Inspectors for Peace: A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency 1421443333, 9781421443331

Table of contents :
Cover
Half Title
Title
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Nuclear Inspectors
1 One World or None
2 Atoms for Peace
3 Cold War Vienna
4 Science, Safeguards, and Bureaucracy
5 The Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty
6 Gaps in the System
7 North-South Tensions
8 Chernobyl
9 The Nuclear Watchdog
Conclusion: The Last Man Standing
Abbreviations
Glossary
Notes
Index
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
Z

Citation preview

Inspectors for Peace

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Johns Hopk ins N uc l e a r His t or y a nd C on ­t emp or a r y A f fa ir s Martin J. Sherwin, Series Editor

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Inspectors for Peace A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency

EL ISA BE T H ROEHR L ICH

Johns Hopkins University Press Baltimore

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 © 2022 Johns Hopkins University Press All rights reserved. Published 2022 Printed in the United States of Amer­ic­ a on acid-­free paper 2 4 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 Johns Hopkins University Press 2715 North Charles Street Baltimore, Mary­land 21218-4363 www​.­press​.­jhu​.­edu Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­P ublication Data Names: Roehrlich, Elisabeth, 1980–­author. Title: Inspectors for peace : a history of the International Atomic Energy Agency / Elisabeth Roehrlich. Description: Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2022. | Series: Johns Hopkins nuclear history and con­temporary affairs | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2021022703 | ISBN 9781421443331 (hardcover) | ISBN 9781421443348 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: International Atomic Energy Agency—­History. | Nuclear energy—­History. Classification: LCC QC791.9 .R64 2022 | DDC 341.7/34—­dc23 LC rec­ord available at https://­lccn​.­loc​.­gov​/­2021022703 A cata­log rec­ord for this book is available from the British Library. Special discounts are available for bulk purchases of this book. For more information, please contact Special Sales at specialsales@jh​.­edu.

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Contents

Acknowl­ edgments  vii

Introduction: Nuclear Inspectors   1 1  One World or None   16 2  Atoms for Peace   31 3  Cold War Vienna   61 4  Science, Safeguards, and Bureaucracy   78 5  The Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty   107 6  Gaps in the System   130 7  North-­ South Tensions  152 8 Chernobyl  182 9  The Nuclear Watchdog   203 Conclusion: The Last Man Standing   233 Abbreviations    243 Glossary    247 Notes    255 Index    313

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A c k n o w l­e d g m e n t s

Many ­people and institutions supported me in writing Inspectors for Peace. In 2011, Leopold Kammerhofer, head archivist at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), got the ball rolling. Leopold, who was also teaching a class on archival studies at the University of Vienna, where we met, was wondering why Vienna-­based historians never paid much attention to the city’s oldest and most impor­tant international organ­ization and its archives. I am grateful that Oliver Rathkolb, head of the University of Vienna’s Department of Con­temporary History, convinced me to delve into the agency’s story, a proj­ect that I found increasingly exciting. Leopold supported the development and writing of this book ­until his retirement, so it is only appropriate that he leads in the acknowl­edgments h ­ ere. In addition to Leopold, the entire team at the IAEA archives provided me tremendous support over the years as I conducted my research. I am especially grateful to Gabriella Ivacz, Elizabeth Kata, Shadrack Katu, Richard Lehane, and Marta Riess. I am thankful for the trust and support of former diplomats and retired IAEA staff members who took the time to share their recollections with me. T ­ here are more ­people than I can list h ­ ere who enlightened me about the IAEA’s history based on their own experience. I am especially grateful to t­hose who w ­ ere willing to sit with me for in-­depth, video-­recorded interviews, including former director generals Mohamed ElBaradei and Hans Blix. John Carlson, Pier Roberto Danesi, Stein Deron, Dieter Goethel, James Goodby, Shirley Johnson, Erwin Kuhn, William Lich­ liter, Marco Marzo, Abdul Minty, Merle Opelz, Laura Rockwood, Thomas Shea, David Waller, and Norman Wulf provided me insights into the IAEA’s history and helped me to understand its orga­nizational culture. It was a privilege and delight to have engaged with and learned from Odette Jankowitch-­Prevor, Dimitri Perricos, and Mohamed Shaker, all of whom passed away before the completion of this book. The interview stage of this proj­ect would not have been pos­si­ble without the technical (and moral) support of my colleague Klaudija Sabo.

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viii  Acknowl­ edgments

Researching and writing this book has been an adventure, during which I made many friends around the world. In the early stages of the proj­ect, I became a member of the Nuclear Proliferation International History Proj­ect (NPIHP), a truly global group of nuclear historians who are my academic f­ amily. While I cannot thank all of them individually h ­ ere, I want to acknowledge the support of the NPIHP’s directors Leopoldo Nuti and Christian Ostermann as well as the proj­ ect’s se­nior advisors Francis Gavin, David Holloway, Joseph Pilat, and the late Martin Sherwin. Marty was so kind to invite me to publish this book as part of Johns Hopkins Nuclear History and Con­temporary Affairs, the series he edited for Johns Hopkins University Press. He was a wonderful colleague. I would also like to thank Timothy McDonnell and Evan Pikulski, former NPIHP proj­ect assistants, and the faculty and students of the NPIHP’s Nuclear History Bootcamp and the Asia-­Pacific Nuclear History Institute. A fellowship at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, in Washington, DC, enabled me to begin writing the manuscript in 2015. I thank the 2015–2016 Fellowship Class for their companionship. I am grateful for the many helpful comments from and discussions with my colleagues at vari­ous workshops and conferences and owe special thanks to ­t hose who read and commented on large and small parts of the manuscript or ­earlier versions of it: Günter Bischof, Kian Byrne, Malfrid Braut-­Hegghammer, William Burr, Eliza Gheor­ghe, Maximilian Graf, Jonathan Hunt, Karena Kalmbach, Fabian Lüscher, Jan-­Henrik Meyer, Mary  X. Mitchell, Robin Möser, Or Rabinowitz, Jayita Sarkar, Lukas Schemper, Thomas Shea, Anna Weichselbraun, and the reviewers of the book proposal and the manuscript. I would also like to thank the NPIHP’s research assistant, Yosua Siagian, for support with proofreading. Some of my ­earlier work on the IAEA’s history was made pos­si­ble with financial support from vari­ous institutions. In this regard, I want to thank the Car­ne­g ie Corporation of New York, the Norwegian Institute for Defense Studies, the City of Vienna, the Anniversary Fund of the Austrian Central Bank, and the Austrian Science Fund as well as my academic home, the University of Vienna. At Johns Hopkins University Press, the wonderful team around Laura Davulis, my editor, and her assistant, Esther Rodriguez, guided me ­toward completion of this book. Robin Surratt is all you can wish for in a copyeditor. Her careful reading and precise questions made this a better book. Most importantly, I want to thank my ­family and friends for their loyalty and kindness. I want to especially

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Acknowl­ edgments  ix

acknowledge the support of my friends Julia Koch, in Vienna, and Nancy Boone, in Washington, DC. I owe my greatest thanks to my parents and to Jan and Juna. I always had their support, and they unfailingly encouraged me during the lengthy development and publication of this book.

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Inspectors for Peace

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Introduction

 Nuclear Inspectors

Late on the night of 17 May 1974, two international civil servants arrived at their ­hotel in India ­after a long trip to get ­t here. The young men, nuclear inspectors for the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), had traveled to South Asia to check on selected nuclear facilities. India had set out to develop a civilian nuclear program beginning in 1948, and foreign countries supported it with supplies of material and equipment. The inspectors’ assignment called for them to verify that the Indians ­were using certain foreign nuclear aid solely for peaceful activities and not directing it t­oward any military uses. Such on-­site inspections in member states w ­ ere routine tasks for the IAEA, and the offices in Vienna had handed the Indian job to two rather ju­nior inspectors.1 During breakfast the morning ­after the inspectors arrived, they noticed that ­people at the h ­ otel seemed peculiarly excited. “We saw a lot of smirking around us, b ­ ecause they knew we w ­ ere from the International Atomic Energy Agency,” recalled one of the two inspectors, Dimitri Perricos, in a conversation more than 40 years ­later, eager to share his recollections of the day.2 What was ­going on? Why ­were ­people so interested in the presence of the IAEA officials? The two men asked around u ­ ntil someone showed them a newspaper with explosive front-­ page news. In the early morning hours, while the two nuclear inspectors slept, the Indian army had tested a nuclear fission device ­u nder the Rajasthan desert.3 The Indian prime minister, Indira Gandhi, claimed that Smiling Bud­dha, as the government code-­named the test, had been a peaceful nuclear explosion (PNE), not a nuclear weapon test.4 At the time, many states considered PNEs useful, power­ful instruments for large-­scale industrial and engineering purposes, such as excavation proj­ects and the development of oil and gas fields. Technically speaking, ­there was ­little difference between nuclear explosives for peaceful uses and ­those for military purposes. This ambiguity made the situation

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tricky for the inspectors. ­A fter all, the international community had charged the IAEA with promoting civilian uses of nuclear technology without furthering its use for military activities. The news about the Indian nuclear test had caught the IAEA inspectors by surprise. “It was a bit embarrassing,” said Perricos in retrospect. Never before had IAEA officials been surprised by a nuclear explosion during an inspection tour. The two men de­cided to consult their boss, a Yugo­slav named Slobodan Nakićenović, the responsible division director within the Department of Safeguards at the IAEA headquarters in Vienna. Making a phone call from India to Austria was a challenge in the mid-1970s. When the inspectors fi­nally got through and w ­ ere able to ask Nakićenović what to do in light of the unpre­ce­dented situation, they ­were directed to follow the inspection schedule as originally planned. ­Today, almost fifty years l­ater, the inspectors’ story, largely forgotten even within the IAEA, raises puzzling questions: How was it pos­si­ble that the IAEA and its two inspectors on the ground had no clue about the upcoming nuclear test of a member state? Why did the IAEA, which media ­today like to call the United Nations’ “nuclear watchdog,” not immediately condemn the explosion? Why did the agency’s leadership not initiate further investigations while the inspectors ­were in India instead of ordering that business proceed as usual? Why did the IAEA, an intergovernmental organ­ization affiliated with the United Nations, continue to offer cooperation on a technology prone to military use?

The Dual Mandate ­ here is a short answer and a long answer to the above questions. The short anT swer is that the IAEA had no authority and no instruments that would have allowed it to learn about the Indian test in advance. It also had no power to prevent India from, and no means to penalize it for, testing a nuclear explosive—­even if the test had a military origin or purpose. The IAEA was bound by international treaties to fulfill tasks that its member states authorized it to perform. In the case of India, only a few specified items among the foreign nuclear supplies it received fell ­u nder IAEA control.5 The starting material for the plutonium used in the Smiling Bud­dha test, irradiated uranium fuel, had come from the CIRUS reactor provided by Canada. The United States had supplied the moderator for the reactor, heavy ­water, on the condition that India use it exclusively for peaceful nuclear activities. Despite the reactor’s foreign origin, the involved states had not placed it ­under IAEA safeguards. Moreover, India, though an IAEA member, had not signed the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) of 1968, for which the IAEA held authority to verify adherence.6 The treaty was con-

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Introduction  3

ceived as an international effort to freeze the number of existing nuclear weapon states, and all the non-­nuclear weapon states that signed the treaty committed themselves to forgoing the manufacture or acquisition of nuclear weapons or any other nuclear explosives. Smiling Bud­dha presented a prob­lem for the IAEA, but it had no authority in regard to it. The longer and less technical answer to the questions about the inspectors’ powerlessness in India goes to the heart of Inspectors for Peace, which aims to unravel the IAEA’s seeming paradox of sharing nuclear materials, technology, and knowledge while aiming to deter nuclear weapon programs. This paradox has characterized the agency’s mission since its inception. The IAEA’s “dual mandate” of technological promotion and inhibition is enshrined in the first two articles of its statute.7 In the words of the agency’s l­egal foundation, drafted between 1954 and 1956, the IAEA seeks “to accelerate and enlarge the contribution of atomic energy to peace, health and prosperity throughout the world.” At the same time, and “so far as it is able,” the agency has the task of ensuring “that assistance provided by it or at its request or u ­ nder its supervision or control is not used in such a way as to further any military purpose.”8 The example of the ­Indian test, and the uneasy global reactions to it, show that real­ity was and is more complicated. Governments around the world w ­ ere worried about Smiling Bud­dha precisely ­because they did not believe in the ability to strictly separate civilian and military nuclear technologies, especially when it came to an explosive nuclear device. In recent years, po­liti­cal scientists have increasingly warned of the risks involved in nuclear technical cooperation and knowledge exchange.9 Based on quantitative studies, Robert Brown and Jeffrey Kaplow concluded that states benefiting from nuclear fuel cycle–­related technical assistance through the IAEA “are more likely to engage in nuclear weapons programs,” which “is bad news for international nonproliferation efforts.”10 Contrary to what the lit­er­a­t ure might suggest, this is not a new concern. ­T here have always been warnings about the dangers inherent in the IAEA’s dual mandate, and the connections between civilian and military nuclear technology have been well understood from the outset. As the nonproliferation expert Leonard Weiss aptly wrote, “Put simply, spreading nuclear technology spreads the ability (in ­whole or in part) to make nu­ atters can result in providclear weapons.”11 Technical cooperation on nuclear m ing states with some of the equipment and materials necessary for a military nuclear program or with relevant knowledge and crucial practical experience in ­handling nuclear technologies applicable to nuclear weaponry.12 In this regard, critics have described the IAEA’s dual mandate as a “dangerous schizo­phre­nia.”13

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In short, obvious facts point to the risks of the IAEA’s agenda: the spread of nuclear technology and know-­how bears the risk of leading to more nuclear weapon states, and the IAEA’s power to prevent states from developing military nuclear capabilities is l­ imited. Inspectors for Peace aims to understand the historical evolution of the IAEA’s paradoxical dual mandate, from the hopes and expectations that motivated the agency’s found­ers to the organ­ization’s inherent weaknesses and failures. The IAEA’s catch-22 of nuclear sharing and denial originated in its found­ers’ expectation, or at least their hope, that the atom’s peaceful and military uses could be kept apart, recognizing that the uncontrolled spread of nuclear weapons was bad but the distribution of nuclear applications in medicine, agriculture, and industry could benefit humanity.14 Like other international organ­izations in the UN system, the IAEA has a technical assistance mandate. Nuclear safeguards have been developed to make sure that such technical assistance is used only for civilian proj­ects, but in the vari­ous IAEA publications concerning safeguards objectives and approaches, the term safeguards is never clearly defined.15 In s­ imple language, “safeguards” encompasses a number of dif­fer­ent verification methods, ranging from on-­site inspections of member states to containment of nuclear material to remote monitoring of facilities. Throughout the IAEA’s history, the relationship between, and often the opposing nature of, the facilitating and inhibiting aspects of its work have been at the center of po­liti­cal debate among member states. US president Dwight Eisenhower proposed the establishment of an international atomic energy agency in December 1953, presenting the idea to the General Assembly of the United Nations in his now famous “Atoms for Peace” speech. In an act of unpre­ce­dented collaboration between the rival Cold War superpowers, the Soviet Union and the United States followed up on Eisenhower’s concept. Thus the IAEA was born in 1957 amid the optimism and pessimism that si­mul­ ta­neously characterized the post–­World War II era and the dawn of the nuclear age. A ­ fter the United States dropped atomic bombs on the Japa­nese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in early August 1945, killing more than 200,000 p ­ eople, numerous politicians and scientists called for the establishment of an international regulatory body to rein in use of the atom’s devastating power. ­Until the mid1950s, uranium, the prime raw material for this new form of energy generation, appeared to be scarce, and many believed that using the rare ele­ment for civilian purposes would reduce its availability for weapon programs. The postcolonial states hoped that the new technology would spur their industrial and scientific pro­gress.16 According to 1950s logic, a truly modern state had to master the

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Introduction  5

atom. Transcending Cold War bound­aries, the optimism surrounding nuclear technology united the East, West, and Global South. The IAEA’s found­ers w ­ ere confident that applying nuclear technologies to agriculture, medicine, and energy generation would help solve some of the world’s most pressing prob­lems, among them famine, w ­ ater and energy shortages, and deadly diseases. Still t­ oday, the IAEA trains scientists from developing countries, sets standards in nuclear safety, security, and diagnostic radiology, assists member states in developing nuclear power programs, and promotes civilian nuclear applications and science in a variety of fields, ranging from food preservation to cancer research. Most of the agency’s achievements in civilian nuclear applications, however, such as the eradication of the tsetse fly in Zanzibar using radiation techniques in the mid-1990s, are less well-­known than the activities of the agency’s nuclear inspectorate. To understand the origins, transformations, and contradictions of the IAEA’s dual mandate, Inspectors for Peace looks at key moments in the agency’s history, especially ­those when the relationship between promotion and restriction became the subject of heated po­liti­cal debate in the agency’s policy-­making organs. Why did the IAEA, an international organ­ization with almost global membership, defend its counterintuitive and risky mandate of sharing nuclear knowledge and technology while hoping to deter nuclear weapon programs? B ­ ecause, it is argued h ­ ere, what appears to be the IAEA’s greatest weakness has actually contributed to its success: While the promotional agenda of the IAEA bore risks, it also allowed the agency to facilitate diplomats and national experts coming together at the same t­able in pursuit of shared missions. In times of crises, the IAEA was a place where scientists from dif­fer­ent states continued to work with each other and where governments could pursue diplomatic solutions in an inter­ national institutional setting. In 1994, North ­Korea withdrew from the IAEA and in 2009 expelled the last inspectors working ­t here, leaving the agency with no means and no mandate to document its nuclear activities, thus depriving the international community of valuable insights into North K ­ orea’s nuclear activities. In order to keep states participating in the safeguards regime, the agency needs to offer them tangible benefits. This is why, despite nonproliferation concerns, technical cooperation remains vital for the IAEA’s legitimacy and broad ac­cep­tance. Common sense would suggest that an international organ­ization with contradictory missions and domination by two opposing powers is doomed to fail. In real­ity, however, the IAEA thrived in such an environment and then survived a major rupture in the international order: the end of the Cold War followed by the

