Making a Difference: Creating and Implementing the Prague Agenda

Editor's Note: Gary Samore, Executive Director (Research) for Harvard Kennedy School's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, previously served as President Obama's Coordinator for Weapons of Mass Destruction Counter-Terrorism and Arms Control. In this personal essay, he reflects on the interplay between government and nongovernment organizations.

What is the value of nongovernment organizations, both in the academy and think tank worlds, to government policymakers? How are such outsiders useful (or not) to policymakers and what can be done to make them more useful? I’ve considered these questions from all three sides—as a government official, foundation funder, and think tanker. From 1987 to 2001, I worked as a civil servant in the State Department and National Security Council under the Presidents Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton, focusing mainly on regional nonproliferation issues in the Far East, South Asia, and the Middle East. During the George W. Bush administration, I was outside government on both sides of the tin cup—as director of studies for the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London, vice president for International Programs at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and director of studies at the Council on Foreign Relations. Most recently, from 2009 to 2013, I served as a political appointee, as President Obama’s White House coordinator for arms control, nonproliferation, and WMD terrorism, and now I’m back on the outside as executive director for research at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Having been in and out and in and out again, I think the development and implementation of President Obama’s “Prague Agenda” is a good case study for the interplay between government and nongovernment organizations. Named for President Obama’s April 5, 2009 speech in Prague, the Prague Agenda is the administration’s integrated strategy to advance U.S.-Russia and multilateral nuclear arms control, prevent nuclear proliferation, enhance nuclear security, and promote safe and secure nuclear energy, as steps toward achieving the long-term objective of a world without nuclear weapons.

The first point to make is that mainstream foundations in the United States have more opportunities to influence foreign policy than in almost any other country because of unique features of the American political system. In most countries, the career paths of foreign policy specialists rarely cross in and out of government. For the most part, academics and experts remain in their universities and think tanks for their entire careers, rarely serving a stint in government, while government civil servants serve out their careers in harness in government ministries, although some enter the private world of universities and think tanks upon retirement. In contrast, the barrier between the government and nongovernment careers in the United States is relatively permeable. Every change in administration in Washington sweeps a cadre of regional and functional experts from academia and think tanks and other parts of the private sector into key positions in the government as special assistants, deputy assistant secretaries, assistant secretaries, directors, and senior directors and above in the foreign policy bureaucracy at the National Security Council, Departments of State, Defense, and Energy, plus some parts of the intelligence community like the National Intelligence Board. As these newcomers move in, many officials occupying political appointments need to leave government to find gainful employment in the private sector, including think tanks and universities, while they wait for their next turn in government.

To a large extent, foundation funding makes this “circulation of elites” possible. The result—in Washington—is a proliferation of huge, well-funded think tanks like the Brookings Institution, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), Carnegie Endowment, the American Enterprise Institute, and many others, which are unlike anything in Europe or Asia. The top schools of public policy offering master’s degrees in international relations, such as the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, the Kennedy School at Harvard University, the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton, the Fletcher School at Tufts University, the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University, and many others serve the same purpose: training American and foreign students for potential careers in government and providing a haven where former U.S. officials can continue working, as faculty and fellows.  (For the most part, university political science departments have developed a quantitative discipline that seems deliberately divorced from policy realities and remains off limits to practitioners. ) Foundations have a strong incentive to support public policy schools and think tanks (and the experts who work there) to help develop young talent and allow seasoned veterans to analyze, generate ideas, critique, and generally prepare for their next turn at bat in government. Such experts are also more likely to return your phone call when they’re back in government.

In theory, the American system should maximize the relative strengths of government and nongovernment organizations to generate fresh ideas, policy analysis, and advice. When it comes to formulating strategy and generating new ideas, outside experts probably have an advantage over harried government officials whose time and imaginations tend to be constrained by bureaucratic inertia, interagency politics, and the daily tyranny of tactics—preparing for the next interagency meeting, the next foreign trip, and the next round of negotiations. Outside experts who have served in government and have some idea how the machinery works should be more able to provide practical advice to those in government. Of course, the vast majority of outside policy advice is never acted on, usually because the recommendations are considered impractical and unrealistic, but from the standpoint of foundation funders, it’s worth the investment to support a range of outside experts if only a handful of their ideas make it into government policy.

