by CKR
This was the first Carnegie Nonproliferation Conference I've attended. It's hard to know where to start. My brain has been in overload for the last few days.
We're in DC, along with New York the epitome of East Coast sophistication and cool. I know. I grew up in all that. So I'm having some reservations about the bloggish let-it-all-hang-out approach. Above all, cool means never saying how impressed you are to meet people. You knew them and their betters all along. But I was impressed and very pleased to be able to talk to so many people I've seen on television and otherwise heard of.
The nonproliferation community is small compared to other groups I've been associated with. The American Chemical Society's twice-yearly meetings draw tens of thousands of attendees. This meeting was 850 people, and, according to those who've been here before, that's a lot. It's small enough that anyone can talk to anyone else, including the talking heads from television and bylines from the newspapers. That includes some MSM writers I like to read and link to. I even had extended conversations with some of them. Totally inadvertently, I sat down next to Mark Hibbs at Monday's lunch. Goes to show that luck can be better than planning.
There were many media people at the conference. Glenn Kessler (and two others from the Washington Post), Steve Coll (The New Yorker), Julian Borger (The Guardian), along with representatives from the BBC, Kyodo News Service, CNN, AP, Munhwa Daily Newspaper, McGraw-Hill, Los Angeles Times, Nile News Channel, Reuters, India Abroad, Washington Monthly, Shanghai Morning Post, Sueddeutsche Zeitung, The Jerusalem Post, Der Spiegel, Kuwait News Agency, La Stampa, US News and World Report, Scripps-Howard, The New York Times, ABC News, USA Today, Congressional Quarterly, and the predictable Arms Control Today, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and Exchange Monitor Publications.
Representatives from the diplomatic corps of many countries also attended: Norway, Sweden, Indonesia, League of Arab States, US Department of State, Netherlands, Australia, France, Slovakia, Poland, UK, Brazio, Iraq, Egypt, Canada, India, Austria, Mexico, Ireland, Germany, Israel, South Africa, Denmark, and Russia.
A few congressmen, past and present, along with a few more congressional aides, were on the attendee list. At least two people from the Government Accountability Office. Employees from several countries' Departments of Defense. A very few defense contractors, and many universities and think tanks.
It's delightful to be immersed in a particular topic for a couple of days, especially such an important one. I met a young man who just graduated from law school and is trying to decide what direction to go in. Most of the people I talked to were gracious and seemed glad to talk to me.
There were some standout presentations: Margaret Beckett's talk was something most of us would have liked to have heard from Condoleezza Rice. Joe Cirincione and Matt Bunn questioned Mark Hibbs on the Khan network (it's not gone) and how he got the North Korea uranium enrichment story right. (He asked factual questions of people who might know, he said.) Ambassador S. Jaishankar presented India's case of the US's opening nuclear trade perhaps as well as we're going to hear it. Clay Sell presented the US's case for the Global Nuclear Energy Partnership perhaps as well as we're going to hear it, including a flourish on the RRW and incorporating weapons fissile material into commercial reactors. If you think those last two descriptions are faint praise, you're right. More about all this later.