More than 450 nuclear tests were carried out by the Soviet Union in the isolated steppes of eastern Kazakhstan from 1949 to 1989. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Russians pulled out and left the Kazakhs to their own devices – literally. Enough fissile material for a dozen or more nuclear weapons was left behind in mountain tunnels and bore holes, virtually unguarded and vulnerable to scavengers, rogue states or potential terrorists.

In a remarkable, yet closely held feat of collaboration between the United States, Russia and Kazakhstan, engineers and nuclear scientists from the three countries spent 15 years and $150 million to secure many of the tunnels and test areas at the sprawling Semipalatinsk Test Site. Siegfried S. Hecker, a senior fellow at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation and professor (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering, launched the project while director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He used his personal ties with Russian scientists to prod them into working with the Americans and Kazakhs after a visit to the test site in 1998 left him stunned by the lack of security and the presence of scavengers.

It was one of the greatest nuclear nonproliferation stories never told, until the White House and Pentagon revealed some details in 2012, which David Hoffman and Eben Harrell of Harvard’s Belfer Center made public over the weekend in an in-depth report: Plutonium Mountain. In October 2012, officials from Kazakhstan, Russia and the United States dedicated a monument that simply reads: The world has become safer.

Hecker – who teaches the popular Stanford class, “Technology and National Security” with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry – answers questions about the extraordinary Semipalatinsk mission. He also talks about next steps to secure the site.

Q: Why were you concerned about plutonium or highly enriched uranium scattered around the former Soviet test site? Did you see it as more than just an environmental and health problem?

Hecker: The atmospheric nuclear explosions resulted in environmental contamination because everything is vaporized in such an explosion. However, I was familiar with additional experiments we Americans performed at our Nevada Test Site and, in fact, some in bore holes at Los Alamos which left these materials much more intact and easily attainable, thus presenting proliferation or terrorism concerns.

Q: Why did you suspect the Soviets of conducting similar tests?

Hecker: We knew the Soviets had at least as robust a nuclear test and experimentation program as we had. If Nevada became an independent country tomorrow, the way the Soviet site now belongs to Kazakhstan, I would be very concerned. Besides, we had kept a close eye on what was going on at Semipalatinsk during the Cold War. It turned out that we had good reason to be concerned.

Q: You were director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Why did you get personally involved in this project?

Hecker: The great thing about being at Los Alamos was that you have so many bright people around you who kept track of everything going on in the security world. It was our scientists who had been tracking the Soviets for decades who brought these issues to my attention. These problems involved more than science; they involved politics and diplomacy, and with those they needed help. They also needed someone who understood the problem and could get action in Washington.

Q: Was this the first time you got involved with the Russian nuclear complex?

Hecker: No, on Aug. 17, 1988, 25 years ago, I was sitting in the Nevada Test Site control room for the detonation of one of our nuclear devices. What was remarkable is that across from me was Viktor Mikhailov, leader of a Soviet scientific delegation and later minister of atomic energy. We were conducting an experiment to verify that the other side could adequately monitor the size of nuclear explosions. It was part of the Reagan-Gorbachev set of initiatives to end the Cold War and grew out of technical discussions on the sideline of meetings to negotiate verification measures for the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.

Q: How did this experience play a role in the Semipalatinsk project?

Hecker: We worked together with the Russian nuclear weapons scientists for the first time in Nevada and in a reciprocal nuclear test at Semipalatinsk on Sept. 14, 1988. These events began the essential process of building the personal trust necessary to work side by side to tackle problems like those at Semipalatinsk.

Q: You visited the Russian nuclear weapons labs in early 1992, right after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Did they tell you about the problems at Semipalatinsk then?

Hecker: No. They had fond memories of the nuclear testing days at Semipalatinsk. They thought it was tragic that Russia lost such an important asset to the now-independent country of Kazakhstan. They believed the real estate and its problems now belonged to Kazakhstan. The Russian government did not want to be stuck with a bill to clean up the test site and believed the highly publicized environmental issues were greatly overblown.

Q: But surely they must have known that there was a proliferation risk with all the plutonium and highly enriched uranium that was left behind from their tests?

Hecker: In the 1990s, the Russian nuclear weapons labs had bigger problems. They were worried about survival and how to pay their people. One has to put the Semipalatinsk issue in perspective. During one of my many visits to the Russian labs the scientists told me that they had not been paid for nearly six months. They also did not think that someone would look for nuclear materials in such a desolate place.

Q: How did you confirm your suspicions that the problems at Semipalatinsk were more than an environmental problem?

Hecker: We got some discomforting reports from Kazakh scientists that prompted us to investigate this issue further.

Q: How did you get involved with them?

Hecker: The U.S. government began a project in the early 1990s with the Kazakhs to close the testing tunnels and eliminate the nuclear testing infrastructure at Semipalatinsk under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program. That was the first major U.S.-Kazakh effort. We also involved the Kazakhs in an extension of programs we developed with the Russians on nuclear materials security. That brought Los Alamos and other Department of Energy laboratory scientists to the nuclear reactor on the Caspian Sea; to one in Almaty, Kazakhstan’s capital at that time; and to research reactors at the test site.

