Is the Obama administration retreating from its nuclear non-proliferation promise?

[UPDATE: Late Thursday evening, the scheduled meeting described below was postponed until Thursday, Oct. 14, for uspecified reasons.]

President Obama promised in his April 2009 speech in Prague that the U.S. would lead the drive towards a world without nuclear weapons. On Friday, top administration officials will meet to decide how far to press that goal in practice when expanding American civilian nuclear cooperation abroad.

"We need a new paradigm for civil nuclear cooperation that allows all countries to enjoy the benefits of nuclear power, while avoiding the spread of nuclear weapons and technologies," Obama said just after the speech.

Now, in what’s being billed as a major internal showdown, top administration officials will meet at the White House on Friday for a "deputies committee" meeting to square off on how to handle ongoing negotiations over two pending civilian nuclear agreements, one with Vietnam and another with Jordan. Two opposing camps within the administration, led by Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg and Deputy Secretary of Energy Dan Poneman, respectively, will debate the key issue of whether to insist that these agreements, which would allow greater nuclear technology cooperation with the United States, must include restrictions that would prevent the two countries from enriching uranium or reprocessing plutonium, activities that are sometimes employed to produce fuel for nuclear weapons.

The civilian nuclear agreements, known around town as "123" agreements, after the section of the Atomic Energy Act that governs them, weren’t always tied to the issue of nuclear weapons material. But the Obama administration, following the Bush administration’s lead, linked the two issues when it trumpeted the last 123 agreement with the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which includes prohibitions on producing nuclear fuel inside UAE borders.

The Obama team celebrated those prohibitions and called the UAE agreement the "gold standard" for all civilian nuclear agreements, but then hit a wall when Vietnam refused to agree to the same prohibitions. Jordan as well has indicated it wants to preserve what it views as its right to produce nuclear fuel sometime in the future.

If the administration insists on the prohibitions now, it risks causing the pending deals with Vietnam and Jordan to unravel in the short term, and perhaps losing out on other potential deals in the longer term. If the administration backs down and signs agreements without nuclear fuel production restrictions, it will cause a bipartisan uproar on Capitol Hill.

"Obama sold the UAE deal as the model, now they are saying it’s a model, not the model. That’s like Clinton saying ‘I didn’t have sex with that woman,’" said Henry Sokolski, executive director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center, a Washington non-profit organization. He strongly supports the prohibitions.

Even non-proliferation experts who are more supportive of the administration lament that the administration held up the UAE agreement as the "gold standard" apparently without thinking ahead to what would happen if other countries didn’t go along.

"Unfortunately, people are calling it the gold standard, but the reality is that’s unlikely to hold up," said Sharon Squassoni, director of the proliferation prevention program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "In a way, the Obama administration is stuck with this policy that the Bush administration was pushing."

Inside Friday’s high-level meeting, two camps will square off on the issue. On one side, Steinberg will make the argument that the United States must insist as much as possible that prohibitions on enrichment and reprocessing (ENR) be included in the Vietnam and Jordan deals. On the other side, Poneman will argue that the deals should go forward even if the ENR restrictions can’t be included.

Steinberg is representing the State Department’s position, although not necessarily everyone inside State agrees with him. Officials focused on the countries involved feel that the agreements have a positive effect on bilateral ties.

"It’s a good sign that Steinberg will reportedly argue for the enrichment and reprocessing limitations. This means that the State Department has decided that these nonproliferation concerns are more important than the regional bureaus’ interest in concluding these agreements quickly," said Jamie Fly, executive director of the Foreign Policy Initiative, a conservative think tank.

And although the administration is fighting the spread of nuclear weapons on a number of fronts, observers throughout Washington and especially on Capitol Hill are watching this meeting carefully for signs of how Obama’s promise to stand up against nuclear proliferation fairs where the rubber meets the road.

"The outcome of this meeting will indicate whether the Obama administration is serious about moving toward a world without nuclear weapons or whether it is willing to risk the proliferation of sensitive nuclear technology and thus a world with even more nuclear weapons states," said Fly.

The view from Capitol Hill

In Congress, there is a bipartisan and bicameral effort to pressure the administration to include ENR restrictions in both the Vietnam and Jordan deals. Interested members in both parties are frustrated with what they see as a constantly changing message from the administration on this issue.

Key lawmakers who are making it clear they want to see enrichment restrictions in the Vietnam deal include Reps. Howard Berman, (D-CA), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), Ed Royce (R-CA), Ed Markey (D-MA), and Jeff Fortenberry (R-NE).

A bipartisan and bicameral group of lawmakers wrote to President Obama on Aug. 26 urging him to include ENR restrictions in the Vietnam 123 agreement. Referring to the UAE standard, the lawmakers said that, "Failure to include similar restrictions in any deal with Vietnam could work against U.S. leadership and credibility on non-proliferation at a time when both are needed."

During their sales pitch for the UAE agreement, the administration told Congress that the ENR restrictions would be the model for future agreements, three separate senior Congressional aides told The Cable. Then, last summer, the administration started telling Hill staffers they would no longer push for the ENR restrictions. Subsequently, the administration shifted its message again, saying that no decision had been made.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the administration at one point decided to pursue ENR restrictions only for agreements with countries in the Middle East, thereby exempting Vietnam. But according to one senior GOP Senate staffer, the administration knew all along that making a special
rule for Arab countries probably wouldn’t fly, especially with Jordan.

"The strategy early on in the Obama administration was to lock in Vietnam, take that back to the Jordanians, and say ‘this is not an Arab thing,’" the staffer said, pointing out that there’s less concern about Vietnam pursuing nuclear fuel but that Jordan probably won’t go along if Vietnam gets a pass.

"If they abandon the restrictions with Vietnam, they are by extension making a decision on Jordan," the staffer said.

If Jordan gets a civilian nuclear agreement that does not include ENR restrictions, the future of the UAE deal might also be called into question. The UAE has the right to renegotiate their agreement if another Middle East country gets a better deal, which could be an excruciating process.

It’s extremely unlikely that Congress would move to prevent the 123 agreements with Vietnam and Jordan from going forward if they are sent to Capitol Hill without the ENR restrictions. The deals go into effect 90 days after submission unless Congress passes a resolution opposing them. Practically, that would mean opponents would have to round up two-thirds of Congress to override a presidential veto of such a resolution.

But there are several other ways lawmakers can make life difficult for the administration on the issue, through public criticism or by moving to amend the Atomic Energy Act to give Congress greater oversight over these deals.

Multiple GOP aides said that even though Republicans want the restrictions in the agreements, they might see a lack of such restrictions as a perfect opportunity to attack Obama politically for what they will cast as a failure on non-proliferation.

"Republicans will savagely argue that the guy who believes in a world without nuclear weapons is making it easier for countries to acquire them," one senior GOP aide said. "Republicans are hoping that Steinberg does lose, because then they can rain a storm of shit on the administration, which is exactly what will happen."