Proliferation Security Initiative:
A Piece of the Arms Control Puzzle
By Wade Boese
Libya’s December 2003 renunciation of its chemical and
nuclear weapons programs and the exposure of the A.Q. Khan
nuclear black market network two months later rank as the
most prominent nonproliferation successes of the last several
years. Bush administration officials attributed both developments,
in part, to an earlier interdiction of the ship BBC China,
steaming toward Libya loaded with nuclear contraband. This
seizure occurred as part of the administration’s Proliferation
Security Initiative (PSI) to intercept shipments of weapons of
mass destruction (WMD) and their components worldwide.
With the Bush administration hyping the initiative as one of its
leading achievements, PSI soon became the poster child for
stopping proliferation.
In truth, interdiction is not a novel concept, and the Libyan
interception might well have happened without PSI. One State
Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity,
explained that the initiative marks a “better way of doing what we
have been doing for a long time.”1 PSI, which does not legally
empower countries to do anything that they could not have done
before, is no panacea for halting proliferation. Shipments will
get through, as the mixed success of the United States in the war
on drugs suggests. North Korea and Iran, the two countries
believed to be closest to barging into the nuclear weapons club,
have arguably advanced their known or
suspected weapons programs far enough
that intermittent PSI interdictions would
be insufficient to stymie or roll back these
two states’ arms efforts. Ending foreign
WMD programs and denying terrorists the
lethal weapons they seek still require a
multi-pronged strategy, of which interdiction
is one component.
Inauspicious Beginnings. On 9
December 2002, Spanish naval forces,
with American urging, stopped and
boarded the So San in the Arabian Sea on
its way from North Korea toward the
Middle East. Onboard, they discovered
fifteen short-range Scud-B ballistic missiles
and conventional warheads. Two
days later, the United States announced
that the ship and its cargo were released
and heading for Yemen, the purchaser of
the missiles. U.S. government spokesmen
explained that no legal basis existed
for confiscating the cargo as no interna
tional agreement outlawed ballistic missiles.
2 Still, the fact that North Korea—a
member of President George W. Bush’s
“axis of evil”—was able to deliver its lethal
wares did not sit well with many administration
officials.
The So San’s release ironically coincided
with the administration’s unveiling of its
National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass
Destruction, a document outlining how
Washington planned to stem proliferation.
Identified as a “critical part” of stem
ming the spread of ballistic missiles and
WMD, interdiction appeared first under
the strategy’s counterproliferation pillar.3
PSI Emerges. Not long after the vex
ing So San incident, President Bush
announced on 31 May 2003 that the
United States and several of its close allies
were banding together to “keep the
world’s most destructive weapons away
from our shores and out of the hands of
our common enemies.”4 Australia,
France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the
Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Spain,
and the United Kingdom formed the
original PSI group with the United States.
Over the next year, Canada, Norway,
Russia, and Singapore joined, and over
forty additional countries voiced their
support for the initiative’s mission.
PSI participants pledge to interdict
shipments of WMD, delivery systems,
and related materials at sea, on land, and
in the air to states and non-state actors of
concern. To enhance their chances of
success, PSI participants commit to shar
ing intelligence and improving cooperation
between their militaries and law
enforcement agencies. But no participant
is ever obliged to act. In addition,
there is no special register of goods to
intercept, though PSI is meant to reinforce
treaties and export control regimes
that proscribe or restrict the possession
and trade in specific weapons, technologies,
and materials. This flexibility
reflects the informal structure of PSI,
which participating countries describe as
“an activity, not an organization.”
President Bush’s top arms control official
and primary PSI architect, John
Bolton, brags frequently about the initiative’s
casualness. “It doesn’t have a secretariat;
it doesn’t have a headquarters
building; it doesn’t rely on mass meetings
of diplomats,” he stated on 28
September 2004.5 In this respect PSI is
very much the mirror image of its creator,
who favors preserving U.S. freedom
of action over legally binding obligations.
All PSI activities, including interdictions,
exercises, intelligence sharing, and
war-gaming, are voluntary.