 Good afternoon and welcome to the Center for Strategic and International Studies. I'm Sharon Squasoni and I direct the proliferation prevention program here at CSIS. And I'm totally delighted you could join us today for this session on the 10th anniversary of the proliferation security initiative. We are webcasting this at the same time. So I ask it's especially important that you turn your cell phone ringers off. This session is completely on the record. We have a terrific panel. But first we have a special guest speaker, His Excellency Richard Schnepf, who is the ambassador of Poland to the United States. You fans of PSI may know PSI was launched in Warsaw. And so we're thrilled to have him join us today. He'll be speaking first. And unfortunately he has some other obligations so he'll need to leave early. So he'll just be speaking without a Q&A session. Ambassador Schnepf was named ambassador to the U.S. last year in September. And he has served in other posts as the ambassador to Spain. And he's also served in Costa Rica, Uruguay and Paraguay. And he recently served as Poland's undersecretary of state for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. So I will give the floor over to Ambassador Schnepf. Thank you and welcome. Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, dear friends, let me start by saying that I'm very happy. More even, I'm delighted. I can join you here to assess the current state of the non-proliferation regime and its future. It is crucial that this message comes precisely from this place, from Washington, D.C. As Poland is concerned, our geopolitical location forced us to engage in disarmament and non-proliferation efforts practically on all stages. As early as some of you may remember, but mostly you might have read it in the history manuals, in 1957 Polish Foreign Minister Adam Rapacki at the United Nations introduced an idea to establish a nuclear weapon-free zone in Central and Eastern Europe. The funny story about it is that the idea was so timely and attractive that following here, First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party Władysław Gomułka presented it with minor changes as his own. So it passed to the history as Gomułka plan. The Proliferation Security Initiative, PSI, attracted Poland's attention from the very beginning. The initiative came to life in Kraków in 2003, 10 years ago, while at the Wawel Castle of the old royal city, President George W. Bush and President Aleksandar Kwasniewski proclaimed a new forum for cooperation against proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The recent 10 years anniversary conference was the third time a political meeting of all PSI-endorsing states took place in my country. This tradition is not a mere gesture. It is a symbol of continuous engagement of Poland in a broad non-proliferation and disarmament agenda. The PSI has been functioning for a decade. Some doubts have been raised whether the initiative has a real impact on the non-proliferation regime and that it has become a matter of interest for experts only. I strongly disagree with that point of view, although we can hear it from time to time. Let me remind us all that the PSI and all interdictions activities almost never make front pages. And that is correct as we all know how difficult it is to be a silent hero. At this point, let me underline an acknowledge of those, all those engaged in non-proliferation activities. I thank to you that we can feel safe without even thinking about it. Bravo! Ladies and gentlemen, the PSI 2013 political meeting proved the importance of the forum and provided it with a substantial stimulus. We placed a strong emphasis on concrete outcome. The idea was to design an action agenda for several years and to plan and coordinate activities of its members. The 10th anniversary confirmed the political importance of the PSI. It gathered representatives from over 70 PSI endorsing states, the highest number so far at a PSI political meeting. Over 30 of them were at the level of undersecretary of state or equal. I said that this meeting aimed to deliver tangible and concrete results, not only in mere statements about the PSI. And so here it is. The action agenda for the next five years. It is contained in the four joint statements endorsed at the meeting by the PSI states. And in national declaration of individual states, it's also placed. It further validates that the family of countries who enhance the interdiction capabilities is not shrinking. On the contrary, it's growing. The joint statements outline the commitment of the supporting states to take specific actions in four issue areas. Taken together, they represent a common view upon the future work for the initiative. Already at the very meeting, over 70 states affirm the joint statements. In this regard, the real measure of the effectiveness of the PSI sessions is that a few delegations decided on the spot in Warsaw to adhere to the joint statements. This includes the Russian Federation, which approved two of them despite its previous reservations. Additionally, in the individual declarations, states committed to concrete actions. These range from conducting PSI exercise rotations to examining new national laws, including export controls and international frameworks. For example, now we have a series of exercises planned for Asia-Pacific region through 2019. There will also be regional workshops in Europe, American states, and Asia. Participants also committed to further develop relevant national international law and work on the platform for cooperation in building prevention and interdiction capabilities. Some other important results worth to mention include commitment to work on encouraging other states to join the PSI and increasing efforts at public communication with the launch of an official PSI website. First work on the coordination side was done already the day after the political meeting. On May 29, Poland hosted an implementation meeting for all PSI states. On the other hand, the first review meeting will take place at the next mid-level political meeting scheduled for 2015 and will be hosted by the United States. The PSI community will then have the opportunity to analyze the progress of the 2013 commitments. Here I would like to stress that this success would not be possible without an extensive involvement of the United States and three other countries chairing the session of the political meetings, namely Australia, Germany, and Republic of Korea. Thanks to their political support, the final outcome of the 10th anniversary was more than an outstanding one. Ladies and gentlemen, to assure a real impact of our efforts, we need to implement the PSI action agenda and national commitments declared on the 10th anniversary. However, taking into account the political engagement of the PSI states demonstrated in Warsaw, I think the future is a promising one. And one more thing, dear friends, there are many people, many social and professional circles, dreaming about the life achievement to save the world. Among them, all engaged in novel activities, you. You are closest to make it. Thank you for that, and I wish you a fruitful discussion. Thank you, Ambassador Schnep, for starting us off. Such an excellent speech. We have a panel of three longtime colleagues. I was going to say old, but no. Long time colleagues, expert colleagues on PSI. I'm very thrilled to have them. I'm going to introduce all of them right now, and then we are going to hear. Oh, you're right. Thank you so much, and they will speak in the order in which they're seated. First, Rebecca, then Van, then Susan. We'll hear first from Rebecca Hersman, who is the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for countering weapons of mass destruction in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense. She's been there for four years, and so she's your go-to person on counterproliferation, among other things. She has under her watch the Biological Weapons Convention, Chemical Weapons Convention Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and what was formerly known as the Cooperative Threat Reduction Program. Just kidding. She spent close to a decade, or maybe a full decade, as a senior fellow at the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at National Defense University. But she also has spent some time at the Council of Foreign Relations and OSD, and also on the Hill, the House Armed Services Committee. So she's also author of Friends and Foes, How Congress and Presidents Really Make Foreign Policy. So we're going to hear today from Rebecca about how policy on PSI is really made. Following Rebecca, we're going to hear from Van Van Diepen, who is the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation. He has also been in that job for four years. Prior to that, he was, and I was trying to figure out the acronyms, NIO for WMD at ODNI. For those of you who are not so familiar with the acronym SUP, that means he was the National Intelligence Officer for Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. And before that, he directed the State Department's Office of Missile Threat Reduction. And where I worked, I guess I worked with you, although not in your office, way back when in the State Department. Van Van will hear from Dr. Susan Cook, who is now a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Weapons of Mass Destruction at NDU. Susan has a long distinguished career right now. She's serving on the Department of Defense Threat Reduction Advisory Committee and the Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Task Force of the Strategic Command, Strategic Advisory Group, that's a mouthful. From August 2005 to 2007, she advised Ellen