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dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.17 Judging the IAEA and its dual mandate solely by looking at one dimension of the proliferation prob­lem—­technical assistance sometimes helping the development of secret nuclear weapon programs— is too s­ imple. Given this, Inspectors for Peace instead explains why, despite early awareness of the involved risks, the IAEA could not give up civilian nuclear cooperation to prioritize nuclear nonproliferation. The history of the IAEA demonstrates that the degree of awareness of the security risks involved in technical nuclear assistance varied over the years, and that even at times when concerns about weapons proliferation grew, the IAEA’s dual mandate continued to be preserved for a host of po­liti­cal, ­legal, and technical reasons. When nuclear proliferation fears increased, some hoped that institutionalized access to civilian nuclear assistance would at least provide insight into global nuclear developments. Jayita Sarkar and John Krige have recently argued that for states that wanted to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, notably the United States, technical cooperation—­even in the nuclear field—­served “as an instrument to inhibit the technological trajectories of in­de­pen­dent nuclear programs.”18 Borrowing the 1970s notion of “positive disarmament,” they show that in parts of the US administration, technical cooperation was seen as a way to discourage the development of uncontrolled, national nuclear developments. Nuclear safeguards, including inspectors on the ground, served as the IAEA’s instruments for reducing the risk of atoms for peace turning into atoms for war. For the United States, as the first nuclear power, establishing the IAEA served not only as a peace initiative and a generous offer of civilian cooperation, but also as a way to legitimize nuclear technology and to distract from its military uses.19 The so-­called developing states stood up for their right to benefit from nuclear applications. They perceived the global nuclear order as discriminatory, a system of “nuclear apartheid” that denied them an equal chance for industrial development.20 As the anthropologist Hugh Gusterson has argued, ­t here was (and is) “a common perception in the West that nuclear weapons are most dangerous when they are in the hands of Third World leaders.”21 Rather than conforming to the typical Cold War divisions, alliances within the IAEA often formed according to how advanced states w ­ ere in their development of nuclear technology and ­whether they belonged to the “nuclear-­haves” or the “nuclear have-­nots.” The nuclear weapon states sold the NPT, which cemented the separation between the nuclear weapon states and the non-­nuclear weapon states, as a “­grand bargain,” promising access to civilian nuclear assistance for ­those who gave up the nuclear weapons option. Yet for non-­nuclear states, the treaty was not a bargain but

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Introduction  7

a means of superpower cartel politics.22 Over the years, the rivalry between the industrialized and the developing states became the most prevalent source of antagonism among IAEA member states. Historians are trained to scrutinize carefully the terms they use in writing about the past. Which words did contemporaries use in discussing issues the historian is studying? Are the original terms appropriate when writing about the past from a ­later perspective? ­Today, the term developing countries is widely criticized as pejorative. It implies that the states in question have not yet reached a certain level of development, the standard of which is set by the so-­called developed countries. The term also implicitly suggests that the developing countries are a group of quite similar states, thus shrouding the diversity that characterizes the states said to comprise the “developing world.” Responding to ­these concerns, in 2016 the World Bank ­stopped distinguishing between “developing” and “developed” countries in its annual World Development Indicators.23 Although ­there are a number of reasons for using the term developing countries cautiously, throughout the IAEA’s history, representatives from Asian, African, and South American states used the expression self-­confidently in the IAEA’s vari­ous forums. To identify oneself as a representative of a developing country, and to speak on behalf of all developing countries, became a power­ful way of promoting the agency’s technical assistance activities. They asserted their states’ entitlement to technical and scientific support from the IAEA by declaring them still in the pro­cess of industrial “development.” In the 1970s, the idea of the Global South became popu­lar as well. While geo­graph­i­cally inaccurate—­for example, India is regarded as part of the Global South, but Australia is not—it aimed to establish an identity for the developing states that was more empowering than past conceptions.24

Politics and Technology The IAEA has always had a strained relationship with politics. In its institutional self-­image, the agency is a technical, not a po­liti­cal, organ­ization.25 This narrative goes back to the IAEA’s origin. In September 1956, when most countries w ­ ere discussing the text of the IAEA statute at the United Nations in New York, one delegate hoped that the talks would remain f­ ree of propaganda and “all the arguments dug up in the dustbins of the Cold War.”26 ­After the agency’s inception, “politicization” became a “dirty” word within the agency, a charge leveled by member states against o ­ thers perceived as bringing politics into an impartial technical organ­ization. To accuse someone of unwanted politicization, however, was (and is) usually more than a

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matter-­of-­fact reminder about the IAEA’s technical agenda. Member states usually do not accuse other states or the agency’s leadership of politicization b ­ ecause they truly regard a position as too po­liti­cal; rather, it is b ­ ecause they do not like it. For instance, in 2007 US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice criticized the agency’s director general, Mohamed ElBaradei, over Iran’s noncompliance with its obligations u ­ nder the NPT. Rice, who did not share ElBaradei’s stance on the case, stated, “The IAEA is not in the business of diplomacy. [It] is a technical agency,” to which ElBaradei countered, “I d ­ on’t sit h ­ ere and feel I’m only a technician. I owe it to the international community to give them my advice. They ­don’t have to take it.”27 The disagreement between Rice and ElBaradei revealed more about how member states sometimes use the notion of “politicization” to kill opposing views than about an a­ ctual distinction between politics and technology. In light of IAEA’s controversial dual mandate and the heterogeneity of its member states’ interests, however, the agency found it necessary to cultivate the image of being a technical assistant to the international community and, as Madeleine Herren-­ Oesch has described it elsewhere, to manage the normative distinction between politics and science.28 Over the course of the IAEA’s history, its vari­ous director generals have interpreted the agency’s technical nature differently. From the start, the IAEA tried to steer clear of the epitome of g ­ reat power politics: nuclear weapons. It has no verification or any other role u ­ nder the Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty (1996) and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017). The distinction between politics and science has, however, turned out to be more complicated than originally thought, as the agency’s initial working hypothesis—­t hat nuclear weapons constituted a po­liti­cal topic and civilian nuclear applications a purely technical one—­did not hold up. The funding of technical assistance and growing public opposition to nuclear power since the 1970s revealed that the peaceful atom was also highly po­liti­cal. As the historian Marc Mazower noted, just as in other intergovernmental organ­izations, “the claim to stand above politics. . . . ​was both rhetorically necessary and scarcely pos­si­ble.”29

International Organ­izations and the Global Order The science and technology of the atom, rather than a singular administrative function, governs the IAEA’s agenda. Yet the history of the IAEA extends beyond that of the nuclear age, with the agency’s development also being part of the larger history of the global order of the second half of the twentieth ­century. With the end of World War II, “governing the world” and managing the atom appeared

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Introduction  9

to be inseparable tasks.30 At the newly founded United Nations, this was made apparent by the first resolution of the General Assembly, a­ dopted 24 January 1946 and dealing with the international regulation of nuclear technologies.31 The IAEA’s establishment and evolution are an impor­tant example of how states can come together to find solutions to global challenges and to build institutions to ­handle them. The agency’s history also demonstrates why states at times work together but at other times work against one another in pursuit of aims and when and why they fail or succeed. Writing the history of the IAEA is thus inevitably a study in global governance and the role of international organ­izations in it. UN history “has long remained the preserve of po­liti­cal scientists and diplomatic historians, who have tended to focus on its institutional development and on its role in the Cold War,” explain Sunil Amrith and Glenda Sluga in their seminal essay, “New Histories of the United Nations.”32 Akira Iriye came to a similar conclusion ­after he began writing Global Community, his impor­tant study on international organ­izations in the making of the con­temporary world: historians mostly ignored ­these institutions.33 A number of developments and events, however, among them the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 and the US-­led war on Iraq in 2003, have triggered renewed interest in the history of the United Nations and other international organ­izations over the past two de­cades and fostered more varied and critical historiographies. In addition to po­liti­cal scientists, historians have come to understand the key role of international organ­izations not only in international peace and security, but also in managing knowledge, developing norms, and institutionalizing ideas.34 William Walker argues in A Perpetual Menace, his groundbreaking study on nuclear weapons and the international order, that the advent of nuclear weapons “created an exceptional, lasting, ordering imperative in international politics.”35 A new kind of weapon had been introduced—­one capable of unpre­ce­dented destructiveness—­and the international community needed to find ways to limit its possession and use. Nuclear weapons therefore put the “creation of order of an inclusive and comprehensive kind at or near the center of global po­liti­cal inquiry and action.”36 The creation of the IAEA in 1957 was in response to the ordering imperative that the invention of nuclear weapons had caused. In some regards, the new agency could build on the expertise and experience that its member states had gained in building institutions of global governance over the preceding c­ entury. In the second half of the 19th ­century and the first de­cade of the 20th  ­century, the early forerunners of some of ­today’s international organ­ izations, such as the Universal Postal Union and the International Sanitary Office, had been run by small national staffs.37 Only the League of Nations, however,

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10   Inspectors for Peace

in the 1920s u ­ nder Secretary-­General Eric Drummond from Britain, forged the idea of an international civil ser­v ice to act without guidance or direction of the civil servants’ respective home countries.38 Most intergovernmental organ­ izations of the post-1945 era ­were characterized by what the po­liti­cal scientist Inis Claude described as a dualistic architecture of diplomacy and bureaucracy.39 The IAEA’s two policy-­making organs, the Board of Governors and the larger General Conference, consist of delegates from IAEA member states and thus form the diplomatic pillars of the IAEA. The agency’s staff, or secretariat, comprises the bureaucratic body of international civil servants. Complementing Claude’s analy­sis, the United Nations Intellectual History Proj­ect l­ater introduced the notion of a “third UN,” referring to the work and impact of nongovernmental organ­ izations (NGOs), advisors, and other external actors.40 In the IAEA’s case, t­hese include representatives of the peace and environmental movements, opposition parties (such as the South African anti-­apartheid movement, which warned the world about Pretoria’s secret nuclear weapon program during the Cold War), the media, the nuclear industry, outside experts and scientists, and other actors. Like other international organ­izations of the postwar era, the IAEA had to deal with three fundamental facts about the new and evolving global order. First, the new order entailed the end of colonial empires and the emergence of newly in­ de­pen­dent states in Asia and Africa. The creation and workings of the IAEA reflected, in some ways, the dismantling of colonialism, but in o ­ thers the legacy of it in international affairs. That legacy would play out not only in developing countries’ demand for civilian nuclear assistance, but also in uranium mining and nuclear weapons testing. Belgium’s mining of vast uranium reserves in the Belgian Congo contributed to it becoming a founding state of the IAEA, and France, by virtue of its control over Algeria, would in 1960 test its first nuclear weapon in the Sahara Desert. Second, the IAEA had to navigate the ideological, economic, and po­liti­cal conflict between East and West—­t hat is, the Cold War. The strug­gle manifested itself in many ways at the IAEA—­from espionage to competition over the agency’s leadership—­but interestingly, rather than the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union playing out as a dangerous conflict, it often turned out to be, in the words of Roger E. Kanet and Edward A. Kolodziej, “Cold War as cooperation.”41 In par­t ic­u ­lar, on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation, the two Cold War superpowers collaborated successfully at the IAEA, often even challenging the priorities of their allies. Third, the advent of nuclear weapons changed relationships between states, states’ thinking about war and peace, and the criteria for ­great power status.

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Introduction  11

Institutional Memory The dust of archives and the living memories of ­people provide the empirical core of Inspectors for Peace. It is based on extensive archival research in the United States, Eu­rope, and beyond and relies especially on firsthand access to the IAEA Archives, which w ­ ere primarily established to meet the needs of internal users, such as IAEA staffers and diplomats, not outside historians. The archives are located on the fourth floor of the Vienna International Centre (VIC), which ­houses the IAEA headquarters, and the director general resides at the very top of the VIC, on the 28th floor. If the IAEA’s hierarchy corresponds to the vertical, occupational structuring of its office space, institutional history does not seem to rank very high: the archives occupy the lowest floor of agency offices.42 ­Until recently, many key holdings in the archives, including the rec­ords of the Board of Governors, w ­ ere closed to outside researchers. Only in the wake of the agency’s 60th anniversary, celebrated in 2016, and thanks to growing pressure from historians in vari­ous member states did the IAEA make the archives more transparent and allow access to more rec­ord collections.43 In addition to written sources from the archives of international organ­izations, member states, and personal papers, this book draws on interviews with former IAEA diplomats, staff members of vari­ous positions and departments, and high-­ ranking officials, including the former director generals Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei. The study also builds on the work of a number of pioneers in writing the agency’s history, in par­t ic­u ­lar Lawrence Scheinman, an American ­career diplomat and nonproliferation expert who was the first to systematically analyze the IAEA’s role in the global nuclear order in the latter years of the Cold War;44 Benjamin Schiff, who in the late 1980s analyzed the IAEA’s dual mandate from a po­liti­cal science perspective;45 and David Fischer, a South African diplomat and long-­standing IAEA official who authored the agency’s official history on the occasion of its 40th anniversary in the 1990s.46 As with Fischer’s book, much of the existing historical work on international organ­izations has been commissioned or published by the organ­izations themselves, given their “remarkable tendency for self-­portrayals.”47 Often, ­these official histories can be identified by their overuse of capitalization in line with official, in-­house terminology, referring to the “Secretariat” and the “Member States.” While such authorized works are impor­tant sources for historians, they are also too often “sanitized histories that tend to embrace a narrative of pro­gress.”48 ­Later in­de­pen­dent histories of international organ­izations, by contrast, scrutinized the founding myths and narratives that such official histories presented.49

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Building the IAEA The history of institutions is often judged by what they have become. The case of the IAEA shows how this can be misleading. In attempting to disentangle the agency from its pre­sent overidentification with Iran’s nuclear program in the public’s mind, Inspectors for Peace examines why the IAEA’s found­ers created the organ­ization in the mid-1950s, how the agency’s mandate evolved over time, and what history reveals about the agency’s limits and potentials. T ­ oday, the agency is well-­k nown for its global verification and inspection regime, but the organ­ ization’s technical assistance branch, rather than safeguards, was the IAEA’s original flagship. While states usually appreciate technical advice and assistance for their industrial development, they mostly loathe international inspectors on their territory. This is why IAEA safeguards, including inspections—­now often the center of po­liti­cal and media attention when the agency makes headlines—­ got off to a slow start. During the 1950s and 1960s, the age of decolonization, newly in­de­pen­dent states associated inspections with what they had just strug­ gled to overcome: g ­ reat power imperialism. Safeguards, thus, began as a small division, with only a few staff members, and was ­housed in less desirable parts of the IAEA’s first headquarters—­t he former ­Grand ­Hotel in Vienna.50 At the time of the Indian nuclear test, the world’s nuclear landscape also looked very dif­ fer­ent from ­today’s. While Iran’s nuclear program has concerned the international community since the early 2000s, Western nations including the United States were initially interested in supplying the country with nuclear-related technology—despite early suspicions about the country’s nuclear intentions.51 In explaining how and why a once small technical organ­ization in Vienna came to play a central role in international security, Inspectors for Peace forgoes a meticulous history of ­every IAEA division and its activities to instead illustrate and explain how the relationship between the agency’s facilitating and inhibiting functions was envisaged, negotiated, and executed. It proceeds mostly ­chronologically, focusing on the IAEA’s most defining developments, conflicts, and breakthroughs of each de­cade. It opens with a brief look into the immediate postwar years, when scientists and diplomats first recognized the need to control the threat posed by nuclear weapons. Despite this seeming consensus, initial efforts at international control of the atom failed (chapter 1). The only use of nuclear weapons in war was in 1945, but the horror of Hiroshima and Nagasaki remained vivid. Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative was born of Cold War propaganda and the idea of decreasing the amount of fissile material available for weapons programs (chapter 2). Just

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Introduction  13

four years ­after Eisenhower’s announcement, the IAEA opened its headquarters in Austria. War-­torn Vienna had begun developing into a center for international diplomacy, a place where Vyacheslav Molotov—­t he Soviet representative to the IAEA from 1960 to 1962—­could be found reading in the city’s famed coffee­ houses (chapter 3). During the IAEA’s first de­cade, when it was led by the Swedish physicist Sigvard Eklund, the agency mainly focused on nuclear science and applications, becoming a center for the exchange of nuclear data and information, and one of the few places during the Cold War where scientists from East and West closely cooperated. The superpowers collaborated much more successfully at the IAEA than in other UN-­related organ­izations, exemplifying the proverbial “spirit of ­Vienna,” which envisioned neutral Austria as a place of successful consensus building (chapter 4). ­After initially emphasizing scientific and technical development, the IAEA’s goal to reduce the threat of nuclear warfare came back into focus when the club of nuclear weapon states began to acquire new members. ­T hese developments led the Cold War superpowers to cooperate on nuclear nonproliferation more than ever. Together with sixteen other nations, the superpowers drafted the NPT. The IAEA was not at the t­ able, but received the mandate of verifying that signatory states abide by their nuclear safeguards obligations ­under the treaty (chapter 5). The nuclear industry began booming in the late 1960s, and in 1973, the oil price crisis seemed to confirm the widely held view of nuclear energy as indispensable, as the power source of the f­ uture. The NPT entered into force in 1970, meaning that for the first time an international organ­ization, the IAEA, had the authority to routinely conduct on-­t he-­g round inspections across the world to monitor the development of a technology prone to military use. It would take years, however, to translate and incorporate the treaty’s lofty goals into concrete IAEA procedures. The agency did not set out in search of clandestine nuclear weapon programs, nor did it possess tough enforcement powers. The 1974 Indian nuclear test fueled efforts to establish stricter controls for nuclear exports and resulted in a reassessment of the IAEA’s provisions for granting technical assistance (chapter 6). While the IAEA’s promotional activities had been more prominent in its ­earlier years, the NPT strengthened the agency’s verification functions. Nevertheless, for a majority of IAEA member states, technical assistance—­t he department was ­later less presumptuously restyled the Department of Technical Cooperation—­ remained the core function of the agency. In the 1970s, the influence of the developing states began to be felt more strongly in the IAEA General Conference,

