ROSE E. GOTTEMOELLER

When I think of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, what immediately come to mind are both research programmes and a convening forum that reach beyond the norm to create new possibilities for policy makers everywhere. I have become accustomed to thinking of SIPRI as a place to try out really difficult new ideas, to see how practitioners will react to them, and to hone and adjust thinking in the light of their comments and criticism. SIPRI in my mind is thus one of the most useful of policy tools: a place for analysis, creativity and brainstorming new ideas. Some of these new ideas will make it into official policy and others will not, but the value is in the process.

I have experienced this phenomenon several times since I had the honour to join SIPRI's Governing Board in 2004. For example, the Institute's examination of the relationship between business and security has had a major impact on my own work.

In 2005, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, under its President, Jessica Mathews, undertook a major study on the future of the non-proliferation regime. I was a member of the study team, and took responsibility (among other topics) for considering new ideas to strengthen export controls. This issue became especially urgent in the wake of the revelations about Abdul Qadeer Khan and his sales of nuclear technologies through a worldwide marketing network.

It is vital that the international community has established through UN Security Council Resolution 1540 an obligation for all governments to strengthen their laws and procedures against trafficking in nuclear materials, technologies and know-how. However, in starting my research, I realized that putting such laws in place takes time, sometimes many years, and in the meantime the impact of the Khan network was becoming ever more visible and shocking in its wide implications. Those involved in the network had actually entered into a business agreement with a Malaysian firm, to retool its factory to produce centrifuge components for international sales-to Libya, evidently, but no doubt with further customers in mind.

Thus, finding a way to break the momentum of illicit activity was urgent and needed to reach far beyond the traditional export control systems. As useful as regimes such as the Nuclear Suppliers Group have been, they focus on the actions that governments can take and do not try to reach directly to other actors, particularly in the business community.

Another problem is uneven enforcement. Even when countries have similar export control laws on their books, some might be lax in their implementation or inadequately prepared to carry out them out. They often simply lack enforcement agencies that are trained and equipped for this purpose.

Puzzling this problem, I found inspiration in an important project that SIPRI undertook, beginning with a conference in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, in September 2003. It focused on the relationship between business and security, and resulted in an excellent volume entitled Business and Security: Public-Private Sector Relationships in a New Security Environment (edited by Alyson J. K. Bailes and Isabel Frommelt, 2004). This book, quite simply, was a revelation to me. It emphasized the now unequivocal role for business in modern security: 'Private business itself has become a security actor with great responsibility and potential: in conflict prevention and reconstruction, in drying up the fl ow of fi nance and dangerous materials to men of violence, and in making its own operation and society's essential infrastructures more survivable'.

At the same time, the authors emphasized that companies could not be engaged in security responsibilities at a cost to their own performance and economic viability: 'To be effective, national and international responses to the new security agenda must find the right ways to engage private business as an ally and a partner. To be viable, these solutions must be capable of protecting economies without draining them dry or stifling them in the name of security'. Thus, the volume combined a principled approach with one that stressed practicality and the importance of engaging companies on their own terms, with their business interests in mind. This was a refreshing strategy, not always embraced by those working on the security agenda in the harrowing days since the 11 September 2001 attacks.

The volume put forward a refreshing strategy,
one not always embraced by those working
on the security agenda in the harrowing days
following the 11 September 2001 attacks

Taking inspiration from these ideas, I embarked on an examination of the role that voluntary measures could take in enabling both states and corporate actors to take early, speedy action to address the problem of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Countries, for example, might volunteer to pursue a code of conduct that would prohibit aiding and abetting proliferation of WMD technologies. Banking and lending institutions could introduce 'non-proliferation soundness' as a principle of their international lending, much as they have embraced principles for lending to countries that have had a poor history of maintaining environmental and social standards. Large industries and manufacturing firms, including multinationals, could adopt their own codes of conduct to combat proliferation problems, and especially to curb trade in possible WMD components.

My analysis and conclusions appeared in Universal Compliance: A Strategy for Nuclear Security (written with G. Perkovich, J. T. Mathews, J. Cirincione and J. B. Wolfsthal, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington, DC, Mar. 2005), the result of the Carnegie Endowment's comprehensive year-long examin ation of the future of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. This study emphasized that an effective strategy for nuclear security will require universal compliance with a toughened nuclear non-proliferation policy. 'Universal' in this case means that non-proliferation norms and rules must be extended not only to parties to the Non-Proliferation Treaty, but also to all states, to individuals and to corporations.

Thus, my conclusions helped to defi ne one of the core imperatives outlined in the study: to stop illegal transfers of the technology, material and know-how needed to make nuclear weapons.

In the aftermath of Universal Compliance, the Carnegie Endowment received many comments about it. I am pleased that the recommendations on voluntary measures that business and industry could take to fi ght proliferation received a positive share of them. One reviewer numbered them among the most innovative ideas in the study.

I would like to lay credit for the inspiration that led to my work fully at the feet of SIPRI. The volume Business and Security was an important revelation for me, and once again showed how SIPRI is a major source of creative ideas in the international policy arena.

I look forward to continuing to cooperate with SIPRI and its talented staff as we take on some of the never-ending stock of tough proliferation problems-in Iran, North Korea, and beyond.