from being strengthened, all in the name of nonproliferation. Thus, Bolton was talking about the Sudanese threat to justify keeping the BWC inadequate . . . because, circularly, the BWC was inadequate. From the full transcript of the 19 November 2001 speech:

Finally, we are concerned about the growing interest of Sudan (a non-BWC party) in developing a BW program. The BWC has not succeeded in dissuading these states from pursuing BW programs and we believe the draft BWC Protocol would have likewise failed to do so.

This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but to demonstrate real challenges left unaddressed by the Biological Weapons Convention. There are other states I could have named which the United States will be contacting privately concerning our belief that they are pursuing an offensive BW program.

He does love the stage. But when it comes to policy the guy is downright schizophrenic . . . on the surface. On various occasions, Bolton has celebrated the multilateral BWC and demanded compliance, criticized it as ineffective and providing "essentially no benefits and [it has] a lot of downsides," in a matter of months scuttled a years-long effort to make it more effective, called for specific reforms and improvements that the reform effort didn't address, and since then no movement or initiative. Hence, double-speak resulting in paralysis, all in the name of the "national interest."

We've seen something similar with Nunn-Lugar and the US-Russo plutonium liability dispute. While arms control treaties aren't repudiated and are actually supported publicly, over time their flaws are highlighted while solutions are thwarted in order to justify unenthusiastic, auto-pilot implementation and an utter absence of creativity to solve enduring proliferation problems. Disputes between parties are entrenched, and later they are held up as evidence of failure, justifying further  inaction. Treaties aren't repudiated outright, but their legitimacy is eroded over time. The ideology is validated and reinforced. What are dealing with is a deliberate, yet very foolish self-fulfilling prophecy effect.

But back to the Biological Weapons Convention. Via an NTI backgrounder: The 2001 Fifth Conference Review proposed strengthening the 1972 BWC from a primarily voluntary, non-verifying treaty that can only be enforced after UN Security Council appeal (bioweapons programs are much, much easier to hide than other WMDs). In 1994, an Ad Hoc Group was set up to negotiate a new protocol that would force transparency that would make it easier to distinguish dual-use military programs from legitimate commercial and scientific research.

That is point that the Bush Administration couldn't accept, or negotiate down. The point was beyond bargaining. The US refused to permit mandatory instrusive inspections, particularly of private industry, and argued it wouldn't stop proliferation anyway. US points refused to accept any verification or monitoring mechanisms. So, under John Bolton, the US withdrew from negotiations.

This anti-verificationism is a key component of current US policy. It is doctrinal, even though before Congress and in interviews Bolton has spoken in "case-by-case" terms. Bolton obeyed it in the scuttling of the Fissile Material Cut Off Treaty, for example.

Meanwhile, the legitimacy of the BWC itself -- not just the reform effort -- has been undermined, the same way that the Nunn-Lugar agreements are all weakening because of the plutonium liability dispute. Instead of seeking verification or pursuing violations through the BWC's current (insufficient) mechanisms, the US -- and this is actually policy -- has resorted to naming suspected violaters in speeches. That's it. Thus, John Bolton's rhetorical grandstanding is the preferred solution to the evident flaws of the BWC.

So Bolton was trying to kill off the BWC reform by July 2001. He succeeded that November. The BWC as it stood (and still stands) had no teeth, no real verification protocols, and dependend on a Security Council referral for any enforcement. The 5th Review was the end of a 6-year effort to change that, but the US -- via John Bolton -- killed that effort. That he was citing WMD threats --even after September 11 and during the anthrax attacks -- to further justify this project is appalling.

During the 5th Review scuttling, Bolton came up with a couple of good ideas - albeit fig leaves for withdrawal. Unfortunately, because of this 2001 stonewalling maneuver, the conference has been delayed until 2006, meaning that in this post-9/11 era of heightened WMD proliferation threat, John Bolton preferred a five-year delay to actually finding solutions, striking deals, and even trying to implement his own proposals.

And Sudan?

I've written all of this in order to demonstrate that when Bolton reeled off his litany of offenders - Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, Syria, Sudan and Cuba variously - the factual basis of these claims were only instrumental to the broader project. The litany was part of a rhetorical strategy.

Whether true or not - and the record so far hasn't been kind - Bolton's inflation of threats was directed toward affirming a doctrinal understanding of and approach to proliferation controls. Sudan was just another plug in the end; one more slot to fill.

The assumption that the litany is supposed to justify: The purported existence of bioweapons programs in these countries invalidates not only the Biological Weapons Convention, but even a reform effort that hasn't yet been implemented.

The logic is immediately mystifying: How can a proposed substantive reform package that acknowledges and rectifies the BWC's flaws be a failure because some states are non-compliant? It doesn't follow. But that's the rhetorical strategy employed.

Non-compliance doesn't delegitimize a treaty itself. It actually validates the need for such a treaty, as well as setting in place the international norms that John Bolton points to in the first place. While non-compliance calls for better implementation, attacking the legitimacy of these treaties - which John Bolton did with his litany of offenders - erodes a norm that is a crucial component of combatting proliferation.

Yes, nonproliferation agreeements are insufficient on their own. Yes, we need robust, ass-kicking counterproliferation efforts. Yes, we need every nation state to write into their domestic law vigorous legislation criminalizing proliferation. But we need things like the BWC as a necessary component of a broader strategy. I can accept that we should come up with verification controls that protect intellectual property rights, and are not overly invasive of private business and legitimate biodefense efforts. It's soluble; it's just a question of will.

But favoring counter-proliferation at the expense of nonproliferation is stupid and counterproductive. They are both insufficient on their own, so why erect this dumb dichotomy in the first place? But that's what John Bolton's tenure at the State Department amounted to. So much for "blunt, but effective."

Comments

[J.]

Execellent post. I keep wondering what the Repubs are talking about when they talk about Bolton's record of success. In an amazing flip of logic, they accuse the Dems of focusing on his temperment, when it appears that they are focusing on his temperment as "proof" of his ability to reform the UN. Cause it sure ain't his capabilities.