Q: Did Kazakh scientists who visited Los Alamos and confirm your worst fears?

Hecker: As part of the Nunn-Lugar program, the U.S. established what was called an International Science and Technology Center program with the Kazakhs to help scientists make the post-Cold War transition to civilian work. That program brought Kazakh scientists to work with my colleagues at Los Alamos. It was a January 1998 visit by Kairat Kadyrzhanov, director of the Kazakh Institute of Nuclear Physics, which confirmed my fears. He told me not only about finding radioactive hot spots on the test site, but also about not being able to control the metal scavengers digging up copper cables to sell. And he invited me to Semipalatinsk.

Q. What did you find during your April 1998 visit to Semipalatinsk?

Hecker: I was alarmed to find unmanned guard posts and virtually no security at the site. My Los Alamos colleagues and I became convinced that Semipalatinsk was not only a serious proliferation problem, but also an urgent one. The copper cable thieves were not nomads on camelback, but instead they employed industrial excavation machinery and left kilometers of deep trenches digging out everything they could sell. We were concerned that some of that copper cabling could lead to plutonium residues.

Rachel Maddow, on Hecker's work (please bear with us on the initial ad):

Q: How did you convince Washington and Moscow that we had a problem that needed to be addressed on a trilateral basis?

Hecker: Washington was easy. We briefed then-DOE Assistant Secretary Rose Gottemoeller and Under Secretary Ernie Moniz. They were very supportive of our efforts. We also had a great advocate for our effort in Andy Weber in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. Moscow was more difficult. The Ministry of Atomic Energy was reluctant to get involved.

Q: What persuaded them to take action?

Hecker: I traveled to Sarov, the Russian Los Alamos, and showed director Rady Ilkaev the photos I had taken at Semipalatinsk. I asked if he was sure that they didn’t leave anything of concern behind. He talked to Ministry of Atomic Energy officials that night and sent the scientists who conducted some of the most important experiments at the site to see me the next morning. The Russian scientists knew this was important and they convinced Moscow that we should work together to mitigate the risks at the test site.

Q: Why did you need the Russians if you had good relations with the Kazakh nuclear establishment and the test site was now under their jurisdiction?

Hecker: Semipalatinsk is huge, almost the size of New Jersey and five times as big as the Nevada Test Site, so we wouldn’t know all the places to look. It would be like looking for a needle in a haystack. Besides, we would have little idea of how dangerous it was to dig around without knowing what we should expect to find. Only the Russians knew where to look and what to look for.

Q: Did the Russians scientist cooperate?

Hecker: The Russian scientists were terrific. Without their cooperation, none of this could have been done. Director Ilkaev cleared the way with Moscow. The two key scientists from Sarov, Dr. Yuri M. Styazhkin and Dr. Viktor S. Stepanyuk, felt it was their moral duty to help solve the problems they left behind. They spent the better part of the next 15 years working on this problem. Unfortunately, Dr. Styazhkin passed away and was not able to celebrate with us when we had a small gathering of scientists at the site last September, just before the official unveiling of the monument in October.

Q: What about the American side?

Hecker: The key technical person was my Los Alamos colleague, Dr. Philip Hemberger. He took over the daily scientific leadership and provided the trusted interface with the Russian scientists. He also spent a better part of the next decade, and his career, working on this problem. The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) managed the project with oversight from Andy Weber in the Pentagon.

Q. What was physically done to secure the sites?

Hecker: One site required an enormous sarcophagus, at another huge metal vessels were filled with concrete and special materials, and some of the tunnels were filled with concrete. The entire region in question at the test site was equipped with video cameras, seismic sensors and drones feeding information back to a sophisticated control room. 

Q: Why did the operation take so long?

Hecker: The test site is huge. The Soviets conducted nuclear tests and other experiments there for 40 years. It involved their two weapons laboratories and multiple defense agencies. They were in a hurry, especially in the early years, and likely did not keep complete records. And, some of the key people were no longer alive. There were three countries involved and a lot of bureaucracy and diplomatic tussles, but the personal trust between the scientists helped to overcome the logjams.

Q: Was the length of time not related to lack of cooperation from the Russian side since they were reluctant to get involved in the first place?

Hecker: Yes, there was reluctance, but some of it was quite justified. For example, they were concerned that if we start digging around in some of the suspected areas, but then pull out U.S. support, we would leave the area more dangerous than it was before because now we had shown the scavengers where to look. They wanted to move step by step – identify an area, take samples and analyze the risk, then remediate if necessary. Trust was built along the way and they continued to roll out one problem area after another.

 The trust and personal relationships developed among the scientists in all three countries were crucial."

Q: Who paid for all of this?

Hecker: The Americans paid the entire bill. The project was managed by professionals from DTRA supported by Nunn-Lugar funds appropriated by the U.S. Congress.

Q: But why only American money?

