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Nuclear Risk Reduction in the Hemisphere [1]

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Date: 2024-04 

THE WASHINGTON FOREIGN PRESS CENTER, WASHINGTON, D.C.

MODERATOR: Welcome, everyone, to the Foreign Press Center virtual briefing. My name is Gini Staab and I’m the moderator for today’s briefing. It is my pleasure to introduce Mallory Stewart, the Assistant Secretary of State for the Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability. Today, Assistant Secretary Stewart will outline U.S. efforts to advance nuclear arms control and risk reduction measures, with a particular connection to how these efforts intersect with the regional security environment.

Just a reminder that the briefing today is on the record, and we will post a transcript and a video of the briefing on our website, fpc.state.gov, later today. If you have not already done so, please take a moment now to rename yourself in the chat window with your name, outlet, and country. And I would like to invite Assistant Secretary Stewart to begin with her opening remarks. Thank you.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Thank you so much for that introduction, and thank you so much for all the press that have joined us today – really, really happy to have this opportunity to speak with you and hopefully have an opportunity to answer questions as well. I am very happy to be able to discuss what we’ve been doing in the arena of arms control, deterrence, and stability, and maybe I should just start with that name of the bureau in case any of you are not familiar with our bureau. It used to be the Arms Control, Verification, and Compliance Bureau, and of course we still do verification and compliance, but we see that as crucial parts of our arms control efforts. The addition of deterrence to our title is because of all the work we do in the arms control context to try to deter bad actions, to deter noncompliance with arms control, to sort of incentivize compliance with international law and norms and all of the architectures that the international community has set up for greater security and stability in the global arena.

So I can talk about that further, and maybe an example I can provide is the work we’ve been doing to work towards normative developments of collective efforts towards responsible behavior on emerging tech, towards responsible behavior in the outer space arena. With respect to emerging tech, we’ve been working very closely with our Department of Defense colleagues to bring on more governments and regions to our political declaration on the responsible use of AI and autonomy in the military, which right now has 54 governments that have signed on and it really entails some very fundamental commitments to try to help understand, appreciate, and get ahead of the risks that AI can bring into the military – not just with respect to the weapons systems that the military uses but also with respect to the broader military context, such as understanding inherent human biases can impact decision making in the military human resources division or in promotion capacities; understanding how you can utilize AI in a manner ensuring its consistency with international law, which is relevant across the board to all of the militaries’ use of AI.

And it’s really a conversation that we officially kicked off last February with Under Secretary Jenkins announcing our commitment to addressing responsible use of AI in the military arena, and we’ve actually involved and heard from many countries as to their comfort level with this concept and what they would like to see in the political declaration, and we see it as very much a very live document, growing and changing. I can deep dive into that if there’s any interest.

In the space arena, we’re working towards ensuring that there is risk reduction for the challenges we deal with in the space domain – so, for example, space debris created by intentional anti-satellite testing is something that we’ve addressed starting through a U.S. commitment unilaterally made by Vice President Harris in April of 2022 and then put forward in the UN General Assembly context, culminating in a resolution in the First Committee, confirmed in the General Assembly of over 150 countries agreeing that direct-ascent Earth-to-space launched destructive – meaning debris-creating anti-satellite tests – should be prohibited and we should seek to prevent the creation of debris through that capacity going forward.

These are just two examples of what we’ve been working on in the risk reduction arena, responsible behavior arena, working to hear from other governments, incorporate a very broad-based approach to how we can collectively define what the international community feels is responsible behavior so we can try to prevent and deter destabilizing or irresponsible behaviors in some of these arenas – again, not taking a position that the U.S. knows what the right approach is, but really working with the international community to figure out what could be addressed to minimize some of the threats that we experience in those arenas.

So I kind of went deep there and went pretty technical quick, but I should say our bureau is of course working across the board on preventing weapons of mass destruction in conformity with international law, trying to uphold, enforce, and implement and verify the international legal agreements and commitments that countries have made in this context, and we recently rolled out our annual arms control and nonproliferation compliance report to really share and be transparent with respect to the underlying information that we have and we rely upon to make some of our decisions and to raise some of our concerns with respect to compliance with these treaties and commitments.

We work very closely with our regional partners to understand where we can take steps through crisis communication, through awareness raising, through coordination, and sort of capacity building – towards risk reduction efforts of transparency, communicating concerns, communicating some of the drivers of instability in the regional context.

So on that note, I will just highlight coming back from New York where I was on Monday and Tuesday – on Monday, hosting 27 countries from the Western Hemisphere, including Canada, and countries all up and down, to discuss the value of nuclear risk reduction in particular, the value of trying to take steps to understand. From the U.S. perspective, we see very broad-based nuclear risk reduction as something that can go hand in hand with our Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty requirements under the NPT to works towards disarmament.

