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alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear

A Walk With Alex Bell

Words: Laicie Heeley
Pictures: Holson House
Date:

I won’t even be diplomatic about this. Alex Bell is one of my favorite humans. She’s from the south. She’s smart as hell. And she doesn’t mince words.

Alex is the Senior Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control & Non-Proliferation, where she focuses on national security issues in Congress, nuclear arms control, foreign policy, Pentagon spending, and other areas of peace and security.

Before that, she was the Director for Strategic Outreach in the Office of the Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the Department of State. Oh, and a Peace Corps Volunteer in southwest Jamaica.

She’s a Truman National Security Fellow, a Council on Foreign Relations Term Member, a 2017 Munich Security Conference Young Leader, a member of the Project on Nuclear Issues Mid-Career Cadre and a member of the Younger Generation Leaders Network on Euro-Atlantic Security.

Blah, blah, blah. She’s pretty damn great. She’s also an incredible artist.

And if you don’t already know who she is, I promise you’re in for a treat. Give her interview a read, below. And for an added bonus, tune in to hear her talk diplomacy on the very first episode of Things That Go Boom from PRI and Inkstick Media!

alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
The idea that people would come out en masse to protest nuclear weapons on Capitol Hill is an alien concept to me. Except, now, in this strange turn of events, the Trump administration has done more for the arms control community to get our message out than anything we've ever done or tried.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I can't think of a single weapon that's been used twice and never again. And the reason for that is, I think, we went too far. And I think we knew that. That's what scares me the most about people who talk about nuclear war-fighting. I really, really want them to go to Hiroshima and Nagasaki and walk through those museums. And really process what happened there. Then come and talk to me about nuclear war-fighting.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
What I really want to see is that, in particular, young people pick up the idea of nuclear disarmament and responsible nuclear behavior and put it on the pile with the rest of the things they believe in, like climate change, and gender equality, and civil equality.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I have hope in the next generation — in the idea that we're all in this together and we've got to find ways to make this work. And hopefully in a rejection of the kind of terrible partisan polarization that we're now going through.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
The biggest assembly of people in protest in the history of our country was in reaction to this president getting elected. It took that long for women to mass in those numbers. Women have been getting the short end of the stick forever in this country. It took two-hundred-and-thirty-some years to do what they did a year ago [Saturday] and I hope that's the beginning of something. That that this is sort of the death rattle.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
It's more painful than I thought it was going to be. And scarier than I thought it was going to be. But it's happening now. The country and the world is changing. I think for the better.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
If the Trump administration can somehow figure out how to not get in its own way as we try to look for ways to stabilize the [Korean] peninsula and eventually work towards denuclearizing then I'll be the first one cheering for it. I want it to get done. It's not partisan to me, it's what has to be done. And you've got to get back to a place where we're supporting whoever's in office as they try to reduce these nuclear threats.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
The months and years have gone by and what used to be 100 percent, don't worry about this, we can handle this. This is not 100 percent anymore. I can't tell my friends in good conscience that that there aren't dangers now and that we haven't, sort of, failed to figure out how to work through this problem. And I don't think that's any one particular administration's fault or any one person's fault. I mean I will say that I think dropping out of the Agreed Framework has proven to be a poor decision and that's what worries me so much about the Iran Deal is that we have something that may indeed be imperfect. But it's something. We can build on that.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I heard a Republican make the case years ago, before I even went into the administration, and he was saying that even if you don't believe in climate change — and you really should believe in climate change — even if you didn't, wouldn't you want to move away from fossil fuels just given the fact that so many countries that we have problems with need fossil fuels to sustain their economies? From a simple national security perspective, investment in green tech has a side benefit.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I remember during the New START floor debate… we were trying to get an idea of the whip count — how senators were voting — and at least two Republican senators announced on Twitter that they were going to vote yes for the treaty. So I called up to the war room [at State] and I said we've got these two people. And the response was, 'What news outlets are reporting this?' And I said, 'No, it was on Twitter.' They tweeted it. They were like, 'No, but who has verified it.'
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
To think about that day in December, 2010… that eight years later we'd be dealing with a president who basically conducts his foreign policy entirely through Twitter. And that you would have the Secretary of State say things like, we print them out and then try to figure out how to work policy around it.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
The minute I start becoming cynical and think, we can't possibly accomplish things and it's too hard, it will never change. I mean the minute I start thinking that, I'll head back to the mountains. Just become an artist bartender.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I feel like when I'm working out I'm still thinking. When I paint, when I draw, it just… it gets clear and I just concentrate on one thing.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
You can get awesome content in front of somebody. But it's really the speaker and really the fact that they believe it. Which is the great thing about writing for Rose [Gottemoeller,] is that she really did believe in what we were working for and knew that it was the right thing.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I did have a conversation in advance of meeting [President Obama.] I was asked if I had any funny stories… so I went to Chapel Hill to the Peace Corps and they were like, what about anything funny? And all I could think of was, 'Well everyone talks about my dog Lulu and Bo going on a date.'
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I thought I was going to shake his hand and there would be a picture, and that was it, like a receiving line. But then when I arrived there they made it clear that the folks that had been nominated as doing a good job as a political appointee were going to get to talk to him alone in the Oval Office, and I was not mentally prepared for that at all… And he's like, 'First things first, I understand that you want to set Lulu up with Bo' — and I'm like, how does he know my dog's name. So I say, 'Yes sir, my friends and I joke about that.' And he was like, 'I feel like I should tell you, Bo is fixed.' I said, 'Oh ya so is she, so they could just be platonic friends.' And it was the only clever thing I said for the rest of the interaction.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
Work and rework and rework and eventually you'll get there.
alex bell inkstick media women in national security foreign policy state department nuclear
I sort of look at the government like a 10-day thing. You had nine not so great, and some of them probably bad days, and then a day that was awesome.
Author bio

Laicie Heeley

Editor in Chief

Laicie Heeley is the founding CEO of Inkstick Media, where she serves as Editor in Chief of the foreign policy magazine Inkstick and Executive Producer and Host of the PRX- and Inkstick-produced podcast, Things That Go Boom. Heeley’s reporting has appeared on public radio stations across America and the BBC, where she’s explored global security issues including domestic terrorism, disinformation, nuclear weapons, and climate change. Prior to launching Inkstick, Heeley was a Fellow with the Stimson Center’s Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense program and Policy Director at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. Her publications include work on sanctions, diplomacy, and nuclear arms control and nonproliferation, along with the first full accounting of US counterterrorism spending after 9/11.

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