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14   Inspectors for Peace

the forum of all the member states. In 1977, South Africa—­a founding member of the IAEA but suspended from the UN General Assembly b ­ ecause of its racist policy of apartheid—­lost its seat on the influential IAEA Board of Governors. In reaction to Israel’s surprise air attack on the Osirak nuclear reactor in Iraq in 1981, the IAEA General Conference in 1982 rejected the credentials of the Israeli del­ e­ga­tion, leading the US del­e­ga­tion to walk out in support of its ally. The uptick in diplomatic crises found expression in the choice of the new director general, Hans Blix, a Swedish c­ areer diplomat, to succeed the scientist Eklund in 1981 (chapter 7). While t­ here had been accidents at nuclear reactors over the years, the reactor explosion at Chernobyl in 1986 delivered a major shock. The incident brought the risks associated with nuclear power generation to the center of worldwide public debate and prompted the IAEA secretariat and the agency’s member states to intensify its work on global, ­legal conventions for nuclear safety. Scientists from East and West evaluated the accident in an exchange that insiders described as the first hint of glasnost, but the IAEA’s dampening influence on the World Health Organ­ization’s public evaluation of the accident was described as a “toxic link.” It was at this time that the agency began to tone down its language of nuclear power promotion (chapter 8). The IAEA’s nonproliferation efforts entered a new era when, in the early 1990s, it became known that three member states had secretly explored obtaining nuclear weapons: Iraq’s program was disclosed ­after the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War; South Africa, in the final days of the apartheid regime, declared that it had built (but subsequently destroyed) six nuclear weapons; and North K ­ orea ­violated its safeguards agreement. The IAEA had to ­handle the consequences, on a narrow, zero real-­growth bud­get. The Cold War had just ended, and the successor states of the Soviet Union, which formally dissolved in 1991, did not contribute to the IAEA’s bud­get to the same extent as the former superpower. Events in the 1990s also changed the IAEA from the inside. While the technical cooperation and safeguards departments had coexisted during most of the IAEA’s history, the two branches now began to exchange more information and to institutionalize cross-­departmental dialog. For the first time, the IAEA also regularly received intelligence information from member states, strengthening it as a central pillar of the international architecture to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons. A de­cade l­ater, equipped with newly acquired experience and technical tools, the IAEA’s leadership stood up against the United States, its main founder. In 2003, Director General Mohamed ElBaradei stated before the UN Security Council that the IAEA had found no evidence of the revival of a nuclear

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Introduction  15

weapon program in Iraq. While the IAEA’s assessment, which proved to be right, did not prevent the US-­led war against Iraq that year, it helped make the organ­ ization and ElBaradei Nobel Peace Prize laureates in 2005. By this time, the two inspectors pre­sent in India during the 1974 test had become se­nior inspectors on the Iraq inspection teams. Since 2002, the IAEA has been occupied with the most complicated and technically complex verification task in its history—­the case of Iran’s noncompliance with the NPT (chapter 9). ­Under Director General Yukiya Amano, who succeeded ElBaradei in 2009, the IAEA refocused on its technical assistance mandate, symbolized by the modification of the agency’s “Atoms for Peace” motto into “Atoms for Peace and Development.” A ­ fter the 2011 meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant in Japan, caused by an earthquake and a ­giant tsunami, the IAEA had to reconsider its role in protecting ­people and the environment from the harmful effects of nuclear radiation by, for instance, regulating the safe use of nuclear power plants. Throughout the agency’s history, it had been hard to f­ ree this activity from purely national oversight. The IAEA also reinforced its efforts to protect nuclear materials from theft and to secure nuclear facilities against terroristic attacks. The expanded focus of the nuclear safety and nuclear security branches reflected a diversification of activities around its dual mandate (concluding chapter). ­Today, the IAEA is one of more than 40,000 international organ­izations in operation.52 As of summer 2021, it has 173 member states and over 2,500 staff members.53 The agency performs in excess of 2,100 safeguards inspections a year, and 147 countries or territories receive support through its technical cooperation program.54 ­After several proliferation crises, major nuclear accidents, and new potential threats, among them nuclear terrorism, the IAEA continues to embrace the dual mandate at its core.

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chapter one

One World or None

From the first the new government handled affairs with a certain greatness of spirit. Indeed, it was inevitable that they should act greatly. From the first they had to see the round globe as one prob­lem; it was impossible any longer to deal with it piece by piece. They had to secure it universally from any fresh outbreak of atomic destruction, and they had to ensure a permanent and universal pacification. On this capacity to grasp and wield the w ­ hole round globe their existence depended. —­H. G. Wells, The World Set F ­ ree, 1914

In 1914, the year World War I began, the British author H. G. Wells published his science fiction novel The World Set F ­ ree.1 Amid the fear of impending war and rapid developments in science, technology, and engineering, science fiction flourished at the beginning of the 20th ­century, and the novelist Wells was one of the most prominent prac­ti­tion­ers of the genre. Set in the 1950s, The World Set ­Free describes a global atomic war that leaves millions of ­people dead and major cities destroyed. Wells was the first to coin the notion of atomic bombs, three de­cades before the United States conducted the first nuclear explosion on 16 July 1945. Having read the works of leading nuclear physicists of the time, Wells ­imagined ­t hese weapons of the f­ uture being thrown from airplanes. The World Set ­Free is noteworthy not only for its visionary conception of the atom bomb but even more significantly for its description of a postwar world in which the advent of the new weapon revolutionizes international relations. A ­ fter the war ends in Wells’s story, the leaders of the world come together to establish a global authority to secure the peace. International collaboration appears to be the only way to avoid total annihilation in a nuclear-­armed world. At the end of the book, the civilian applications of nuclear energy accelerate development

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One World or None   17

worldwide and improve living conditions. Relations between states no longer suffer from conflicts over resources, and rather than being a menace, nuclear energy is a blessing. Thirty years ­later and in the real world, nuclear physicists, several of whom had been involved in the United States’ secret development of the atom bomb, drew conclusions similar to Wells’s vision. In 1944, the Danish physicist Niels Bohr, who worked on the American bomb proj­ect, hoped to convince President Franklin D. Roo­se­velt and British prime minister Winston Churchill to inform Soviet leader Josef Stalin about the ongoing effort. Bohr argued that the Western leaders should initiate diplomatic talks with the Soviets, still allies at the time, on postwar nuclear arms control. Bohr ultimately failed in this early attempt to make atomic weapons the subject of international diplomacy.2 ­A fter the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima, on 6 August 1945, and on Nagasaki, on 9 August  1945, calls by scientists for international control of such weapons increased and found power­f ul expression in the slogan “One World or None.”3 ­Humans had created a weapon with the potential to extinguish humanity altogether, thus making international peace and cooperation more impor­tant than ever. Intellectuals and journalists joined forces with scientists and together made world government “an enormously impor­tant cultural leitmotif” of the immediate postwar years.4 This chapter recounts the prehistory of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). It shows how control over nuclear energy and the creation of an international peaceful world order became “twin goals” during postwar reconstruction and how this played out in the early history of the United Nations as a newly founded world organ­ization.5 The initial attempts to build an international nuclear order envisioned all states benefiting from the peaceful applications of nuclear technologies, whereas nuclear weapons would be banned.6 This line of thinking was evident in the UN General Assembly’s first resolution, which called for the establishment of an international commission “to deal with the prob­lems raised by the discovery of atomic energy.”7 The subsequent UN Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC) was dissolved in 1951, a­ fter years of fruitless negotiations, but its establishment had shown how intergovernmental organ­izations like the young United Nations, and not just multilateral treaties or summit talks between major states, could be institutions of choice in confronting the threat posed by nuclear weapons. A look into the history of the UNAEC reveals why ­these new weapons brought states together in search of cooperation, how ­t hese attempts differed from e­ arlier disarmament negotiations, and what this new

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18   Inspectors for Peace

form of nuclear diplomacy had to do with the beginnings of the Cold War. As a first step, the chapter briefly traces the invention of nuclear weapons, from the discovery of nuclear fission in 1938 to the American war­t ime effort to build an atomic bomb.

Building the Bomb At the time Wells wrote The World Set ­Free, nuclear physics was a rather young scientific discipline, its initial discoveries having been made only a few de­cades prior. At the turn of the previous ­century, scientists across Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca ­were able to detect invisible forms of previously unknown radiation. Among them, the German Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen discovered X-­rays in November 1895, and only weeks ­later, in experiments with uranium salts, the French engineer and physicist Henri Becquerel observed a pro­cess that the Polish-­French physicist and chemist Marie Słodowska Curie and her husband Pierre Curie would call “radioactivity”—­the spontaneous decay of unstable atomic nuclei and the resulting release of radiation. A new form of energy—­ nuclear energy—­had been discovered.8 Among the first practical uses of the new discoveries ­were medical applications, which set off a worldwide search for uranium that some compared to the 19th-­century gold rush. Reports about the new scientific discoveries and theoretical explanations appeared in leading academic journals, creating a new international scientific community in the field of nuclear physics. The interwar period was a time of rapid development in nuclear physics, with another ­woman following in Curie’s footsteps and establishing a key term in the discipline. In late 1938, the Vienna-­born, Stockholm-­based physicist Lise Meitner, who had left her academic home in Berlin to escape the Nazis, unraveled the pro­cess of nuclear fission. Enrico Fermi, in Italy, and Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, in Germany, had previously observed the pro­cess, but Meitner and her nephew Otto Frisch w ­ ere the first to conclusively explain it. Borrowing the biology term fission from the study of cell division, they defined fission as a nuclear reaction in which the nucleus of an atom is split by a neutron. In the pro­cess, which can occur spontaneously or through intervention, two or three neutrons are released and then cause the splitting of other nuclei, creating a nuclear chain reaction, a snowball effect of splitting nuclei, during which ever larger amounts of energy are released.9 Enabling a nuclear chain reaction requires a certain amount of material, the so-­called critical mass. To maintain a chain reaction, the speed of the neutrons must be slowed by the presence of a substance called a moderator, such as graphite or heavy ­water.

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One World or None   19

A controlled nuclear chain reaction can be used to produce nuclear power, generating huge amounts of energy while using far less resources than other methods. The l­ ater development of nuclear power showed that, while a coal-­fired power station with an output of 1 gigawatt would require 80 train cars of coal ­every day, a nuclear power plant would only need fuel once a year to produce the same output, and it would fit in half a train car.10 As the first generation of nuclear scientists correctly anticipated, nuclear fission could not only be exploited for civilian uses; an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction that would release im­ mense amounts of energy could also be harnessed to produce incredibly power­ ful explosives. ­After World War II appeared imminent in early 1939, states restricted the publication of scientific information to disrupt international exchanges within the nuclear research community and to protect knowledge of potential military value.11 The experiments of the 1930s and 1940s showed that nuclear fission reactions occurred primarily in two materials, hence called fissile materials: the uranium isotope U-235 and the plutonium isotope Pu-239. In 1946, uranium-233 (U-233) was identified as another fissile material (bred from thorium-232). Uranium can be found in nature primarily in the form of isotope U-238, with the fissile isotope U-235 constituting less than 1%. To induce nuclear fission—­whether for civilian purposes, such as nuclear power reactors, or for explosive weapons—­ the ratio of U-235 to U-238 isotopes needs to be increased—in other words, the uranium needs to be “enriched.” Uranium with a concentration of 20% or more U-235 isotopes is called high enriched uranium (HEU). Modern nuclear weapons use uranium enriched up to 90% U-235, designated as weapon-­grade uranium. Unlike uranium, plutonium is generally not found in nature. First produced in 1940, plutonium is a highly fissile material that can be extracted, or repro­cessed, from the spent fuel rods of nuclear power reactors, which generate the material during normal operation. This by-­product of the civilian nuclear industry can be used to build military explosives, making it an impor­tant example of the so-­ called dual-­use prob­lem: some nuclear-­related technologies have civilian as well as potentially military uses. Fermi was the first to produce a controlled, self-­sustaining nuclear chain reaction, at the University of Chicago on 2 December 1942. This ability spurred the launch of the United States’ effort from 1943 to 1945 to build an atomic bomb—­the Manhattan Proj­ect, named a­ fter the location of the first planning group.12 Fears that Nazi Germany, an impor­tant hub for nuclear science, would secretly build atomic bombs catalyzed the massive proj­ect. At several locations across the United States—­the most famous being laboratories at Los Alamos, New Mexico—­some

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20   Inspectors for Peace

130,000 p ­ eople worked u ­ nder the leadership of the proj­ect’s military director, Gen. Leslie R. Groves, and the laboratories’ scientific director, J. Robert Oppenheimer. The Manhattan Proj­ect grew to become comparable in size to the entire US automobile industry.13 The United Kingdom and Canada, the latter of which had large uranium reserves, joined the American effort, which included numerous ­Eu­ro­pean scientists who had fled Nazi persecution. Beginning with the Manhattan Proj­ect, no national nuclear weapon program has ever been entirely indigenous if one takes into account the personnel, equipment, and materials involved. On 16 July 1945, near Alamogordo, New Mexico, the Americans tested a plutonium implosion-­t ype bomb, using a conventional explosive to start the nuclear chain reaction. This is the type of bomb that destroyed Nagasaki. Three days before Nagasaki, the Americans had dropped a uranium-­based bomb on Hiroshima, without prior testing. The two bombs killed over 200,000 ­people.14

International Inspection and Control Voluntary cooperation by states on arms control, arms limitation, and disarmament is a relatively recent phenomenon. Historically, the most common form of disarmament has been that of the defeated by the victors of war. A ­ fter the Second Punic War (218–201 BC), the defeated Cartha­g inians had to dissolve their army and to give all but ten of their ships as well as their war elephants to the victorious Romans. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles, following World War I, is a more recent example of imposed disarmament ­after armed conflict.15 The history of voluntary multilateral disarmament began in the second half of the 19th ­century. The Crimean War (1853–56)—­t he first “industrial war”—­ changed the nature of modern warfare, and new technologies, such as the telegraph and photography, brought news of the war’s cruelties to mass audiences. The first international peace movement emerged in response to what the world learned.16 Pacifists from dif­fer­ent countries—­among them the Austrian writer and 1905 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Bertha von Suttner—­attended the peace conferences held in The Hague in 1899 and 1907. ­T hese conferences ­were essentially gatherings of state del­e­ga­tions called for by the Rus­sian tsar Nicholas II to discuss multilateral disarmament, though primarily for his own ideological, economic, and strategic purposes. The meetings bore few tangible results other than agreement to ban the use of poisonous gases in war and “projectiles the sole object of which was asphyxiation.”17 The governments involved did not, however, establish a control regime to verify or enforce the terms agreed to; the United States never even ratified the agreement.18

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One World or None   21

­ fter World War I, the League of Nations, pre­de­ces­sor to the United Nations, A was established by the Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to preserve international peace and security. Disarmament was the league’s “greatest crusade and its greatest disappointment,” as member states often perceived disarmament mea­sures as limitations on national sovereignty and ­were reluctant to provide the league information on their weaponry.19 Naval arms control became the main topic at the multilateral Washington Conference of 1921 and 1922, at the prompting of the United States. France, ­Great Britain, Italy, Japan, and the United States agreed to limit the size of their battleships, their overall naval tonnage, and the use of submarines. Again, the signatories failed to include verification or enforcement mechanisms.20 In 1928, US secretary of state Frank B. Kellogg and French foreign minister Aristide Briand initiated a treaty to outlaw war as “an instrument of national policy.”21 While more than 60 states had signed the treaty by 1939, it could not prevent World War II. Like other disarmament initiatives, the Kellogg-­ Briand Pact contained no enforcement provisions. Unilateral, bilateral, and multilateral plans to reduce the number and size of certain types of weapons as well as regulations to limit or ban their production, use, and trafficking, characterize the history of modern disarmament and arms control, but controversy over the sovereign rights of states and the rejection of verification and enforcement mea­ sures always hampered implementation. Unlike in The World Set F ­ ree, the world organ­ization that followed the introduction of atomic weapons was established while the world war remained ­under way. National del­e­ga­tions discussed and signed the UN Charter at a conference in San Francisco that ended in June 1945, two months before the United States dropped atomic bombs on Japan. The advent of nuclear weapons prompted states to think more seriously about verified disarmament and enforcement. Optimistic expectations of peaceful applications of the atom complicated the task despite the demonstration of its destructive force in Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the dawn of the nuclear age. In this regard, the discovery of radioactivity and the harnessing of nuclear fission w ­ ere similar to developments in the chemical industry and the invention of dynamite, both of which had civilian as well as potential military uses. The prospect of dynamite being used in military explosives had led its Swedish inventor, Alfred Nobel, to contemplate the development of a weapon so power­f ul that it would prevent f­ uture wars altogether—an early expression of the logic of military deterrence that half a ­century ­later became central to the Cold War nuclear arms race. Influenced by his pacifist friend Bertha von Suttner, he dedicated his fortune