We do not see risk reduction – nuclear risk reduction as a substitute for the N5, the P5, a current member of the Security Council but also the nuclear weapon states under the NPT’s obligation to work towards disarmament. But we see risk reduction as consistent with that requirement and that obligation.

And so we’ve been working to understand how we can build awareness but also hear from the Western Hemisphere countries their approach to risk reduction and what they see as valuable in that context – specifically nuclear risk reduction, how we can work through transparency mechanisms, through communication channels, through exercises, and tabletops to really understand how they perceive the risk reduction benefits of how we work towards nuclear disarmament verification, as we do through our International Partnership for Nuclear Disarmament Verification, the IPNDV; how we work towards creating an environment of more stable and less insecure military contexts so that – this is through our – Creating an Environment for Nuclear Disarmament – our CEND Initiative.

We can bring together a lot of different voices as we do in the IPNDV – so both nuclear weapon states, non-nuclear weapon states, nuclear possessing states that are not party to the NPT – bring them together to hear their concerns and approaches to the numerous challenges we face in the nuclear arena, but also instability and drivers of arms races or drivers of concern in other arenas as well, including emerging technologies.

So we had a really good conversation on Monday explaining how we approach risk reduction as productive and part of the important approach that we need to take towards our NPT obligations but also towards a more stable and secure environment. And then on Tuesday, we had a really good trilateral meeting with Canada and with Mexico to, again, get a greater appreciation for all of the ways our three countries can work to support the NPT community, can work to support the international security environment, and to hear the concerns that both Canada and Mexico have with what is perceived as a diminishing security environment right now, as the P5 aren’t able to agree upon crisis communication provisions.

We’re not necessarily able to move forward towards greater risk reduction in the P5 context – and really to hear from Mexico and Canada how we can more effectively work towards a more cohesive P5, to work towards our Article VI obligations under the NPT. So again, I – I’m sorry I’m switching back and forth between way too technical and high-level contexts, but I’m trying to give some sense of what we’re doing in this bureau to work towards these efforts. And I will – I could probably talk too much, but I do think question and answer is probably more helpful.

I will conclude with we are working across every arena of weapons of mass destructing, trying to strengthen the Chemical Weapons Convention and work towards universalizing its implementation, trying to strengthen the Biological Weapons Convention; working very closely with Ambassador Ken Ward, working to understand how we can move towards greater implementation and appreciation of verification possibilities; working in, of course, the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty arena to bring more consensus and more forward push towards how we have successful progress on these issues.

And then, of course, in the Conventional Arms Control context, trying to build up greater crisis communications, build up awareness of how transparency and prenotification of exercises can be to the benefit of stabilizing what could be challenging environments – really building on what our Vienna Document commitments can provide, if there’s anything they can do to help other destabilized regional conflicts that have conventional arms as a big driver of instability.

I will say in the space arena – right now, happening this week and last week – we have been working with our Japanese colleagues to propose jointly a UN Security Council resolution regarding the peaceful use of outer space. We feel this resolution as really important to reaffirm one of the core obligations of the Outer Space Treaty, that countries must not put into orbit nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction. And so specifically citing our effort to reconfirm at the UN Security Council level the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, including that obligation; but also hoping, while reaffirming this existing obligation, that we can sort of also prohibit developing nuclear weapons or WMDs for placement around Earth’s orbit or on celestial bodies, as would be consistent with the Outer Space Treaty.

So I can talk to that more as well. We think the resolution is straightforward, and it’s a really classic example of trying to reduce risks of misunderstanding and misperception by reaffirming, recommitting to, and really understanding how we can strengthen existing international law the vast majority of the international community agrees with and worked on to create.

All right. So I’ve probably talked too much. I’ve given a lot of substance for folks to ask about. But if you don’t have any questions, I can keep talking. But I’ll stop there because I see there are some questions in the chat. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Yes. Thank you so much, Madam Assistant Secretary. If you do have a question, please raise your hand and wait to be called upon; and then once called upon, please state your name and media outlet prior to asking your question.

Let me ask one that has – was pre-provided: “So what nuclear risks do you see today in Latin America? What impacts those risks, and do you see them increasing?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Yeah. I mean, it’s a really interesting point because when we talk about reducing nuclear risks, we’re not necessarily saying that Latin America – which is an especially positive element of nuclear risk reduction in their Tlatelolco Treaty commitments, and through their work with OPANAL, the implementing force and really a excellent organization that combines the Latin American community to support their Tlatelolco Treaty – we’re not saying that they themselves are at risk of developing nuclear weapons necessarily. But of course, the nuclear risks that they experience are because everyone has heightened risk of nuclear conflict while we have an unstable international arena, especially as we have challenges with our ability to communicate and clearly prevent misunderstanding, miscalculation, or even escalation with Russia specifically in this context.