Origins of the Prague Agenda

The development of President Obama’s Prague Agenda is a good case in point. As he has said many times, President Obama was inspired by the writings of the “Four Horsemen”—former Secretary of State George Shultz, former Secretary of Defense William Perry, former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, and former Senator Sam Nunn—who published a now famous op-ed in the Wall Street Journal in January 2007, in which they argued that the essential nature of the nuclear threat had shifted since the end of the Cold War from a confrontation between the United States and Russia to proliferation to states such as North Korea and Iran and nuclear terrorism. To meet this new threat, the four senior statesmen advocated that the United States lead an effort to achieve agreement among all countries possessing nuclear weapons on a program of action to “lay the groundwork for a world free of the nuclear threat.”

The ambitious program of action proposed by the Four Horsemen included reduction in the size of existing nuclear arsenals, eliminating short-range nuclear weapons, increasing warning and decision time for deployed nuclear weapons, halting production of fissile material for nuclear weapons, ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), and taking various measures to increase security of nuclear materials and reduce or eliminate the peaceful use of weapons-grade material.

Patently, some of the specific measures called for by the Four Horsemen were not achievable in the near term because of opposition from the other nuclear weapons states. Nonetheless, the central idea of reasserting the vision of a world without nuclear weapons and advancing practical measures to achieve that objective was timely and appealing for the Obama campaign. Senator Obama had developed a strong personal interest in nuclear security issues, working with Senator Lugar on the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee, and the ambitious nuclear vision provided a positive agenda to balance the candidate’s strong criticism of the Bush administration’s foreign policy. No doubt, the credibility of the Four Horsemen message was enhanced by the stature of the four statesmen themselves and its bipartisanism.

By the time their second op-ed appeared in the Wall Street Journal in January 2008, the Four Horsemen had attracted endorsements from nearly all living former Republican and Democratic secretaries of state and defense and national security advisors.  Benefiting from a conference of bipartisan experts and former officials organized by the Hoover Institution and the Nuclear Threat Initiative (NTI) in October 2007, the second iteration of the Four Horsemen message also took a more practical turn. Whereas the January 2007 op-ed advocated for agreement among all the nuclear weapons states, the January 2008 op-ed argued for actions by the United States and Russia as a first step, including strategic reductions and cooperative missile defense.

In the meantime, a group of outside policy experts led by Ivo Daalder at the Brookings Institution and Brooke Anderson at Nuclear Threat Initiative were working to translate the Four Horsemen message into speeches and policy papers for the Obama campaign.  In addition to Daalder and Anderson, who became ambassadors to NATO and the UN, respectively, the group included a number of academic and think tank experts and former officials, such as Graham Allison, director of the Belfer Center; Bob Gallucci, dean of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service; Matt Bunn at the Belfer Center; Jeffrey Lewis at the New America Foundation; former undersecretary of defense Jan Lodal; and former undersecretary of state John Holum. The group also included former officials who later joined the Obama administration, including Robert Einhorn at CSIS; Dan Poneman at the Scowcroft Group; Michael Nacht, dean of the Goldman School of Public Policy at University of California, Berkeley; Laura Holgate at NTI; and Jon Wolfsthal at CSIS. Others involved in the Hoover Institution’s October 2007 conference who later joined the administration included Ashton Carter of the Belfer Center, Rose Gottemoeller of the Carnegie Endowment, and Michael McFaul of Stanford University. (Personal disclaimer: As director of studies for the nonpartisan Council on Foreign Relations, I was barred from formal association with either campaign, although I did respond to several requests for advice from the Obama campaign and would have done the same for the McCain campaign if they had asked.)

