A Nuclear Blunder?

A spokesperson for the NSC referred all questions about Bolton and its own role to the State Department. Asked to respond to the criticism, a State Department official denied that the United States had been unprepared for the conference or was underplaying it. He said that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice couldn't attend because she was caught in between back-to-back foreign trips to Latin America and to Russia. Bolton himself was preoccupied with his Senate confirmation, and Robert Joseph has yet to be confirmed as Bolton's replacement as undersecretary, the State official said, adding, "We had several prep conferences for the NPT."

Bolton, who faces a scheduled confirmation vote in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Thursday, has been savaged by critics in recent weeks over his alleged manipulation of intelligence, his sometimes tempestuous efforts to sideline officials who disagreed with him, his statements under oath and other complaints. Throughout the Bolton controversy, his backers in the Bush administration have argued that though he may need better people skills, he has been very effective as a public official. Yet some critics of Bolton say that his alleged mishandling of the NPT conference and other initiatives show that he has sometimes botched the administration's business as well.

Bolton, for instance, often takes and is given credit for the administration's Proliferation Security Initiative--an agreement to interdict suspected WMD shipments on the high seas--and the deal to dismantle Libya's nuclear program (a deal that Bolton had sought to block). But the former senior Bush official who criticized Bolton's performance on the NPT conference says that in fact Bolton's successor, Robert Joseph, deserves most of the credit for those achievements. This official adds that it was Joseph, who was in charge of counterproliferation at the NSC, who had to pitch in when Bolton fumbled preparations for the NPT conference, as well. Bush, in his February 2004 speech, also sought to give new powers to the International Atomic Energy Agency, which enforces the treaty. But Bolton, says the former Bush official, "focused much more time and attention trying to deny Mohammed elBaradei a third term" as head of the IAEA. The effort failed, and it was considered another international humiliation for the United States. (Ironically, elBaradei has been one of Washington's chief allies at the NPT conference, pushing for parts of the Bush agenda.)

Critics of Bolton acknowledge that even in the best of times the ongoing NPT review conference--which lasts for a month--is a "painful mess" at which little of substance is achieved, as one international diplomat involved puts it. And today the negative sentiment against the United States is so strong, one Bush official said, that "not even Metternich could win an agreement here." Mitchell Reiss, the former policy-planning chief at State, says that "one of the real challenges is trying to persuade the non-aligned movement [a caucus of non-nuclear developing countries] that nonproliferation is not a gift to the United States, but that it's fundamentally in their national-security interests."

Still, in past decades Washington has signaled its seriousness about the NPT by sending heavy hitters--Vice President Al Gore went in 1995, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000. At the '95 conference in particular, Washington won kudos for leading the fight to extend the NPT's life.

The NPT, perhaps the most successful arms-control treaty in history, has been in effect since 1970. It permits the already declared nuclear states--the United States, Russia, Britain, France and China--to keep their nuclear arsenals while forbidding such weapons to everyone else--as long as all parties strive "in good faith" to achieve nuclear disarmament and the non-nuclear states get access to civilian nuclear power. The treaty has 188 signatories and only a few detractors, among them North Korea and potentially Iran (Israel, Pakistan and India also refuse to sign.) But in recent years the "loophole" in this grand bargain has become more apparent: the treaty contains worrisome ambiguities that may allow states like Iran to legally pursue a nuclear arms capability disguised as a civilian program.