Major Fellowship Activities: Prosser focused on the nexus between export control, non-proliferation policy and U.S. counterproliferation policy, and wrote several articles and reports for CDI that are posted on its website. He researched and wrote a short analysis piece on U.S. arms transfers and military policy towards Pakistan, entitled “U.S. Arms Transfers to America’s Newest ‘Major Non-NATO Ally.’” He also contributed case studies on U.S. military assistance to both Pakistan and India to CDI’s “Arms Trade” web page. His research for these pieces included interviews with experts from several think tanks and government officials. He attended a hearing of the House International Relations Committee and heard testimony from Assistant Secretary of State John Wolf on the potential admittance of China to the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), a multilateral export control regime that coordinates nuclear export guidelines among supplier countries. He subsequently wrote another article for CDI’s “Nuclear Issues” web page entitled “Considering China as a Potential Member of the Nuclear Suppliers Group.” He wrote two articles about nuclear proliferation and means to curtail such activity. The first is entitled “The Proliferation Security Initiative in Perspective,” on a U.S.-led effort to interdict illicit sea, air and land-based WMD shipments. He conducted research on nuclear smuggling in South and Southeast Asia, and the role of international intelligence cooperation and export control efforts in curtailing the illicit trade in NBC weapons, materials and equipment. He wrote “Nuclear Trafficking Routes: Dangerous Trends in Southern Asia,” which detailed nuclear and missile trafficking activities in South and Southeast Asia during the past 10 years; this research article was posted on CDI’s “Nuclear Issues” page. He drafted an op-ed on the inadequacy of measures taken to bring to a halt the Khan nuclear smuggling network and associated agents’ activities. He also authored a research piece titled “Iraq: Civilian Suffering in the Fallujah Assault” about the humanitarian effects of the fighting in Fallujah, Iraq in November 2004. In addition to the articles for CDI, he co-wrote an op-ed, “The Need for Arms Transfer Restraint,” which was published in Defense News. The op-ed voiced concerns about the U.S. delivery of major conventional weapons systems to authoritarian allies in the war on terrorism. He was quoted in an article in Sea Power magazine (“Proliferation Security Initiative Seen as Start to Curbing Trade in Weapons of Mass Destruction,” November 2004). In June 2004, he served as a rapporteur for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace at its annual Nonproliferation Conference, which hosted talks by leading nuclear experts, including Hans Blix and Mohammed El-Baradei. He also spoke to a class of students at American University about careers in the field of peace and security.
He attended a lecture by the Pakistani ambassador to the U.S., Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, on U.S.-Pakistan Counterterrorism Efforts, at the Heritage Foundation. He attended a Congressional briefing, “Pakistan and the Nuclear Supermarket: Assessing the Damage,” given by Husain Haqqani, former adviser to Prime Minister Bhutto, at the Dirksen Senate Office Building, a conference at the National Academy of Sciences (CISAC summer symposium), “Post-Cold War U.S. Nuclear Strategy: A Search for Technical and Policy Common Ground,” and a briefing, “Nuclear Security Strategy for the 21st Century,” by General Eugene Habiger (ret.), USAF, at the Center for International Trade and Security. He also attended and participated in a meeting of the Arms Transfer Working Group, at which his article on Pakistan was circulated to the Group’s members. He attended various segments of CDI’s annual Board meeting, including the CDI Board dinner where General Anthony Zinni gave a speech about the situation and U.S. policy in Iraq. He attended the Luxembourg Group conference on Transatlantic Relations, held at the Woodrow Wilson Center and SAIS, as well as two panel discussions–one on failing states, and another on weapons proliferation.
Current Activities: Prosser is an INSSP Officer (Asia-Pacific region) at International Atomic Energy Agency. He was previously a Senior Analyst with the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute (UNICRI) in Geneva, Switzerland. UNICRI’s major goals include formulating and implementing improved policies in the field of crime prevention and criminal justice. He was responsible for guiding national officials in developing strategies for chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear risk mitigation. He also performed analysis regarding the impact of emerging technologies on global security.
He has been a participant in the UN Counter-Terrorism Implementation Task Force (CTITF) Working Group on Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) since 2009, was a member of UNICRI Delegation at the Meeting of State Parties to the Biological Weapons Convention (BWC), Palais des Nations, Geneva, in December 2017, and is a member of the International Studies Association. He wrote “Status Ambitions and Iranian Nuclear Reversal” in Strategic Studies Quarterly in summer 2017. In May 2017 he gave two lectures, one entitled “Introduction to Chemical and Biological Materials and Weapons” and another entitled “Understanding the Risks of CBRN Terrorism’” at the UNICRI Specialized Course in Turin, Italy. He gave a presentation on “What are the Present and Future Risks in the Area of Biosafety and Biosecurity?” at a side event of the Eighth Review Conference of the Biological Weapons Convention in Geneva in November 2016. He organized a panel discussion “Governing Security in the Global Information Age: Counteracting the Risks of Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Terrorism,” and presented a paper entitled “Weapon of Mass Protection: Security Governance and the Non-state CBRN Threat,” at the Annual Convention of the International Studies Association in San Diego on April 1-4, 2012.
He received a PhD in International Relations in 2010 from the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, which is affiliated with the University of Geneva. He researched U.S. nonproliferation policy and nuclear policies in emerging nuclear states. His thesis is entitled “Nuclearization and Its Discontents: Status, Security, and the Pathways to Nuclear Reversal.” His doctoral thesis examines the question of why so many states have forsworn nuclear weapons. It applies quantitative methods and sociological insights on status and prestige to comprehend states’ nuclear choices.
He worked as a Graduate Assistant in the Political Science Dept. of the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies. In November 2006 he received first prize in the American Academy of Diplomacy’s 2006 Leonard Marks Essay Contest for Creative Thought and Writing on American Foreign Policy for his essay titled “Engaging Iran to Impose Limits on its Nuclear Program.” As part of the prize, he met with Under Secretary for Political Affairs Nicholas Burns at the State Dept. to discuss his essay, and he also defended the essay before a distinguished panel of former US ambassadors at the American Academy of Diplomacy. He wrote “Criminal Pursuits,” a letter to the editor in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (March/April 2007) about the A. Q. Khan network and state incentives to acquire nuclear weapons. He presented “The Paths to Restraint: Explaining Why States Abandon (or Embrace) the Nuclear Option,” Annual Jan Tinbergen European Peace Science Conference in Amsterdam in June 2007. In February-March 2006, he traveled to India with the help of a grant from the Tokyo Foundation (SYLFF Fellows Mobility Program). In India, he was a visiting fellow at Jawaharlal Nehru University and interviewed nuclear policy experts in New Delhi in support of his academic research. He is a member of the American Political Science Association, the International Studies Association, and the Peace Science Society International.