Tauscher, as the, I guess Ellen was the undersecretary. Bob Joseph. Oh, it was Bob Joseph. I'm sorry, I got my, maybe those dates are wrong. She also served on the White House National Security Council, the Department of Defense and CIA. So let's start our panel discussion. Rebecca, do you want to speak from where you are? And we'll, okay. Well, thank you very much, Sharon, and thanks to CSIS for putting on this event. And I especially wish to congratulate Poland for its very successful hosting of the 10th anniversary meeting, but really more importantly for Poland's leadership throughout the initiative going back to its very inception. That's important because one of the misconceptions out there about PSI is that this is really a U.S. initiative, and in fact there are many parents of PSI back through the history and Poland is one, a very important one. So we think that that is really important and we were grateful that Poland was willing to host the high level meeting. I thought what I might do, however, as we begin to move into a discussion about the future of PSI, what lies in the 10 years ahead, was to do a quick visit to the history, because I think sometimes it is helpful as we're driving down a road to just keep one eye in the rear view mirror and kind of realize from whence we have come. And with that I was reminded and hoped to take you back for a second to December 2002. In that month the Spanish naval ship Navara was acting as part of a task force set up to counter-terrorism and it interdicted a ship named Sosan on the high seas of the Mediterranean. This flagless vessel with a North Korean crew was transporting 15 complete scud missiles, 15 conventional warheads and two forms of missile fuel to Yemen. However, the detainment turned out to be temporary. Two days after the interdiction, the U.S. Navy, having assumed control of the vessel at the request of the Spanish Navy, was compelled to release the Sosan complete with its cargo. And this came after consultations at the highest level of our government. And at the time, the White House publicly explained that while stopping and inspecting was legal, that we had limited grounds on which to seize the cargo. And privately, the issue had become a serious irritant in U.S.-Yemini relations. I won't get into too much more detail, the expert on all of the ins and outs of the Sosan episode is sitting at the table. But it is an important one. And so I actually remind, if you have a chance to look at Susan's publication and you really want to get into the details, you can uncover more about the Sosan there. But needless to say, this was not seen as a policy success. So President Bush charged his administration to resolve the problem, come up with a solution that would try to make sure that this situation would not repeat itself. And out of this, with key partners, the Proliferation Security Initiative, which I think was also referred to as the Crack-O Initiative at the time, was born. And with a rapid pace of early meetings among 11 nations, this innovative construct that we now refer to as PSI came together. But at the time, it was extremely unusual. PSI would not be a treaty, but it would be an activity. It would constitute a political commitment, but not an independent legal, legally binding commitment. States wouldn't join PSI, per se, but they would endorse a set of principles that would commit them to national action. It had an operational focus, right from the outset. You'd hear the words practical. We want to be practical in PSI, and that came across. And the way things came together, and the roles that many of us came to play, and our departments came to play. Because it was not just a political forum, although it was a political commitment. It was a very practical effort focused on information sharing, focused on exercising, focused on understanding the tools in the toolkit better so that we could use them in a timely fashion. And there was a real collaborative spirit in support of that national action that allowed countries to come together. So what partly emerged, in which we, I think, collectively benefit from today, that PSI helped to create, was a real community of experts. People in a variety of countries, but especially among a certain group of countries that come together in what we sort of refer to as the operational experts group, who have tremendous depth and expertise in operational matters, in legal matters, in policy matters, all relating to questions of interdiction. PSI has fostered an environment where additional international authorities and came, could be developed and promoted. For example, the instruments, such as ship boarding agreements to facilitate rapid decision making among governments, were kind of born out of those conversations in the early days of PSI and recognizing that there were some gaps that could be filled if we planned ahead and worked ahead to fill them. We take some of these things for granted today because they're now just part of the natural way in which we do business amongst countries. But 10 years ago, they, in fact, didn't exist. I think in that sense, we have much to thank the policy failure of SOSAN because if it had been a success, it's entirely possible that all of these other tools that have come into the toolkit may never have actually come to fruition and that the successes we've enjoyed since then would not have had a chance to see the light. Particularly, importantly, PSI has just sort of established a new baseline for counter-proliferation and addiction, a new expectation, a new standard. And we see that as the initiative has gone from 11 to 102 endorsing nations. We see it's fully taken root in the international community and I think will be challenged as we look ahead to determine how to leverage fully the power of 102 nations that have decided they're committed to the same fundamental principles. That is quite a powerful thing. Well, another sort of touchstone, I think, in the PSI history came a number of years later and in 2011 when the motor vessel Light departed North Korea, likely bound for Burma and carrying a missile-related cargo in clear violation of UN Security Council Resolution 1718 and 1874. Though the light departed from North Korea and was North Korean crude, it was registered and flagged to Belize. Now, through initial bridge-to-bridge communications, the USS McCamble hailed and queried the MV Light off of Vietnam. The light claimed to be sailing from China to Bangladesh and to be carrying sodium sulfate and no dangerous cargo. In a subsequent approach operation, the light admitted that it was Belize flagged. The Belizean flagging of the vessel is actually a critical part of the story because the U.S. had a PSI shipboarding agreement with Belize, something that allowed for the swift permission from Belize to board the light. And this was actually the first time one of these shipboarding agreements had been used in this fashion. Despite the fact that the United States had formal permission from Belize to board the ship, the master of the vessel refused and threatened violence, vowing to fight to the death. This uncooperative behavior reinforced concerns about the ship, both its cargo and its intended destination. And while it did not produce the immediate desired outcome of allowing the U.S. to board the ship, it greatly facilitated what was equally important, which was a comprehensive diplomatic effort to engage countries in the region and around the world to deal with this violation of international law. The McCamble maintained surveillance of the vessel and while the same extensive high-level diplomatic engagement was unfolding. The diplomatic effort meant that the vessel's options for friendly port stops were increasingly limited and political pressure was intensifying. And nations were used to having these conversations because they were practiced as part of PSI. Three days later, the light turned around and headed back to a North Korean port and aborted the shipment. The MV Light's change, of course, demonstrates the positive results of multinational coordination. And it highlights our collective intolerance and commitment against proliferation and particularly the practical usefulness of bilateral shipboarding agreements and other tools that are developed as part of the PSI process. This enabled time-sensitive action in a highly sensitive situation. Consultations with Belize and other nations were absolutely fundamental to the way in which the situation unfolded. PSI, this was not a PSI interdiction or a PSI exercise in some way. This was nations acting in their national capacity to deal with a real-time interdiction situation. What PSI had provided was some of the groundwork. PSI had provided more of those coordination opportunities. Those relationships that could be used quickly that tools such as the shipboarding agreement and all of those came into fruition, I think, really emphasized the importance of this broader political and operational dialogue. So as we start to look ahead here, we really want to think about what does this mean? How are we adapting? How are potential proliferators adapting? And are we managing to outrun them at least a little bit in the conduct of PSI? And this is where having an activity that is adaptable, that is flexible, is a real advantage. Because we're able to kind of respond, see changes and interact through all of those formal and informal mechanisms. I think the fact that we've sustained growth within the overall initiative has been critical. We've managed through PSI to build a norm and an expectation about interdiction. It doesn't mean it works every time, but it does mean there's an expectation. And I think that that is significant