Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
So Director General, Luke Grossi. I think I will start with you. We're going to endeavor to have a bit of a conversation, so others should feel free to jump in. But I want to begin on the big picture here talking about the shifting international order and what that means for the non-proliferation regime. More specifically, is it possible to maintain or really have a nonproliferation regime that functions in the absence of the US being a benign?
Rafael Mariano Grossi:
Well, thank you very much. Great to be here with you and with my co-panelists here. This is a great question. As you said, the non-proliferation regime with all its limitations, which we know it has, is one of those still remaining elements of predictability and certainty that we have in a world which is otherwise what it is. And when it comes to the non-proliferation treaty and the regime, what we are seeing are points of vulnerability, which we did not have in the past, which is important in my 40 plus years of diplomatic career. My first review conference of the NPT was in 1985. So I've seen a few of those. And traditionally, traditionally, what you would have in terms of criticizing the NPT and looking at its limitations or inadequacies, if you want to put it like this, it would probably be coming from the what we now call the global south or countries in the G 77 non line, whatever.
I mean put the etiquette, the label that you want to say that of course the grand bargain of the NPT, the eye restrained, but his arm was not being with and nothing was happening on that front, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Well, what is happening now is that the line of, can I say attack, but at least questioning is coming from countries that heretofore were imperfect iner not imperfect. Two words, imperfect alignment with MPT obligations. We have important countries in the Gulf, important countries in Asia, minor, important countries in Asia, proper important countries in Europe that are starting to say some more publicly than others in some cases from high officials in some other cases in a more indirect way, that perhaps they should revisit their approach to nuclear weapons and to nuclear nonproliferation because they believe that the restraint that they exercise for the past half a century might not be necessarily servicing their national interests.
And I believe that this is a point that we should be looking at because it's obvious coming from the director general of the watchdog of the regime. It would be a terrible thing to see more countries armed with nuclear weapons, and that is a distinct possibility bringing forward the famous prediction that is attributed to President Kennedy. I don't know whether at this point whether this is true or not, but in any case, it embodies a credible warning for all of us when he was talking about the 2025 or whichever number was. We know that technically and technologically speaking, this is perfectly possible. And so I think we have to look at a moment where some other instruments are unraveling or disappearing, and I'm sure we'll hear more about that at this point, to think about the good old non-proliferation regime, what it has been giving us for the past half a century and the risks of losing it.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
Great. So on that note, you introduced the fact that there are new risks coming forward. The threat or the disgruntlement with the regime is not from the global south primarily. Maybe it's additionally, but additionally, but that there's this new possibility of allied proliferation, which is a phrase that we've used in this. I guess it's a more of an American-centric report, hence the allied proliferation. But certainly that reflects a growing nervousness on the part of US allies about the reliability of the extended deterrent of the United States. And so maybe I'll turn to Madam Pouzyreff to ask a little bit about this crisis of confidence and what is that crisis of confidence? How could that affect possible proliferation? And maybe from a European perspective, you could give us a sense of how real those challenges to the current nonproliferation regime are?
Natalia Pouzyreff:
Yes, sure. It's certain that there's a crisis of confidence that the transcendental link is put into question, and so that some countries in Europe may be incited to revise their position and to go for a plan of having their own deterrence, nuclear deterrence. But coming back to NTP, I think with great power comes great responsibility of course, and that it's P five members to maintain their unity and to propose maybe alternative plans to countries which are a bit nervous and would like to go to the path of having their own capabilities. First, it's very costly, but then we don't want that friendly proliferation amongst allies make the world more uncertain. So certainly there's a way for discussing and finding with extended deterrent either provided by the US or by France and uk, which are both P five members. So certainly there are ways to keep the unity and try to maintain NTP non-proliferation regime as it used to work. Although the environment at the moment is very volatile, we know, and I don't know on which page are Russia and China with that respect.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
Yeah, we'll come to Russia and China in a moment. Before we do, I want to try to stoke a little debate here on stage by turning to Graham and asking him that question. Do you think that a combined UK French alliance on these issues, could the P five really provide an extended deterrent to the rest of Europe in the absence of American reliability? Do you think that's a viable alternative?