Hecker: The Russians were in no position to pay at the beginning of the project, as 1998 was a year of financial meltdown for the Russian economy. If we waited for them to pay, the copper cable thieves may have beat us to the nuclear materials. Likewise, the Kazakhs did not have the financial means and they believed they were not responsible for creating the problem. On the other hand, the U.S. initiated the Nunn-Lugar program to reduce the nuclear risks we face from the proliferation of nuclear weapons or materials resulting from the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Washington, spanning three presidential administrations, was prepared and willing to pay. It was money well spent.

Hecker was astonished to find trenches where scavengers had dug up copper cables used in communications with the Semipalatinsk Test Site control room. Photo Credit: Siegfried Hecker

Q: Is the problem fully resolved now?

Hecker: No, it likely will never be. As the Russian scientist, Viktor Stepanyuk, wrote in one of his papers about the mission: “The `definitive reduction’ of proliferation risks … on the territory of the former STS (Semipalatinsk Test Site) can be realized only though comprehensive set of activities comprising physical protection, security, information and legal protection.” I believe it will require the attention of all three countries for a long time to come. During my visit to Semipalatinsk last September and in subsequent discussions, we agreed to hold a trilateral technical workshop early next year on the long-term future of Semipalatinsk.

Q: What were the secrets to success behind the Semipalatinsk Project?

Hecker: The Semipalatinsk project serves as a remarkable example of how scientists can work together and how their efforts should be reinforced by governments to address serious proliferation problems. The trust and personal relationships developed among the scientists in all three countries were crucial. American Nunn-Lugar funds were crucial and the effective project management by DTRA was essential as the project expanded.

Q: Do you see cooperation with the Russians as particularly important?

Hecker: Yes. The U.S. and Russia have special responsibilities to lead the world’s efforts in nuclear safety and security. They own the bulk of the world’s nuclear weapons, nuclear materials and nuclear facilities. The others pale in comparison. Semipalatinsk was only one example of how Russian and U.S. scientists cooperated to make the world safer. Russian and American scientists believe strongly that we have much more work to do. But the strained relations between Moscow and Washington are impeding our efforts. I hope the Semipalatinsk story reminds them that nuclear cooperation is in the interests of both sides.

Q: Finally, with success at Semipalatinsk, what keeps you awake at night now?

Hecker: Most certainly, the nuclear hotspots around the world, namely, North Korea; Iran and Israel in the Middle East; and Pakistan and India in South Asia. Of equal concern, however, is getting all countries to take nuclear safety and security seriously. They require constant vigilance – one is never done. There are no simple technical fixes. International cooperation at all levels is required to ensure that world-class nuclear safety and security is practiced at all nuclear sites around the globe  

American, Russian and Kazakh scientists at the so-called Atomic Lake, the crater created by a nuclear test fired on Jan. 15, 1965. Photo Credit: CISAC

Scott Sagan has several pieces of advice for young scholars coming up in the field of international security: pick worthy opponents, pick and invest in worthy friends, recruit and promote independent-minded students. And always be open to debate.

“You remember your jobs, your tenure, you remember your first book when it comes out and you hold it in your hands,” Sagan told some 300 scholars and former CISAC honors students and fellows as he was named the 2013 Distinguished Scholar in International Security Studies by the International Studies Association.

“You remember the times when sometimes, remarkably, you feel like you’ve had some policy impact. But among the things that I will always remember is tonight, because getting this award is wonderful,” Sagan said during the ceremony in San Francisco.

Sagan, a political science professor and senior fellow at CISAC and FSI, was praised during the ISA event for his contributions to the study of nuclear nonproliferation and his mentorship of many students who count him as a pivotal person in their professional lives.

“Scott is a truly outstanding and remarkably unusual mentor,” said George Perkovich, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “One of the greatest ways for a scholar to affect the world is to mentor very talented young people. They may go on to be scholars or go into government or business or the news media – all of these enterprises that combine, in messy ways, to produce real-world action.”

Sagan – who founded the CISAC Honors Program in 2000 when he was co-director – is known on campus for his simulation classes and field trips to American battlefields. He has written nine books, dozens of articles and has been cited in thousands of publications related to nuclear nonproliferation and weapons of mass destruction, the development of first-use norms and the management of hazardous technology and South Asia.

  Scott literally changed my professional life." - Vipin NarangA panel discussion at the ISA’s annual convention – the largest gathering of security scholars in the world – was convened to give an overview of Sagan’s contributions to scholarship and teaching. It was at times political, at times moving – and at times felt like a roast, with plenty of ribbing about Sagan’s seemingly perfect hair and owl-eyed glasses.

“He has the most perfect hair of any senior scholar,” said Vipin Narang, a former CISAC honors student. “He used to have these round glasses, such that when I first saw him in 2000, I thought, `This is what Harry Pottery will look like in 40 years.’”

Peter D. Feaver, a professor of political science and public policy at Duke University, recalled the first time he met Sagan. He was a poor graduate student living on macaroni and cheese, flying back from a research trip when he passed Sagan in first class.