both operationally and diplomatically. I think we've had enhanced cooperation within and amongst governments. That's critical because interdiction is really a whole of government enterprise. So it's essential to have that cooperation both internally within governments to support rapid decision making and also between governments, whether those are occurring in defense to defense channels, law enforcement to law enforcement, customs and so forth. One of the beneficial things we do as governments participating in PSI is we practice. We use exercises to help us demonstrate international will and at the same time hone our skills and share information. And we do that through operational exercises, tabletop exercises, and a wide variety of meetings and workshops and other activities that allow us to walk through scenarios, anticipate problems, and identify new tools to put in the toolkit. So this is really what PSI is about at kind of a practical level is continuing to engage those efforts. Now, how do we go forward from here? The real next step we believe and have believed over the last few years, I think the high-level meeting really re-emphasized for the United States and other nations, is to fold. First, we need to continue to work at the capacity-building aspects of the initiative to make sure that more countries have more tools. That means moving beyond the operational experts group, which represents a smaller group of very well-prepared nations, and recognizing that we really need to do better at harnessing the power of 102 nations and putting more tools in their hands. In 2011, the Critical Capabilities and Practices Effort, or CCP as we kind of shorthand it in PSI, was conceived and developed by this operational experts group, which is a 21 nation, informally convening body that tries to provide some steerage to the overall initiative. That effort has been getting developed over the last few years, and during the 10th anniversary meeting in Warsaw, the CCP was launched to the broader 102 PSI nations, and I'm happy to say received a very enthusiastic reception. CCP is a framework for isolating the skills necessary to have successful interdiction efforts and spans a range of considerations and actions from having the right laws in place to inspection and identification of commodities and to seizure and disposition. CCP also emphasizes rapid decision-making within governments, among governments, and between governments and industry. And under these critical elements, PSI nations have offered specific concrete tools and resources that can help build partner nations' capacities. From model national authorities to checklists for commodity reference manuals and information on forfeiture funds, so very detailed technical areas, these are real practical tools that can and should be shared among the PSI nations, and we are in the process of integrating CCP tools into all of our PSI exercises. I believe you have a handout that does a bit of a summary of CCP. Is that right? It's going around. So we'd be happy to take questions on that as well. Another thing I want to highlight though in terms of where do we need to go from here? We have been through the first 10 years of PSI pretty maritime focused, and the adversaries and the proliferators have been adapting as we have been adapting. Increasingly, we recognize that to be truly effective in our interdiction efforts, we will need to turn our attention increasingly to the problem of air interdiction. This in part reflects some of the successes that we've had in the maritime domain, the fact that we've made maneuvering by proliferators in the maritime domain more difficult. So potential proliferators are changing their behavior, they're adapting and try to find other ways to move cargo where they want to move it, and so we are seeing more activity in the air side. We are focused on that because we realize this is a pretty challenging area. There are unique challenges associated with interdicting shipments by air. Compared to maritime shipments where states may have days or weeks to develop interdiction courses of action, in the air domain time is truly of the essence. There may only be a span of hours in which to receive intelligence and take action. Territorial overflight and transshipment windows are short, requiring rapid information sharing and quick operational planning. And interdiction operations are also limited simply as a matter of physics because states cannot conduct boarding operations in flight. Just making sure. That's probably one challenge we're not going to overcome. So how do we work this problem? Well, through exercises hosted by the UAE, Japan, Australia, and Panama over the last few years, PSI has provided a forum for us to come together and address how we can adapt our tools to the air interdiction challenge. Diplomatic outreach has been crucial and it has been happening at high levels. And only a few months ago, Secretary Kerry publicly urged the President of Iraq to further curb overflight over Iraqi territory. This is just one example, but this is we're constantly looking at the air domain as increasingly challenging. The 10th anniversary meetings appealed to all PSI states to sign, ratify, and help bring into force the 2010 Beijing Convention and Protocol as a tangible step towards building international norms to counter WMD proliferation by air and in a way fully consistent with all of our PSI commitments. Building on broad international instruments such as the 2010 Beijing Convention and Protocol, information and intelligence sharing is a foundational component to countering this emerging threat. And we're looking at how to augment the CCP toolkit to further enhance and develop capabilities in this area. Clearly the urgency of the proliferation challenge remains, but it's also evolving. As it evolves, we collectively and through PSI need to adapt, but I don't think it reduces in any way the relevance of the initiative. In fact, it may highlight it because it is in fact a highly flexible initiative, more so than many of the other tools that are in our non-proliferation toolkit. Many challenges remain from post-interdiction actions like disposal and disposition to just shrinking budgets around the world that limit the availability of resources. We need to do more on reaching out to industry. We need to focus more on issues such as transshipment. We need to stay focused on communicating both on what PSI is and what it is not and make sure that the broader international community understands the value of the tool and what we're trying to accomplish. PSI partners are actively moving forward as showcased in the 10th anniversary. The French are working with EU partners on PSI activities in the Mediterranean. The Republic of Korea plans to host a regional outreach workshop. Germany just launched an internal PSI website for all endorsers featuring the first wave of CCP tools. As you can see, we see PSI has had a real and practical and significant impact on interdiction, but an even greater impact on enhancing international cooperation and norms in this area. PSI created the conditions for new international legal instruments from UN Security Council resolutions to ship boarding agreements and their operational implementation. And the CCP effort, we believe, will help to build capacity in concrete ways and enhance state's ability to act. So with that. Thank you, Rebecca. We're going to move right to Van Van Diepen, and I know you all have questions. I have a whole list of questions here. So, but we'll do them all together. So keep them in your thoughts or write them down. Van, the floor is yours. Well, thanks, Sharon, and thanks to UN CSIS for hosting this. I wanted to thank Ambassador Shum for his remarks and for Poland's continued leadership in the PSI as exemplified by its hosting of the May 28th high-level political meeting. Or HLPM in Warsaw. I'd also like to thank Rebecca for her remarks, which I hope are useful in framing the background and progress of the initiative. But I also want to thank Rebecca for the key role that she plays in PSI, and especially in the operational experts group. Now I'm going to try to add on to her remarks by talking about the outcomes of the Warsaw meeting and what they mean for the future of PSI. Initiative and initiative that the Obama administration is committed to sustain as a strong and effective means of confronting the key threat posed by the proliferation of WMD and their delivery systems. From the U.S. perspective, the HLPM was a great success that gave endorsers of the initiative an opportunity to do three things. To review the accomplishments of the last 10 years since PSI's creation in 2003, and Rebecca has talked about that in some detail. To leverage those accomplishments to bring further focus to the efforts of the initiative, and she's talked about that in some detail as well. And to provide strategic direction for the next several years of activity. Now as the Ambassador noted, over 70 countries attended the event, over 30 of which at the Deputy Foreign Minister level, including U.S. Acting Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rose Godemuller, who led the U.S. delegation. And 10 years into the life of an initiative like PSI, such a strong show of support at a high level underscores the importance that we and our PSI partners place on its success. Under Secretary Godemuller and the Chair of the meeting, Polish Vice Minister Winnid, also read statements of support for the PSI from President Obama and President Kamarowski, emphasizing support at the highest levels for sustaining and enhancing the initiative as it moves forward. The HLPM also provided an opportunity for endorsing states to declare