The IAEA has recently released their 20/20 vision of the future. This report is authored by a ‘commission of eminent persons’. What it means to be eminent is up to the reader, I suppose.I understand, however, that most of the report has been drafted and edited by Matthew Bunn, the Belfer Centre’s Atomic Energizer Bunny. I call him that because his publishing record indicates that he never sleeps, or that he is on some sort of new miracle energy drug. In any case, he keeps on drumming long after the rest of us have fallen asleep.
The report puts forward a couple of initiatives that has been discussed within the verification community for some time now. I just have not seen them expressed so clearly. Some of them is extremely controversial.
First, the report suggests that the IAEA’s existing authority should be interpreted to give the Agency the responsibility to inspect for indicators of nuclear weapons activities. This is an interesting recommendation since it suggests that the current safeguards authorities are enough to give the legal cover for the verification activity.
It would nevertheless have been interesting to learn more about how the group reached that conclusion, especially since the recommendation, despite its dramatic content, is very vague.
What does it mean to ‘inspect’ for an indicator, for instance? Are inspectors supposed to roam around in all countries, equipped with a magnifying glass and a pipe, looking for stuff that may point to a weapons programme? This must hardly be the point of the panel.
Instead, what is needed is an enhanced Agency capability to detect, and then monitor, potential weaponization activities. It is obviously here the majority of investments need to be done, before actual inspection is possible. This includes making sure that the Agency is entitled to receiving credible information on undeclared facilities or fissile material holdings from national intelligence agencies. It also includes building in-house capacity so that the IAEA can assess the intelligence it receives.
In addition, the IAEA should explore ways in which they independently can detect and monitor weaponization activities. This is likely to be a harder task, but would include reviewing satellite monitoring practices, open source information and collation, and improving the organization’s tie-in to national and multinational export control regimes.
Once a lead has been generated, the Agency needs to develop the ability to follow-up on that lead. Here, existing Agency authorities come in, since it would involve Agency personnel travelling to the suspected country, visiting various establishments, reviewing their records, and most importantly, talk to its staff. The present formulation of the Statute might cover activities of this kind.
Inspections in the literal sense will only be needed when a site has been identified and located. Here, I am not so sure that the current mandate will be enough, since the state wishing to deflect the inspectors are likely to argue that the more specific --- and constrained --- procedure in the CSA or the AP should be followed. They would probably be right. After all, in international law the specific have precedence over the general.
That is why it is important to incorporate any new monitoring and inspection mandate into the proposed ‘Additional Protocol Plus’. Personally, I think that the AP plus could overcome some of the problems we have today. It could give ‘emergency powers’ to the Agency to get access to relevant sites, personnel and documentation. Authority going beyond what’s envisioned under today’s ‘special inspections’
It is not surprising that the panel is calling on all States to give full transparency and access to the IAEA. After all, the only way for a State to give full assurance to the international community that a state has nothing to hide, is to at least attempt to show the Agency everything it’s got. Sadly, several States today are either unwilling or, in some cases at least, unable to give this kind of transparency. Iran is a case in point. By constantly pressing on non-diversion and conveniently forgetting the words ‘completeness’ and ‘correctness’ it is even embarked on a public relations campaign effectively trying to prove that the pre-Iraq verification regime was fit for purpose.
Syria is not far behind, arguing that full transparency often leads to a Western witch-hunt. Other states don’t want to contribute to enhanced safeguards because their regional rival has elected to stand outside the non-proliferation regime.
In the latter sense, the ‘New Partnership Approach’ suggested by the panel to bring in Israel, India and Pakistan is quite interesting. After all, the present situation, where the NPT membership seems obsessed about bringing them into the treaty as non-nuclear weapon states, and the three seems obsessed about joining the treaty as nuclear-weapon state members, is both unrealistic and counter-productive.
Clearly, a new approach must be taken. Building that on the Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty and the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty seems unlikely to yield immediate results (given the opposition to both treaties by India and, to some extent, Pakistan). Rather then attempting to build on the old, this new approach should be truly innovative, looking at ways to bring this States into the non-proliferation fold, without attempting to put them into one box or the other.
This challenge will require true creativity.
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