Combating Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction

The Commission believes this reorganization has the potential to improve theDepartment’s ability to address the long-term challenges it faces in combating theproliferation of weapons of mass destruction.Maintaining the Proper Balance Between WMD Priorities and BilateralPrioritiesRecommendation 5.1: The Department of State should take advantage of its neworganizational structure to create country-specific strategies that combine regionaland functional perspectives concerning WMD proliferation. Instructions to Chiefs ofMission should reflect these strategies.Centralizing responsibility for proliferation-related issues within State should help balancethe Department’s historical institutional preference for bilateral policy objectives at theexpense of global policy objectives, such as WMD proliferation. The long-standing parallel“functional” and “regional” organization viewpoints within the Department reflectfundamentally different ways of organizing and approaching foreign policy issues. Thisoverall organizational framework could pose a continuing challenge to proliferation policymanagement. Advocacy for “functional” issues, such as WMD proliferation, arms control,and counter-narcotics, is likely to continue to clash with the State Department’s dominant“regional” philosophy and structure. Instead, the Department should find ways to betterintegrate its regional and functional expertise to bring both approaches to the developmentof country- and region-specific strategies for combating proliferation.The Commission also believes that the appointment of a National Director forCombating Proliferation, as recommended in Chapter 2, will help alleviate concernsabout maintaining strong interagency advocacy for proliferation policy objectives within theforeign policy community.48