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Kathleen Bailey is a senior associate at the National Institute for Public Policy (NIPP), a Washington, D.C.-based think tank founded in the early 1980s by hawkish nuclear strategist Keith Payne that promotes aggressive U.S. strategic policies. Bailey has served in several Republican administrations, including most recently as a member of former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s Arms Control and Nonproliferation Advisory Board (2006-2008). During the George H.W Bush administration, Bailey was assistant director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency; under President Ronald Reagan, Bailey served as the research director of the U.S. Information Agency and then as deputy assistant secretary of state for intelligence and research. During 1992-1998, Bailey was a senior fellow at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. [1]

A staunch opponent of many arms control initiatives, Bailey is perhaps best known for her opposition to the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT), which is widely viewed as a key treaty aimed at stemming the proliferation of nuclear weapons. During the 1999 Senate debate over whether to ratify the treaty, Bailey told the Senate Committee on Armed Services that the treaty would likely “promote the spread of nuclear weapons, as well as enable Russia and others to modernize their arsenals while the US arsenal remains static. … Thus, the limited political benefits of the CTBT are not worth the high cost to our national security." [2]

Bailey has also been critical of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT), arguing that the treaty is not verifiable—a potentiality that the CTBT was created to remedy. In an article for the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Bailey wrote, "Linking the extension of the NPT with a requirement for a timetable for nuclear disarmament is not constructive. Disarmament will not eliminate the risk of nuclear war, it will do little or nothing to prevent nuclear proliferation, and it will not cement the end of the Cold War. … Because there is now no effective verification for nuclear disarmament, potential proliferants [sic] might be inspired to pursue nuclear weapons, and those nations that already have them might decide to secretly retain them." [3]

Bailey was a member of the NIPP team that produced the January 2001 study Rationale and Requirements for Nuclear Forces and Arms Control, which served as a blueprint for President George W. Bush's controversial Nuclear Posture Review. [4] According to a report by the World Policy Institute, "The Bush Administration's Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), released in January 2002, reflects the thinking of far-right conservative organizations and nuclear weapons contractors. The NPR drew many of its findings from a report released in January 2001 by the National Institute for Public Policy, entitled, Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear Forces and Arms Control. In general, the NIPP report calls future security threats to the United States unknown and unpredictable. Therefore, the report concludes that the United States must maintain its nuclear arsenal, and the ability to design, build and test new nuclear weapons. The report asserts that conventional weapons are inadequate replacements for nuclear weapons because they do not have the same ‘destructive power.’ As a solution the report recommends the development of ‘low-yield, precision-guided nuclear weapons’—in other words, a nuclear weapon the United States can actually use. The NIPP panel frowns on arms control treaties because, ‘U.S. policymakers today cannot know the strategic environment of 2005, let alone 2010 or 2020. There is no basis for expecting that the conditions that may permit deep nuclear reductions today will continue in the future.’" [5]

Bailey is the author of four books: Death for Cause (1995), The UN Inspections in Iraq: Lessons for On-Site Verification (1995), Strengthening Nuclear Nonproliferation (1993), and Doomsday Weapons in the Hands of Many: The Arms Control Challenge of the 90s (1991). [6]

Please note: IPS Right Web neither represents nor endorses any of the individuals or groups profiled on this site.