both general and specific actions intended to move the PSI forward. This took two forms, as the Ambassador noted. Affirmations of four joint statements issued at the meeting's conclusion, and specific national declarations of actions in support of the frameworks in those joint statements. Those four joint statements covered the four key themes of the HLPM. PSI activities, such as exercises and workshops, outreach, not only outreach to non-endourcing states, but to industry and civil society. Authorities for action, such as the Beijing Convention that Rebekah mentioned, as well as the protocol and the suppression of unlawful acts at sea, and capacity building. Each of these four statements lays out a broad area of initiative activity and of emphasis moving forward and declares a series of top-level actions. And the text of each of these statements and the list of the countries endorsing each of them is available, among other places, on the State Department website. And collectively, as the Ambassador noted, these four statements constitute the action agenda for the initiative moving forward. And beyond affirming these joint statements, and over 70 countries affirmed each one, Poland also asked countries to make specific declarations of action that would support one or more of the four themes. They could be conducted either alone or jointly with other nations, and they could be either domestic, international, and character. And over half of the attending states made national declarations in support of specific actions, including commitments on conducting PSI events such as exercises. For example, as has been mentioned, the U.S., Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Australia, and New Zealand collectively committed to establish an annual rotation of PSI exercises in the Asia-Pacific region. And this will demonstrate a sustained effort as well as facilitate planning. France and 10 other European states made a declaration on strengthening European cooperation to prohibit illegal transfers in the Mediterranean Sea, including an exercise focused on this in 2014 or 2015. Chile announced that it would host a tabletop exercise. There were also commitments about contributing to national capacity-building efforts. The UK made a commitment to host a workshop on the disposition of interdicted cargoes. Hungary is hosting illegal and licensing training for Bosnia-Herzegovina. Lithuania is hosting law enforcement training for Georgia. There were commitments by several states to host outreach events, such as Germany and France hosting an outreach event for the Mediterranean, South Korea considering an Asia-Pacific outreach event. And Slovenia, Canada, and New Zealand all announcing enhanced national outreach efforts. As noted, Germany announced the creation of both a public PSI website as well as an internal PSI website with the CCP tools available to all the endorsing nations. Numerous national announcements occurred regarding intent to pursue ratification of the suppression of unlawful Axis Sea protocol and the Beijing Convention concerning airshipments that criminalize trafficking in WMD-related materials. For our part, the United States, in addition to joining the Pacific exercise rotation, committed to host the first-ever PSI mid-level political meeting in late 2015 as a sort of midway check-in before the 15th anniversary meeting in 2015. We pledged to expand bilateral and multilateral outreach efforts to non-endorsing states in Southeast Asia, in the Western Hemisphere including a tabletop exercise focused on the CCP, and in Africa. We pledged to continue offering interdiction-related training to partner states through various capacity-building mechanisms, such as the State Department's Export Control and Related Border Security Program, and to contribute tools to the CCP effort. And we also declared our intent to join the suppression of unlawful Axis Sea protocol in the Beijing Convention. To sum up, PSI emerges from the 10th anniversary meeting with greater policy impetus and direction, numerous concrete commitments of additional actions in support of the initiative, and a schedule of events over the next several years that give us an opportunity to implement these commitments. And this is above and beyond the PSI successes to date, including expanding to 102 members on all continents, conducting an average of 10 capacity-building activities in several regions per year, and having embarked on this important CCP effort to ensure that all 102 endorsers can conduct interdictions in the real world. We believe that these steps have added to the durability and stability of the initiative in accordance with the vision in President Obama's 2009 Prague speech, and added to PSI's ability to augment the treaties, regimes, export controls, sanctions, and other components of the non-proliferation toolkit. And they underscore the readiness of PSI states to stop WMD-related shipments at sea, in the air, and on land. And now we're working with PSI partner states to operationalize further the commitments made in the joint statements and to fulfill the pleasures of action that were made in Warsaw. And we will aim to ensure that the political process started in Warsaw will continue in Washington in 2015 and propel the PSI forward in the years beyond. Thank you. Thank you, Van. We will now turn to Susan Cook. Thank you. Thank you, Sharon. Well, I just learned a lot about what happened at Warsaw, which I find very promising. I'll talk a little bit more about that. My direct involvement with PSI is in the past, so I've been an interested observer in recent years. And so I suppose very friendly critic may somewhat sum up my impression. But I'm hearing great promise from Warsaw if it is, in fact, realized. PSI, yes, was not one of our, the immediate origin SOSAM was not one of our greatest moments. It was particularly painful because the day of the release that the SOSAM was released back to Yemen was also by pure coincidence the day of the issuance of the National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction. The President was not pleased. And it was created very quickly and moved very fast, particularly by those of you who have served in government, by government standards. From December 11th, the release of the ship to Yemen, to May 31st, the President's announcement of the PSI proposal in Krakow. And then just a few months and spanning summer vacation until the issuance of the Statement of Interdiction Principles, the kind of constitution of PSI in early September by the 11 founding governments who were called informally the core group. The Statement of Interdiction Principles, as Rebecca stressed, was purely political. No new legal obligations. It stresses again and again the importance of abiding by existing national and international authorities. And then everything it didn't include. No organizational structure, no schedule of meetings, no secretariat, no staff. It was from the beginning an activity, not an organization. Acceptance of the Statement of Interdiction Principles is, as Rebecca said, the one criterion for PSI adherence. I don't think we ever thought that it would grow as fast and as large as it did. Starting out with 11 states within a month after the issuance of the Statement, there were 50 adherents. And of course now it's 102. There are no other obligations. An actual involvement does vary greatly, but at least it represents a rhetorical acceptance of the need to counter proliferation both domestically and through international cooperation. PSI support may be widespread, but it's also quite uneven. Every European state except Monaco participates. That means the Holy See and San Marino are members. I'm sorry, I will say members. That's incorrect, but I'll say it because it's easy. But so you have every European state except Monaco, but you only have three Sub-Saharan African states. Only eight Asian and South Asian states. Noted non-subscribers are Brazil, China, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, Pakistan, and South Africa. So the joint statement on strategic communications, which I call outreach, is well taken. There's still a lot to do. The core group, the initial founding states, continued to lead the initiative, meeting quite frequently until the spring of 2004. By that time it had grown to 15, and there was a lot of pressure from other states to be inside the core group. But the larger it got, the more unwieldy. So the upshot wasn't just disappeared. And instead it was replaced by, or its role was taken by two different responsibilities. First were the high-level political meetings. The first one in May of 2004 for the first anniversary, and then two years later, 2006, 2008, and then five years went by with no meeting until the May in Warsaw this year. Now those first, 2004, 2006, 2008, had political value, helping to keep a public focus on PSI and maybe more important the focus of the adherence on the initiative. But they were too large for effective decision-making. What I'm hearing about Warsaw from this spring is that it may be a different model. That having the joint statements, having the individual declarations, and I'm wondering how much we're having one initiative learned from another if the pattern of the Nuclear Security Summit, which is a very successful pattern, was adopted for PSI. And if so, all to the good. We're waiting to see what happens. But it sounds promising. That I'll go back to what hasn't happened up to that point. With the end of the core group, the only regular action-oriented PSI meetings became the operational experts group. That 21 members, initially 20, and then when South Korea joined PSI in 2009, was added, chosen for political