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to establish the Nobel Prizes, including the Nobel Peace Prize, which was first awarded in 1901.22 ­T here was no pre­ce­dent for the prohibition of an entire form of energy generation, so the international attempts to confront the challenges created by the nuclear age tried to balance the sharing of and access to nuclear technologies and materials on one hand, while denying and restricting it on the other. This held true even for the first international talks on the topic among the former Manhattan Proj­ect partners in 1945, when ­there was only the horrible experience of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and no peaceful nuclear reactor yet in operation. On 15 November 1945, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States issued the Three-­Nation Declaration on Atomic Energy, a call for international action “to prevent the use of atomic energy for destructive purposes” and to “promote the use of recent and ­future advances in scientific knowledge . . . ​for peaceful ends.” They proposed establishing a UN commission to develop proposals for “the elimination from national armaments of atomic weapons” as well as for the development of “effective safeguards by way of inspection and other means.” ­Until such “effective, reciprocal, and enforceable safeguards” ­were in place, they asserted, they would not share certain nuclear knowledge.23 Thus, the leaders of the three countries envisaged the United Nations as the custodian of international nuclear safeguards. The delegates of the 1919 Paris Peace Conference had introduced the concept of safeguards to the vocabulary of international security when they linked it to the creation of “a League of Nations . . . ​to promote international co-­operation, to ensure the fulfilment of accepted international obligations, and to provide safeguards against war.”24 Six weeks a­ fter the declaration by the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada, the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and United States issued a similar text on 27 December 1945. While this communiqué, signed by James F. Byrnes, Ernest Bevin, and Vyacheslav Molotov, echoed the overall goals expressed in the ­earlier declaration, the joint East-­West statement specified the nuclear commission’s ­future relationship with other organs of the United Nations.25 The UNAEC would be established as a commission of the General Assembly, but report to the Security Council.26 Its close relationship to the Security Council would be reflected in the UNAEC’s membership—­t he permanent and the rotating nonpermanent members of the council. Canada would retain a seat on the UNAEC even when not a rotating member. The Soviets insisted that the final say on commission business lie with the Security Council, where each of the permanent members—­France, China, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—­had the power to veto any decisions. Already at the 1944 Dumbarton Oaks Conference in Washington, DC, where

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the foundations of the United Nations w ­ ere laid, the Soviets had made it clear that their primary interest in a world body was to establish an international security organ­ization that relied on the una­nim­i­t y of the ­great powers.27 Only ­after the United States—at that time the only country with atomic weapons—­publicly committed itself to the creation of the UNAEC did it establish a national expert committee, directed by ­Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, to evaluate the prospects for such a commission and develop guidelines for goals to pursue within it. To assist the committee, Acheson established a board of technical con­sul­tants to be led by David E. Lilienthal, chairman of the Tennessee Valley Authority, the large-­scale federal enterprise to spur industrial pro­gress ­after the ­Great Depression. J. Robert Oppenheimer, prob­ably the most influential scientist on the board, would draft most of the resulting Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, commonly known as the Acheson-­Lilienthal Report, issued in March 1946.28 Oppenheimer believed that a mere pledge to renounce nuclear weapons was not strong enough to prevent states from seeking them; the failure of the Kellogg-­ Briand Pact to prevent war had demonstrated this crucial dynamic.29 The report explained that the civilian and military uses of nuclear energy relied on the same source materials and technologies. For its authors, the only pos­si­ble solution was to establish an Atomic Development Authority that would have owner­ship and control of all nuclear materials, including uranium and thorium mines, as well as “dangerous” nuclear technology. The report elaborated on what ­were considered to be dangerous activities and indicated that t­ hese would likely change in the ­future.30 The committee suggested safeguards mea­sures, such as on-­site inspections for nuclear activities that remained in states’ hands, but it was specific in asserting that inspections alone ­were not enough to prevent the global spread of nuclear weapons. Technical, po­liti­cal, social, orga­nizational, and psychological ­factors drove its skepticism: “The presence of a large number of ‘foreigners’ necessarily having special privileges and immunities inquiring intimately and generally into industrial and mining operations would be attended by serious social frictions.” This represented one of the “­human ­factors” ­behind the control prob­ lem.31 Indeed, jumping ahead, the IAEA’s history shows that nuclear inspectors ­were not neutral, interchangeable agents of an international bureaucracy, but individuals of dif­fer­ent character with their own expertise, po­liti­cal opinions, and worldviews who during inspections had to deal with an equally diverse group of technicians and government officials. Interestingly, while the authors of the Acheson-Lilienthal Report believed that some of the potential civilian uses of nuclear technology ­were “within close reach

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of actuality,” they expressed ­little exuberance about the peaceful applications of nuclear energy, while also not recommending that nuclear energy be banned altogether. The authors describe the peaceful atom primarily as an asset for the successful creation of an international security regime for nuclear materials and technology. ­Here the authors provided social and psychological reasons: in their eyes, to inhibit all—­military and peaceful—­research in a certain field contravenes the inherent curiosity of h ­ umans that results in scientific pursuits. It would also frustrate inspectors and attract the wrong personnel: “The difficulty of recruiting enforcement officers having only a negative and policing function, one of prohibiting, detecting, and suppressing, is obvious. Such a job lacks any dynamic qualities. It does not appeal to imagination.” In other words, the members of the committee believed that nuclear disarmament would be better achieved if t­ here was not only a stick, but also a carrot—­civilian nuclear science and technology. This, too, evolved as an idea central to the IAEA.32 The UNAEC negotiations opened on 14 June 1946 at the United Nations’ temporary headquarters, a building formerly owned by the Sperry Corporation, in the village of Lake Success, in Upstate New York.33 At the first UNAEC session, the head of the US del­e­ga­tion, Bernard Baruch, presented the American plan. Baruch, the personal choice of President Harry Truman, was a “Wall Street speculator and Demo­cratic Party financier,” not a nuclear expert. He had served on the War Industries Board during World War I, and now, at the age of 75, was nearing the end of his ­career.34 To many he seemed an odd choice. Sir Alexander Cadogan, head of the British del­e­ga­tion, found Baruch “a dreadful type of talking American . . . ​quite impossible to work with.”35 What became known as the Baruch Plan was mostly based on the Acheson-­ Lilienthal Report. Baruch called for the establishment of an International Atomic Development Authority (IADA), which would have “managerial control or owner­ ship of all atomic energy activities potentially dangerous to world security” and the “power to control, inspect, and license all other atomic activities.” In line with the Acheson-­Lilienthal Report, Baruch explained that “no system of safeguards that can be devised ­will of itself provide an effective guarantee against production of atomic weapons by a nation bent on aggression.” The IADA would also be charged with fostering beneficial uses of atomic energy. Baruch added two ele­ments that gave the US plan a sharper po­liti­cal edge than that expressed in the Acheson-­ Lilienthal Report: no state would have veto power, and ­there would be sanctions for violators. Baruch explained, “If I read the signs aright, the p ­ eoples want a program not composed merely of pious thoughts but of enforceable sanctions— an international law with teeth in it.”36 This had to include swift punishment of

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Meeting of the UN Atomic Energy Commission at the United Nations’ temporary headquarters in Lake Success, New York, 14 June 1946. © UN Photo

violators: “Penalization is essential if peace is to be more than a feverish interlude between wars.”37 Had the members of the UNAEC implemented the plan, nuclear energy production would have been subject to control by a supranational organ­ization. The IADA would have had the power to make decisions immediately affecting its members, even when ­t hose decisions contradicted the intentions of member states. On 19 June, the Soviet representative and ­future foreign minister, Andrei Gromyko, delivered the Soviet response to Baruch’s pre­sen­ta­tion.38 Before Gromyko presented the Soviet plan, however, he spoke, in En­glish, about the atom’s dual character. He explained, “One of the greatest discoveries of mankind found its first material application in the form of a par­t ic­u ­lar weapon—­t he atom bomb. However, although up to the pre­sent time this use of atomic energy is the only known form of its practical application, it is the general opinion that humanity stands at the threshold of a wide application of atomic energy for peaceful purposes for the benefit of the p ­ eoples.” Gromyko referenced the “paradox of the

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situation” in that the military uses of nuclear energy ­were “more studied and more effectively mastered in practice” than its civilian applications. Given this, the first step of the Soviet plan was to conclude an international ban on atomic bombs—­prohibiting the use, production, and storage of them—­and to destroy existing weapons within three months. Gromyko cited similar bans on chemical weapons in the 1925 Geneva Convention as pre­ce­dents. Only ­after the dismantling of all nuclear weapons would the establishment of an international control and inspection regime make sense. Any international nuclear control organ­ ization, Gromyko asserted, needed to be subject to the UN Security Council, in which all permanent members had veto power.39 The UNAEC sessions from 1946 to 1948 w ­ ere dominated by conflicts over veto power and ­whether the establishment of a control system or the prohibition of atomic bombs should have priority. For the Soviets, international inspections on their territory ­were anathema. Ultimately, only Poland supported the Soviet plan, which came to be known as the minority plan. All the other members of the Security Council, permanent and nonpermanent, favored the Baruch Plan, the majority plan. The Soviets, secretly working ­toward their own nuclear weapon capabilities since 1943, argued publicly that the abolition of all existing atomic bombs—­i.e., ­t hose held by the United States—­must precede the establishment of international control. Despite having numerous differences on details, the Americans and the Soviets agreed that any f­ uture world nuclear institution would have a dual mandate of promoting civilian uses of nuclear technologies while regulating military uses. This approach became the foundation of negotiations ­going forward. In late 1945, British prime minister Clement Atlee had considered preventing the former Axis Powers Germany and Japan from using nuclear technologies altogether, even peaceful ones, but his never became a mainstream position.40 Thus the only uncontroversial proposition of the UNAEC negotiations was that all states should have access to the peaceful applications of nuclear technologies. The Mexican delegate, Luis Padilla Nervo, suggested establishing the Scientific and Technical Committee to discuss safeguards mea­sures, which ­were regarded as largely technical topics.41 The committee, in which the Soviets participated, managed to draft and unanimously adopt a report for the Security Council. The document laid out provisions for the detection and prevention of illegal diversions at declared and undeclared nuclear facilities and discussed how safeguards could ensure the detection of clandestine nuclear activities. Despite the apparent consensus regarding the report, once put in front of the Security Council, the Soviets vetoed it.42

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In 1947, the Soviets introduced revised proposals to the UNAEC, in which they continued to call for a ban on nuclear weapons. They suggested that all nuclear activities remain the responsibility of individual states, rather than falling largely ­under the authority of an international body like the IADA proposed by the Americans. An “international commission for atomic energy control to be called International Control Commission,” which would be linked to the Security Council, would carry out periodic inspections of national nuclear facilities and, if a state was suspected of a violation, the commission would be authorized to conduct “special investigations” as well.43 ­Because the Soviet’s UNAEC proposals in 1947 relied so heavi­ly on on-­t he-­ ground inspections by an international commission but left nuclear programs in national hands, the French physicist Bertrand Goldschmidt, ­later an IAEA veteran, considered them in hindsight to be a “forerunner to the NPT.”44 The United States deemed the Soviets’ safeguards provisions inadequate, noting that they would not be able to detect clandestine nuclear weapon programs. Thus in 1947, the Americans viewed as insufficient safeguards provisions that they would thirty years ­later support in the NPT. According to Goldschmidt, in the immediate postwar years it seemed “completely unrealistic” for Western states “to expect any nation to renounce atomic weapons without any assurance that all nations ­w ill be prevented from using them.”45 Interestingly, ­behind the scenes the Western camp was less convinced by the Americans’ dismissive stance t­ oward the Soviet proposals. Somewhat similar to the Soviets’ thinking, the British del­e­ga­ tion had also developed a proposal that would leave many potential nuclear activities in nations’ hands, but the Americans rejected it before the British could put it in front of the UNAEC.46 Oppenheimer observed with concern what had happened to his original plan as laid out in the Acheson-­Lilienthal Report. He reportedly said that he had lost all hope the day Baruch was appointed head of the American’s UNAEC del­e­ga­tion.47 In early June 1950, in a conversation with an official of the UN Department of Security Council Affairs, Oppenheimer had reflected on how frustrating he found the UNAEC negotiations. He called for greater involvement by scientists in nuclear disarmament, whom he saw relegated “to a secondary place” in the negotiations ­after “the ‘hierarchy’ took over” in 1945 and 1946. The shock of the atom bomb was no longer fresh, and Oppenheimer feared that the momentum to create a lasting international nuclear order had been lost. He also did not share in the growing optimism over the peaceful applications of nuclear energy, which he dismissed as “loose talk.” For Oppenheimer, the discussion about the peaceful atom was ­shaped by “too many vague hopes of a paradise round a corner.”

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Still, he considered the United Nations one of “the instruments that can bridge the gulf” between the Cold War opponents. For Oppenheimer the scientist, the UNAEC discussions about inspection and control of nuclear facilities was “much more a po­liti­cal than a scientific prob­lem.”48 Indeed, the role of the Security Council, sanctions, ­great power una­nim­i­ty, and national sovereignty ­were po­liti­cal issues that had to be solved first, a fact made obvious by the Soviet veto of the Scientific and Technical Commission report. The UNAEC was by that time already deadlocked. The Soviets, who as noted had been busy developing their own nuclear weapon program, conducted their first test in August 1949.49 Now that ­t here ­were two nuclear powers, the conditions ­u nder which the UNAEC had been negotiating no longer existed. On 11 January 1952, the commission, inactive since the Soviet test, was officially dissolved and then merged with the Commission for Conventional Armaments to become the UN Disarmament Commission. It is impor­tant to note that at that time, disarmament was an umbrella term used for dif­fer­ent initiatives that from the late 1950s onward would be differentiated into disarmament (the abolition of weapons), arms control (the reduction of weapons), and nonproliferation (the limitation of the spread of weapons).50 In October 1952, the United Kingdom became the third nuclear weapon state. A month l­ ater, the United States tested the first thermonuclear, or hydrogen, bomb, a generation of nuclear weapons several hundred times more power­ful than atomic bombs. Since then, over 2,000 nuclear test explosions have been conducted around the world.

Cold War at the United Nations For a brief time, between the successful development of the American atom bomb in 1945 and the Soviets’ first test in 1949, the United States was in a profoundly superior position vis-­à-­v is its former ally. It had been the sole nuclear power. With the Soviet test, however, the Cold War dichotomy of superpowers was set, and the nuclear arms race became a fundamental ele­ment of the East-­ West rivalry.51 The very notion of a “cold war” stems from the entanglement of superpower dynamics and nuclear development. Even before the American writer and po­liti­cal commentator Walter Lipp­mann pop­u­lar­ized the concept of a “cold war” with his 1947 publication bearing that title, Baruch’s close advisor Herbert B. Swope had spoken of a “cold war” in the UNAEC negotiations.52 In fact, the United Nations became a center of Cold War ­battles soon ­after its creation. During the Cold War, the Soviet Union would veto 89 resolutions in the Security Council, the United States 65, the United Kingdom 29, France 16, and the ­People’s Republic of China 1.53

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Although nuclear weapons w ­ ere regarded as exceptional, occupying a unique po­liti­cal domain, decisions involving them w ­ ere closely connected to other po­liti­ cal issues of the time as well as the larger context of the Cold War. The UNAEC negotiations ­were not the only, or even the most impor­tant, stage on which the evolving Cold War played out. Indeed, the superpowers found themselves in a stand-­off over the status of Berlin and the division of Germany, and the Korean War emerged as the first Cold War proxy war in Asia. Meanwhile, US nuclear testing continued. The Americans even invited representatives from all UNAEC member states to witness the power­ful weapons being tested in the Bikini Atoll.54 Does this mean that the early discussions about international nuclear control w ­ ere just exchanges of Cold War propaganda and that the UNAEC’s brief existence merely represents a history of failure devoid of any pro­gress on disarmament? Ten years ­after the UNAEC’s establishment, the American ­legal scholar and po­liti­cal observer David F. Cavers wondered how ­f uture historians might look back on its negotiations and their “ritualistic character.” T ­ hose historians might conclude that the opposing sides had only advanced proposals that they fully expected to be rejected by their opponents. Cavers thought the UNAEC meetings would prob­ably come to look like “medieval morality plays or even Punch and Judy.”55 Indeed, much of the scholarly lit­er­a­t ure on the UNAEC focuses on the evolving US-­Soviet rivalry.56 The historians Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko, for instance, have argued that the Baruch Plan was not primarily an attempt to create a lasting international nuclear order, but “one of Amer­i­ca’s first acts of the Cold War.”57 They assert that the US government was not serious about its own Baruch Plan. At the time, the extent of Soviet espionage involving the Manhattan Proj­ect was becoming increasingly clear, and as the US government knew, the American public would not have accepted a plan to share nuclear information with a state that had spied on it. Craig and Radchenko compare the Baruch Plan to the Marshall Plan of 1948 for the economic reconstruction of postwar Eu­rope, as both put the Soviets in a similar no-­win situation. If the Soviets had accepted the Baruch Plan, it would have been seen as a success for the Americans; if the Soviets rejected it, they could be blamed for rejecting a proposal for world peace.58 To promote the Soviet Union’s image as the true peace-­loving nation, the Soviets instead asked the Americans to relinquish their atomic bombs and to ban such weapons by international agreement. Like the Americans and their plans, the Soviets doubted that their opponents would accept their proposals.59 The propagandist aspects of the UNAEC negotiations are evident, but it would be too simplistic to dismiss the negotiations as ­little more than rote exchanges among Cold War rivals. While key figures in the US and Soviet governments

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might have considered the talks an empty exercise, some administration officials as well as scientists and other experts found the negotiations useful in terms of thinking through pos­si­ble instruments of a ­future nuclear order, such as safeguards provisions. Outside the diplomatic forums, members of the UN bureaucracy began to plan orga­nizational structures for a ­future nuclear world order. They looked at existing institutions within the UN system to determine ­whether they could be useful as models for an international atomic organ­ization; what they had to offer in terms of working mechanisms, decision-­making pro­cesses, and leadership structures; and how they managed the relationship between the po­liti­cal and the technical aspects of their activities. ­Those organ­izations that ­were regarded as “only technical and administrative,” such as the Universal Postal Union and the International Telecommunication Union, seemed inapt models, as ­were organ­ izations seen as “neither po­liti­cal nor operational,” such as the World Health Organ­ization and the International ­L abour Organ­ization. Thus, they looked closely at institutions that had “some po­liti­cal or operational aspects,” such as the International Civil Aviation Organ­ization and the International Monetary Fund.60 The Cold War narrative of the UNAEC also neglects dimensions of the nuclear question that transcended the East-­West divide. For instance, the dynamics of the talks revealed that the shared interests of the uranium producers would need to be addressed at some juncture. Belgium (the colonial power in the Congo) and Brazil, both UNAEC members, only supported the Baruch Plan on the condition that uranium and thorium resources still in the ground would not become the property of the proposed IADA.61 Some members of the UNAEC del­e­ga­tions remained active in the field, in some cases ­going on to long c­ areers in disarmament, arms control, and nonproliferation and sometimes crossing over to engage in international diplomacy, science, and civil society activism. For such delegates, their experiences with the UNAEC served as the foundation for l­ater involvement in the IAEA and other UN institutions. Through discussions about inspection and control regimes, they came to grasp, at the least, the basic challenges of and obstacles to international nuclear cooperation, and they also got to know their fellow scientists from other major powers. By default, they de­c ided that nuclear energy should be further ­explored. What was theoretically thinkable—­banning not only the military but also the civilian development of nuclear technologies—­seemed neither realistic nor desirable. The IAEA would be born from such thinking.

