Speech

by NATO's Assistant Secretary General for Political Affairs and Security Policy, Ambassador Martin Erdmann at the NATO Seminar on Proliferation Issues

Dear Mr. Talat-Kelpsa,

Excellencies,

Dear participants,

Let me also offer you a very warm welcome here in Vilnius.  And let me, first of all, thank our host, the Lithuanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, for the hospitality we are being shown.  Without your support, this event would not have been possible.

We have assembled here a most distinguished group of experts in the field of non-proliferation.  Some represent their national governments, others come from various international institutions.  And we have also among us a number of distinguished academics, who I am certain, will make good use of their academic freedom to provoke us with out-of-the-box ideas.

Allow me to say a few words on this seminar.  It is organised under the auspices of NATO’s Senior Politico-Military Group on Proliferation, which I chair.  Vilnius is the third seminar of this kind.  The previous seminars in Rome and in Sofia were very encouraging.  The discussions were frank and wide-ranging, and the feedback from the participants was extremely positive.  The high number of participants in today’s conference bodes equally well.  In short, this seminar has become a true flagship event.  And with the help of you and your governments, we shall be able to hold this event on an annual basis.

The need for having such a unique forum should be clear to us all.  The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction has reached a critical stage.  Last October, North Korea announced that it had detonated a nuclear device.  Iran continues to defy the international community’s demands to suspend its efforts to enrich uranium.  Progress on measures to strengthen the ban on chemical and biological weapons is being made, but only slowly.  And measures to strengthen the nuclear non-proliferation regime have run into considerable difficulties.

Why has proliferation turned into such a major challenge?  Let me suggest a few reasons.

Perhaps the first and foremost reason is the phenomenon that we tend to describe as “globalisation”.  Globalisation continues to open up economies, create new wealth, and connect many regions to the global economy.  Yet we also increasingly see globalisation’s darker side.  The same networks that allow money and information to be transferred instantly across borders can also be used by criminal networks to traffic virtually any commodity, whether it is laundered money, people, missile components, or fissile materials.  This tendency is reinforced by the diffusion of know how, as well as by the “dual use” nature of many technologies.

Second, the fear that proliferation by some key countries could lead to a “domino effect” in their respective regions. Iran and North Korea are two critical cases.  If they go nuclear, other nations in the Middle East and, respectively, in Asia, may feel compelled to follow.  As a result, proliferation might accelerate substantially.

Third, the emergence of non state actors.  For a long time, proliferation of WMD was seen as a problem exclusively between states.  Not any longer.  The attacks of “9/11” have reminded us of the emergence of a new breed of terrorism, bent on inflicting mass casualties.  Traditional concepts of rationality, self-restraint, and mutual deterrence – none of them applies to terrorists who are ready to die for their cause.  It they would get access to WMD, they would use them. And we all know that they are indeed trying to acquire them.

Fourth, the emergence of a private market for WMD components and know how.  The uncovering of the Khan network has dealt a heavy blow to international non-proliferation. This “WMD black market” has further eroded the logic that proliferation and non-proliferation are essentially issues on the level of states and governments.  The Khan network demonstrated that proliferation is increasingly proceeding outside the classical interstate regime.

Finally, many of these new developments are exacerbated by the proliferation of ballistic missile technology.  Here, too, patterns are changing.  Whereas in the past a customer would buy a fully-fledged missile system from the seller, several nations are meanwhile cooperating on the development, production and testing of missiles.  This reduces testing needs, international visibility, and costs.  As a result, the spread of WMD is accompanied by a parallel spread of delivery means.

These are most worrying developments.  But do they mean that we are helpless?  Do they mean that all we can do is to stand idly by and take proliferation as something that proceeds largely beyond our control, very much like the weather?  I do not think so.  We have the means to do something about it.  Indeed, if we look back at the history of international non-proliferation, we can see that there were many positive achievements.  Many states have bridled their ambitions to acquire weapons of mass destruction and dismantled their programmes. 

Given these successes, it would be irresponsible to argue that the non-proliferation challenge cannot be met.  To meet it, however, requires first and foremost a frank debate on new approaches – a debate that is looking ahead and not stranded in the past. 

How these new approaches could look like, and how they could be implemented, is something we can discuss over the course of this seminar.  I do not want to pre-empt that discussion. One thing is already clear, however. The role of the UN Security Council in stemming proliferation is bound to increase even more, not least through the non-proliferation committee established pursuant to the UN Security Council’s pathbreaking Resolution 1540 in 2004.  That is why we are truly honoured to have with us the Chairman of the Committee, Ambassador Peter Burian, who, just two months ago, also presided over the work of the Security Council.  In addition to the United Nations, we welcome among us the representatives of the Council of the European Union, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, and the Organization for Cooperation and Security in Europe.

NATO is another international institution that seeks to strengthen non-proliferation.  We will have more opportunities to discuss NATO’s specific policies and initiatives in this regard later in the seminar.  All that I want to say here is that the Alliance’s efforts in this field are intended as a contribution to the wider international community’s non-proliferation efforts.  Because the challenge can only be met by the broadest international cooperation.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

At the end of the Cold War, Tom Clancy, the well-known US military author, argued that the dawn of a new era of proliferation was breaking.  To meet the new challenges, he offered us an interesting piece of advice:  Non-proliferation experts, he argued, should approach their subject in much the same way as immune biologists or cancer researchers.  Why?  Because these scientists work in a dynamic environment.  They deal with threats that are constantly changing.  And, accordingly, they know that there is no single, permanent answer to the challenges out there.

I believe that Tom Clancy’s advice remains as topical as ever.  So let us behave like cancer researchers or biologists.  Let us try to grasp the ever-changing nature of proliferation, and then come up with new and innovative responses.  I wish us all a successful seminar.