importance, involvement in international shipping, strength of their commitment to PSI and or regional distribution. So one of the four or some many all four. The whole aim to translate PSI principles into action through planning, conducting exercises, identifying available, required introduction capabilities, sharing lessons learned, et cetera. Now in the first years, OEG met three to five times in plenary with a few additional regional meetings and workshops. And then late 2008, early 2009, the decision was to go to one plenary a year and more regional meetings. Well, what happened was half of that. One down to one plenary a year, but only one regional meeting a year. Again, it sounds that that pattern will change in a welcome direction. Incomparable happened with PSI exercises. There've been a total of about 50 announced ones, but they all haven't been announced as near as I can tell. And there were a lot in beginning four in just the first three months of the initiative in the from September 2003 through December 2003. Nine the following year in 2004. And after that kind of up and down, but never back up to nine, one year there were seven. The low point was zero in 2011. Probably several causes. One initiative fatigue. It wasn't new and exciting. And there were other demands on attention and activity. Another certainly budget stringencies with global economic difficulties and relatively few participants have dedicated PSI budgets. And perhaps a third may have been the absence of incentives to action that came from frequent group political level consultations. There again, I point to Warsaw and the emphasis on national commitments, group commitments as a spur to action. The CCP, Rebecca has discussed in some detail, so I won't that struck me at the time in 2011 when it was first announced as an interesting and more economical alternative to exercises. There are also other things you can do with exercise instead of having a dedicated live PSI exercise, which is very expensive. Have a PSI scenario as part of a regularly scheduled exercise that's going to happen anyway. More tabletop, more command post exercises that are less resource incentive, but have important capacity building functions. Perhaps the most important measure of PSI's impact, at least politically, is actual interdictions. But they're very hard to measure for some reasons. First, many are not publicized for lots of good reasons, so we never know they happened. Second, there's a real question about what constitutes an interdiction. Rebecca talked about the MV light. Well, by my lights, that's an interdiction. The cargo was prevented from reaching its destination. I would also give PSI credit for it because of it involving PSI adherence. That reads the question of how do you attribute, how easily do you attribute to PSI something that might have happened anyway. Lots of the adherence have cooperated for years in this area. Good example is probably the best known interdiction. That's of the BBC China in October of 2004. That's the shipment board of German flag vessel of centrifuge parts from Malaysia to Libya. The United States and the United Kingdom went to Germany as the flag state saying, why don't you put into an Italian port and went to Italy, another PSI state saying why don't you accept this. The upshot was the unraveling of the AQCon network and eventually Libya's decision to abandon its W&D and longer range missile programs. Critics will say it would have happened anyway. Adherence of PSI say, oh, PSI. At a minimum, the fact of PSI we know from German and Italian governments facilitated their decision. They didn't have a decision to make. Legal frameworks, another really important measure of success. Because while PSI adhering to national and international law, the hope was to expand the national and international legal basis. And several states have improved their national legal frameworks against proliferation. The two conventions that stand out on the international front have been mentioned. The 2005 SUA protocol, and I always forget what SUA stands for, convention on the suppression of unlawful acts against the safety of maritime navigation. And its air counterpart known lovingly as the Beijing Convention, but it has an equally long real title. SUA protocol has come into force, came into force three years ago, but has 23 parties. Beijing Convention will come into force once it has 22 parties. It only has seven. The United States has not ratified either one. The SUA protocol has been held up over implementing legislation. I don't know if the Beijing Convention has been submitted to the Senate for advice and consent yet or not. So here's an area where the focus on those two conventions at Warsaw is more than welcome and very important. And the final important point about legal frameworks, which also says something about legitimacy. PSI started out as very controversial. There was sort of an image of this, you know, U.S. cowboyism. And the administration, the Bush administration hoped that U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540 generally on against proliferation would endorse PSI. It wound up with a very general call upon states to take cooperative action against illicit trafficking. By 2009, you've got much more detailed provisions in Security Council Resolution, whose name I can't remember, against North Korea on maritime interdiction, that then in 2013, air interdiction was added against North Korea. And you have the same general provision in the 2010 UNSCR against Iran. So that shows real legitimacy. It still doesn't change the need for flag state consent at the end of the day. But the political context of that legal framework is crucial. Finally, one of the most important things I think happened with PSI was President Obama's endorsement in the Prague speech in April 2009. Admittedly, many, many states or the parents of PSI are essential to its success. But I think we're still in the stage where U.S. leadership is required. And particularly to make it clear that this was not just a Bush administration activity. This was U.S. This was nonpartisan. That I think it's no accident that those UNSCRs on Iran and North Korea came after the Prague speech. But what is also essential is for PSI to keep up its momentum, which is hard in the absence of structure. Absence of structure in my view is essential to the success of PSI. I can't imagine putting an interdiction to a vote. But it means that it's hard to keep the focus up. And I hope that what I was hearing about the Warsaw 10th anniversary meeting is that we may have found a way to keep the strength of having an activity, not an organization, while minimizing the potential weaknesses. Thanks. Thank you, Susan. So we have just about an hour for questions and answers. Thank you, Ambassador Schnep coming. Congratulations. Thank you. And while you are all gathering your thoughts, let me start off with the first question. Which is, could you just describe a typical operational exercise for folks who might not know exactly what that entails? Typical might be a little challenging because I think they can vary a lot depending upon the host and depending upon the nature of the countries participating and the scenarios they've been asked to discuss. But so perhaps rather than typical, I'll say a notional, might be a way to think about that. I think some of the strongest exercises try to bring together a number of different elements. They might on the one hand have a, here I'll say sort of traditional military element, something where we have a chance to actually observe and nations can observe and participate in a maritime interdiction demonstration of some kind. Now that's the stuff you imagine, right? You know, ships pulling up alongside other ships and practicing talking to them and bridge-to-bridge communications and then usually the resistance is helicopters and boats pulling up alongside and kind of either repelling down or climbing up to go onboard a ship and then actually walk through what would that inspection look like and so forth. But I think it would be a mistake to say that's necessarily even the most important part of a typical exercise, which often have other components. They might have a tabletop component that's done for a day where certain types of questions are fleshed out in a tabletop exercise and other sorts of workshops where they might dig into other issues. And that's really important because the bulk of interdiction activity is not done at sea between maritime vessels. The bulk of interdiction activity is done through paperwork and customs inspectors and, you know, lawyers talking to lawyers and various communication channels moving back and forth. And that's where those tabletops are very important because you need to have interagency teams talking about, you know, ship X has pulled into my port and I need to think about what might be on board and how I might approach that country and what legal authorities do I have and so forth. So the best ones really try to have some of the operational piece, but a lot of the meat and potatoes are in these tabletops so that you can actually exercise things that don't repel down on ships or climb up ladders. So I hope that's helpful. That's really helpful. Van, did you want to add anything? Questions? Just, we have microphones so wait for the microphone and please identify yourself and your organization, Rishi. And please make it a question and breathe. Hi, Rachel Oswald, Global Security Newswire. I was hoping if Ms. Hurstman and anybody else wants to jump on this could flesh out a little bit more what this means that there are going to be more, more eyes watching the sky I guess for possible illegal shipments. What will that