The most practical lesson I learned at Generation Prague was to never show up 25 minutes early to a State Department event, as doors typically open 25 minutes after they are scheduled to do so. My fellow compatriots and I endured 50 minutes of a coffee-less morning until finally, at 8:25, we were processed through security. Thankfully, the conference inside made the wait worth it.
The list of speakers included Senator Chris Murphy (D-CT), Chief of the UN Joint Mission in Syria Sigrid Kaag, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Nuclear, Chemical, and Biological Defense Programs Andrew Weber, former Lieutenant General and National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) Director Frank Klotz, Under Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller, and STRATCOM commander Admiral Cecil Haney.
Aside from a few technical difficulties (such as Lieutenant General Klotz’s microphone not functioning until midway through his speech), the conference went off without a hitch. It focused on innovation in national security, primarily via the application of technology and youth engagement using social media. Senator Murphy delivered a keynote address in which he emphasized the non-traditional nature of 21st century national security threats. He argued that nuclear weapons overall have become a liability, due to the rapidly diminishing value of nuclear deterrence. Cyber threats and small-scale crises neither require nor can be remedied by the blunt force a nuclear solution entails. Additionally, the traditional concepts of deterrence theory cannot be as readily applied due to the rise of non-state actors, and the increasingly blurred distinction between sovereign nations, proxy organizations, and terrorist groups (e.g. ISIS). Even when deterrence applies, such as with great powers like the Russian Federation, the cold war era approach to deterrence are no longer effective in areas like Eastern Europe, due to the shift away from traditional ground forces and greater reliance on quasi-covert operations. Nevertheless, stated Senator Murphy, the threat of United States use of military force must be seen as a credible.
One of the main foreign policy events the conference focused on heavily was the Syrian Chemical Weapons situation. Sigrid Kaag, the head of the UN Joint Mission in Syria, discussed the immense physical, political, and financial obstacles her team encountered during the weapons removal program. Through her description and the comments of various other speakers, one could detect the consensus that the Syrian Chemical Weapons crisis was being viewed and marketed as an overwhelming victory for the United Nations and the State Department. The oft-repeated narrative stated that the Join Mission represented a paragon of international cooperation, with ships from a wide variety of nations working tirelessly in tandem to remove chemical agents from Syrian borders for their destruction offshore, despite escalating tensions between the United States and its allies and the Russian Federation due to the Ukrainian crisis. Despite different approaches, the great powers had come together on this one issue to rid the region of chemical arms, using a little bit of Russian arm-twisting and United States military potential to ensure the compliance of the Assad regime.
The conference also addressed the twin-pronged threat of bioweapons and infectious diseases and pandemics. Assistant Secretary of Defense Weber heavily emphasized the broad and varied nature of biological threats (making nonproliferation and security efforts focused on biological weaponry extremely difficult). Biosecurity, more so than any other type of WMD nonproliferation effort, requires international cooperation, due to the ease of producing and distributing biological agents as demonstrated by the 2001 Anthrax Attacks in the United States. Most importantly, bioweapons only represent half of the threat in biological security, with the destructive ability of naturally occurring pathogens and drug-resistant viruses and bacteria posing a grave threat to peace and stability. Without international communication, Assistant Secretary Weber argued, containing and responding to biological threats is next to impossible. Border security becomes much less relevant because of the disparate methods of transmission a virus or bacterium can utilize. International collaboration becomes the only way to stand a chance against biological threats.
General Frank Klotz shifted the focus of discussion back to technological application, speaking on the role of technology in updating and increasing the effectiveness of existing nuclear technologies, and discussing his experiences at the NNSA. Technological innovation helps increase the lifespan of older systems, allowing the United States to update existing nuclear infrastructure and improve monitoring capabilities instead of testing new devices and delivery systems.
The penultimate speaker of the conference, Under Secretary of State Gottemoeller, was (in this intern’s humble opinion) the highlight of the conference. She synthesized the primary points of the prior speakers, and argued that the need to focus on WMD’s is even more critical after the end of the Cold War. “The Cold War is over,” she stated, “but the ash and trash of the Cold War is still with us.” Agreeing with Assistant Secretary Weber, Under Secretary Gottemoeller emphasized the benefits of international collaboration, decrying the attempts of various elected officials to disengage from the Russian Federation, despite its policy differences with the United States. She also specifically identified Asian proliferation as a potential problem in the immediate future, and reiterated General Klotz’s point regarding the need for updated monitoring capabilities. As Congressional disengagement from the nuclear issue increases, Under Secretary Gottemoeller argued for the importance of social media engagement, both domestically and internationally, to ensure that the United States remains active in preventing WMD proliferation of all types. Such social media efforts could help renew political interest in an issue that has fallen out of favor on the national stage. Overall, Under Secretary Gottemoeller tried to make clear the increasing, rather than decreasing, role nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons will have on world affairs in the immediate future.
Admiral Haney finished out the event by focusing on the need to redefine deterrence in the modern world. Proper application of technology and intelligence, rather than the numerical amount of warheads in the US arsenal, are vital to an effective US deterrence strategy. As the threat of nuclear war declines, he commented, the threat of the use of a nuclear devise increases. Nonproliferation and deterrence, therefore, remain just as relevant in the 21st century.