Graham Allison:
I think the answer is unlikely, but can I put it in context just a little bit? Sure, of course. Because I think the director started us in the right direction. One of the nice things about this report called Preventing Nuclear Anarchy, of which you were one of the co-chairs, is that it reminds people how unnatural it is that most countries don't have nuclear weapons. I mean, why do they have armies? I mean, some don't Costa Rica for a while. Well, why would a state not have nuclear weapons to secure itself if nuclear weapons provided a deterrent? That's a credible deterrent. So this is an unnatural act and it's extraordinary. It's fantastic achievement. The director mentioned John Kennedy in 1963. He said the year that Munich Security Summit was started by the seventies are going to be 25 or 30 nuclear weapons states. Not one single person at Munich said that's crazy, not one single person in the analytic community.
Because the presumption was that of course as states get the technical and economic capability, if nuclear weapons are good for France and nuclear weapons are good for the us, why are they not good for me? Okay. And some then went that way. If you had asked anybody in 1963, let's take a bet about what the odds that in 2026 there would be only nine nuclear weapons states. If you had gone to poly market, you would've got 10,000 to one odds against this. So it's an extraordinary, extraordinary achievement and it's as you say now being undermined and even under destruction in some ways. But if things just reverted to normal, this would be a world we could live in. I mean, the reason John Kennedy put out this forecast because it became a nightmare for him that this was going to be a world in which there would be nuclear war regularly and nobody could live. I mean it would be nuclear anarchy, just as you say. So I think that recognizing how profound both the achievement is, something to be grateful for, but also how profound the risks are. And if you back to then your particular on the Europeans, I think it'll be interesting to see and I think to advertise another interesting report that was produced just this week by the Munich Security Group. It's called Mind the Deterrence Gap, assessing Europe's Nuclear Options. It's got a good analysis of what the possibilities are, even some that look promising.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
Great. Thank you very much Graham, and thanks for putting that context.
So Rose, I'm going to ask you to kind of bring us more into the current moment. As I mentioned, you were the chief negotiator for New Start back in 2009, 2010, just I believe it was last week we saw the expiration, or maybe it was weeks very recently, just one week, the expiration of that treaty. And so for the first time in many, many decades, we actually don't have any limits on the nuclear weapons numbers and deployment of the United States and Russia. And so I've heard you write and speak about how you think that President Trump should have taken advantage of President Putin's offer to have a defacto kind of informal extension of that treaty That didn't happen. Do you feel like we're poised for some kind of arms race between the US and Russia here?
Rose Gottemoeller (15:32):
I've actually been rather afraid of that. And some of you may have seen my testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee from last week and then from the Foreign Relations Committee. My view has been, and it's in line with the Strategic Posture Commission's finding, I was also a commissioner on the Strategic Posture Commission in addition to this excellent non-proliferation study. But we found in that document, the SPC report that the Russians actually have the ability to upload, put more missiles, put more warheads on their missiles very quickly. They have the capacity, the capability, the experience, and it's something now the United States is grappling with. And so my concern was the Russians could sprint away from us once the new start limits went out of force. And I want to stress it was always to extend the limits of the New START treaty, not to extend the treaty itself.
The treaty inevitably would have gone out of force and it did go out of force on the 5th of February of 2026. It could only be extended by its terms for five years. And that is what happened. It went out of force. I do want to also say though that there have been many times in the history of our bilateral relationship with the USSR and Russia where we have had informal limits in place. When Jimmy Carter put the Salti Treaty up before the Senate, the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979, Carter pulled it back, but the Russians, the Soviets at that time and the US agreed to keep the Salti limits in place for some period of time. And frankly, that's what I see happening now. It's very interesting. If you read carefully what's coming out now about the way the administration made their decision, the president, there's no love lost between President Trump and President Obama.
And the President said, point blank last week. It's a badly negotiated treaty that made me feel great. You can imagine. But I thought about it and I said, well, of course this is President Obama's treaty, and Trump would naturally politically not want to extend the limits of an Obama treaty. But there are several interesting comments this week, including the vice president's comments when he left Baku a couple of days ago saying, well, we'll be working on the basis of the New Start treaty to negotiate new limitations and reductions with the Russians. And he emphasized the President's commitment to non-proliferation. And so I do think there's a nuance here, and I'm telling people, let's not panic, but let's encourage these negotiations that apparently were agreed in Abu Dhabi again at the level of Jared Kushner and Steve Whitcoff very closely tied to the President and the White House. And let's see if we can encourage limitations to again be negotiated because, so in other words, Megan, I'm not giving up on this by any means, but it's not going to be the limits of New Start. It's going to be the status quo upon which a new treaty is built.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
Great. Thank you, Rose. Graham, let me come back to you and just maybe ask you for potentially another interpretation of President Trump's ambitions here. Our mutual friend David Sanger, reported in the New York Times that there are at least discussions about deploying more nuclear weapons and potentially even testing on the part of the United States. Do you think those are likely or actually serious or do you think this is about getting into a negotiation and given your work on China, I wanted to ask your views about whether you see it feasible that the us, China and Russia could actually sit together and have a tripartite negotiation, which President Trump has said on numerous occasions this would be his desire just given the buildup of Chinese nuclear weapons.
