South-South Models for Preventing Proliferation

November 14, 2011

Today's interconnected global economy has eased the ability of more people in all corners of the globe to be part of to the weapons of mass destruction supply chain than at any other time in history. Criminals and terrorists alike can undertake proliferation and related activities as effectively in Luanda as they can in Los Angeles. As a result, two decades after the end of the Cold War, while the risk of a nuclear confrontation between states has gone down, the risk of a nuclear incident itself is going up.

Yet, while the threat of proliferation may be growing into new spheres of concern, the global financial downturn has caused a dramatic shift in countries' spending priorities. Consequently, major nonproliferation donors have reduced, or at minimum, flat-lined appropriations to international assistance programming, including nonproliferation assistance to the G8 Global Partnership. In light of these budget reductions, however, some governments in the Global South have begun instituting more savvy approaches to prevention.  Their innovative concepts seek to satisfy international obligations to the global nonproliferation regime while also meeting higher-order local priorities, ranging from human security to economic development.

Consider this:

• Detecting and responding to a biological weapons incident requires a functional disease surveillance network and a robust public health infrastructure;
• Trade expansion and business development cannot occur unless borders and ports are safe, efficient, and secure-also a key component to prevent the physical movement of WMD materials and technologies; and
• Preventing trafficking and illicit trade of humans, conventional arms, and drugs relies upon many of the same resources and capacities needed to detect and prevent nuclear proliferation and combat terrorist activities.

Thus, developing nations are able to stretch limited financial resources toward not only building a more stable and secure environment for development but also fulfilling security obligations to the global community. The result is a more sustainable nonproliferation programming that ultimately costs less. More importantly, it has yielded an array of unique South-South partnerships that indicate an emerging bright spot for global efforts against the proliferation threat.

To date, at least three broad categories of partnerships in this discrete security space are evident across the Global South. They are categorized as:

1. Initiatives of "incipient global leaders," where governments of regional powers work with neighboring countries to address security challenges. For example, beginning in 2010, Argentina launched a bilateral cooperation initiative with Peru that not only includes commodity identification training, interagency cooperation across the Ministries of Defense, Industry, Foreign Affairs, and Justice, but also targets the training of Peruvian police and border personnel;
2. Collaborations among the "resource challenged," where nations with limited funds work together in order to pool resources toward greater overall security. For instance, in 2007, the Caribbean Community proposed an innovative collaboration to share regional implementation capacity for nonproliferation implementation as well as facilitating the hire of a single coordinator to manage each government's implementation program; and
3. Cooperative programs instigated by the "strategically motivated," where nations with economic incentive for regional security provide the means and coordination to create safe trade routes and improve overall regional security. For example, Croatia, in a direct effort to promote its admission to the EU, has launched an aggressive campaign to not only highlight its compliance with the global nonproliferation regime but also to share these capacities with other states-in-need, including Pakistan, Qatar, Belarus, and certain African states.

Rather than considering these partnerships challenges to the traditional Western-oriented approaches, proponents of nonproliferation should welcome these developments as positive advances. In short, countries in the Global South increasingly find themselves to be links on a potential proliferation supply chain. As such, unique South-South partnerships provide a look at how nonproliferation programming might be modernized to address these changing proliferation realities across the developing world.

For a more detailed discussion of innovative South-South partnerships see: Brian D. Finlay, "Proliferation Prevention: Bridging the Security/Development Divide in the Global South," Global Studies Review volume 7.3 (Fall 2011), which can be accessed here.

Photo Credit: DVIDSHUB, Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/dvids/3533706447/