In his first major foreign policy speech of the campaign at DePaul University in October 2007, candidate Obama said that he would call for a world in which there are no nuclear weapons and outlined a few practical steps he would pursue on arms control, nuclear security, and nonproliferation.  The Daalder–Anderson group generated a detailed fact sheet with policy positions, which was posted on the campaign Web site. In July 2008, candidate Obama hosted a panel discussion on nuclear, biological, and cyber threats and gave a speech with more details on his nuclear strategy. Drawing a link between disarmament and nonproliferation, Obama argued, “By keeping our commitment under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, we’ll be in a better position to rally international support to bring pressure to bear on nations like North Korea and Iran that violate it.”  Shortly after his speech, the campaign issued a detailed policy paper, “Confronting 21st Century Threats,” which contains detailed policy recommendations on arms control, nuclear security, nuclear energy, and nonproliferation and ultimately became the basis for the Prague speech.

From Vision to Implementation

Thus, when President Obama took office in January 2009, the administration already had a detailed set of policy proposals and strategy on nuclear issues, developed during the campaign by policy experts, many of whom, with the support of foundation funding, worked in think tanks and schools of public policy. As discussed, many of those who had a hand in preparing the campaign speeches, fact sheets, and policy papers landed jobs in the administration that gave them some opportunity to practice what they preached. Of course, campaign documents are not always (or even often) translated into policy by the victorious candidate. In this case, however, President Obama’s personal interest and commitment ensured that his campaign promises became the basis for his April 2009 Prague speech. Drafted by President Obama’s brilliant speechwriter Ben Rhodes, with input from State, Defense, Energy, and the Joint Chiefs, most of the policy proposals survived the transition from campaign to administration, such as the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, emphasis on reducing the danger of nuclear terrorism (through a four-year program to secure vulnerable materials and President Obama’s proposal to host a Nuclear Security Summit in Washington), and practical arms control measures, which (we hoped) were achievable. These included reaching agreement with Russia on additional nuclear reductions, beginning negotiations on a global Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT), and ratifying the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT).

Even by the time of the Prague speech, however, some of the campaign ideas were dropped or modified to reflect bureaucratic, diplomatic, and political realities. For example, the Prague speech was silent on the idea of working with Russia to increase warning and decision time for launching nuclear weapons, reflecting the conservative wariness of both the Russian and American militaries to any proposal that smacked of “de-alerting.” To accommodate nervous U.S. allies in Europe and Asia, who depend on the U.S. nuclear umbrella for their security, the Prague speech beefed up assurances to maintain a strong nuclear deterrent, and downplayed prospects that allies with nuclear weapons (the UK and France) would be asked to join the disarmament process anytime in the near future. Wisely, the speech omitted any target date for completing ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, recognizing the facts of life in the Senate and the administration’s other legislative priorities.

Inevitably, reality intruded even more as the Obama administration began an intense effort to implement the Prague Agenda. This culminated in the “nuclear spring” of 2010, which included the release of the new U.S. Nuclear Posture Review on April 6, 2010, signing the U.S.-Russia New START treaty in Prague on April 8, 2010, hosting the first historic Nuclear Security Summit in Washington on April 12–13, and the successful NPT Review Conference in May. As a general rule, the United States is not in a position to dictate terms to the other nuclear powers, so progress is necessarily limited to actions that the relevant nuclear states agree are in their own interests. For example, U.S. proposals to include verified limits on deployed and nondeployed nuclear warheads as well as strategic and tactical weapons in a new arms treaty with Russia quickly proved unrealistic because Russia refused to go along, and the ceiling on warheads in the New START Treaty was limited to deployed strategic warheads. Hopes to begin negotiations for a Fissile Material Cutoff Treaty (FMCT) crashed against Pakistan’s veto at the Conference on Disarmament (CD), and the refusal of Russia and China to accept any negotiation outside the CD. Efforts to obtain consensus at the NPT Review Conference to strengthen the treaty, such as by limiting the Article X withdrawal clause or making the additional protocol mandatory, were blocked by the countries of the nonaligned movement, who opposed additional measures to strengthen the nonproliferation elements of the treaty until the nuclear weapons states took more concrete measures on disarmament and universality, including Israeli adherence to the NPT.