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chapter two

Atoms for Peace

The grounds in front of the United Nations building in New York had been closed for hours when President Dwight Eisenhower entered the General Assembly Hall on the after­noon of 8 December 1953. Unlike the regular meetings of the assembly, the seats that day w ­ ere packed, with some 3,500 ­people in attendance; thousands more had waited outside the building to greet the US president. It was Eisenhower’s first appearance before the world organ­ization, and rumors about the subject of his speech had generated excitement around it. Dressed in a bright sari, Vijaya Lakshmi Pandit—­sister of Jawaharlal Nehru, aunt to Indira Gandhi, and the first ­woman to preside over a UN General Assembly session—­walked the US president to the podium, where he took a seat in a high-­back armchair while she formally introduced him to t­ hose in attendance.1 ­A fter this formality, Eisenhower walked a few steps to the lectern, and in a firm and sincere voice, took the audience on a 25-­minute tour d’horizon of the nuclear revolution. “The atomic age has moved forward at such a pace that e­ very citizen of the world should have some comprehension, at least in comparative terms, of the extent of this development, of the utmost significance to ­every one of us,” Eisenhower remarked.2 He described the nuclear threat in blunt terms, taking his audience back to the first nuclear explosion, conducted in New Mexico on 16 July 1945, and the 42 subsequent nuclear tests by the United States. The new hydrogen bombs, the president explained, ­were even more destructive—­more than 25 times as power­ful as “the weapons with which the atomic age dawned.” He carefully avoided referring to Hiroshima and Nagasaki by name.3 Eisenhower asserted that the United States remained the frontrunner in the nuclear arms race, but also acknowledged that it had lost its mono­poly, noting, “The dread secret and the fearful engines of atomic might are not ours alone.”4 The United Kingdom

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and, most importantly, the Soviet Union had developed and tested their own nuclear weapons. Eisenhower declared that he would not accept the “belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other in­def­initely across a trembling world,” and shifting to a more optimistic tone, turned to the work of the United Nations, where the General Assembly’s First Committee, the Disarmament and International Security Committee, provided a forum for the Cold War rivals to discuss arms control.5 In Eisenhower’s eyes, however, the times required more than just talk about disarmament. “It is not enough to take this weapon out of the hands of soldiers,” he said. “It must be put into the hands of t­ hose who w ­ ill know how to strip its military casing and adapt it to the arts of peace.”6 Almost twenty minutes a­ fter the president had begun his speech, he presented the idea for which the speech became known—­the creation of an international atomic energy agency, as he called it, to work “­under the aegis of the United Nations.”7 The basic task of this new agency appeared to be s­imple: states with nuclear weapons and t­hose with advanced nuclear programs would donate fissionable and other nuclear materials to the agency, which in turn would make ­those materials available to its member states for civilian nuclear applications in medicine, agriculture, science, and power generation. “Thus the contributing powers would be dedicating some of their strength to serve the needs rather than the fears of mankind.”8 Increasing the civilian uses of nuclear technologies would stimulate scientific research and help diminish “the potential destructive power of the world’s atomic stockpiles.”9 Eisenhower went on to suggest that the details of his plan be worked out in private between ­those states principally involved, including the Soviet Union. Before closing, he reminded his audience of the atom’s benign and hazardous aspects. Eisenhower characterized the new technology’s civilian and military uses as separable, but glossed over how this might be achieved: “The United States pledges before you, and therefore before the world, its determination to help solve the fearful atomic dilemma—to devote its entire heart and mind to finding the way by which the miraculous inventiveness of man s­ hall not be dedicated to his death, but consecrated to his life.”10 The thunderous applause concluding the speech lasted for ten minutes. Even the Soviet del­e­ga­tion applauded. Some called it one of the most impressive speeches delivered at the United Nations.11 What excited many listeners was the prospect of nuclear energy as a f­ uture source of power generation, in­de­pen­dent of a country’s natu­ral resources and applicable around the world. Some observers did, of course, express skepticism. ­A fter all, Eisenhower had not called for a ban of the atomic bomb.

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Atoms for Peace   33

Even ­today, historians continue to be divided on ­whether Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace initiative represented a mere act of US Cold War propaganda or an honest attempt to reduce the nuclear threat; a tool to prevent the uncontrolled and global spread of nuclear weapons or an initiative that eventually furthered the distribution of nuclear weapons; or all of the above.12 Scholars also disagree over how sincere Eisenhower was about arms control. Some contend that he had no interest in reducing US stockpiles and point to the central role of nuclear weapons in the New Look, his national security policy, and the buildup of nuclear weapons during his presidency. Atoms for Peace shifted the public’s attention from military uses of the atom to civilian purposes.13 The historian Kenneth Osgood has therefore described Eisenhower’s presidency as juxtaposing “talking peace and waging Cold War.”14 Indeed, during the months-­long drafting of his UN address, vari­ous po­liti­cal, psychological, and economic aims had come together. “In fact, the president suggested some half dozen goals,” Ira Chernus noted in his historical linguistic analy­sis of the “Atoms for Peace” speech.15 This chapter documents events from the time of the first drafts of Eisenhower’s UN speech in 1953 to the final negotiations over the IAEA statute in 1956. It examines how the agency’s found­ers envisioned its promotional and control activities; why, other than at the failed UNAEC negotiations, cooperation between the Cold War rivals proved to be pos­si­ble; and what price was paid as a condition for this cooperation. The prominent arms control aspect of Atoms for Peace declined in importance during the international negotiations to establish the IAEA. On the other hand, nuclear safeguards—­designed to detect diversions of nuclear material from civilian to military uses and not mentioned in Eisenhower’s speech—­moved from the margins to the center of the debate on the new agency.

The Genesis of Eisenhower’s Plan In the early 1950s, Eisenhower had entered the presidential race as a war hero, having served as supreme commander of the Allied forces that brought an end to World War II in Eu­rope. His popularity was such that both Demo­crats and Republicans had tried to recruit him as a candidate. The slogan “I like Ike,” adopting Eisenhower’s nickname, attested to the public enthusiasm for him. In January 1953, Eisenhower, who had eventually run as a Republican, succeeded Harry Truman to become the thirty-­fourth president of the United States. Like his pre­de­ces­sor, he had only a ­limited understanding of the United States’ nuclear program before he took office due to the utmost secrecy that surrounded it. Two months before Eisenhower’s inauguration, a group of high-­ranking officials from the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) briefed the president-­elect on the state of the program.16

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US president Dwight Eisenhower delivers his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the UN General Assembly, New York, 8 December 1953. © UN Photo

The top-­secret meetings centered on the two aspects of the atom: its destructive force, most vis­i­ble in the development of the hydrogen bomb, and its expected benefits, in the form of energy generation and science. Even though World War II had ended almost a de­cade prior, and the Manhattan Proj­ect was dissolved in 1946, nuclear technology remained shrouded in secrecy. During the early 1950s, the espionage trial and subsequent execution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, a ­couple accused of having passed information about the Manhattan Proj­ect to the Soviet Union, made national headlines.17 The atmosphere in regard to nuclear technology was not one of scientific exchange and openness, but of secrecy and denial.18 A secretive approach had been enshrined through federal legislation, the Atomic Energy Act of 1946 (also known as the McMahon Act, a­ fter its sponsor),

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Atoms for Peace   35

which placed the development of both nuclear weapons and civilian nuclear technology ­under the authority of the newly created AEC.19 Around the time of Eisenhower’s briefings, the American public as well as industry began to show interest in nuclear energy and its plentiful peaceful applications. The atom promised to be a never-­ending resource of energy “too cheap to meter,” plus it would revolutionize medicine and turn deserts into green fields.20 Given the restrictiveness of the Atomic Energy Act, the hands of the private industry ­were bound when it came to nuclear ­matters; it remained reluctant to invest. Eisenhower sympathized with American companies’ desire to play a role in the development of the nuclear field. Unlike the state-­r un Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) u ­ nder Roo­se­velt’s New Deal, which placed industrial development ­under government control, Eisenhower and most Republicans rejected the idea of an “atomic TVA.” On the other hand, the new president, who would strongly rely on nuclear weapons during his presidency, was nonetheless deeply worried about the threat of nuclear warfare and appalled by what he had heard in the secret briefings about the recent testing of a hydrogen bomb in the Pacific. Despite his support for domestic industry, Eisenhower understood the need for the secrecy surrounding nuclear-­related ­matters.21 The conflicting aspects of Eisenhower’s thinking on nuclear weapons are reflected in the vari­ous drafts of what became the “Atoms for Peace” speech. Eisenhower inherited the initial ideas from the out­going Truman administration, which had established a committee to discuss the threat of nuclear war. The Soviet Union appeared to be rapidly catching up with the United States’ nuclear pro­gress, and an atomic “knockout blow” by the Soviets was a real fear. The Truman committee was called the Oppenheimer Panel, ­after the physicist and former scientific director of the Manhattan Proj­ect J. Robert Oppenheimer, the panel’s most famous member, who had also advised the Acheson-­Lilienthal committee in 1946.22 The panel recommended that the American public be made aware of the full dimension of the nuclear threat and national defense plans. This suggestion became the starting point for a public information campaign by the new Eisenhower administration, and a major presidential speech was part of the plan. C. D. Jackson, Eisenhower’s public relations adviser and speechwriter, oversaw the proj­ect. Given the supposed aim of being candid with the public, Jackson dubbed the proj­ect Operation Candor.23 The ups and downs of the Cold War affected the drafting of the speech. In March 1953, Stalin’s death promised a relaxation of international tensions, but half a year ­later, on 12 August 1953, the Soviets declared that they had conducted their first test of a thermonuclear weapon. The test showed that despite the

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change in leadership, the nuclear arms race continued and that the policies of secrecy and denial had not prevented a Soviet thermonuclear program. Within the Eisenhower administration, faith in Operation Candor faded. It was also felt that the speech needed a positive message, but looking over the drafts, Jackson found the message demoralizing. He feared that as written, it would leave its audience thinking “bang bang, no hope, no way out in the end.”24 The positive twist arrived in the form of the creation of a new international organ­ization that would primarily focus on the civilian rather than military uses of the atom. The proposal to establish an international pool of fissionable materials was debated late in the drafting pro­cess, in September and October 1953. Eisenhower’s team would ­later recall that it was the president’s own idea.25 On 10 September 1953, Eisenhower had sent a memorandum to Lewis Strauss, chairman of the AEC, and to Jackson, in which he explained his idea: “Suppose the United States and the Soviets w ­ ere each to turn over to the United Nations, for peaceful use, X kilograms of fissionable material. The amount X could be fixed at a figure which we could ­handle from our stockpile, but which would be difficult for the Soviets to match.”26 The idea was technically an arms control proposal, as it would reduce the stockpiles of the nuclear weapon states by putting part of their fissionable material ­under the control of the United Nations, but at the same time would not undermine US nuclear hegemony. Like the Baruch Plan a de­cade ­earlier, the new initiative gave some responsibility to the United Nations, which was as much a battlefield of Cold War rivalries as a place to overcome conflict. Strauss and Jackson then moved to adapt the existing draft of Eisenhower’s speech to incorporate the new plan. Strauss was not a big fan of establishing an inter­national pool of nuclear material. He agreed with the president that the proposal made sense from a propaganda perspective, but also saw difficulties that Eisenhower had neglected. Strauss emphasized the lack of precise knowledge about the Soviet nuclear program and argued that the development of the much more destructive hydrogen bomb had reduced “the relative importance of a stockpile of fissionable material.”27 Strauss and Jackson usually met to revise the speech over breakfast at the private Metropolitan Club, nicknaming the proj­ect Operation Wheaties, ­after the iconic American breakfast cereal.28 When in late October Eisenhower received an invitation to give a speech at the UN General Assembly, he thought it the perfect setting for presenting his proposal. As a result, the draft, which had been written for a domestic audience, had to be revised again, this time tailored for an international audience.

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In early December, a few days before the scheduled speech, Eisenhower discussed it with British prime minister Winston Churchill and French president Joseph Laniel on the island of Bermuda, a British territory in the Atlantic with a history of high-­level po­liti­cal meetings. In April 1943, American and British del­ e­ga­tions had met in Bermuda to discuss how to help Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany, a meeting that ended inconclusively. The two allies returned to Bermuda ten years ­later, 4–7 December 1953, this time joined by a French del­e­ga­tion. They discussed almost ­every international affairs issue at the time: the relationship of the West to the Soviet Union and communist China, the ­future of Eu­rope and the North Atlantic Treaty Organ­ization (NATO), and policies t­ oward the ­Middle East and Far East. The del­e­ga­tions at the 1953 Bermuda meetings ­were relatively small, about ten ­people from each state. Eisenhower discussed his plans for the upcoming UN speech in even smaller, confidential circles, with just the three heads of state and their foreign ministers pre­sent or more informally in conversations with Churchill, Churchill’s science advisor and “personal nuclear guru” Lord Cherwell, and Strauss.29 Churchill remarked that it would be difficult to draw a line between the civilian and military dimensions of the atom—­a separation that was vital to Eisenhower’s plan. Yet, Churchill, like his French counterpart, generally supported the Atoms for Peace proposal. Eisenhower described his proposal as a message to the states of the ideological West and a Cold War initiative. The speech, he said, would give “­t hese nations a stronger feeling of participation in the strug­gle of East and West.”30 Eisenhower had not discussed the nature of Atoms for Peace with anyone outside his innermost circle. Within the AEC, only Strauss was kept in the loop, to the annoyance of the other commissioners. Eisenhower did not even inform his fellow Republican William Sterling Cole, chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), the congressional forum established in 1946 as a result of the McMahon Act. Four years ­later, Cole would become the IAEA’s first director general. Around the time Eisenhower put the final touches on his speech, Cole, too, felt the need to launch an initiative for the international control of fissionable material. In early December, Cole had a conversation with the physicist Edward Teller—­the inventor of the hydrogen bomb—­about this topic. Talking with Teller led Cole to think that it was time for a new attempt to inform the public about the state of nuclear affairs. As head of the JCAE, Cole felt a personal responsibility to deliver a speech to revive some aspects of the Baruch Plan.31 Before moving

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forward with this plan, Cole sought out Strauss for his opinion, catching him as he was about to leave for Bermuda with Eisenhower. During a short car r­ ide from the office of the AEC to see the secretary of commerce, Cole explained his ideas to Strauss, who knowing about Eisenhower’s upcoming speech (but unable to share it with Cole), asked him to wait ­until the US del­e­ga­tion had returned from Bermuda before further considering his plan. Four days l­ater, Eisenhower’s speech at the UN made Cole’s initiative obsolete.32 While the British, French, and US del­e­ga­tions met in Bermuda, on 7 December 1953, one day before Eisenhower’s speech, Charles E. Bohlen, the US ambassador to Moscow, discretely called on Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov, without informing the press about the visit. Bohlen told Molotov that Eisenhower’s speech at the General Assembly would deal with the nuclear threat. The failed Baruch Plan still loomed in the air, and Molotov wanted to know if Eisenhower’s speech would proceed along the same lines. Would Eisenhower pre­sent a new proposal for the international control of nuclear weapons? Bohlen could not provide Molotov more details but promised to keep the Soviets informed.33 On the plane back from Bermuda to New York’s LaGuardia Airport, Eisenhower and his team made the final changes to “Atoms for Peace.” Only at that point did the ­f uture agency get its name, with the previous draft having referenced the “International Atomic Energy Authority,” a name with some resonance in the failed Baruch Plan of 1946, which aimed to establish a so-­called International Atomic Development Authority.34 Still on board the plane, the final draft to distribute at the United Nations was reproduced on a mimeograph machine.35 Despite all the hard work on the draft of the speech, the precise role and objectives of the new International Atomic Energy Agency remained somewhat blurry in the presidential address, outlining three distinct but overlapping objectives. First, the IAEA would receive and store fissionable materials previously part of national military stockpiles, thus controlling a neutralized “pool” of fissionable materials with the immediate promise of slowing down the nuclear arms race. This was the arms control aspect of Atoms for Peace. Second, the new agency would seek to make t­ hese materials available for civilian use in member states, acting as a “bank” or a “broker” to promote the peaceful use of nuclear science and technology. This reflected the promotional role of the ­future agency. Third, the organ­ization would open a new channel for peaceful discussion in a world divided by Cold War front lines. This represented the moral, psychological dimension of the initiative.36 Despite the ambitious goals suggested, nobody had put much thought into how this would look in practice. The plan was to work it all out in the multilateral negotiations that followed.

