Enforcing nuclear disarmament.

• Author: Etzioni, Amitai

EVER SINCE I was a student in the early 1950s, I have been told that world government is a dream of starry-eyed idealists. But a form of world government is coming into being, although not the one that Immanuel Kant, Bertrand Russell or the United World Federalists envisioned. It is not the vast web of rules and norms embodied by the United Nations and the European Union. It is not based on shared ideology, race or religion. And it is not a byproduct of the Wilsonian daydream of a world rapidly democratized by the application of American power.

It is motivated, rather, by realism and specifically by the robust response to terrorism. What began in the 1970s as a largely regional problem arising from a uniquely volatile set of circumstances--namely, Middle Eastern terrorism--has slowly become a global phenomenon. International terrorists and those who support them are being recognized by most of the world's governments as a collective threat to their national security. These threats--what President Clinton called an "unholy axis of terrorists, drug traffickers and organized international criminals"--are the impetus for the formation of what I have termed a Global Safety Authority (GSA). The GSA is maintained by the United States (which provides the lion's share of the funding and sets the agenda) and its allies, but it is comprised of most nations of the world, including other major powers such as China, India and Russia.

The Global Safety Authority is taking shape from the post-9/11 ad hoc anti-terrorism coalition, as informal interstate cooperation takes on a more permanent character. I use the term "authority" to indicate that this coalition is both legitimate and institutional, and therefore lasting rather than temporary or transitional. It can be described as a global police agency, but unlike typical intergovernmental organizations, the various individuals who staff the GSA (though they may be of different nationalities) largely work directly with one another. In carrying out their work, agencies such as the CIA, MI5 and the Mossad work closely with one another, and often do not first consult with their respective foreign ministries or more generally with their own governments. The same holds true for various members of special forces, surveillance entities, naval patrols and so on.

The GSA's main division, if you will, is the Antiterrorism Department, through which the intelligence and police services of some 170 nations now work together quite seamlessly. This is not a "coalition of the willing" defined by nominal participation: Fifty-five nations have changed their domestic laws to accommodate the global pursuit of terrorists. Military and intelligence units cooperate in untold corners of the globe. Phone calls and e-mails around the world are scanned by computers in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia--and the information gleaned is shared with other countries. It pays little mind to national borders in the fight against terrorism, and it is not subject to any transnational authority to set boundaries and exercise oversight.

The most important division of the GSA, however, deals with deproliferation--the removal, forcibly if necessary, of nuclear arms, material and components from those states deemed by the international community to be insufficiently stable or reliable; and the replacement of these items with safer technologies or economic assets. For as countless politicians, government officials and analysts have noted, if even a crude nuclear bomb were to be successfully detonated in New York City, for example, the death toll would range in the hundreds of thousands and the economic cost would be more than one trillion dollars. (1) It is not surprising that President Bush identified stopping the spread of nuclear weapons as America's number-one foreign policy priority.

Deproliferation's goal--to prevent terrorists or rogue states from acquiring either the material from which nuclear arms could be made or the arms themselves--meets what I term "the triple test" for assessing the soundness of policy. (2) First, it addresses the interests of the nations most threatened, as well as their neighbors, and the global community at large. (I start with an appeal to national interests because the recent emphasis on soft power has not paid enough attention to the fact that the international "system" is much less normatively driven than are domestic polities. Hence, having complimentary interests is of special import.) Second, deproliferation has prima facie legitimacy--few anywhere around the globe doubt that the world would be better off if the availability of nuclear bombs and the material to make them was reduced. Finally, the level of cooperation needed to ensure deproliferation--including the development of new institutions and norms--is a major source of community building.

The Bush Administration has not left this vital matter merely in the hands of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), because as an arm of the United Nations, it has many of that institution's limitations. The IAEA also fully allows countries to acquire the materials from which bombs are made, as long as they promise to use them only for research, medical treatments or power generation purposes and allow inspectors to verify that they live up to these promises. Deproliferation as defined above requires giving up such materials completely. The United States has instead been orchestrating a multilateral approach to what it considers the most dangerous nations, Dan and North Korea. Iran is being pressured by the European Union, Russia and the United States to live up to its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Similarly, in sharp contrast to America's largely unilateral approach to deproliferation in Iraq (which turned out to have nothing to deproliferate), the United States has refused so far to conduct bilateral talks with North Korea. Instead, North Korea must negotiate with a five-country coalition including China, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the United States.

The nexus between deproliferation and the formation of new, robust, transnational security institutions and their relationship to global antiterrorism institutions is most evident in the formation of the Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI). In addition to the United States, the PSI has 15 "core participants", including Australia, France, Japan, Portugal and Spain. These nations have agreed to share intelligence and to stop all of the...