In general, as the government shifts from grand strategy to implementation, the interaction between the government and outside experts reverts to a more typical symbiotic (cynics would say parasitic) relationship. When it comes to implementing policies, government officials have all the advantages over outside experts by virtue of their immersion in the details of the interagency process, real-time interactions with foreign governments, and access to classified information not available to outside experts. Within the Washington bubble, outside experts provide daily media commentary, criticism, and recommendations, much of which is dismissed by government officials as well-meaning but naïve advice from uninformed armchair amateurs (at best) or malicious criticism from partisan rivals (at worst). Often, the policy recommendations of outside experts are the same as options already being considered inside the government, and the ideas are helped or hurt within government circles according to the reputation of the expert endorsing them. Government officials sometimes float ideas through the lips of outside experts, and the outside experts stress their intimate access to government officials to enhance their reputations and raise funds. Amidst the flurry of classified memos, e-mails, cables, and intelligence reports of various stripes, government officials often don’t have the time or appetite for lengthy policy reports from outside government. Instead, the most effective way to reach policymakers is an op-ed in a major newspaper (people still read The New York Times, Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal) or a visit to their offices.

With the focus on implementing the Prague Agenda, the Obama administration viewed outside experts and groups less as a reservoir for fresh ideas and more as opinion leaders and “validators,” who might be persuaded to support the administration’s policies and refute its critics. The administration made a genuine effort to bring in outside experts on a bipartisan basis for consultations, to preview expected results, and to seek their support. In May 2009, for example, President Obama met with the Four Horsemen in the Oval Office to praise them for their inspiration, brief them on the administration’s plans to implement the Prague Agenda with practical steps, and seek their support.  Before the Washington Nuclear Security Summit in April 2010, Laura Holgate and I briefed the small group of experts who specialize in nuclear security on the expected “deliverables” of the summit, in hopes that, being well informed, they would speak favorably in the media. Unfortunately, a number of them complained that the administration should be seeking a comprehensive international treaty for nuclear security with global standards and mandatory inspections to verify compliance. For those of us who sat through the lengthy international meetings to prepare for the summit, such an outcome—no matter how worthy—was clearly impossible. It was slightly annoying to be criticized by some of those who should have been our strongest supporters, but it’s all part of the Washington game. Outside experts need to put forward new and innovative ideas (i.e., more than what the government is already doing) to get attention and money, even if the ideas are impractical.

Inevitably, as we implemented the Prague Agenda, the administration was criticized from the left for not doing enough and from the right for doing too much. For example, the Nuclear Posture Review endorsed new declaratory statements that were intended to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in overall U.S. defense strategy. Updating the U.S. “negative security assurances,” the United States committed not “to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear weapons states that are party to the NPT and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations” and stated that the “fundamental purpose” of U.S. nuclear weapons was to deter nuclear attack against the United States and its allies.  In truth, the declaratory changes were primarily symbolic, but some experts on the left complained that we should have gone all the way to declaring that we would not use nuclear weapons against any nonnuclear weapons states under any conditions and that the “sole purpose” of U.S. nuclear forces was to deter nuclear attack. Our critics on the right charged (extravagantly, I thought) that our new formulations went too far, undercutting the credibility of U.S. nuclear assurances and potentially driving our allies to develop their own nuclear weapons. In fact, I thought we got the balance just right. If you are criticized by both sides, it’s usually a good sign.

The issue of nuclear reductions also tended to polarize outside experts between the disarmament community on one hand and the pro-nuclear weapons lobby on the other. Some supporters of the Prague Agenda called for the administration to back much deeper reductions or proposals for a multilateral nuclear weapons convention mandating the phased elimination of nuclear weapons over a specified time frame. Such proposals were clearly unrealistic and ran the risk of creating false hopes and excessive demands among countries championing the cause of disarmament. On the right, some warned that ANY reduction in the role or number of U.S. forces, such as the retirement of the antiquated nuclear-tipped sea-launched cruise missile (TLAM-N), which the U.S. military was happy get rid of, jeopardized the U.S. nuclear deterrent. Such criticism ran the risk of unsettling U.S. allies in Europe and Asia who depend on U.S. nuclear forces as part of their national security. In fact, the Department of Defense and the Joint Chiefs fully supported the steps President Obama took to implement the Prague Agenda, which maintained a robust nuclear capacity.