“As I walked down the aisle, I see out of the corner of my eye this very distinguished guy with flecks of gray hair, probably a movie star, sitting up in first class,” Feaver said. “I was feeling a bit sorry for myself, but then I said to myself, `But I’m pursuing the life of the mind and those people up there, they are crass materialists who are working in Hollywood or whatever.’”

Feaver, who worked in both the Bill Clinton and George W. Bush administrations, said it finally came to him that the distinguished gentleman in first class was Sagan.

“He graciously came back for a little while to give me some words of encouragement – and he’s been giving me words of encouragement from first class ever since.”

Past winners of the annual prize have included such notable scholars as Jack Snyder, Robert Jervis, Thomas Schelling and Sagan’s renown writing partner, Kenneth Waltz. Sagan and Waltz argue for and against nuclear nonproliferation, respectively, in their landmark book, “The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate.”

     We’re all involved in the same enterprise: trying to find truth and trying to make an impact.” - SaganNina Tannenwald, a senior lecturer in political science at Brown University whose work focuses on international institutions, norms and global security issues, said she and Sagan don’t always agree on policy, but that she rarely disagrees with his methods. She credits Sagan with making great contributions to nuclear nonproliferation norms.

“Scott’s interest in norms is reflected in his policy work and I want to talk here about his article, “The Case for No First Use,” which was published in Survival in 2009,” said Tannenwald, author of “The Nuclear Taboo” and currently a Franklin Fellow in the Bureau of International Security and Nonproliferation in the U.S. State Department.

“His argument about no first-use has been made in the past by others, but Scott’s contribution is to make a very sophisticated case that declaratory policy matters,” Tannenwald said. “Now realists of course think that declaratory policy is cheap talk. But Scott makes the very constructivist argument that declaratory policy matters for both military planning domestically and internationally.”

Other scholars who spoke in praise of Sagan included Charles Perrow, a professor emeritus in sociology at Yale University and Todd Sechser, an assistant professor of politics at University of Virginia, as well as handful of former Stanford students.

Narang, a Stanton nuclear fellow at CISAC this academic year, gave a a moving tribute to Scott’s role as mentor. He was a Stanford senior in 2000, majoring in chemical engineering and bored by his lab work, when he took one of Sagan’s classes.

The proverbial light bulb went off in his head.

“Scott literally changed my professional life,” said Narang, recruited by Sagan for the first CISAC honors class. He recalled how Sagan taught him how to write his thesis about India’s chemical weapons program using the classic social science method: find a puzzle, come up with a theory to solve it, establish alternative explanations – and then test it.

“I would have been an unhappy researcher in rural Pennsylvania playing with bacteria if not for Scott’s vision to found the honors programs and to take undergraduates and train them in a hands-on way about the social science process,” Narang said.

Today, Narang is an assistant professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison focused on nuclear nonproliferation and South Asian security.

He said Sagan is know as “Scott Singh Sagan” in South Asia due to his pioneering book, “Inside Nuclear South Asia,” which is widely cited by Pakistani and Indian scholars.

“It has been probably the most foundational work in the study of South Asia nuclear weapons in the field,” Narang said. “And in addition to the scholarship and the influence he’s had on young scholars such as myself in this area, he has been responsible for bringing Indian and Pakistani military fellows to CISAC for sort of his own Track II discussions that have helped Indians and Pakistanis understand each other’s doctrines.”

Sagan, drawing the event to a close with his advice to young security scholars, said that choosing the right professional opponents and personal friends would impact their lives.

“Pick worthy opponents. Argue with them. Ken Waltz; what more worthy opponent to have?” Sagan said. “Pick and invest in worthy friends and some of the people who are the opponents intellectually will become the friends personally, because we’re all involved in the same enterprise: trying to find truth and trying to make an impact.”

In his blog posting SORT vs. New START: Why the Administration is Leery of a Treaty, Steven Pifer continues with his previous posting Presidents, Nuclear Reductions and the Senate.  He points to the ratification experience between George W. Bush's 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT) and Burak Obama's 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) as the basis for the Obama administration fear that the Republican majority Senate would not consider a treaty for further nuclear reductions on its merits.

President Barack Obama desires to further reduce nuclear arsenals below the levels set in the 2010 New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START) and Republicans and former officials of the George W. Bush administration assert that this can only be done through a new treaty.  Steven Pifer, director of the Brookings Arms Control Initiative, in his blog posting Presidents, Nuclear Reductions and the Senate, points out that nuclear reduction efforts have not always been accomplished through treaties requiring ratification by the senate.  History shows that past presidents, including Republicans, have used alternative methods that did not require a 2/3 majority vote by the Senate. 

He broke the news to the world that North Korea had built a modern uranium enrichment plant. He’s helped the Russians secure their vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. And Stanford students routinely rank him as one of their favorite professors. 

Siegfried Hecker, one of he world’s top nuclear scientists and co-teacher of the popular course, “Technology and National Security,” has completed his five-year tenure as co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC).