Graham Allison:
Well, as usual, complicated, but I think Rose's testimony actually captures my thoughts about it. Let me say two or three things. First, I think as Rose's testimony says, the treaty basically has outrun the world in which it was negotiated. It was negotiated in 1975. Since then, we have 10 major developments including the development of Chinese Arsen as it's now growing. So how likely is it if we're just doing American nuclear force planning, how likely is it that the answer we gave to the question, how many nuclear weapons do we need to deter the Soviet Union against all the potential risks? It also just happens to be the right answer. If we faced two peer competitors, that's called in the language. Now the three body problem, you don't need to have the same, but if you have two competitors, each of whom would like to have the same number of warheads you do, the answer is that problem is irresolvable.
That's called the three body. So there's one another is precision. I mean, in 1975, how many did you take to destroy a target today, how many do you in 1975 you didn't have conventional precision. I mean, if I'm going after targets, I will go with most of them with a conventional strike or a covert strike. So if you go through the whole list of reasons why it's now a much more complicated task, I think we need to send rose back to the negotiating table. It took a long time to get to the 75 arrangement, but I think it'll have more dimensions and more complexity. And on the rush, on the Chinese piece, I think it's complicated, but in the first Trump administration, there was an impulse from some saying, well, why don't we just have three-way negotiations? And we had, according to Newstart, each the US and Russia each have 1550 deployed weapons.
We have about 5,000 warheads, the Soviets, Russians about the same. China had 400. So who would go sit down at a poker game in which you got two parties there with 5,000 chips and you have 400 ships? And as Chinese have said regularly, excuse me, why would you imagine we would sit in a poker game and let's all freeze where we are now? So I think it's going to be complicated. I think the Chinese will aspire to have an arsenal appropriate to their own agenda. And in any case, since why would a party want to have fewer of whatever matters than the big guys if they imagine they're going to become another big guy.
Rose Gottemoeller:
Great. Can I just jump in with one really quick comment? And that is I think that just as Graham has said, trying to cram the Chinese, even now when they built up to 600 warheads into a negotiation with Russia and the United States, well, it has the feel of a poison pill. To me, it doesn't work, it just doesn't work just as Graham said. But I think we should encourage the notion of two treaties, one between President Trump and his friend Xi Jinping and a second treaty between President Trump and his friend Vladimir Putin. They're very different treaties. We can continue on the same trajectory of limiting systems with the Russians. And again, Graham commented, it's a different set of goals having to do with lessening nuclear risks with the Chinese.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan (23:14):
Great. Let me just ask one more question on stage and then open it up for Director General Grossi. As you are more than well aware, there are intense negotiations happening between the United States and Iran. I just read a new news report about the US sending another aircraft carrier to the Gulf. I'm sure you've been following this very closely and thinking about what an inspection regime would need to look like if there is hopefully some sort of deal. Do you think it's possible that one could develop an inspection regime that would give you everything you needed to feel comfortable about undergirding a new arrangement?
Rafael Mariano Grossi:
Yes. Yes.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
Can you elaborate on what the components of that?
Rafael Mariano Grossi:
I can say some things, but the important thing I can say is that this is absolutely possible and it is terribly difficult, but it is technically possible and it is politically even viable. But that is the thing we have to recognize that after the 12 day war, the whole landscape of nuclear Iran has changed radically in terms of perhaps not capabilities, but in terms of actual physical infrastructure, which is basically no longer there or badly damaged. So this is a fact that changes the whole equation. Why I say this, because when it comes to any possible arrangement or agreement, you will have to be looking at what is there, what remains there, but most importantly or more importantly, the future, what kind of nuclear Iran can emerge from this new situation. It will not be like what we had in June or in May. All the facilities at is fahan at Netan.