So the nuclear risks that we were discussing with the Latin American community really entail their concerns about escalation that is – that could lead to nuclear conflict. And so how we embody an ability to limit the development of nuclear arsenals, right, we talked about the fissile material issue, how we can work to reduce or how we can work to understand how we reduce the development of fissile materials for nuclear weapons; we talked about their concerns about escalation because of miscommunication and how we can work to get crisis communication channels in place in the P5; and now, of course, we need to do that with the agreement of the rest of the P5 or the N5, as we call them as well, the nuclear weapon states that are recognized under the NPT – how we can work towards crisis communications, how we can work towards encouraging Russia to come back to the table on our New START negotiations, how we can work toward risk reduction, communications with China, and learning and addressing misunderstandings with the rest of the P5, but especially Russia and China.

So the risk reduction that we talked about with the Western Hemisphere countries really involves their questions about nuclear disarmament, their questions about participating in some of the risk reduction mechanisms that we’ve been trying to support across the board, showing that, again, as I mentioned, the IPNDV and the CEND, but also showing that those support risk reduction and are not somehow inconsistent with the obligation to work towards disarmament, showing how participating in a lot of our emerging technology commitments would help reduce risk, right. If you can prevent the unintentional risk added into a strategic system through AI and you can prevent unintentional risk added into just a military context in general that could be added by AI, that’s taking a step towards reducing conflict, misunderstanding, and miscalculation.

So all of these issues were very much swirling around in our expansive conversation all day on Monday, and also more specifically focused on with Canada and Mexico on Tuesday.

MODERATOR: Thank you. So the next question is: “So many countries in the – in Latin America have tenuous security environments, such as Venezuela. How does that affect its view of nuclear risks in the neighborhood?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Yeah. I mean, I think the risk of proliferation is something that’s real for all countries; but also, the risk of being caught up in the – a nuclear conflict, even if countries don’t have nuclear weapons, is also something that we’ve seen, as a result, come up in conversations and come up in concerns as a result of the illegal and continuing invasion of Ukraine.

I think all of us being aware of the interconnectedness of our societies because of the broad effect and really tragic and extraordinary consequences of any use of nuclear weapons I think ties us all together in this context. So in a difficult security environment of any country but, for example, the question is about Venezuela where you have conflict that could escalate, the concern has to be either preventing a broader, wide-scale conflict from pursuing from a regional conflict, but also preventing the use of more and more dangerous weapons to continue the escalation and confrontation.

So in the Venezuelan context – and I would obviously defer to the experts on this call, but also the regional experts – having an ability to prevent unintentional escalation, miscommunication, and miscalculation, and limit the drivers toward global escalation in any context – so having communication channels, having transparency, having ability to cut through disinformation is something that we talked about in our nuclear risk reduction conversations because it is all very related, especially in this environment, again, of disinformation.

So we don’t want to have a situation where misunderstanding and miscalculation leads to increasing participation, increasingly escalatory weapons involvement, and then other countries bringing you whatever weapon systems they have to address the conflict.

MODERATOR: Thank you so much. The next question is: “What can be done to further bring global views together on nuclear risks?”

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Yeah, I mean, it’s a really good question because we’ve historically had such strong divides between some of the non-nuclear weapon states, between nuclear weapon states, between nuclear umbrella states, those states that feel they rely on nuclear weapon states to confirm their security. And I think what we’ve been slowly sort of realizing is that at the heart of it, we all agree that the world would be safer and more secure without the presence of nuclear weapons, but we find ourselves in this world where nuclear weapons exist, and there’s no good, easy answers to pure disarmament.

And I think hearing on Monday all of the advocates for sort of a nuclear ban treaty was really good to hear. But to try to explain the challenges from the nuclear weapon states’ perspectives where if you feel that you are either protecting other countries that have made the decision not to develop any more or any – any nuclear weapons of their own, and you feel you have an obligation to protect them; and some of these countries and the U.S. Government itself sometimes feels that we are placed in the crosshairs of other nuclear weapon states, how just a pure unilateral disarmament is even possible in that arena.

So really hearing and explaining and diving into the difference of perspective and the difference of perception, and how – a very good point was made that for many countries, nuclear risk reduction would be accomplished completely if you just got rid of nuclear weapons. Like, I understand there’s certain – there’s a certain truth to that statement. It’s just the reality of how we get to that disarmament point is what we need to work towards, how we need to diminish instability, maximize security through conformity with international law, international architecture, as a way to remain convinced that countries won’t seek to violate the UN Charter or the existing constructs that prevent and try to forestall additional wars.