entail in terms of having to build up capacities to do interdictions over the air and also maybe some more of this like you mentioned, you know, talking through lawyers and customs inspectors. How will that be different if you're looking at air cargo? Well, I'll answer part, but in fact I think Van, you need to chime in because for exactly the reason that I said, the, as I said in the maritime domain, the actual operational, you know, ships pulling up to ships part is a lot less than in the real world than what we kind of think of. But that's even more so in the air interdiction arena. So you really have to look at how, how does cargo move between countries through kind of air, the air domain. And how do countries communicate quickly and how do they manage all of their customs and border control mechanisms in such a way that they can have confidence that they understand what type of equipment is transiting their airspace or their ports of embarkation, or their airports. So that's really, I think from my perspective, what it's fundamentally about when we commit to the statement of interdiction principles in part we're committing to understanding what's transiting areas over which we have authority and responsibility and each in our national capacity. So I don't know about eyes on, I wouldn't want to suggest necessarily an intelligence issue here, I'm sure that could be one. But I think the bigger question is to step back and say we've been very maritime focused. If we understand the future may mean that illicit cargo may move increasingly in an air domain, what are the implications, what additional tools do we need? How do we need to engage our partners and to then deliberately work that through the nature of our activities and workshops and other engagements? I just say I think that the key difference really between air and maritime is time. Airplanes go a lot faster so that means you have a lot less time to detect an activity, characterize it, work with another country to take action against it. And the economic consequences of time are very severe because the reason why legitimate trade wants to use air is because it's fast. And if you start to intervene in ways that disrupt that speed of legitimate commerce that's going to have a big negative impact. So there's a lot more balancing that has to go in and a lot more emphasis is going to be placed on a droit intra-agency and international cooperation. I think that's the real stressing factor. Not exactly what you asked, but the need for greater focus on air is a good example of both the PSI success and the price of same. Because one of the great successes has probably been, and again it's hard to measure, is the fact that it has closed off trafficking methods and routes to proliferant states. And so they need to find new ways, new methods of trafficking. And the challenge for PSI is to always stay at least with them and preferably ahead of them. I'm going to just move from side to side. Ryan, can you give the mic to Sandy? Excuse me, Sandy Spector with the Monterey Institute. I was trying to understand the relationship a little better between these sanctions resolutions and their restrictions on the requirements for inspection and the restrictions on certain Iranian and North Korean transportation activities and the PSI. PSI is stronger because it's got these 102 commitments. In some ways the resolutions are stronger because they're legally binding. But I'm sort of wondering, have any of the methods that were used in these sanctions resolutions such as denying access to ports for any ship that's associated with the Iranian Islamic Republic shipping lines, have any of those been applied in the context of PSI and is there a possibility of having a similar kind of blanket prohibition on overflights? I mean, can countries simply deny overflights for a Korean or Iranian aircraft either, I guess, under the PSI or under the other, under the resolutions? Also, bunkering services, can there be some kind of understanding that aircraft won't be serviced wherever they may land? If they're of Iranian or North Korean origin? Well, I'm not exactly sure how to answer that. I think that obviously the fact of the UN Security Council resolutions and their obligations increases the scope of action for interdiction and increases the receptivity of interdiction partners in dealing with those actions. And it's clearly had an impact on how the proliferators do business. In terms of having additional unscrup provisions to affect air, on the one hand, of course, that depends on getting nine votes without a veto in the Security Council for something. But also there's a very healthy body of existing codified and customary international law about freedom of air navigation and civil air navigation that would probably interfere with doing some of the more extreme things that you've talked about. So I think there would be a reticence to do that that would also translate into a difficulty in getting the necessary Security Council votes to do the kind of thing that you're talking about. There is some degree of relationship between the UNSCRS and PSI, even though I think they're fully independent, but there's some kind of communication that's occurred between those worlds over time. First of all, I think this very specific provisions included in the UNSCRS, things like dealing with bunkering, diversion to port and so forth, did not kind of materialize out of the ether. They were born out of the experience of the interdiction community. Those weaknesses in international law in dealing with interdictions were discussed and recognized in PSI meeting after PSI meeting. So when opportunity presented itself for those UNSCRS, I think the interdiction community was better positioned to know and identify some of the specific gaps that needed to be addressed and filled in the UNSCRS. And I think that that was very helpful. Similarly, I can say, for example, within the operational experts group where I chair the U.S. representation, it's very clear that having these concrete UN Security Council resolutions with regard to Iran and North Korea definitely facilitate action. Again, independent of PSI, PSI doesn't target a particular country, but they have certainly supplemented the legal basis upon which we can discuss and react, and they have filled certain key gaps in some very important areas. So they're certainly discussed, taken into account, you know, recognized as being an extremely important part of the legal landscape. Again, I find it telling that UNSCR 2094 against North Korea, it's not a mandatory provision, but it does, quote, calls upon states to deny permission to any aircraft to take off land or overfly their territory. And the statement of interdiction principles deny aircraft reasonably suspected of carrying such cargoes, transit rights through their airspace. You know, you have much the same provision in both. Okay, Rishi, we had a question up front here, please. Hello, Caspar Oswald from the Congressional Research Service. I'm aware of the fact that there were exercises, PSI exercises related to air interdiction within the past couple of years, and I'm wondering if those were solely tabletop exercises or if there were operational components that went into them, and if you could detail that a little bit more. I don't know that I have all the details at my fingertips, to be honest. I know that there have been operational elements of a couple of different exercises recently, and they did exercise an air component, but I would still emphasize that non-operational piece is just as important and was definitely part of those exercises, both in the Middle East context and I believe one that was done in Japan as well. So that's been part of the picture, but not the primary or exclusive focus. Okay, we have a question up here, Ryan. Thank you. Chris Bidwell from the Federation of American Scientists. This question will be a little tough for our government colleagues to answer, but it's kind of open season on Susan. So my question is this. Has any thought been given to the concept of requiring as a condition of bringing your ships into U.S. ports that the flags of those states be signatories to the PSI principles? Why would this be important? Ships, I guess we've got about 80 now miscreants out there that still haven't signed up to the PSI principles. You can make a choice whether or not they want to visit U.S. ports and sell their cargoes in U.S. ports or drop off their cargoes in U.S. ports and maybe as a condition to bring some of those others along, putting that requirement either by executive order or congressional legislation. Just wondering if that thought has crossed anybody's mind, if it might be effective, if it might not be effective. Thank you. Well, I'm going to take the burden off of Susan on this one. I think that kind of runs counter to the idea of PSI as a voluntary association, sort of coalition of the willing as opposed to a coalition of the coerced. And I just don't think that that's the approach that we've been taking. I think the outreach efforts that we're doing and sort of the steady increase in the membership and being able to show those countries who right now are not choosing to subscribe that increasingly they're sort of there outside of the mainstream and in fact that there are things they're missing out on by not being part. I think over time that's what's going to get us subscribing states. And the idea to get more subscribers is not to simply increase the body count. We don't want to go to 170 just to go to 170. We want to have, you know, increase the number of countries that are actually interested in and willing to cooperate with us in actual real world interdictions. Okay, right