Making the Grade: Are Countries Living Up to their Nonproliferation & Disarmament Commitments?
How well do countries measure up to their nonproliferation and disarmament commitments? The Arms Control Association, a Ploughshares Fund grantee, released an objective report to see which countries made the grade: “Assessing Progress on Nuclear Nonproliferation and Disarmament: 2009-2010 Report Card.”
In the style of a report card, the 65-page study grades the performance of 11 countries (China, France, Russia, the United Kingdom, the United States, India, Israel, Pakistan, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, Iran, and Syria) according to 10 nonproliferation, disarmament, and nuclear security categories for the past 18 months.
The Arms Control Association launched their report at an event at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Daryl Kimball, executive director of ACA, moderated the discussion between Peter Crail, lead researcher at ACA for this report, and George Perkovich, director of the nuclear policy program at the Carnegie Endowment. Kimball and Crail spoke about highlights from the study, while Perkovich raised some questions and observations about their methodology and the usefulness of this grading exercise.
Crail summarily commented, "The finding's of our 2009-2010 Report Card suggest that the global system that has been established over the decades to reduce nuclear weapons dangers is neither on the verge of crumbling nor on the cusp of success."
In an attempt to remain objective, the ACA researchers judged countries based upon the actions that states had pledged to take and on how well they had followed through on those agreements - avoiding questions of what countries should be doing.
The United States suffered in the grading scheme primarily because of slow congressional action on arms control. Other areas of concern were the fissile material talks being blocked by Pakistan, and the potential for new nuclear testing in India, Pakistan, and North Korea. While North Korea failed the assessment overall, Crail and Kimball were quick to recognize how much worse the situation could actually be above the 39th parallel. “There is a grade worse than F,” said Crail, drawing attention to the fact that North Korea has not been caught supplying nuclear technology to terrorist networks.
Perkovich lauded ACA’s efforts and took the analysis one step further, asking questions about how countries not included in the study would view the grading system and how they would be graded themselves. He also noted the lack of a category for reducing the role of nuclear weapons in national security postures, something that is more difficult to measure, but important for progress on nuclear disarmament
Since the value of this grading scheme increases over time, ACA hopes to do a similar report every couple of years. In doing so they will be able to map the trajectory of individual states, while continually assessing global progress on arms control.