Though Hecker is stepping down from the leadership role, he’s not walking away.

“He’s not going anywhere,” emphasized his successor, Stanford microbiologist and biosecurity specialist, David Relman, as he opened a seminar in Hecker’s honor on Feb. 25. The panel discussion, “Three Hard Cases: Iran, North Korea and Pakistan” featured Scott Sagan, Malfrid Braut-Hegghammer, Abbas Milani, Robert Carlin and Feroz Khan.

“He’ll be back this summer with his infectious energy and unswerving dedication for which he is so well known,” Relman said.

Hecker, 69, is taking a sabbatical in New Mexico – where he was director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory for more than a decade before coming to Stanford – and then at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation, run by the Monterey Institute of International Studies. He’ll continue work on his book about his historic efforts to foster collaboration between U.S.-Russian nuclear labs and do some travel to meet his nonproliferation counterparts in other parts of the world.

“CISAC is part of my heart and soul now,” Hecker told a reception in his honor after the seminar. “Los Alamos was in my blood and bones. Today, Stanford is part of that too.”

Hecker will return to CISAC this summer to resume his writing and research projects as a senior fellow at CISAC and its umbrella, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He’ll head back to the classroom as well.

“What I found out is that teaching is so much harder than just giving a lecture, because you really have to pay attention to what the students have actually absorbed,” Hecker said. “You need to be able to communicate with each and every one of them.”

Among the many national honors that Hecker has received over the years, the one he treasures most is the 2010 Eugene L. Grant Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, an honor voted on by the students.

Lauren Cipriano, a Ph.D. candidate in Mechanical Science and Engineering, has been Hecker’s teaching assistant for four years. She noted his class co-taught with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry – also a senior FSI fellow and CISAC faculty member – is routinely attended by hundreds of students and rated among the best.

“He shares his own stories of how developing personal relationships with Russian nuclear scientists in the wake of the Cold War helped overcome diplomatic challenges, and how he continues those efforts today in Russia and North Korea to make the world a safer place,” she said in her reception toast. “Sig also has a scary ability to predict the future. Several times our policy paper assignments have nearly come true.”

One of those dramatic examples unfolded in 2010. While the students were writing a paper about how they would respond to the discovery that North Korea had established a uranium enrichment facility, Sig was traveling to Pyongyang.

“Our students were some of the first to hear the stunning news of the uranium enrichment facilities the North Koreans revealed to him on his trip,” she said. “The students couldn’t have been more excited to feel like insiders in the national security policy arena.”

Hecker said he is particularly proud of the bright young scientists who have come through as CISAC fellows during his tenure.

“I think we’ve been able to build a really strong science component to support CISAC’s mission of building a safer world,” Hecker said. “We’ve been able to attract a lot of very good young scientists and then send them on to good careers from here.”

He said that working with these pre- and postdoctoral fellows and visiting faculty and scholars from the life sciences and political sciences “has helped me to better understand how important it is to bring the technical and social sciences together when looking at problems of international security.”

Hecker, who moved to the United States with his family from Austria when he was a boy, received his Ph.D. in metallurgy from Case Western Reserve University and began his professional career as a senior research metallurgist with the General Motors Research Laboratories in 1970. He joined the Los Alamos National Laboratory in 1973, became its director in 1986 and served for more than a decade.

Hecker came to CISAC in 2005 as a visiting professor, having been recruited by Sagan, who was then the social science co-director of CISAC.

“Sig first became involved with CISAC when he was still at Los Alamos, through participating in our Track II nuclear diplomacy efforts with John Lewis in North Korea and with me in a Five Nations project meeting in Thailand,” recalled Sagan. The Five Nations Project on Asian Regional Security and Economic Development focused on new challenges to nuclear nonproliferation by the U.S., China, Russia, India and Pakistan.

“I first broached the possibility of his coming to Stanford as a visiting professor when he and I were in the back seat of a taxi in Bangkok after giving a joint lecture at the Royal Thai Military Academy,” in July 2004, Sagan said. “He has been a stellar leader and now that he is stepping down from administrative responsibilities, he will have even more time to be involved in CISAC’s nuclear nonproliferation activities around the globe."

CISAC co-director, Tino Cuéllar, called himself a “charter member of the national federation of the Sig Hecker fan club.”

“In his eventful, five-year tenure, Sig has been an extraordinary leader,” Cuéllar said. “He’s been a visionary about its future, an endlessly enthusiastic supporter of its varied missions and a role model of excellence combined with the collegiality that CISAC prizes so dearly.

Since its inception, the European Union has come under criticism that it has consistently shied away from taking full-fledged global political and security responsibilities despite its role as an economic powerhouse on the world stage. The EU, its critics argue, has been content to linger in the protective limbo provided by the United States and NATO, while conveniently voicing some ethical disagreements against the unilateral posture of its trans-Atlantic defender, without ever formulating any specific alternatives.