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Soviets and Americans at the Negotiating ­Table Starting in January 1954, the United States and the Soviet Union began quietly exchanging notes on Eisenhower’s proposal.37 This was in line with the president’s statement that the Soviet Union would be included in the implementation of Atoms for Peace as well as with Bohlen’s conversation with Molotov. Despite the approach to the Soviet government on Atoms for Peace, the Americans initially considered both options—­Soviet participation or non-­participation—as pos­si­ble scenarios in the initiative’s realization. Attitudes about ­whether the Soviet Union should be involved in the creation of the IAEA varied among US officials throughout the course of discussions.38 The Soviets, while not enthusiastic about the initiative, w ­ ere nonetheless willing to discuss Eisenhower’s proposal and did so in conversations and letters. Eisenhower remained on the margins during the discussions on putting his plan into practice. This was somewhat typical for the man who has been called the “hidden-­hand president.”39 Despite showing public support of Atoms for Peace at the United Nations, the Soviet government remained skeptical of it for several reasons, most of them in line with classic Cold War propaganda. The Soviets argued that the creation of the IAEA was not a genuine effort ­toward nuclear disarmament, a key propaganda point. They had publicly called for a prohibition on nuclear weapons. The Soviets also wanted to include the ­People’s Republic of China (PRC) in the IAEA. Both proposals ­were unacceptable to the Americans. US foreign policy relied on nuclear deterrence—­t he ability to deter other states from attacking for fear of nuclear retaliation. Eisenhower’s New Look defense policy emphasized the role of nuclear weapons, compared to conventional bombs and ground troops, not least to reduce military spending.40 Thus, a ban on the bomb was out of the question. In addition, the US government recognized the Republic of China, not the communist PRC, as the legitimate representative of the Chinese ­people. The third Soviet c­ ounter to Atoms for Peace transcended mere Cold War propaganda and surfaced in April 1954 at the Indochina Conference in Geneva, where leading states had come together to end the conflict in Indochina and to discuss the ­f uture of a divided ­Korea. The meeting gave US secretary of State John Foster Dulles and his Soviet counterpart, Molotov, the chance to exchange ideas about the ­future IAEA. In a memo to Dulles, Molotov raised a point about the dilemma of the atom’s dual character that would play an impor­tant role in the subsequent negotiations. “[T]hat the peaceful application of atomic energy is connected with the simultaneous production of atomic materials utilized for the production of atomic weapons is indisputable and has been proved in practice,”

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Molotov explained. The line between civilian and military uses of nuclear energy was easy to cross, and Eisenhower’s idea to promote civilian nuclear technologies evoked an alarming situation. Molotov added, “[It]not only fails to lead to a reduction of the stocks of atomic materials utilized for the manufacture of atomic weapons, but also leads to an increase of ­these stocks without any limitations being applied ­either to the constantly increasing production of ­t hese materials in individual states or to the production by the International Agency itself.”41 Molotov referred to the dual-­use prob­lem: nuclear power reactors would not simply use nuclear fuel to generate electricity, but during operation would also produce fissile material, notably plutonium. In fact, the Soviets ­were in the pro­cess of designing such a reactor type. The diplomatic language of the aide memoire made Molotov’s argument sound less explosive than it actually was, but the Americans got the message. Gerard Smith, Dulles’ special assistant for Atomic Energy Affairs, paraphrased the Soviet reaction more bluntly as “asking what in the world Americans thought they ­were d ­ oing proposing to spread weapon-­grade nuclear materials around the world.”42 Dulles confessed to some of his team members at the State Department that “he had been completely puzzled by Molotov’s reference” and that he had not initially understood what the Soviet foreign minister had in mind.43 Smith had to inform his boss that Molotov had been better briefed by Soviet scientists than Dulles had been by Americans experts.44 Indeed, several members of the Eisenhower administration apparently had turned a blind eye to the security risks of Atoms for Peace, focusing instead on the public relations impact of the UN speech and the enthusiastic response it received.45 This neglect stemmed from ­factors that characterized the drafting pro­cess of the speech—­t he early focus on Operation Candor and the lack of involvement by ­people outside Eisenhower’s close circle. Moreover, the question of if and how nuclear weapons would spread around the world could only be answered theoretically. The Americans had not entirely understood the Soviet argument at first. Molotov’s criticism primarily focused on the likely growth of nuclear weapons stockpiles within the United States and the Soviet Union as a result of intensified nuclear activities and dual-­use technologies—­t hat is, the dangers of what would ­later be called vertical proliferation. The Americans, on the other hand, thought that the Soviets w ­ ere talking about the emergence of new nuclear weapon states as a result of the global technology distribution aspect of Atoms for Peace, in other words, horizontal proliferation.46As an analyst in the State Department put it, “The US and the USSR have been worried about two dif­fer­ent aspects of a related question. The USSR apparently brought up the point that ‘peaceful utiliza-

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tion of atomic energy must necessarily increase stocks of materials available for military purposes.’ This is only partially true but in countering their argument we . . . ​[mentioned] ‘diversion’ rather than the overall increase prob­lem. We believe, therefore, that in any discussion with the Rus­sians we must be prepared to consider both aspects.”47 From an early 1950s perspective, the flaws of the Eisenhower plan w ­ ere not simply due to ignorance. What was known at the time suggested that fostering the civilian uses of nuclear technology could help slow nuclear weapon programs. At the time of Eisenhower’s speech, uranium was believed to be a scarce resource. Accordingly, the initial idea of establishing a neutral pool of fissionable material would have decreased the amount of nuclear materials available for weapon programs. Only the discovery of new uranium sources in the mid-1950s, when it became apparent that the ele­ment could be found all over the world, made it clear that t­ here could be no “zero-­sum game between uranium for peaceful purposes and for weapons.”48 Dulles delivered his response to the Soviets’ criticism of the Eisenhower proposal in an “informal paper” to Molotov. In it, he argued that the Soviet Union had misunderstood the rationale of Atoms for Peace, which “was not intended as a mea­sure for the control of atomic weapons,” but an initiative for international cooperation in the civilian uses of nuclear science and technology.49 Contrary to what Dulles said to Molotov, however, the Eisenhower speech had certainly focused on an arms control proposal—­t he “pool”—­even though the concept had been controversial among Eisenhower’s aides and had not been well thought-­out at the time of its pre­sen­ta­tion. Over the course of the next few months, the arms control aspect of Atoms for Peace would move to the background of discussions, as attention turned to civilian nuclear applications. On 9 July 1954, Assistant Secretary of State Livingston Merchant followed up with an official response to Molotov’s Geneva memorandum about the dual-­use prob­lem and plutonium produced at civilian facilities. He wrote, “[T]he Soviet Union . . . ​appears to assume that any form of peaceful utilization of atomic energy must necessarily increase stocks of materials available for military purposes. In real­ity, however, ways can be devised to safeguard against diversion of materials from power producing reactors.”50 Although the “ways . . . ​to safeguard” against misuse of nuclear materials ­were not specified, the question of nuclear safeguards—­tools and activities to verify that peaceful nuclear assistance is not being used for military purposes—­became a central part of the discussions on the IAEA. Nuclear safeguards had been a fixture of the US nuclear policy debate since the 1945 Three-­Nation Declaration on Atomic Energy called for international

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nuclear control, but Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace did not rely on nuclear safeguards to inspect other countries’ nuclear programs. Quite the opposite, according to Eisenhower, his proposal had “the ­great virtue that it can be undertaken without the irritations and mutual suspicions incident to any attempt to set up a completely acceptable system of world-­w ide inspection and control.”51 With this, Eisenhower countered potential criticism that Atoms for Peace would fail, like the Baruch Plan, which had relied on inspection and on the a­ ctual control of nuclear materials. The dangers of both vertical and horizontal proliferation would be discussed in more detail during the l­ ater stages of the negotiations, but for the time being, the US-­Soviet exchange on the creation of the IAEA was put on pause ­until late September 1954. The cause of the break was not a deadlock comparable to the one that froze UNAEC negotiations in the late 1940s, but t­ here was no clear understanding on how to further proceed. Despite this, the previously secret US-­Soviet exchange of letters on Atoms for Peace was published in the United States and the Soviet Union in October 1954 due to worldwide interest in the negotiations on the Atoms for Peace plan. This act of transparency was one ­thing both rivals agreed on.52

Bringing the Allies on Board Alongside this early and controversial exchange with the Soviet Union, the United States discussed the creation of the IAEA with the United Kingdom and Canada, its close allies and former partners in the Manhattan Proj­ect. London was particularly worried about the disagreement between the two superpowers. In the eyes of the British Foreign Office, the key contribution of the IAEA lay in having a positive effect on international Cold War tensions; according to London, the new organ­ization should become a “bridge between East and West.”53 A working party at the Foreign Office, established to discuss the British attitude ­toward Atoms for Peace, did not think that it made sense to proceed without the Soviets and, if so, was in ­favor of having “the plan dropped altogether.”54 Economic issues drove the lukewarm attitude of the British ­toward the IAEA. For the United Kingdom, it was more desirable to strengthen nuclear cooperation within the Commonwealth of Nations than to launch a new international nuclear organ­ization that would most likely be dominated by the United States. Nevertheless, the Foreign Office would be willing to support the creation of the IAEA if the Soviet Union participated. This was seen “as a price worth paying to secure the relaxation of international tension.”55 In spring and summer of 1954, as the exchange with the Soviet Union slowed, the State Department included Australia, Belgium, France, Portugal, and South

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Africa in its correspondence on the IAEA. In the “Atoms for Peace” speech, Eisenhower had referred to the states “principally involved,” referencing a resolution previously ­adopted by the UN General Assembly’s First Committee that envisaged the formation of a Subcommittee of the Disarmament Commission, composed of the United States, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, Canada, and France.56 Given Eisenhower’s reference to this resolution, the need to add France to the group of negotiators was obvious. It was also felt that the exclusion of France would offend the country’s sense of national prestige and harm the alliance of Western nations.57 The above-­mentioned states formed an eight-­nation negotiation group and served as the main international forum in which the United States discussed the implementation of Atoms for Peace. Australia, Belgium, Portugal, and South Africa had been included in the eight-­nation negotiating group b ­ ecause of their natu­ral deposits of raw materials. The Belgian Congo was the Western world’s biggest supplier of uranium, closely followed by South Africa. Australia had started extracting radioactive sources in the early twentieth ­century. Portugal was a minor producer of uranium, but delivered uranium oxide to the United Kingdom and the United States. Five of the eight states w ­ ere colonial powers.58 Within the group of eight nations, the United States and the United Kingdom took the lead in developing the first draft of the statute establishing the IAEA’s ­legal foundations. In an early version, the agency’s highest official held the position of general man­ag­er. This terminology evinced the AEC’s (and thus the United States’) strong influence on the draft; a general man­ag­er oversaw the dif­ fer­ent divisions of the AEC.59 Ambassadors of the countries involved discussed the draft, as did State Department and AEC officials in Washington. The plan to establish a pool of fissionable materials built from the stockpiles of the states principally involved did not play a major role in the discussions; without Soviet participation, siphoning off fissionable materials from US military stockpiles did not make much sense.60 The early multilateral discussions on Atoms for Peace and the creation of the IAEA consisted of ad-­hoc discussions at the State Department, not formal meetings. Although the initial draft statute underwent revisions in the ­later stages of the negotiations, some of the main features of the ­future IAEA—­its aims, policy bodies, and membership qualifications—­were outlined in the early discussions of 1954. In short, the foundations of the IAEA’s statute ­were laid by a group of states that could be described as the global West—­the two nuclear weapon states of the ideological West (the Unites States and the United Kingdom), four additional members of NATO (Belgium, Canada, France, and Portugal),

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and two uranium-­ producing states of the Commonwealth (Australia and South Africa). While the State Department was exchanging bilateral notes with the Soviets, it kept the seven other nations informed and, on an “eyes only, top secret basis,” shared the Soviet notes with them.61

The Role of the United Nations Why did the United States discuss the creation of the IAEA in letters and meetings with the Soviet Union and in conversations with several allies instead of seeking international negotiations within the UN framework? Why was the implementation of Atoms of Peace not handed over to the UN General Assembly’s First Committee? ­After all, had Eisenhower not declared that the IAEA would operate ­under the aegis of the United Nations? ­There ­were three primary reasons for the US approach. First, the United States wanted to lead in the proj­ect that it had initiated. Second, as Eisenhower said in his UN speech, the creation of the IAEA would be discussed in “private or diplomatic talks.”62 Third, Atoms for Peace was based on the assumption that the peaceful and military uses of nuclear energy ­were distinct and separable and that the IAEA’s primary purpose would be to promote its civilian uses and science. While Atoms for Peace was partially born out of arms control considerations, the Eisenhower administration increasingly tried to distance it from disarmament initiatives. According to this logic, the IAEA was not exclusively a ­matter for the First Committee, which dealt with disarmament.63 The UN General Assembly—­where the “Atoms for Peace” speech had received the most enthusiastic response—­ultimately played an influential role in implementing Eisenhower’s plan, even though much had already been discussed in the private meetings of the eight negotiating states.64 Del­e­ga­tions from around the world discussed the creation of the IAEA during the annual UN General Assembly meetings in 1954 and 1955. ­T hese gatherings would be decisive in engendering Soviet support for the IAEA’s creation. In the mid-1950s, the influence of the developing and newly in­de­pen­dent states gained in visibility at the United Nations. In 1955, 16 new members, including the young states of Cambodia, Ceylon, Laos, and Libya, joined the United Nations. In 1956, the African states of Sudan, Morocco, and Tunisia took seats in the General Assembly. The historian Mark Mazower has argued that at that time, the United Nations shifted from being an “instrument of empire into an anticolonial forum.”65 The enlargement of the General Assembly served as an indicator of this. The General Assembly’s First Committee discussions on the creation of the IAEA revealed a broad desire among delegates from po­liti­cally dif­f er­ent states—­

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among them Egypt, France, India, Pakistan, and the United Kingdom—to include the Soviet Union in the pro­cess. The Soviets themselves indicated their willingness to take part in the IAEA’s establishment and that to possibly compromise on some of their demands, such as insisting on the prohibition of atomic weapons.66 Delegates from several developing countries, including Egypt, Pakistan, and Peru, stressed the importance of the IAEA in helping meet the needs of the eco­nom­ically less advanced nations.67 Eisenhower had referred in his speech to the “power-­starved areas of the world” as a main beneficiary of Atoms for Peace. During the UN General Assembly debate in fall 1954, a number of states began framing the IAEA as a development agency.68 Many countries perceived the peaceful uses of nuclear science and technology as an impor­tant means for accelerating economic growth. For newly in­de­pen­dent states, access to nuclear technology symbolized modernity and offered national prestige.69 Against this backdrop, the peaceful use of the atom had the potential to open a crucial field of technical assistance provided by the Soviet Union and the United States, with the IAEA playing an obvious role in the distribution of development aid as part of Cold War competition.70 As Jackson, Eisenhower’s psychological warfare expert and co-­crafter of “Atoms for Peace,” underscored to Strauss, in light of Soviet economic offensives, “Atoms for Peace, wisely placed in vari­ous parts of the world” would be a means to recapture “for the US a lot of the recent international slippage.” 71 Both the United States and the Soviet Union tried to pre­sent themselves as the developing countries’ “true friend and champion in bringing them the benefits of the atomic revolution,” wrote Gladys Walser, UN secretary-­general Dag Hammarskjöld’s observer to the IAEA negotiations.72 In this regard, since 1955 both superpowers pursued bilateral programs for nuclear technology assistance to friendly nations. Somewhat confusingly, the US bilateral nuclear assistance programs w ­ ere promoted ­u nder the same motto as the IAEA, “Atoms for Peace.” The first state to sign a bilateral Atoms for Peace agreement with the United States was Turkey, which had already been a major recipient of Marshall Plan aid ­because of its geostrategic importance. To make the bilateral nuclear program work, the US Congress had to amend the previous, very restrictive McMahon Act. The Atomic Energy Act of 1954, signed by Eisenhower on 30 August, allowed for peaceful nuclear cooperation with other states, as long as the material provided was subject to strict nuclear safeguards. Similar to the United States, the Soviet Union signed bilateral nuclear assistance treaties with Eastern Eu­ro­pean states, in the spring of 1955. Unlike the United States, however, the Soviet Union did not rely on nuclear safeguards to prevent peaceful nuclear assistance from being misused for weapon programs.

