US Should Push for Improved Export Controls, Sanctions at Nonproliferation Conference, Experts Say

The U.S. should lobby for increased export controls and more stringent sanctions regimes relating to weapons proliferation at the upcoming Non-Proliferation Treaty review conference, arms control experts said during a March 3 House hearing. While it may be difficult for all treaty members to sign off on a broad consensus document relating to non-proliferation, the U.S. should use the spring conference in New York to seek common ground on controls of items used to produce dangerous weapons.

“There is broad consensus on many of these issues,” Richard Johnson, former director of non-proliferation for the National Security Council and current senior director at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, told the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia, the Pacific and Nonproliferation. “Maybe there’s a way to highlight … things like strengthening export controls and working on having effective sanctions regimes.”

Johnson said export controls are a “critical element in preventing the diversion” of dual-use technologies and equipment, adding that increased denuclearization will only succeed with multilateral support. He called on China to “strengthen export control enforcement” and said the United Nations should convene more panels of experts to improve sanctions enforcement. Several House members agreed, saying the U.S. needs to encourage multilateral support. “The world is safer when states that do not need dual-use technologies do not have them,” said subcommittee Chairman Ami Bera, D-Calif.

The U.S. should consider adding sanctions and export control authorities to prevent weapons proliferation, said Wendin Smith, the Defense Department’s former deputy assistant secretary for countering weapons of mass destruction. But Smith also said the U.S. needs to be careful in how it uses those tools, specifically financial sanctions. She said the effectiveness of U.S. sanctions often relies on the “prevalence” of the U.S economy and how dependent other countries are on the U.S. dollar. “Should that be diminished,” Smith said, “the effectiveness of those tools will also be diminished.”

Several House members criticized the Trump administration's sanctions approach, specifically relating to its withdrawal from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and its imposition of sanctions against Iran. Rep. Gerry Connolly, D-Va., said even though the sanctions are hurting Iran’s economy, the administration lacks a clear strategy and has not provided Iran with a path toward relief (see 1908010020). “You've got to have a carrot and a stick,” Connolly said, “and all I see are sticks.”

But Stephen Rademaker, a trade lawyer with Covington & Burling and the State Department’s former assistant secretary of the Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, said the U.S.’s maximum pressure sanctions campaign on Iran has been “astonishingly effective.” He pointed to a steep drop in Iran’s oil exports, which he said has been reduced from about 1.2 million barrels per day at the height of the Obama administration's sanctions pressure on Iran to 500,000 barrels a day under Trump. “They are feeling pain,” he said, “and that’s without real cooperation from the rest of the world.”

Although its sanctions tools can be powerful, the U.S. has yet to adopt a clear sanctions and non-proliferation strategy, said Bonnie Jenkins, a former State Department coordinator for threat reduction programs and current president of Women of Color Advancing Peace and Security (see 1908010020). This could hamper the U.S.’s ability to convince other countries to adopt proliferation-related export controls and sanctions, including at the upcoming NPT conference. “I would like to see a statement that reflects a strategy … which would include what we’re doing with Iran and what we’re doing with North Korea and how everything we’re doing fits into a particular strategy going forward,” Jenkins said. “I think that would be very helpful for countries to understand what exactly the U.S. is really doing right now on non-proliferation.”