IWP Professor Henry Sokolski has recently completed an extensive two-year research project for the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center that has culminated in a paper entitled: “Improving the Role of Intelligence in Counterproliferation Policymaking: Speaking Truth to Nonproliferation Project, 2018.” This paper was included in the CIA’s Studies in Intelligence journal, Volume 63, Number 1 (March 2019).
Synthesizing discussions from 50 intelligence officers, top academic national security analysts, and policymakers, Sokolski’s report developed primary histories for eight different nuclear proliferation cases. Covering Taiwan, South Korea, India, Pakistan, Israel, Libya, an Argentine and a separate South African nuclear rocket case, Sokolski’s new histories were made with direct consultation from former officials who played firsthand roles in the events he reviews.
Prof. Sokolski’s primary objective in compiling this piece was to assess when and how intelligence shaped or prompted nonproliferation policy actions. Sokolski also sought to identify instances in which intelligence failed to prompt these actions and identify why. Ultimately, his project sought to address three broad questions, all of which are intrinsic to the intersection of intelligence and the creation of nonproliferation policy, both past and present:
- How can the role of intelligence in the making of non-proliferation policy be approved?
- How can the nonproliferation agenda get the priority it deserves?
- How can the nonproliferation community be sustained and strengthened?
Professor Sokolski’s work helps illustrate the exceptional resources at the disposal of IWP students, with world-class scholar-practitioners distinguished in the discipline they teach.