Of course, criticism of the government is normal and healthy. Nonetheless, I did find it disheartening (but not surprising) that some of the debate over the administration’s nuclear policies degenerated into gratuitous, dishonest partisan sniping, like so much else in Washington. This reached a height during the ratification debate of the New START Treaty, in which (I thought) some outside experts were enlisted to exaggerate or invent arguments against the treaty that they probably knew—or should have known—were fallacious. The challenge for foundations, unless they choose to be in the business of partisan politics, is to support those organizations and experts who make a genuine effort to conduct serious, objective analysis and make recommendations and suggestions based on the national interest rather than currying favor or scoring cheap partisan points. In the arms control world, people like Linton Brooks, Frank Miller, and Walter Slocum ultimately have more ability to inform public awareness and influence policy because they are seen as credible and authoritative, no matter what their political leanings. Vice President Biden led the administration’s ratification effort, and Senators Kerry and Lugar chaired hearings in the Senate Foreign Affairs Committee. I was very encouraged when the Senate ratified the New START Treaty in a bipartisan vote of 71-26 in December 2010 because it demonstrated that official Washington was still capable of putting partisan politics aside for sake of the national interest.

As someone who has dealt with a variety of countries on nuclear issues, including Pakistan, India, China, Korea, Russia, Iraq, Israel, and Iran, I’ve also found that real regional experts who speak the language and understand the culture, history, and politics of their respective areas of study are the most helpful. For example, outside experts could not contribute much to the preparation of detailed negotiating positions with Iran, compared to government experts who were steeped in the technical details, intelligence reports, and intimate understanding of the relative diplomatic positions. The most important assistance outside government came from real Iran experts, such as Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations and Karim Sadjadpour of the Carnegie Endowment. Their broad understanding of Iranian domestic politics and foreign policy provided an overall context for the nuclear negotiations.

Talking to Enemies, Frenemies, and Others

Another way in which nongovernment organizations seek to influence government policy is through so-called Track 2 and Track 1.5 meetings and conferences, in which outside U.S. experts and former officials meet with their counterparts from other countries to discuss issues and seek to develop ideas for negotiated solutions between the United States and other governments.  Such conferences are usually very enjoyable and educational for the participants. For example, when I was at the International Institute for Strategic Studies from 2001 to 2005, I had several opportunities to organize meetings with Iranian officials and experts and even visit Iran as a guest of the Ministry of Atomic Energy—none of which I would have been able to do as a U.S. government official. The experience of dealing with Iranians outside government definitely helped to prepare me for working the Iranian nuclear issue in the Obama administration and frankly made me more skeptical that a negotiated solution was possible, especially after the election of President Ahmadinejad in 2005.

For the Obama administration, the Prague Agenda included a dual-track approach of engagement and pressure toward North Korea and Iran, countries that had “violated the rules,” as President Obama said in Prague. From early on, it became clear that the pressure track would outweigh the engagement track because neither Pyongyang nor Tehran were prepared to make the nuclear concessions necessary to satisfy U.S. concerns. In April 2009, North Korea reneged on its September 2005 nuclear deal with the Bush administration, celebrating with a rocket launch conveniently timed for the day before President Obama’s Prague speech. Although U.S.-North Korean negotiations proceeded in fits and starts after that, North Korean behavior in 2009 created a deep skepticism in Washington about the possibility of a diplomatic deal with North Korea, reinforced by Pyongyang’s subsequent actions, such as violating the April 2012 Leap Day agreement with another rocket launch. Similarly, Iran’s rejection of the Tehran Research Reactor agreement in November 2009 and steadfast refusal to take up President Obama’s offers to begin a serious bilateral dialogue inevitably shifted U.S. policy toward economic sanctions and political pressure, even as multilateral negotiations with Iran continued with little progress.

