Waltz with Bashar (al-Assad)

Last Sunday, I flew into Monterey, California to spend one week studying international nuclear safeguards policy at the Monterey Institute for International Studies. I learned a lot in those five days, through a series of very informative lectures and presentations from national lab employees, representatives from the IAEA, and safeguards inspectors. Yeah, I said inspectors. You know those news stories you hear, for example, about Iran refusing to let "inspectors" into the country, or about North Korea kicking out "international inspectors?" Yeah, we got to meet and speak with those folks. Seasoned veterans of the nuclear field who have been there, done that and seen it all.

Aside from these lectures, presentations and guest speakers, another part of our course required us to engage in a simulation exercise, in which we were put into pairs and assumed the roles of the representative countries on the IAEA Board of Governors. In this scenario, the Board was meeting to discuss and vote on a draft resolution, put forth by the United States, condemning Syria's clandestine nuclear weapons program, at least as alleged, and calling for the IAEA Director General to invoke his "special inspections" right to coerce Syria into compliance and transparency.

Background: There are 15 countries on the Board of Governors, one of which serves in a presidential or oversight capacity (which is rotational). That country in the simulation was Malaysia. In addition, according to IAEA rules, any country that is named explicitly in a draft resolution, and against which the Board is considering taking action, is allowed to sit in on Board sessions, though it is not allowed to vote. In the simulation, that country was, of course, Syria.

Turns out my partner and I were assigned to play the role of Syria. Right away we recognized the unique role we could play in negotiations. After all, the initial draft was extremely harsh (from the historically Syrian perspective), as it named specific sites which allegedly were nuclear facility sites tied to the Syrian military nuclear program. So we could try to force a more favorable outcome, which ideally would be the voting down of any resolution on the table. In a less ideal but still favorable second option, we would aim to dilute the language of the resolution so much that the end product would be ambiguous, non-binding and relatively unenforceable. No matter what, we resolved, we would do everything in our power to ensure Syria suffered minimal repercussion.

In order to achieve our goal, we had to leverage our unique position of being almost like a ghost at the Board meeting. We could discuss issues with other Board members, we could voice our opinions in plenary sessions, and we could even make a formal statement prior to the final voting session. But we couldn't vote ourselves. So we had to seek out countries on the Board that might empathize with us -- or that would want to leverage our issues for their own personal gain.

As it so happened, we didn't have to raise a finger. Egypt approached us almost immediately, and we struck a strong relationship. Because Israel unilaterally attacked at least one Syrian site, and because Israel has a nuclear weapons arsenal, Egypt championed our cause and claimed, partially on our behalf and partially on its own, that the real issue at stake wasn't whether Syria had a clandestine nuclear weapons program, or whether the site that was attacked had anything to do with such a program, but rather that Israel made a move which in itself constituted an act of war, and that the real criminal here was Israel, not Syria. If anything, Syria was the victim.

Other countries approached us in similar manners, and lines were quickly drawn and sides were taken. Essentially, it came down to the Non-Aligned Movement (a large group within the United Nations General Assembly that has significant latent negotiating and voting power) versus the United States and its allies.

Interestingly, of the P-5 (US, UK, Russia, China, France), Russia and France sought out the Syrian delegation and put an interesting proposal on table, in which the draft resolution would urge the Director General to conduct a special inspection in Syria without explicitly calling it a "special inspection." In return, Russia and France hoped that by appeasing us, they could work out an agreement by which they would be able to provide Syria with civilian nuclear energy cooperation. Russia also had additional interests in having access to Syrian territory to build natural gas pipelines through the Levant at a later date.

In the end, after three hard and long days of intense negotiations, increasing tension and constant bickering over the placement and choice of individual words, the Board of Governors produced a final resolution that was passed by a vote of 11 to 3, with 1 abstaining. That document was so diluted, so vague and toothless, that we as the Syrian delegation were quite satisfied with our intense lobbying efforts and with the final outcome.

Through the exercise, I learned quite a bit about how difficult it can be to get states to agree on anything. I also stepped into the shoes of the Syrians and took a look at things from their perspective. I must say, I am both impressed and daunted by the enormous complexity of trying to resolve such issues.

On a more real-world note, here's a Washington Times article from last week on what the Board of Governors should do on the Syrian issue. Though the Board meeting has already happened, it's still of note to read the article all the way through. Though I don't agree with everything the author says, it is important to realize that his viewpoint is reflective of many countries' perspectives on this highly complex, politically charged issue.