So how we build those architectures, how we build that confidence and security, is what we need to all work together on, regardless of nuclear weapons status. And that’s really where I think we were able to come together, that risk reduction is really comprehensive across the board, something that we can agree to while we agree that the nuclear weapon states have an obligation under the NPT to work towards disarmament. And we all need to sort of remind ourselves of that obligation as well, and yet come to the table to diminish the drivers of instability and unintentional or intentional escalation, diminish those drivers – so prevent that misunderstanding, miscalculation, and that disregard for international law.

So again, I’m trying to kind of go back and forth between the 20,000-foot level and the more specifics, but I do think that’s something we can all come together on, and that there really is a good amount of consensus that in a perfect world there would be no nuclear weapons; but we’re not in that perfect world, so what we need to work together toward is how we get to that place and how we get there practically, realistically, and without allowing further exacerbation of either nuclear proliferation or nuclear weapons programs.

MODERATOR: Thank you. So I think you just answered the last question that we had there, which was how does risk reduction – is the goal risk reduction or disarmament, and how do they sort of inter-relate.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Absolutely. I think the ultimate goal for all of us is and should be disarmament; that’s our obligation. But risk reduction is synergistic, and they can work together at the same time because we can’t wait for disarmament to start working on risk reduction, right. We can’t say we must disarm now and not worry about anything else. We have to reduce the risks that we’re driving towards armed races, reduce those risks so that we can actually talk comprehensively about bringing Russia to the table, bringing the P5 as a whole to the table to fulfill and figure out how we can more fulsomely address our obligations for disarmament.

So they are not inconsistent, and we cannot work towards one while ignoring the other, right, and I don’t think it’s very helpful to say risk reduction can’t solve the problem, right, because nuclear weapons ultimately exist. I don’t think that means you have to just discard risk reduction as a whole. I think you have to work to reduce the drivers of instability and insecurity and reduce the drivers of escalation toward potential nuclear war, which the P5 has agreed can never be won and so must never be fought, and yet making that real – making that understanding and appreciation and trying to get away from the risks that we’ve seen and the saber-rattling that we’ve heard in the Ukraine context more and more. So those are consistent efforts, but one is not to the preclusion of the other, for sure.

MODERATOR: Thank you. Any final questions from our journalists?

So this ends the Q&A portion of today’s briefing. Assistant Secretary Stewart, do you have any final remarks you’d like to share, please?

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Just that I encourage all of you to reach out, reach out to the bureau and ask as many questions as you can. I think it’s a foregone – or maybe a cliché that the arms control bureau is all about transparency. The more we can raise awareness of what we’re working towards and really utilize your good voices in the international community to ask the questions, to make the points, to sort of highlight that arms control, nonproliferation, disarmament – all of these are objectives that we all should be working towards, and they are all an inherent part of the security dynamic that we need to work to achieve global stability and security. So appreciate your interest in this conversation, thank you for letting me talk too much, and please do come back with more questions.

MODERATOR: Thank you. We do have one final question.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Okay.

MODERATOR: Kristoph Rivera, please, of Sputnik. You can turn on your camera, please.

QUESTION: Okay. Can you hear me?

MODERATOR: Yes.

QUESTION: Thanks for doing this. Just a quick question on – there’s been a lot of talk about Iran getting close to developing nuclear weapons, and I just want to see if you have any update on what the U.S. might be doing to address that concern.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I mean, we work – we’re working very closely with the IAEA and with the Board of Governors in that context to try to encourage greater transparency, greater willingness to work together with the international organizations set up really to confirm no diversion of nuclear capabilities toward a weaponized program. And I think we have to work with the international community, and that’s the step that we’re supporting. This isn’t something that our bureau directly leads on, so I’m kind of recounting what we’re working on in other contexts at the State Department and the White House, but we certainly support all of the efforts of the IAEA to gain greater insight to address the insecurity and really the questions and the misunderstanding that results from a lack of transparency.

So it’s consistent with all of the risk reduction that – the efforts that we’re doing across the board is that greater transparency can answer the questions and prevent some of the misunderstandings, miscalculations, or potential sort of concerns that stem from not being able to answer questions about diversion, answer questions about the development of a program that’s incredibly destabilizing to the region and could lead to greater proliferation.

MODERATOR: Thank you so much. So this concludes our briefing. I want to give a very special thanks to our briefer for sharing their time with us today, and to those of you who participated, thank you. Have a great afternoon.

ASSISTANT SECRETARY STEWART: Thank you so much. Thank you for hosting this. Thank you.

MODERATOR: Thank you so much.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.state.gov/briefings-foreign-press-centers/nuclear-risk-reduction-in-the-hemisphere

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