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Instead, it required strong guarantees by recipient states not to divert the material to military uses. In addition, recipients had to return used nuclear fuel to the Soviet Union to ensure against plutonium repro­cessing.73

Nuclear Safeguards against Diversion The United Nations was not only a forum for discussing the politics of the atom, but also for promoting the science b ­ ehind it. In 1954, the UN General Assembly established the United Nations Scientific Advisory Committee (UNSAC), which would advise Hammarskjöld on organ­izing a conference about the peaceful uses of atomic energy, to be held at the UN office in Geneva, Switzerland, 8–20 August 1955. It was the largest scientific conference until then, with almost 2,000 scientists in attendance. Eisenhower himself introduced a swimming-­pool research reactor that the Oak Ridge National Laboratory had provided for the accompanying exhibition. The president even operated the control panel of what Enrico Fermi’s wife described as the world’s “most beautiful ­little reactor.”74 ­A fter the conference, a small group of some of the top American and Soviet delegates and experts stayed on in Geneva for a few days to discuss the next steps in the IAEA’s creation, in par­tic­u­lar the issue of nuclear safeguards. Despite initial

Left to right, UN undersecretaries Ilya S. Tchernychev and Ralph J. Bunche at the closing session of the UN Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy seated alongside conference president Homi J. Bhabha, Geneva, 20 August 1955. © UN Photo

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skepticism, the Soviet Union had fi­nally resumed its exchange of notes on Atoms for Peace with the Americans. This shift was largely due to the worldwide enthusiasm for the proposal, revitalized scientific exchange between East and West, and pressure from within the UN General Assembly to have both Cold War superpowers participate in the initiative. The post-­conference technical meetings in Geneva centered on the question of how to ensure that “nuclear material for use in reactors can be supplied to members of an International Atomic Energy Agency without increasing the risk to the security of the world.”75 This issue—­the potential diversion of nuclear materials from civilian to military programs—­had gone largely unanswered since Molotov asked Dulles about the proliferation risks involved in Atoms for Peace in 1954. The meetings took place on UN premises, at the Palais de Nations, and—­ even though they w ­ ere officially called “meetings of six governments”—­the del­e­ ga­tions ­were led by scientists, rather than diplomats or politicians. Along with experts from the Soviet Union and the United States, delegates from Canada, Czecho­slo­va­kia, France, and the United Kingdom participated in the meetings. Eastern and Western media described the talks as “ultra-­secret,” and even some of the State Department staffers working on the creation of the IAEA knew l­ ittle about what was transpiring. While the group made use of the facilities at the Palais de Nations, they w ­ ere unwilling to allow UN representatives to attend the meeting. Ralph Bunche, Hammarskjöld’s undersecretary for special po­liti­cal affairs at the time, only learned about the gatherings shortly before they began, and then only by chance, during an eve­ning reception at the embassy of Yugo­slavia. Engaging in small talk, Bunche asked the Soviet ambassador, Dimitri Skobeltzyn, if he would be able to get some rest a­ fter the Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, which had been exhausting. Skobeltzyn responded that unfortunately he would not, as the negotiations on IAEA safeguards would start the following Monday. The meetings, Skobeltzyn also told Bunche, would take place in a UN fa­cil­i­t y but ­were “outside the UN and not UN business.” In a handwritten note to Hammarskjöld, Bunche described how irritated he was about not having been informed ­earlier by ­either the Americans or the Soviets.76 The participation of such eminent scientists as the American Isidor Rabi and the Soviet Dimitri Skobeltzyn added to the public’s perception that the talks ­were highly impor­tant.77 Rabi, as the lead US delegate, announced in the first session that the meetings ­were designed “to talk about a technical prob­lem in a technical manner,” an agenda to which the participants largely kept. Rabi noted that while the drafting of the IAEA’s statute was “a ­matter for diplomats and ­lawyers,”

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the scientists would have to deal with the technical feasibility of inspection and control.78 The larger po­liti­cal questions, such as disarmament or the Soviet conditions for participating in the IAEA, ­were not on the agenda. Although the atmosphere of the Geneva meetings of August 1955 was positive, American and Soviet delegates failed to reach an agreement on a technical solution to the “diversion prob­lem.” The US del­e­ga­tion presented a half-­baked proposal, drafted on short notice in a ­hotel room, to use radioactive tracers, such as high-­ energy gamma emitters, to track the movement of nuclear fuel.79 The Americans accused the Soviets of coming to the meeting unprepared, but the Americans also found it difficult to figure out which control mechanisms might make sense. Although the delegates departed without a concrete technical fix to the prob­lem of nuclear diversion, the Americans’ conversations with Soviet scientists improved their understanding of the potential h ­ azards of nuclear technology sharing and the available tools to address them. While the notion of safeguards had been part of nuclear control proposals since 1945, the meetings in Geneva made clear that no one ­really knew how ­these safeguards might work in practice. Smith, Dulles’s special assistant, would l­ater write that he felt at that time that “if only American scientists and our Soviet counter­parts could have exchanges about controlling nuclear weapons, the chances would be better than if it w ­ ere 80 left to politicians, bureaucrats, and military officers.” Of importance, the talks revealed that the two Cold War rivals had more in common than ­either had expected. In the weeks ­after the Geneva meetings, the State Department’s Atomic Energy Affairs section devoted unpre­ce­dented attention to the potential dangers of peaceful nuclear assistance. Rabi, a key figure at the Geneva technical meetings along with Skobeltzyn, played a major role in shaping this discussion. He had already had an impressive c­ areer in science and politics, as a Manhattan Proj­ect scientist, Nobel laureate in physics, and chair of the AEC’s General Advisory Committee. Rabi also served on Hammarskjöld’s UNSAC, which provided a regular opportunity to exchange views with Skobeltzyn. In the weeks before and ­after the Geneva talks, Rabi and a group of State Department officers discussed internally the dif­fer­ent aspects of the risks in peaceful nuclear assistance: What types of peaceful nuclear assistance would be vulnerable to the diversion of nuclear materials? How could diversions be prevented? How serious was the threat of the spread of nuclear weapons? What role could the IAEA play in preventing the proliferation of nuclear technology for military uses? Smith and his colleagues realized that Atoms for Peace had been developed and released without giving proper consideration of the risks involved in the

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spread of nuclear technology. Impressed by the talks with the Soviets, and ­after intense exchanges with Rabi, Smith included a warning in a September 1955 report about anticipated US bilateral nuclear assistance agreements: “[T]he Atoms for Peace program is approaching the stage where dual-­use power reactors ­will be constructed around the world. In ­these reactors, weapon-­g rade material ­w ill be formed in large quantities which ­w ill pose a worldwide security prob­lem that has not been squarely faced.”81 Rabi felt that before the United States implemented peaceful nuclear assistance programs, it would be imperative to develop an appropriate system of control ­either directly by the United States or through ­ ill rethe ­future IAEA.82 Smith concluded that “the Atoms for Peace program w sult in a number of countries having competence in atomic energy technology at an e­ arlier date than if such program did not exist.”83 Even more to the point, two years before the IAEA’s establishment, Smith also worried about dual-­use reactors. He wrote, “[T]he impor­tant question of control and disposition of plutonium formed in power reactors abroad has not been considered by the US.”84 The most impor­tant result of the technical meetings in Geneva was that officials at the State Department came to believe that the Soviet Union was as concerned as the United States about the potential of other states acquiring nuclear weapons. Smith wrote, “The prospect of other nations obtaining a nuclear weapons capacity should be as unpleasant to the USSR as it is to the US. This is one of the rare instances where the US and the USSR may have a clear community of interest.”85 While the Americans could not be certain that their assessment of the Soviet attitude was correct, their belief in the existence of a “community of interest” led them to proceed with the negotiations to create an international nuclear watchdog.

The Washington Talks In October 1955, a month a­ fter the conclusion of the technical talks in Geneva, the UN General Assembly convened in New York for its annual meeting. The assembly expressed its overall support for the states engaged in discussions on the creation of the IAEA, but requested that an international conference on the agency’s founding statute be held in fall 1956 at which all UN member states and the body’s specialized agencies have an opportunity to comment on the draft doc­ ument. It also requested the addition of Brazil, Czecho­slo­va­kia, India, and the Soviet Union to the US-­led group of initially eight states negotiating the establishment of the agency. Brazil and India w ­ ere already members of UNSAC, which set a pre­ce­dent for also including the two states in the IAEA negotiations, with the expectation that they would represent the interests of developing countries.

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Czecho­slo­va­kia was an impor­tant uranium supplier to the Soviet Union, making it a natu­ral addition to the group. The negotiating group’s expansion to twelve states was not without controversy. In the eyes of Pakistan and the Philippines—­both members of the Southeast Asia Treaty Organ­ization and thus US allies—­India and Brazil did not fully represent the interests of the developing world. Pakistan and the Philippines submitted a proposal to the First Committee to include in the negotiating group two or three additional countries that had no nuclear program or known uranium deposits. Only an expansion such as this would result in obtaining true insight from “under-­developed economies.”86 For Pakistan, it also represented an opportunity to possibly ­counter the influence of its regional rival, India, in shaping the IAEA. A ­ fter pressure from the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth, Pakistan s­ topped pressing for a vote on its proposal.87 In February 1956, when the newly formed twelve-­nation group came together, the negotiations on the IAEA statute entered a more formal stage. The task of the group was to revise the draft statute e­ arlier compiled by the eight-­nation group for that year’s conference on the statute. The negotiations ­were officially the Working Level Meeting on the Draft Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, but most observers referred to them as the “Washington talks,” a­ fter the location of the meetings.88 For the Eisenhower administration, having Washington host the event was more than a ­matter of con­ve­nience. Certainly, it made sense to meet where all foreign ambassadors w ­ ere based, especially since nobody knew how long the meetings would take—­eight weeks, as it turned out, which was longer than expected. Moreover, in holding the meetings in the nation’s capital, the United States underlined its claim to leadership in the new organ­ization. The Soviet Union and Czecho­slo­va­kia had instead proposed meeting in New York, as headquarters of the United Nations, but without success.89 The twelve-­nation group convened near the US State Department’s main building, in Foggy Bottom, at the conference facilities of the State Department’s International Office, on Pennsylvania Ave­nue. The US government, as the official host of the meetings, hired conference staff, such as security officers, secretaries, and interpreters. Seventy-­ eight delegates and fifteen staff members registered for the talks, but smaller groups attended most sessions.90 ­T here ­were some remarkable characters among the negotiators. Maurice Couve de Murville, the elegant diplomat and l­ater foreign minister of France, served as French ambassador to the United States at that time. Homi Bhabha, the most po­liti­cally influential nuclear physicist in India, led the Indian del­e­ga­tion.

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Six months prior, he had served as president of the UN Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy in Geneva. Bhabha, from a rich and influential ­family, had attended the University of Cambridge and presented himself as a true gentleman; despite his distinguished role in the negotiations, he would always pour a glass of ­water for the assistant technical secretary of the conference, who sat next to him.91 The South African del­e­ga­t ion included the less well-­k nown ­David Fischer. Among the negotiators, only Fischer would spend his entire c­ areer in the new institution, becoming one of its longest-­standing officials. In 1997, he assumed the role of the IAEA’s official historian.92 The delegates’ job was to take the draft statute prepared by the eight-­nation group and incorporate revisions requested by other UN member states. It would be a tricky endeavor. On one hand, the twelve states meeting in Washington had differing opinions on impor­tant questions, and of course each del­e­ga­tion wanted its own interests set out in the final text. On the other hand, the negotiators knew that they had to find a compromise strong enough to survive the international conference on the statute l­ater that year. UN delegates from developing countries made it clear that they would not simply rubber stamp what­ever the twelve presented, but had to be satisfied with the ­actual content.93 Therefore, and despite differences of opinion, the Washington twelve needed to come up with a revised draft statute that they jointly endorsed and that they could capably defend in New York. On 22 February 1956, Eisenhower announced that the United States would make 40,000 kilograms of U-235 (contained in enriched uranium), available for the further development of peaceful nuclear programs. Half of this material was earmarked for US domestic programs, the other half for the foreign Atoms for Peace program. Notably, the president did not specify ­whether by Atoms for Peace he meant the United States’ bilateral programs with allies and friends or if he was referring to the new IAEA. Eisenhower was purposely vague b ­ ecause he did not want to make a binding promise to an institution that had not yet been established. While his announcement underscored that the United States was serious about foreign assistance in nuclear m ­ atters, Eisenhower was smart enough not to commit himself in advance to an agency whose inspection and control functions remained ­under negotiation. The formulation of the offer left enough leeway to allow him to ­later clarify, if necessary, that the donation was for the bilateral Atoms for Peace programs with friendly nations. This was primarily a signal to the Indians, who w ­ ere e­ ager to receive peaceful nuclear assistance through the new agency, but also fiercely opposed nuclear safeguards as too intrusive.94 The first meeting of the Washington talks took place in the after­noon of 27 February 1956, five days ­after Eisenhower’s announcement. Not surprisingly,

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once the procedural nuts and bolts for the upcoming meetings w ­ ere settled, Bhabha raised the topic of the presidential announcement, asking what it meant for the creation of the IAEA. James Wadsworth, the chief US negotiator, avoided answering directly, but assured him that the United States would give its full support to the new agency.95 Bhabha’s question apparently hit a nerve. Two years ­after Eisenhower’s UN speech, the IAEA’s role in the distribution and global development of nuclear technologies remained blurry. Would it serve as a pool for “neutralizing” fissionable materials from national military stockpiles, a bank that would make ­t hese materials available to member states for civilian uses, a broker in nuclear industry deals, a clearing­house, or all of the above? Shortly before the beginning of the meetings, a South African diplomat wrote to his colleague, “It is still not clear to me how far the agency is intended as a propaganda façade and how far it w ­ ill exercise a­ ctual control over an appreciable amount of fissionable material.”96 In the “Atoms for Peace” speech, Eisenhower had presented the image of an inter­national atomic energy agency that “could be made responsible for the impounding, storage and protection of the contributed fissionable and other materials.”97 The president also, if briefly, addressed the risks involved in such a plan: “The ingenuity of our scientists w ­ ill provide special safe conditions ­under which such a bank of fissionable material can be made essentially immune to surprise seizure.”98 While readers of the speech ­today are likely to associate this fear of surprise seizure with potential terrorist attacks on nuclear installations, Eisenhower had something e­ lse in mind. Since the days of the Acheson-­Lilienthal Report and the UNAEC negotiations, experts feared that a national government might seize an internationally controlled nuclear installation.99 During the three and a half years of negotiating the IAEA statute, however, the practical and security dimensions of storing nuclear materials w ­ ere far less discussed than the question of individual states’ contributions to the new agency: How much fissionable and other nuclear material would the big players—­the United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom—­contribute to the nuclear pool? ­Were they serious about this proposal? In the seventeen plenary meetings that followed the first session, the delegates went through the draft statute article by article. The working languages w ­ ere En­ glish, French, and Rus­sian. Decisions required a majority vote, meaning seven votes w ­ ere needed to approve an article. Numerous side meetings took place alongside the plenary sessions, e­ ither among the Western countries, between the United States and Soviet Union, or among the group of uranium-­producing states, which constituted a faction throughout the negotiations. On 2 March,

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three days into the negotiations, Soviet ambassador Georgiy Zarubin called on Wadsworth to discuss the proposed Soviet amendments. The meeting lasted two hours. Wadsworth got the impression that with the exception of a few controversial issues, Zarubin had a ­free hand to negotiate with the Americans without consulting Moscow.100 American and Soviet participants alike shared the impression that the Washington talks ­were businesslike and praised the outstanding spirit of cooperation. By mid-­March the negotiators had agreed on most of the draft to be presented to the conference in New York with one exception: the article on the composition of the IAEA Board of Governors. The board, designated the agency’s most power­ ful policymaking organ, was to be composed of the states most influential in nuclear m ­ atters. B ­ ecause of the controversial nature of the article on the board’s composition, the target date for concluding the talks, 10 March, could not be met. Much more so than the other articles, this one resolutely determined how much power individual member states would have in the new organ­ization. Naturally, ­every one of the twelve negotiating states wanted a permanent seat on the board as well as a stable majority for its respective allies. On 21 March, the negotiators abruptly de­cided to adjourn u ­ ntil 9 April ­because they w ­ ere unable to find a formula that satisfied all of them. Wanting to give the impression that every­t hing was fine, they informed the press that the meetings ­were on hold while the revised statute was being prepared, but a few days ­later, their cover was blown. Reporting on the sudden breakdown of the talks ­under the headline “Atoms-­ for-­Peace Plan Torn by Rival Blocs,” William R. Frye, the UN correspondent of the Christian Science Monitor, wrote an article so close to the truth that it dumbfounded the delegates.101 To the likely surprise of most readers, the “rival blocs” ­were not the two Cold War superpowers, but India on one hand and the uranium-­producing states on the other. “The in­ter­est­ing t­hing to me was not what the Soviet Union said—­they w ­ ere relatively cooperative—­but the newcomers,” recalled James Goodby, a ­career diplomat from the United States who took part in the Washington talks as a ju­nior staff member.102 At the heart of the conflict over the composition of the board ­were South Africa and India, with Bhabha prob­ably being the most out­spoken participant at the talks. The clash between the two countries stemmed from South African domestic policies—­specifically the racist treatment of the Indian minority ­under the apartheid regime. The subject had been a point of contention in the United Nations for years.103 The creation of the IAEA provided South Africa, prob­ably the most unpop­u ­lar member of the United Nations at that time, with the unique opportunity to take on a major role in an international organ­ization. Pretoria

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viewed India’s involvement in the twelve-­nation group as a threat to this goal and therefore tried to reduce Indian influence in the IAEA negotiations and keep “her out of the inner circle.”104 In the eyes of the South African high commissioner to Canada, W. C. du Plessis, “­every endeavor should be made to prevent her [India] from becoming a member of the agency before it has been fi­nally established.”105 South Africa resented India’s involvement in the IAEA negotiations, particularly due to India’s aspirations for leadership of the anti-­colonial movements in Asia and Africa. On the African continent, uranium mining was directly linked to the colonial question since some of the most impor­tant uranium deposits ­were not in metropolitan areas, but in regions ­under colonial control. The Soviet Union supported India and its lobbying activities for the interests of the developing countries. The United States also gave in to Indian claims for a bigger and geo­graph­i­cally more diverse Board of Governors. When the delegates reconvened in April, they reached a compromise: the board would have 23 member states—­more than seemed efficient but enough to allow for broad geo­graph­ i­cal repre­sen­ta­tion of its members. While other con­temporary international organ­izations usually expressed the desire for geo­graph­i­cal diversity in quite general terms, the IAEA statute outlined a rather specific formula. This ensured that the member states of the board included not only leaders in nuclear ­matters, but would also represent all geographic areas of the world. Another key outcome of the Washington talks related to finances. Relying on a Canadian proposal, the negotiators agreed to a unique two-­budget system for the agency. As agreed at the talks, mandatory contributions by member states would finance administrative expenses, while most other expenses would be paid out of voluntary contributions. The mandatory administrative expenses (i.e., the regular bud­get) would include a variety of costs, among them staff salaries, meetings, and scientific publications. The expenses paid by voluntary contributions (the operational bud­get) included materials and facilities, agency proj­ects, and technical assistance. While the voluntary contributions could be large, and l­ ater also went into safeguards, the IAEA’s dual mandate is reflected somewhat in the design of the two-­budget system.106 The Washington talks, though largely forgotten by the historiography of the nuclear age, are an impor­tant and early example of cooperation between the United States and the Soviet Union on nuclear m ­ atters. How was this diplomatic success pos­si­ble? The thaw in US-­Soviet relations a­ fter Stalin’s death was a major reason, but much was the result of the atmosphere and setting of the meetings. The Washington talks ­were held in private, with no press in attendance and no notes on discussions released. This helped to keep Cold War propaganda

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largely at bay. By hosting the meetings in the nation’s capital, the United States underlined its claim to leadership of the new organ­ization. At the same time, however, it showed that it was willing to find common ground with its Cold War rival. The Soviet Union reciprocated. American and Soviet delegates praised the cordial atmosphere of the meetings. In the final session, the delegates voted on the statute in its entirety, rather than on individual articles, some of which still contained seeds of irritation and controversy. This approach, suggested by Zarubin, allowed the group to demonstrate una­nim­i­ty. Fi­nally, the negotiators knew that they had to reach a consensus in order to gain the support of the international community. It was the beginning of the thermonuclear age, and the superpowers shared an interest in finding agreement on nuclear m ­ atters.