in front here. Oh, sorry. No, it's okay. Well, it may be in, I absolutely agree with Van. And also the economic costs on the United States. I mean, look at some of the non adherents, China, Brazil, India, et cetera. I don't think it will happen. Thanks. I'm Bill Gertz, a longtime national security journalist. The discussion started with a failure of the SOSAN and I would argue that there was a recent, very serious arms proliferation failure which would be the Chinese transfer of six transporter erector launchers to North Korea. This partly led to a shift in U.S. policy. We canceled the fourth phase of the missile defense in Europe and added 14 interceptors. We now have long range KN08 missiles. Could you address this issue and how would PSI be structured to try and stop this? Was this transferred by ship, by rail, by air? And are there any sanctions or were any U.S. proliferation laws violated? I'd ask Van and then maybe Rebecca could also. Well, I'm going to do the prudent thing and beg off of that one, because just do any sensitive details inherent in answering that question. I'm sorry, but it just wouldn't be appropriate. I'm sorry. I'm not equipped to answer that question today. It's a, as fans had kind of fraught with a number of issues, but also just it's not really the topic. I don't really even think it's a PSI issue per se. But if China were a member of PSI. Hi. Hi, cool. Sorry. I'm Chelsea Toxar and I'm at GeoStrategies. Just kind of on the other side of that coin, I was wondering, I guess I want to just have a brief understanding of one, what are China's biggest problems with PSI? And then also if you see any movement towards cooperation from China to subscribe to PSI, because recent developments I think, or I assume just in my head that their territorial claims in the South China Sea would probably make problems for PSI. No? And what the gentleman just talked about. I think the best way to answer that question is not to talk about a specific country, but to talk in general about the kinds of concerns that non-endorsing states have put forth. Some states are concerned about the very idea of these informal coalition of the willing organizations for lack of a better term. They have a preference for things that have a basis in treaties. They have a preference for things that have a basis in the United Nations. And so for example, if you look at the countries that are not subscribers to PSI, a lot of them are also not subscribers to the Global Initiative of Combat Nuclear Terrorism, are not subscribers to a lot of these other similar types of mechanisms that have evolved. Some countries have been concerned about what they see as the legal basis for PSI. Now those of us in the initiative stoutly disagree with that, because as the statement of interdiction principles themselves make clear, everything in PSI is done according to domestic and international law and frameworks. But nonetheless, I think in part because of that initial image of PSI as a skull and crossbones in an eye patch, they've never really kind of gotten over that. And so they have sort of legal basis concerns. And I think that some countries see PSI, and again we would dispute this, but see PSI as something that's directed against particular countries, something that's fomented by particular countries, and a number of the countries that are not subscribers sort of see themselves in a more sort of non-aligned mode where they're not comfortable with those kinds of constructs. Now again, I think from our perspective, in some of those cases we're being tarred unfairly with brushes that are not appropriate, but nonetheless those are the perceptions that a number of these countries have. Thanks, Jan Holken with Voice of America. Another question about the air interdiction. North Korea is believed to proliferate or at least try to proliferate WMD or related materials, and probably an increasing number of air flights through China. I was wondering to what degree do you see cooperation from China on this matter, and what's your plan to get more help from China? Thanks. Well, I'll sort of focus on the latter part rather than the former part of that because I don't want to get into talking about intelligence matters. But look, non-proliferation has been at the top of our bilateral agenda with China for many, many years, and we've been pressing for Chinese cooperation in these areas for a long time, and in some areas we're getting cooperation. I mean, China, for example, agreed to the UN Security Council Resolutions on Iran and North Korea. They agreed to UN Security Council Resolution 1540. Those could not have happened without Chinese support. China's an important partner in the P5-plus-1 process with Iran, with the Six-Party Talks process with North Korea. So there's a lot of important help that China is providing in the non-proliferation area. But as we've made clear for a long time, we've got continuing concerns about the activities of Chinese entities in supplying equipment and technology and facilitating the supply. And what, in our view, is inadequate Chinese enforcement and implementation of their export controls of their international commitments as regards getting these entities under control. Now, again, China here has taken steps. They have put in place legislation that meets international standards in a lot of ways, but they're clearly implementation and enforcement issues. We're doing what we can to help them with that, to encourage them with that. But it's also no, you know, it's not a secret that we have also imposed sanctions on Chinese entities because of their proliferation-related activities. And so this continues to be an area where, you know, we keep working with the Chinese, both on the sort of the carrot side and the stick side, to try to encourage them to continue making progress. But we're not where we need to be yet. Can I just briefly follow up just on that? You know, at one point, when you start talking about tabletop exercises, it seems that PSI almost kind of bleeds over into some of the export control assistance that we give to other countries. So my question was, do we do any of that with China? Or could that be a backdoor? That meaning export control assistance? Yes, there is some of that that goes on and not just from the United States, but from Japan, European Union, and some others. Yeah, I think so, but again, not as much or as quickly as we would like. I'm Carl Stoiber. I'm currently the chair of the Working Group on Nuclear Security of the International Nuclear Law Association. So I'm interested in the legal aspect, but I won't press on that one because I know where you're coming from. I have basically two questions. The basic focus indicated by the title of the initiative, Proliferation Security Initiative, indicates that it's primarily directed toward preventing states from acquiring weapons of mass destruction, but I wonder to what extent do you believe that this also works to prevent subnational groups, terrorist groups from acquiring those kinds of weapons. And the second deals with the issue of information sharing, which I think is really the key to implementing this kind of a program effectively. States have to know what is coming through their territory, through their airspace, through their territorial sea. The IAEA maintains what's called an incident and trafficking database that is available to participants on a kind of a quick basis to know what's going on. Is there such a database maintained by PSI or any thought toward establishing anything of that nature? Maybe I'll take the first part and ask Rebecca to talk about the second part. On the first part, the statement of interdiction principles specifically talk about states and non-state actors of concern. So non-state is a specific focus of PSI as it is a specific focus of a lot of the associated international mechanisms. The U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540, for example, has a very predominant focus on non-state actors, although not an exclusive one. So basically, WMD proliferation, kind of irrespective of whether it's a state or a non-state actor would definitely be an explicit target of PSI. And a lot of the interdiction techniques would be the same regardless of who the perpetrator, so to speak, was of those activities. In terms of sharing rapid information, which is, I think, essential to an effective implementation of these commitments, has any thought been given to establishing anything under PSI that is similar to the incident and trafficking database that exists under the IAEA? Or how is information, particularly of a sensitive nature? And I had a lot of problems with this when I was director of non-proliferation in the State Department. How is that managed? I'm not intimately familiar with the database that you describe in order sufficiently to kind of make a comparison. I would say that when it comes to actual interdictions, they become pretty idiosyncratic in case specific. So I'm not quite sure how it would correlate to a database. There are a lot of different ways information is shared through a variety of channels, usually highly dependent upon the facts that are bringing that together, everything from the nature of the diplomatic relationship, the channels that are being activated. And again, it often, as Susan said, we can't speak publicly about many interdictions because so many are handled in intelligence channels. So that's kind of how information moves. There's actually several different pipes and there's a lot of discussion about that. Now that is truly, as we've said, and I want to emphasize separate from PSI. We think of PSI as setting, enabling conditions, building capabilities, so that