With official contacts between the United States and North Korea and Iran stalled or blocked, various former officials and experts stepped into the gap, hoping to facilitate diplomacy. Frankly, the results were mixed. Track 2 meetings provided a convenient mechanism to pay for North Korean officials to come to the United States for informal meetings with U.S. experts and officials, but such discussions could not overcome the fundamental differences between Pyongyang and Washington. In fact, some U.S. participants emerged from these informal meetings even more pessimistic about diplomacy. Nonetheless, in the absence of other options, Washington will likely welcome additional Track 2 meetings with North Korean officials in the future for informal communication and information gathering as the administration seeks to establish a basis for resuming negotiations with Pyongyang.

The situation with Iran is more complicated. Unlike North Korea, where there is no such thing as independent or private views, some Iranian experts and academics on the conference circuit do in fact express personal views that differ from the government, including a greater willingness to compromise on the nuclear issue in exchange for better relations with the United States. Unfortunately, their views are not shared by the supreme leader and they are in no position to influence Iranian government policy. Nonetheless, in their desire to help mediate a solution between Tehran and Washington, some of the American participants were operating under a false optimism that a nuclear deal was close at hand and therefore did not understand why the United States was emphasizing sanctions and pressure against Iran. In addition, the American participants may have inadvertently created false expectations and confusion on the Iranian side when they expressed personal views that differed from the U.S. government—for example, on readiness to accept Iran’s “right” to a safeguarded enrichment program. Prone to conspiracy and self-delusion, the Iranians may have believed that the former senior American officials they were meeting with were delivering “secret” messages on behalf of the administration, only to be disappointed when these “hints” of flexibility were not confirmed in the official meetings.

Another example of nongovernment Track 1.5/2 efforts gone awry concerned meetings to discuss the proposed 2012 conference on a weapons of mass destruction free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East. One of the main results of the 2010 NPT Review Conference was agreement by the NPT depositary powers (the United States, UK, and Russia) to work with the UN secretary-general to convene a meeting of regional parties on the establishment of a WMDFZ in the Middle East. Israel, which is not a party to the NPT, was especially wary that the conference would turn into an exercise to pressure Israel to join the NPT, despite high-level assurances from Washington that it would oppose such an effort. Almost immediately after the NPT Review Conference, a number of nongovernment organizations sprang forward to organize and host Track 1.5/2 meetings of experts from the Middle East (Israelis, Arabs, and the occasional Iranian) and outside powers to discuss the proposed conference and possible concrete results and build confidence among potential participants. Unfortunately, many of the meetings had the opposite result. Contentious exchanges highlighted deep differences between Israel and the Arabs and confirmed Israeli fears that the conference would be primarily an opportunity to pressure them. After much effort, the United States finally persuaded Israel to attend a preparatory meeting of regional parties to discuss the agenda and procedures of the proposed conference, but then the Arab League balked unless they were guaranteed the outcome they wanted.

To be fair, the main reason the Track 1.5/2 meetings failed in these cases is the same reason real diplomacy failed—the differences among the contending parties are simply too great to be bridged. Despite the inability of Track 1.5/2 meetings to resolve intractable diplomatic disputes, I do think that the accumulative long-term effect of international meetings of nongovernment experts, academics, and former officials is generally positive, in terms of creating personal relations, improving understanding, and ultimately strengthening a civil society basis for improving official relations. This civilizing effect is especially important for U.S. relations with “frenemies” like China and Russia, where there is some basis for government-to-government cooperation on specific issues on the basis of common national interest, but deep cultural constraints in the form of mutual suspicion, misunderstanding, and misperception. Clearly, think tanks and outside experts in China and Russia are much less independent from their governments than American think tanks, and probably have much less influence on government decision-making, but over the long term, interaction with their American counterparts can help to enhance their stature and hopefully contribute to the emergence of a stronger civil society in those countries. From a foundation’s standpoint, it is impossible to quantify the impact of any particular meeting or set of meetings, but the cost is so small that the investment is worth the intangible benefits and potential payoffs.