For the last three decades of the 20^th century, the European Union largely looked inward to the management of its complex and never-ending integration process. At best, it sought bland diplomatic engagement with its unstable southern and eastern neighbors, while relying on American leadership elsewhere. As a result, the EU has taken a backseat on significant issues, including the global fight against terrorism and the handling of the Middle East peace process, over which American interests has largely predominated.

In the realm of nuclear politics, too, the EU has played “catch-up” to the United States, even though some of its members had thriving nuclear power-generation industries, and the second-largest nuclear exporter in the world – France – was one of its core founders. Tom Sauer, a European scholar based at the University of Antwerpen, argued: “Europe, in contrast to the United States, acted for a long time as if it were living on another planet. Each time the European States seemed to catch up in the field of non-proliferation, the United States moves to a higher gear. Europe always ran behind. When the European Community (EC) member-states decided to ratify the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), in the mid 1970s, the U.S. was already pushing for stricter control in the frameworks of the nuclear supplier groups. When the EC agreed with the Nuclear Supplier Group (NSG) guidelines, the Carter administration had further hardened its policies. When the EC gradually established non-proliferation policy in the ‘80s and in the ‘90s, the U.S. changed the analytical framework by introducing the concept of counter-proliferation. The latter placed more emphasis on military instruments in the fight against terrorism”.

The EU’s reluctance to take a more muscular role in global nuclear governance is rooted in both institutional deficiencies and acute political disagreements among its member-states.  First, the enlargement process, which has brought 27 countries together under a single European flag in a 40-year-long transition period, has demanded significant effort for internal institution-building and policy harmonization, which in turn has reduced the ability of the EU to formulate foreign policy strategies and to engage proactively with the rest of the world.

More important, at the political level, reaching consensus on the features and contours of a European nuclear policy has proven particularly contentious and divisive for the EU and its member-states. Establishing an EU nuclear strategy entails tackling a series of complex issues, nuclear disarmament in particular, on which Europeans have held highly disparate views even before the eastern enlargement process of 2004. And at present, the EU comprises two nuclear weapons states (France and the UK) that remain skeptical on the possibility of moving toward the total elimination of nuclear weapons, five other countries that are currently hosting NATO nuclear-armed bases (Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and Greece) and harbor substantial disagreements on the future of such weapons, and a widely diverse bloc of countries adamantly opposed to nuclear weapons (notably Sweden, Germany, Spain), nuclear energy for peaceful use (Italy) or both (Austria and Ireland).

Given these political constraints, EU policy-makers have consistently acted upon a “lowest common denominator” rationale, and have adopted a low-key position on nuclear-related matters to avoid stirring unnecessary controversies among member-states. This has inevitably translated into modest positions, timid decisions and compromised policies.

Things have started to improve, at least on the front of nuclear proliferation. In the 1990s, two important achievements altered the institutional landscape of nuclear cooperation within the European Union. First, France’s late accession to the NPT (which the country ratified in 1992) finally freed the EU to develop common positions within major international nuclear forums, giving it credibility and influence as a single unified actor.   Second, the discovery in 1991 of Iraq’s clandestine nuclear program provided much-needed impetus for the three main European nuclear exporters – Germany, the UK and France – to align their efforts to develop EU dual-use-technology export-control regulations. That policy adopted in 1994 and revised and strengthened in 2000 and 2009, was the first substantial political step taken by the EU both to acknowledge the significant threat posed by nuclear proliferation and to prevent further cases of nuclear proliferation in its neighboring area and beyond.

Building on these important achievements, the EU took on a more explicit global outlook during the first decade of the new century. A string of initiatives – the adoption in 2003 of the EU strategy against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (henceforth EU WMD Strategy, an enhanced European role in the Iranian nuclear crisis (2003 to present), and the launch of an EU-designed and -led nuclear security agenda (2010) – underscore a significant change within the European Union in its approach to responding to and preventing proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

First, a clear shift within the European Union has given security considerations primacy over economic calculations in exporting and trading dual-use technology.  Throughout the ‘60s and ‘70s, both Germany and France, in particular, were engaged in nuclear exporting without sufficient appreciation of the potential risks associated with the spread of nuclear technology. But increasingly in the ‘80s, and much more explicitly since the ‘90s, after severe proliferation crises in Iraq, Libya and North Korea, these countries have assumed a much more responsible and cautious position as nuclear exporters. The turn toward nuclear cooperation based on security factors was made explicit in the 2003 EU WMD strategy through the establishment of the so-called “proliferation clause”. The clause states that any EU trade agreement with a non-EU third party will be halted if the contracting party is in breach of one or more international nuclear non-proliferation treaties and agreements.  Such a breach would automatically lead to cancelation of the agreement and cessation of all cooperation.

