Foreign Policy magazine

As you may have already noticed, the July/August issue of Foreign Policy is now online. It's a great one, featuring Minxin Pei's "Think Again" on Asia's rise, Reihan Salam examining how the Great Recession is overturning traditional gender roles, Christian Caryl's look back at 1979, a pivotal year that largely defined some of day's major foreign policy conflicts, and Jacob Heilbrunn's explanation for why Ban Ki-moon's weak leadership makes him the world's most dangerous Korean. Also be sure to check out the 2009 edition of the FP/Fund for Peace Failed States Index. 

 

But that's not the only thing that's new on the site today. We're also very excited about our new article pages, the latest development in our ongoing Web redesign. We've made it easier to navigate throughout the site from each article page. You can also now comment on articles and see what are the most popular articles of the day. We've also made it much easier to share articles through e-mail, Facebook, Twitter and other networking services. We hope these changes will make reading FP online both easier and more enjoyable. 

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With all these Twitter Revolutions breaking out all over the place, it certainly seems like that whole online social networking thing is here to stay. Good thing FP has already got Web 2.0 on lock!

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Last week Ploughshares Fund President Joe Cirincione wrote on ForeignPolicy.com that the pending civilian nuclear cooperation deal between the U.S. and United Arab Emirates was "Half-baked and hasty at best, foolhardy and dangerous at worst" and would likely contribute to a nuclear arms race in the Middle East.

The piece has stirred some debate in the nonproliferation community. Here's one thoughtful response from Joe DeThomas, nonproliferation director at the U.S. Civilian Research & Development Foundation. He previously served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Bureau of Nonproliferation and Ambassador to Estonia. The views expressed here and DeThomas's own and do not represent those of the CRDF:

I may be disqualified from replying to Joe Cirincione's article, since I have actually been to the U.A.E. and discussed its nuclear program with the people actually implementing it.  This will take all the fun out of any comments I make. But the piece does raise a number of questions that I think are worth addressing.

1.  Is there a nuclear arms race in the Gulf and Middle East?  Is interest in nuclear power really driven by the need to counter the Iranian program?

It is probably not coincidental that so many countries in the region, many of them Sunni, have suddenly decided to pursue nuclear power. However, it is probably also not coincidental that these grandiose plans coincided with $150-a-barrel oil and with the fact that booming electricity demand was causing them to consume the lifeblood of their economies at home.  But, are these countries really racing and if so is nuclear power for electricity generation the way they are racing to match the Iranians?  For the most part, I'd say no. 

First there is a lot more talk than action outside the UAE.  (Unless Saudi Arabia were to unleash a crash program, no country in the region outside of the UAE will have an operating nuclear power program before 2025.) Second, if there is any thought of using power reactors as a counter balance to Iran, it is in order to persuade public and elite opinion in the countries in question that they are matching the Iranians without doing any of the real things that would be necessary to create a real arms race. This is not to say that such posturing could not create a mess.  We should be paying attention to ways to keep any such shadow plays from creating real security problems.

2. Is the UAE program a potential proliferation threat?

If ever a program was designed to make it ill-suited for proliferation, it is the UAE program. First, the program did not flow out of a political-military calculation but out of a rather robust energy policy debate.  Second, it specifically rejects acquiring the front or back ends of the fuel cycle. Third, it will be very happy to send away spent fuel and does not wish to pursue a plutonium economy. Fourth, it is in such a hurry to deploy power reactors that it is not going to pursue many of the preliminary steps that other countries do to get ready for nuclear power (e.g., operate research reactors, which we have seen in India and the DPRK are much more useful for small weapons programs than big power reactors are). 

Fifth, because it is resource rich but people poor, the UAE is going to be highly dependent on foreign expertise and foreign firms to build, operate and regulate its program. It has gone out of its way to select outside expertise that will not have any incentive (and faces many disincentives) to assist or tolerate proliferation. Sixth, it has gone out of its way to constrain its future options by signing on to every constraining international agreement and inspection regime it could find. Seventh, it has selected technologies (LWR's with a once-through fuel cycle) for its future program that are the least congenial to pursue proliferation.

Now, there are those who will argue that ANY nuclear technology in the Middle East presents proliferation and security risks. I suppose if we could dictate choices in the region there might be a case to be made to make the Middle East a nuclear technology free zone. But, that is not on the menu either politically or economically. No US strategy will persuade the countries of the region or the suppliers in the industrialized world to create a nuclear boycott on the entire Arab world. If we can't stop the development of nuclear power in the region, we should at least have the sense to be happy if it is put in place in a way that minimizes the risks and maximizes our influence on the way it is used.

If we can show that countries that do things the right way get the benefit of an efficient, safe, secure nuclear power program while countries like Iran end up with clunky hybrid reactors that were obsolete before they ever generated a kilowatt, we might finally get somewhere. 

-Joseph DeThomas

Sorry for two self-promotional posts in a row but I want to announce the very exciting news that Passport is now available in Japanese. The online edition of Newsweek Japan will be translating and publishing about one post a day for Japanese readers here. We're very excited to be reaching a new audience and if any readers of our Japanese edition have found their way back here, let me be the first to say irashaimase.

Also, as a big Tom Waits fan I can't help linking to this.

You may have noticed that the Morning Brief looked a little bit different today. Don't be alarmed. It's all part of ForeignPolicy.com's latest expansion.

Our new Global News page, a custom-tailored news aggregator for FP readers, is now up and running. In addition to the slightly-tweaked Morning Brief, which will still be available here on Passport as well as by e-mail, you'll find the world's biggest stories as selected by FP's editors, the Web's best international news RSS feeds, and the latest content from throughout our site. It's a brand new way to get the latest news that we think loyal FP readers -- and hopefully some new ones -- will really enjoy.

We hope to do a lot more with this and as always, we welcome your feedback.