And for dough, you are presumably not going to see such an array, impressive array of so many facilities dealing with different aspects of the nuclear fuel cycle. But of course, for an agreement to emerge, there is going to be some way forward because the country aims and intends to continue having peaceful hopefully. And we have to recognize this right as a member of the NPT nuclear activities. But there is also the reality of a political restraint, which is being very clearly articulated by the United States and perhaps others. So walking this fine line between what has remained, which needs to be again checked and monitored by the agency, and we haven't been able to do that so far. We have returned to Iran, I should say, but we have been inspecting, if I can put it in simple terms, everything but the attacked facilities. So we cannot say we are not there.
We have returned, which is important. Some said with this war, it is over, you will never see monitoring in Iran again and so on and so forth, et cetera. So we were able to work again to establish some form of dialogue, imperfect and complicated and extremely difficult. But he's there. So I think the big question of the moment is how to define these steps for the future. And we know perfectly well what needs to be checked and how to check it. But I would say we are at a very, very crucial moment, perhaps over the next few days as opposed to weeks or months where we might be seeing the light at the end of the tunnel in terms of having something.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
Great. And before I open it up, I don't know if Madam Pouzyreff, you'd like to comment on anything that you've heard since I last brought you in on the conversation.
Natalia Pouzyreff (28:03):
I would come back about Europe and just point out that it's important that we have a credible deterrence in Europe, either through conventional weapons, AI defense, or through nuclear deterrent. So I don't know which way our partners will follow, but President Macron will have a speech on the European dimension of the French nuclear deterrents early March. So we shall see where does it lead us.
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
One of the points made in this task force report we've been referring to is that when we think about beefing up extended deterrence, we usually think about it in the context of nuclear weapons, but that in fact we can beef up extended deterrence with conventional weapons and with greater integration of planning and those types of things. So we think that's a possible way. So we have
Graham Allison:
Can I ask one question? To the director general?
Meghan L. O’Sullivan:
Please.
Graham Allison (29:17):
In this report preventing anarchy, you and your colleagues say, I'm quoting in extremists. Counterproliferation may necessitate force, but force rarely if ever, provide a stable down proliferation regime. And you give the example of the attacks upon Iran. So I wonder what would the director general say about this that you could say in public? Could this be another part of the non-proliferation regime that the IAEA overseas?
Rafael Mariano Grossi:
I cannot imagine something credible without the IEA, let me put it like that. I don't think we can foresee a situation where national inspectors of a country A, B, or C would be going to another country to inspect something and gaining international credibility or acceptance. And I'm confident of one thing. I believe that all the actors involved in this process recognize that they recognize that there is a need for the IEA to have all the access it needs. If there is an agreement or an arrangement, it'll be different because of what I tried to describe before, but it is indispensable Without it, I don't think we are going to have any form of stability because what we had before, and I'm not going to get into the debate of JCPA, good or bad or whatever, but it was a form of modest vivendi, which is no longer there. So you have to walk towards a new one. Otherwise you will have permanent instability. And even worse than that, because given the degree of confrontational approaches that we are having, we are seeing direct action being taken. And so this is why there's an added sense of urgency. I dunno if I'm answering your question precisely because I am not familiar with
Graham Allison:
Your, there were two halves of it, so it's not misinterpreted or Reagan can say since she's really good author, but it didn't seem to me that they were proposing any alternative to the IAEA or anybody having the notion that there would be somebody as credible as the IAE as the referee. I think that's a unique role. But the question, if the IAE is performing its functions in countries that some other countries have attacked, that may make your job more in some ways easier because otherwise you may not get the access you want. On the other hand, more complicated because you seem to be in cahoots with people who are attacking me.
Rafael Mariano Grossi:
Oh yes. It's incredibly unprecedented actually this situation because you can draw some degree of parallels with the situation in Iraq, for example, but there was a concerted action. There was security council resolution 6, 8, 7, you had some form of international coherence in the approach. Now all of that is gone through the window. It doesn't exist anymore. And even we have lost something, which was very interesting when it came to dealing with proliferation cases like Iran, which was P five coherence. Before I could be sure that when the IEA needed to act or do something, the P five, in spite of all their differences, they would be in agreement. And for example, resolutions at security council or even the board of Governors of the IEA would be adopted without a vote, which gave the G and the inspectors an enormous degree of support. Now these type of resolutions at the board of governors are passing by very tiny.
So you are very close to a divided board of governors. And the moment we cross that line, this legitimacy that we have to act on behalf of the international community will disappear. So this is now I get more the sense of your question and this would be really terrible. This would be a terrible thing. Of course there is all the politicization and the fact that there is some narratives pretending that it is the war happened because of my report, which is really hilarious if it wasn't horrible because it is that this is being said. But yeah, maybe.