Second, the EU has shifted its focus from a regional to a global nuclear approach. In its 2003 EU WMD strategy, the EU clearly states that “proliferation of WMD is a global threat which requires a global approach”. While priority will still be given to nuclear non-proliferation in European neighborhoods (the Middle East, Central Asia and North Africa in particular), the EU’s commitment to halt and prevent proliferation is global. To signal its willingness to act as a global player, the EU has embraced the U.S.-led global counter-proliferation strategy as well as America’s global nuclear-security agenda to fight nuclear terrorism. In addition to lending its support to U.S. measures such as the  Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) and UN Resolution 1540  (the preliminary draft of which was produced through Franco-American cooperation), the EU has also launched parallel initiatives such as the Chemical-Biological-Radiological-Nuclear (CBRN) Risk Mitigation Centres of Excellence. This project, perhaps the most ambitious nuclear-security initiative ever launched at the global level, authorizes six regional centers around the world to provide capacity-building training programs for emerging countries to develop appropriate border and export control policies in the fight against nuclear terrorism and to minimize illicit smuggling of sensitive dual-use technology to both non-state actors and rogue states.

The third EU shift has been from a soft-power approach to a harder, more coercive approach to WMD proliferation. The EU’s WMD strategy introduces the concept of “effective multilateralism” and explicitly states that “when measures – such as political dialogue and diplomatic pressure – have failed, coercive measures under Chapter VII of the UN Charter and international law could be envisioned”.  The shift in rhetoric has been matched by actions. In the handling of the 2003 Iranian crisis, the EU’s main approach had been one of constructive engagement, but increasingly, and particularly from 2008, during the tenure of the EU Presidency by France, the EU has shifted to a much harder stance, calling for and adopting a broad range of economic sanctions.

The costs of global nuclear leadership

Although the changes in the EU’s nuclear approach are significant – and welcome – in an era of increasing nuclear-technology diffusion, they have nonetheless generated some negative consequences that have been acknowledged only marginally by EU officials. Such externalities must be tackled and resolved if EU global nuclear engagement is to remain credible and sustainable over time. Four types of negative externalities can be identified.

The first are political consequences. The increasing engagement of the EU in global nuclear governance has deepened the divide between the main European nuclear players and the rest of the member-states by institutionalizing de facto an EU Directorate comprising France, Germany and the United Kingdom. While the directorate had always been at work within the EU, particularly in matters related to foreign and security policy, for several years it has remained an informal arrangement, usually disguised within bilateral or trilateral talks among the “Big Three”. Yet, the establishment of the EU3+3 (the three EU states plus the United States, Russia and China) to lead Iran negotiations has provided a quasi-officialization to its existence, engendering resentment from other European players and raising questions about its legitimacy within the European Union institutional architecture. Although the majority of the EU member-states seem to be willing to cooperate under an EU Directorate, a few have at times voiced their dissatisfaction. For instance, Italy, the fourth-largest economy within the European Union, openly complained about the Big Three’s handling of the Iranian nuclear row and about its exclusion from the negotiations. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi clearly highlighted Italians’ disapproval during a 2007 interview with the German Newspaper Die Welt, when he stated, “Tehran and Rome are significant business partners and I have not realized why Italy, as an important European player, should not enter negotiations with Iran over the nuclear issue." To mitigate internal friction, the High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy (Javier Solana of Spain through 2009, succeeded by Catherine Ashton of the UK) has been invited to lead negotiations to ensure coordination between the Big Three and the rest of the Union. But tensions will likely flare up again as the EU continues to deepen its engagement with nuclear issues in the future.

The second issue is institutional.  As EU involvement in nuclear governance increases, so does the level of tension between the European Council and the European Commission. In the current European institutional hierarchy, the Council defines the general political direction and priorities of the EU, and the Commission is in charge of producing actual legislation, fitting within the political framework provided by the Council and subsequently approved by the European Parliament. For several years before the Treaty of Lisbon entered into force in December 2009, the main responsibility for crafting an EU nuclear policy was assigned almost exclusively to the European Commission through two different Departments: Energy and External Relations. Now, however, with the strengthening of the European Council and the establishment of the post of High Representative of the Union for Foreign Affairs & Security Policy and of an EU diplomatic staff – the External Action Service – EU nuclear policy has been fragmented and dispersed between the two institutions raising challenges of coordination, duplication and institutional competition.  Above all, the institutional clash resulting from the expanding role of the EU in nuclear governance is something of a paradox.  On the one hand, the EU has begun work on nuclear issues because of the deepening of its regional integration process, and on the other, the very process risks undermining the sustainability of the EU nuclear approach in the long run.

The third negative externality is geo-political. If nuclear governance is to be successful and sustainable, it cannot be merely reactive, responding after the eruption of nuclear crises. Rather, it must address the root causes of proliferation, such as instability, insecurity, prestige or status-seeking aspirations among countries engaged in WMD development and/or acquisition. This means that global nuclear politics should never be disjoined from broader security and development policies.  For this reason, in order to maintain a critical linkage between its nuclear policies and its broader security and defense approach, the EU released in 2003 the EU WMD Strategy in conjunction with its first European Security Strategy. The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction was defined as an international security threat as grave as terrorism, organized crime, state failure, energy insecurity and climate change.