when a real interdiction situation presents itself, we have the basis on which to build. Inside that, I think as we develop critical capabilities and practices and we hone in on some of those gaps, I think that's where, whether it's this particular database tool may or may not be relevant to the particular cases, but those kind of generic tools, how do we build those out? How do we help countries use them? That's thematically, at least, what CCP is trying to accomplish. One, I've talked a lot about things that may hold promise in the future and hoping for the best from the PSI website that has been long in the becoming. Now, you would never be able to share sensitive information among all members, but there may be a wealth of non-sensitive information that can be very useful. Exercise results, lessons learned from exercises from interdictions that have been declassified. For example, there's a lot of information about the BBC China and the MB Light in the public domain. So it's different from the kind of very detailed information that we think of when we hear, at least I think of when I hear the words database, but nonetheless important and useful. Polina Izhevich, I'm a student at Syracuse University. As you mentioned, one of the big problems with PSI is the issue of consent from the flag state. If my understanding is correct, efforts have been made to circumvent that through consent of the owner states, aborting agreements and so on. Are there any other ways that this issue could be circumvented or slightly switched, maybe? I have our lawyer over here on the side. It'll keep me on the straight and narrow here. So flag state consent is definitely a central legal concept. It's absolutely critical. One of the important things about pursuing PSI shipboarding agreements was to begin to make stronger pre-coordination mechanisms with flag states. And I think that's why I highlighted that in the case of Belize, where someone actually knew who to call and how to get it done quickly so that you could have that communication. So that's really important. I think what PSI has done, rather than alter or in any way circumvent some of the principles that nations hold to very strongly, is to help nations that are engaged in supporting the interdiction principles to at least better understand the legal perspectives of other participating and endorsing nations. So as an example, the United States generally acknowledges and keeps within our legal toolkit something called master's consent, which could be seen as an alternative depending upon the circumstances that may present themselves. A number of other nations, any number of them, and we've had many discussions in the OEG about this, do not acknowledge master's consent. Well, we understand that. We've had these discussions. We understand who acknowledges. We understand don't. They hear our perspective. So we're better informed about whether or not that tool might be something we could use in a given situation. But most importantly, most interdiction action does not occur on the high seas. It does not occur at sea. It occurs in port and through the various communications between countries and using all of the tools, especially among your customs and border control and law enforcement entities, at which point those types of authorities aren't necessary because the somewhat more mundane work is happening in port where it needs to happen and where there tends to be robust authorities to work with. Could you just explain what master's consent is? I could. That means that the captain says it's okay as opposed to going to the flag state government itself. Alex Georgia from the Stimson Center. I just wanted to ask briefly about the role of the private sector in all of this and how can we improve their cooperation with PSI? This issue of working with industry is also a topic that comes up very frequently in OEG meetings. I think that a number of countries are really looking for ways to improve the partnership with industry. I think that's a constant effort. But I think this speaks to perhaps some other topics that have come up in the lines of questions that have surfaced. Working well with industry, we have to be careful how much we take PSI and imagine it as a punitive instrument. That's really not its orientation. We have other more punitive instruments in the nonproliferation toolkit. I think in general, we try not to use PSI in that way. It's a more carrot heavy, I guess. I would say approach rather than stick heavy. I think that's very important when you get at some of these questions about how to encourage industry to do the right thing, and are we seen as supporting a robust trade and strong economic principles? If you don't do that, you're really going to have a hard time getting countries and industry on board. We need to kind of all be on the same page as opposed to seeing us as in tension all the time. Okay, further questions? I will jump in with one or two, if I may. I find this fascinating. You mentioned twice now that most interdictions are not happening at sea. If I were a skeptic, I might say, okay, does that mean PSI has succeeded? Does it mean that it's too hard to get them at sea and you wait until they're in ports? Does it mean that PSI was a failure and you're going back to doing what was being done before? Or is it a success because you've learned so much and the channels of communication are much more open ten years later than they were earlier? I don't know. There's a couple things I'm thinking about. Any response? I think implicit in those questions is the idea that at sea is where this would normally happen. It never was before PSI. Is it now? If PSI went away, not going to be. Again, in part just because of the physics of it, think about what's involved. Take a container ship of 2,000 containers and the one you want is always at the bottom. Doing that at sea is just not going to work. As well as these authorities issues where once you're inside a state's territory, there's a lot more authority available to do things. Just for a whole host of reasons, that's the norm. It's really kind of independent of the PSI effectiveness questions. I'd say A, B, and D. Not C. I think Vance hit it, but it really is. PSI has been about all of that. It's just that at sea stuff is pretty flashy and showy like I said in describing an operation. But so much of the real meat and potatoes of what gets done is in this less flashy area. We just have to keep getting the job done there. I just want to point out part of that too is the way most proliferation works is to exploit existing commercial shipping channels. You're using these hub and spoke systems just like passenger air travel. You're constantly changing planes in various places. As the proliferator, you want to hide your stuff in the flow of legitimate commerce that's changing planes, but for us every time there's an opportunity to change planes, there's an opportunity to potentially interdict that cargo. We're much more likely to find out about it because of that. We're much more likely to have opportunities to act on it because of that. Part of it is just the normal flow of business that proliferators are trying to exploit. One last question. How does that affect your budgets? Has that made it tough over the years? For our part, it doesn't really impact because at the extent to which there are identifiable PSI costs, we can accommodate those within our normal operating budget. Frankly, most of our role in PSI is diplomacy, so that's what we do and that's what we have a budget for. I would have to say it's increasingly an issue for us in the department and that is something we're trying to think through how to address in the years ahead so that we can be consistent in our support. I think it's more a feature of the overall budget climate affecting the department that we have had within the last year had to cancel or delay certain PSI activities. In general, costs for those activities have been taken largely out of hide. Out of hide ways of paying for things are going to be increasingly difficult, we can expect. We've had a very small budget line for certain types of COCOM support, again really more just kind of some travel and associated costs and we'll be looking in the future to see is there a better way to handle that because the ability of the services and the combatant commands to kind of just add the inject here to add an exercise there. We know that that is under pressure now and is likely to be under substantially more pressure in the years to come. I have the freedom of not being in government so I can talk about budgets but although I don't disagree, I think one of the great lost opportunities in previous years was not seeking a dedicated PSI budget in the overall DOD budget because in the early years of PSI and probably the early years of this administration before everything went south on the budget side it would have been probably passed pretty easily and would have and once it existed would be easier to keep going if at a reduced sequestered level. Right now it's hard for me to imagine but I would hope that DOD would keep in mind once things lift of the possibility of doing that. Well thank you first of all to this excellent panel Rebecca, Van and Susan I'd like to also thank in his absence unfortunately he had to leave the House Schnepp and the Polish Embassy for their help thanks especially to Aaron Horabaugh from the State Department for facilitating all of this and to our fantastic CSIS staff interns Rushi, Ryan and Jake and Bobby Kim over there and thank you most of all for joining us today for this stimulating discussion in September where we'll be hosting a lot more interesting discussions. Thanks everybody.