The Way Forward

President Obama remains committed to pursuing the Prague Agenda, but near-term prospects for significant achievements are limited. In Berlin on June 19, 2013, President Obama announced that the United States was prepared to reduce deployed strategic nuclear weapons by up to one-third below New START levels and would seek to negotiate such reductions with Russia. Unfortunately, Moscow immediately rejected additional reductions in strategic forces unless the United States accepts legal guarantees and limits on missile defense, which the Senate will not ratify even if the administration was prepared to accept such limits.  Russia also rejected President Obama proposal for “bold reductions” in U.S. and Russian tactical nuclear weapons in Europe in the absence of a new treaty to limit conventional forces in Europe, which would take years to negotiate. In the absence of reciprocal measures by Russia, the president has the option of taking some unilateral steps within the constraints of the Nuclear Posture Review, but this will meet with stiff political resistance. In the meantime, there is little the United States can do to stop the Asian nuclear powers—China, India, and Pakistan—from proceeding with their nuclear expansion and modernization. Ratification of the CTBT is bottled up in the Senate. Negotiation of the FMCT is bottled up in the Conference on Disarmament. In the absence of significant progress on disarmament, the 2015 NPT Review Conference promises to be a contentious affair, especially if the WMDFZ conference on the Middle East remains stillborn. Disarming North Korea and halting Iran’s nuclear program continue to be problems without solutions in the absence of regime change in Pyongyang or Tehran, which is beyond American power to effect.

Faced with these practical difficulties, the administration continues to look to outside experts and nongovernment organizations for fresh ideas and support. One bright spot is the Nuclear Security Summit process. The third summit will be held in The Hague in March 2014, and nongovernment organizations, such as the Nuclear Threat Initiative and the Stanley Foundation, have been holding a series of international meetings between outside experts and government Sherpas to develop ideas for a more ambitious approach to strengthen international cooperation for nuclear security. These ideas could be introduced at The Hague summit and conceivably brought to fruition in 2016 when President Obama has proposed to host a final summit of his presidency. One thing is certain: the main elements of the Prague Agenda will take many years to accomplish and achievement of a world without nuclear weapons is a distant generational goal. In these circumstances, perhaps the greatest value foundations can provide is to help train the next generation of international experts in arms control, nonproliferation, nuclear security, and nuclear energy to keep working these issues inside and outside governments.

Conclusion: Invest in People

In conclusion, the creation and implementation of President Obama’s Prague Agenda illustrates the opportunities—and the limits—for outside nongovernment organizations and experts to influence government policy. As a senator with a strong personal interest in nuclear affairs, candidate Obama was receptive to the “big idea” of the Four Horsemen to shift American nuclear strategy from Cold War deterrence to preventing proliferation and reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism within the overall context of seeking a world without nuclear weapons. The academics and think tankers that worked on Obama’s campaign translated this big idea into a campaign document setting out a series of specific policy recommendations, many of which found their way into President Obama’s Prague speech, which set the overall blueprint for the administration’s nuclear strategy. Foundation support for these individuals outside government and the books, articles, op-eds, and memos that they produced were essential to translate vision into policy proposals for the incoming administration. And, given the unique character of the U.S. political system, many of these outsiders became insiders in the new administration, with responsibility for implementing the ideas they had developed outside government. As the administration shifted to implementation—and proposals came up against reality—the relative strength of the government emerged as the dominant factor relative to outside experts and organizations because the government is much more equipped to handle the daily management of the interagency process and negotiations and consultations with foreign powers. Outside experts acted as advocates, lobbyists, and critics, and their impact on government decision- making was reduced. Overall, however, the great power of foundations in the United States is their role in training and maintaining the cadre of foreign policy experts and specialists who bring fresh ideas and energy into government as officials and bring experience and realism out of government as researchers, teachers, and commentators.