Although the impelling necessity for the EU to adopt a strategic-thinking culture is frequently discussed and acknowledged by EU officials and diplomats of EU member-states, very little has been done in this regard so far, and the negotiations with Iran have exposed, even more seriously, EU naiveté and incongruence in articulating its strategic long-term vision on world politics.  Sauer, for instance, has remarked that the assumption by the EU of a leadership role in the Iranian crisis was initiated with too much confidence, without proper preparations and without a realistic estimate of the potential political backlash for the EU deriving from the failure of such negotiations. 

In this regard, the future engagement of the European Union in emerging proliferation crises could produce serious political backlashes for the EU unless such an engagement is prepared and takes place in the broader context of a consistent and forward-looking defense and security policy. Engaging with nuclear crises on ad-hoc basis will only contribute to bring attention to the actual lack of strategic thinking of the EU as whole.

Finally, there is what I call reputational and identity externalities. As the EU shifts toward a more coercive approach to halt nuclear proliferation – as in the case of Iran – the original view of an EU based on multilateralism, dialogue, economic cooperation and soft power is called into question. The aura of neutrality, impartiality and goodness that the EU has used to distinguish itself from the United States in foreign policy also is fading away, with important repercussions. A deeper engagement in global nuclear politics and great-power politics in general, inevitably entails bold actions, taking sides and sometimes opting for unpopular decisions, such as using military means to prevent rogue countries from acquiring weapons of mass destruction. This may clash with the fundamental idea of the EU as it has been cast for the past two decades. Can we – as Europeans – bear the prospect of an EU more willing to act boldly and strategically in the pursuit of a specific global nuclear order?

EU aspirations in the era of global nuclear leadership

These externalities exist and must be managed, if not completely resolved, through a skillful process that involves transparency, political boldness, strategic insight and, above all, leadership among European Union members and institutions.

At the political level, it is important for the Big Three countries to recognize that their power on the global stage is only as strong as the level of support they get from the other EU member-states. This means that nuclear politics within the EU cannot become an issue managed by a mini-club of countries. In order to avoid marginalization, the EU must be able to engage all members in nuclear discussions. One possible route to that end would be to establish a subcommittee within the European Council exclusively mandated to handle and facilitate nuclear discussions. This could prove tricky, at least in the beginning, because a number of countries within the EU would probably seize the opportunity to raise the controversial issue of nuclear disarmament in Europe that a few members, including the Big Three, oppose. If nuclear policy is to become a true European priority, discussions around nuclear disarmament will have to be undertaken sooner or later. The willingness of the European Council to tackle these sensitive issues in a democratic and participatory way, instead of simply avoiding them altogether, will in time pay off in terms of acquired strength, credibility and legitimacy.

Institutionally, it is essential that the EU can rely on a clear organizational structure mandated to design, manage and lead nuclear efforts in a consistent fashion. The inter-institutional difficulties in coordinating nuclear policies are affecting the ability of the EU to implement nuclear policies and must be resolved. In this regard, the recent establishment, upon French recommendation, of the position of Principal Adviser and Special Envoy for Non-Proliferation and Disarmament within the EU is welcome.  The Envoy will advocate EU nuclear policies in front of the international community, and will also play a key role in facilitating information sharing and policy design among the different institutions of the EU. The Special Envoy’s office must be given adequate resources (both technical and human) and some discretionary autonomy to avoid being completely hijacked by factional politics and member-states’ single-minded interests.

Geostrategically, it is imperative that the EU become much better at using international forums as well as at cooperating with regional and inter-regional institutions. Here, too, the EU can also aspire to be an institution-builder. Given the cosmopolitan nature of the EU’s foreign policy establishment and its global economic outreach, the EU should maintain an informal discussion network with key powers in the regions where it is establishing its Centres of Excellence. This would provide an outstanding opportunity for the EU to develop ties with key regional players and to acquire a more comprehensive and global perspective on nuclear governance.

A more effective EU engagement with the world would also build credibility at home. In the eyes of its European constituency, a globally active, strategically engaged EU could be more “justified” in taking bold actions beyond Europe. However, global engagement must be explained to all Europeans more effectively than the EU has done so far. Europeans can understand that the fight against nuclear proliferation is a vital one that goes to the core of both security and economic interests of the Union, as long as European institutions are willing to work transparently and coherently.

These policy strategies will not be implemented easily, and they will require committed leadership. Stepping into the global arena of nuclear politics demands courage and forward-looking vision. The procrastination that the EU has displayed in nuclear politics has not paid off. Risks have increased, as have insecurity and instability. Since 2003, the EU has demonstrated its willingness to engage more proactively with nuclear governance and to take some risks. Sustaining that change of heart demands further assumption of responsibilities as consequences unfold and externalities emerge. If the EU is able to face head-on the costs of global nuclear engagement, it will step into the 21^st century as a true global power.

Francesca Giovannini is a Post-Doc MacArthur Nuclear Fellow jointly appointed to CISAC and the Europe Center. She earned a PhD from the University of Oxford and has two Master Degrees from the University of California Berkeley. From 2000 to 2005, Francesca served the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the United Nations in Gaza, Turkey and Lebanon.