The Conference on the Statute During September and October 1956, delegates from 81 countries gathered in the General Assembly Hall at UN headquarters in New York to discuss and adopt the statute of the IAEA.107 It was the last step in the negotiation of the document, which took more than three years to draft. The discussion had now returned to the place where every­t hing had begun in 1953, the site of Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech. UN secretary-­general Hammarskjöld welcomed the del­e­ga­tions on behalf of the United Nations but the Conference on the Statute was not an official UN event; the United States had invited the international community to the conference on behalf of the twelve-­nation negotiation group. ­T here ­were a number of reasons b ­ ehind this setup, one of them being that the United States insisted on not inviting the P ­ eople’s Republic of China to the conference. The Soviet Union eventually acquiesced on this point, but emphasized that it nonetheless disagreed with it. The Americans sent the invitation letters and included a paragraph that explained the superpowers’ disagreement on China. All member states of the United Nations as well as members of the UN specialized agencies—­West Germany and Switzerland ­were members only of the latter—­were invited.108 At the beginning of the Conference on the Statute, the question of China’s membership in the agency arose once again as a topic of discussion. While the United States and its allies continued to recognize the Republic of China as the representative of the Chinese ­people, the Soviet Union, its Eastern Eu­ro­pean allies, and many of the newly in­de­pen­dent states launched an initiative to include communist China. Representatives resolved the disagreement in a diplomatic fashion somewhat similar to the successful negotiation of the IAEA

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statute, during which the Cold War opponents time and again sought, and often achieved, compromise. The Soviet Union and its allies made their point on China, but they did not press for a vote on communist China’s repre­sen­ta­tion. Moreover, the debate was held before the election of the conference president, thus sparing the chair diplomatic embarrassment.109 Also, the final statute did not exclude the possibility of states that ­were not members of the United Nations or the specialized agencies, such as communist China, to l­ater join the agency.110 The UN observer Walser recalled that among some of the Western countries, ­there was the feeling that “the Western world would benefit from an opportunity to observe and perhaps supervise Beijing’s atomic development.”111 Using the IAEA as a means to obtain information about and insight into national nuclear programs worldwide had not been articulated in Eisenhower’s original proposal but thus emerged as a potential item to add to the IAEA’s agenda. At the Conference on the Statute, the new agency’s system of safeguards and inspections also caused controversy. The objective of the safeguards system was to verify that the peaceful nuclear assistance provided by the IAEA would not be misused for military purposes by the recipients. Many of the conference sessions dealt with the IAEA’s safeguards provisions, which w ­ ere seen as a new form of ­g reat power imperialism by most of the newly in­de­pen­dent states. The Soviet Union and several del­e­ga­tions from the Eastern bloc took this view and argued that the new organ­ization should not adopt discriminatory practices. For instance, the Indian del­e­ga­tion argued that the verification system would work to the advantage of the industrialized powers and to the disadvantage of the developing countries ­because, according to the statute, the supplier states—­t hose providing nuclear materials and technologies—­would not be subject to IAEA inspections. Bhabha argued, “If a large part of the world is subject to controls and the other f­ ree of them, we w ­ ill stand on the brink of a dangerous era sharply dividing the world into atomic ‘haves’ and ‘have-­nots’ dominated by the Agency. Such a division would in itself, by creating dangerous tensions, defeat the very purpose of the safeguards, that is, to build a secure and peaceful world.”112 According to the Ukrainian representative, who supported the Indians’ argument, the agency’s safeguards provisions would put the developing countries in “a constant position of discrimination” and u ­ nder the “yoke of atomic colonialism.”113 While the Soviet bloc had been underrepresented in the Washington talks, it was now being backed by the Eastern Eu­ro­pean communist states as well as the ­union republics of Ukraine and Belarus, which had been in­de­pen­dent members of the UN system since its inception.114 The developing countries group represented the

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real majority at the Conference of the Statute, so delegates from the East and the West had to bid for their f­ avor, as exhibited by the Ukrainian statement. During the Washington talks, India had called for broad geo­graph­i­cal repre­ sen­ta­tion on the IAEA’s Board of Governors. The formulation of the draft statute reflected the Indians’ suggestions in large part, but not entirely. For many developing countries, the final formula was not sufficiently far-­reaching. The board was still seen as a power cartel of the industrialized nations and uranium-­ producing states, in which the United States and its allies would have an almost certain majority. They also wanted to see the policy-­making powers of the General Conference—­t he IAEA body of representatives from all member states—­ strengthened. Several states from what would l­ater be called the Global South criticized the underrepre­sen­ta­tion of African, Asian, and Latin American states in the new agency. Developing countries had been “deliberately excluded from taking part, and from contributing their share in cementing the foundations of this world-­w ide agency,” the Indonesian delegate had argued before the Conference on the Statute.115 As a result, the Conference on the Statute slightly increased the powers of the General Conference and decreased ­t hose of the board in some minor ways. However, by and large the compromise that the twelve nations had reached in Washington survived the Conference on the Statute. Some noteworthy topics ­were not discussed at the Conference on the Statute. While the IAEA ­today is mostly perceived as the UN’s entity responsible for stopping the proliferation of nuclear weapons, the concepts of “proliferation” and “nonproliferation” w ­ ere never part of the discussion. The official rec­ords of the conference, hundreds of pages long and covering several weeks of discussion, contain only one mention of the term proliferation, and that is not even in the context of nuclear weapons, but in a warning about the “proliferation of paper” that the huge bureaucracy of the new international organ­ization might generate.116 Access to peaceful nuclear technologies, not the denial of nuclear weapons, emerged as the primary objective of the IAEA. Significantly, the statute did not ask member states to relinquish the nuclear weapon option. On 26 October 1956, at the end of the conference, the delegates opened the statute for signature. The conference established a Preparatory Commission (Prep­ Com) to manage the implementation of the conference’s decisions and to prepare for the agency’s inaugural meetings of the two policy-­making organs, the General Conference and the Board of Governors. T ­ here was consensus, but no official decision that the inaugural conference would take place in Vienna, Austria.117 The Conference of the Statute had convened ­under im­mense time pressure. Fall, when the General Assembly holds its annual meeting, is traditionally the

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busiest time of the year for the United Nations. In terms of the Conference on the Statute, this meant that the venue where it was convened would soon be needed for other purposes. Also, just days ­after the conference ended, the Suez crisis escalated, with France, Israel, and the United Kingdom attacking Egypt ­after the Egyptian government nationalized the Suez Canal.118 During 1 to 10 November, the UN General Assembly held its first ever emergency special session, to discuss the crisis. Would the Conference on the Statute have been equally successful if it had lasted a few days longer and overlapped with the Suez crisis?

Success On 29 July 1957, the statute of the IAEA entered into force. Two conditions had to be met for this to happen: 18 of the signatory states had to ratify the statute and at least 3 of 5 par­tic­u ­lar states—­Canada, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States—­had to be among them. Ironically, the Soviet Union—­once a critic of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace—­was the first of the five major powers to sign the statute and the third country to ratify it. By contrast, the United States, the main architect of the IAEA, moved slowly in ratifying the statute, whose ratification was accompanied by controversial domestic debates. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, known for his fierce anticommunism, had opposed the IAEA passionately. In a widely received speech at the Wisconsin GOP (­Grand Old Party) Club in Milwaukee on 9 February 1957, the Senator argued that the new agency would play into the hands of the communists. He spun a scenario for the Republican audience in which the United States would be forced by the IAEA to deliver fissionable material “to communist ports.” “What has been sold to the public in glowing terms as an ‘Atoms for Peace’ program is, potentially, an ‘Atoms for War’ program,” McCarthy remarked.119 On 10 May 1957, Secretary of State Dulles urged the Senate to ratify the IAEA statute, explaining that not ­doing so would have “disastrous effects on the prestige and influence of the United States in the world.” He reminded his audience that the IAEA was “a native American product.”120 On 18 June, more than a year ­after the statute entered into force, the US Senate ratified it. The United States was only the twenty-­second country to ratify the IAEA statute. Shortly before the entry into force, the United States had offered to donate up to 5,000 kilograms of U-235 (contained in enriched uranium), the Soviet Union 50 kilograms, and the United Kingdom 20 kilograms to the new atomic agency.121 An American official called the unequitable commitment a “one ­horse, one rabbit proposition.”122 The comment referred to a statistics joke about a merchant who mixes rabbit meat with cheaper h ­ orse meat in what he euphemistically calls

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a fifty ­percent ratio: “one ­horse, one rabbit.” Nevertheless, the Americans believed that the Soviets would soon increase their offer if only for propaganda reasons. Ultimately the IAEA would never become the nuclear material pool envisioned in early discussions about it. This stemmed, however, from the gradual development of the agency’s activities as a consequence of its l­egal foundations. Article IX of the IAEA statute permits the agency to establish or acquire “facilities for the receipt, storage, and issue of materials” but does not require that it do so.123 Despite the delay in ratification by the United States, the drafting of the IAEA statute proceeded at a fast pace. Expectations for the IAEA had mounted from Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech in late 1953 to the Conference on the Statute in late 1956. Many states waited impatiently for the realization of the new atomic institution, and most of the p ­ eople involved considered the three years it took to draft the statute a long time.124 Viewed from t­ oday, however, it is striking that during a tense phase of the Cold War, an international agreement on nuclear ­matters could be reached within a few years. What made the negotiations so remarkable was that a field as sensitive and as secret as nuclear energy opened up a new channel for international cooperation. Some of the participants in the agency’s creation realized the importance of the new organ­ization at that time. In 1959, Bernhard G. Bechhoefer, a special assistant to the US del­e­ga­tion, described the agency’s founding history as an experience from which to learn po­liti­cal lessons. He was sure that a close analy­sis would provide valuable insight into the art of negotiating with the Soviet Union.125 For Bechhoefer’s boss, Wadsworth, the IAEA’s inception revealed a new path in modern diplomacy, comparable in significance to such historical diplomatic events as the Congress of Vienna.126 For developing countries, many of them newly in­de­pen­dent, the drafting of the IAEA represented a litmus test for their new status in international relations. The IAEA’s inception was strongly ­shaped by North-­South tensions a de­cade before the Group of 77 formed to gain leverage for the interests of developing states at the United Nations.127 Like their counter­parts in the industrialized states, the po­liti­cal leaders of the developing countries often perceived scientific and industrial pro­gress, particularly in the nuclear field, as an impor­tant pillar of modern national identity. The developing countries’ high expectations for the IAEA made the Cold War superpowers act both as competitors and partners. While competing for the ­favor of the developing countries, trotting out typical Cold War propaganda at the Conference of the Statute, the superpowers also cultivated an atmosphere of understanding in order to achieve their respective aims for the new agency. The perception of nuclear energy as the driving force

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of a “new industrial revolution” united IAEA negotiators from the East and the West, the North and the South.128 The science historian John Krige wrote, “In an age in which the power of the modern state increasingly rested on its scientific and technological capability, scientific and technological ‘leadership’ was an essential complement to po­liti­cal, economic, and military leadership.”129 Despite the Cold War race for technological supremacy, cooperation between the superpowers proved to be pos­si­ble in some scientific and technological areas.130 The successful negotiation of the IAEA statute—­which overlapped with, but was largely unaffected by, Cold War crises at the Suez Canal and the Hungarian border—is an impor­tant example for this kind of simultaneity of cooperation and conflict. Optimism about the civilian uses of nuclear energy mostly characterized the drafting of the IAEA statute. This represented a considerable change from the much more restrictive Baruch Plan a de­cade e­ arlier. The IAEA’s first inspector general, the Australian Allan McKnight, described the evolution from the Baruch Plan to the Atoms for Peace as “a shift in emphasis from control, with the dissemination of nuclear science and technology as an adjunct, to a proposal for the promotion of peaceful uses, with control as an adjunct.”131 Despite emphasizing the sharing of civilian nuclear technologies and knowledge, and notwithstanding the high expectations of the developing countries, the IAEA statute in its final form did not feature the term technical assistance that has become so prominent in the agency’s history. By contrast, external nuclear safeguards, which had not been part of Eisenhower’s original plan, featured prominently in the final statute. A ­legal document almost as long as the UN Charter, the IAEA statute foresaw many pos­si­ble roles for the agency in the ­future. It was up to its member states what they would make of them.132

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chapter three

Cold War Vienna

In October 1957, the IAEA’s inaugural General Conference convened in Vienna. Once the heart of the multinational Habsburg Empire, the city was now the capital of a small state of only 7 million inhabitants. A ­ fter the end of World War II, Austria and its capital ­were divided into four occupation zones, with the center of Vienna—­the historic first district—­jointly controlled by British, French, Soviet, and US troops.1 The 1949 movie The Third Man, starring Orson Welles, famously depicted postwar Vienna as a dark and scary place, full of dubious characters. As the film’s opening narrator said, that city had not much to do with “the old Vienna before the war with its Strauss ­music, its glamour, and easy charm.”2 Tennent H. Bagley, a CIA officer stationed in occupied Vienna, ­later described the city “as one of the rare places where a disaffected Soviet soldier or civilian official could jump from East to West by stepping from one building into a neighboring one.”3 A meeting place for agents from the East and the West, Vienna became a spy capital of the world. In the turbulence of the postwar years, numerous illustrious figures lived in the city or passed through it. Among the many returning prisoners of war was Gernot Zippe, a Viennese physicist who had worked on the Soviet uranium enrichment program during his captivity. Nuclear experts know him as one of the inventors of the gas centrifuge—­a device used to separate isotopes and t­oday the main technology for enriching uranium.4 Another returnee, Hans Grümm, an Austrian survivor of Sta­lin­g rad, had become a stalwart communist during his imprisonment by the Soviets. A ­ fter the war, he helped launch East Germany’s civilian nuclear program, but a­ fter growing disillusioned by communism, returned to Vienna in the late 1950s. In 1979, he would become the head of the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards.5 Another returning Viennese physicist, Engelbert Broda, had spied for the KGB while exiled in the United Kingdom, sharing

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information on the Manhattan Proj­ect with Moscow.6 In 1959, C. D. Jackson, President Dwight Eisenhower’s public relations advisor who assisted in crafting the “Atoms for Peace” speech, helped Austrian politicians and intellectuals develop a ­counter program to the communists’ World Festival of Youth and Students in Vienna that year.7 As the histories of t­hese men indicate, Austria had some fascinating connections to the emerging Cold War world and to the nuclear question in par­tic­u­lar. Austria regained its national sovereignty in 1955 with the signing of the State Treaty by the Allied victors of World War II, but ­there was a price to be paid. Although the country considered itself part of the ideological West, it was required to remain po­liti­cally neutral in return for its in­de­pen­dence. While, in the past, Austria’s cultural and intellectual life flourished thanks to the exchange of ­people and ideas from cities like Budapest and Prague, Austria was now an outpost of the “­free world” in the shadow of the Iron Curtain. During the Cold War, more p ­ eople died trying to cross the border between Austria and Czecho­slo­va­ kia than the Berlin Wall.8 Postwar Austria presented itself to the world as Hitler’s first victim, having been invaded by and incorporated into Nazi Germany in March 1938. The global community was willing to go along with this euphemistic view of Austria’s past and to overlook the role of Austrian Nazis in the country’s prewar and war­time politics. This view found international ac­cep­tance in the 1943 Moscow Declaration on Austria, in which the foreign ministers of the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States called Austria “the first ­free country to fall victim to the Hitlerite aggression.”9 Between 1938 and 1945, the Nazis killed 65,000 Austrian Jews, and 135,000 Austrians w ­ ere forced into exile, among them the nuclear physicists Lise Meitner (1878–1968), among the first to discover and explain nuclear fission, and Victor Weisskopf (1908–2002), who like Meitner hailed from Vienna.10 Weisskopf would become one of the several Eu­ro­pean emigrants to work on the Manhattan Proj­ect, and in the early 1960s, served as director of the Eu­ro­pean Organ­ization for Nuclear Research in Geneva (CERN). Vienna in the 1950s seemed not to represent much of what the peaceful atom symbolized in the eyes of most contemporaries: prosperity, modernity, and the ­future. Why then was the IAEA headquartered t­ here? This chapter traces the history of the decisions that led to the establishment of the IAEA in Vienna, a city that apart from a local branch of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) hosted no other international organ­ization at the time. It also looks at the first set of impor­tant orga­nizational decisions made by the new agency, from the choice of its first director general to the design of the organ­

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ization’s logo, and at how Cold War tensions s­ haped the inaugural meetings of the IAEA’s policy-­making organs in the late 1950s.

The Choice of Vienna In 1953, nobody would have expected that four years l­ater, the IAEA would be opening its offices in Vienna. When Eisenhower gave his “Atoms for Peace” speech to the UN General Assembly in December 1953, Vienna was still ­under military occupation. The US president mentioned Austria twice in his speech, in reference to the unresolved negotiations on an Austrian “peace treaty.”11 Apart from that, ­there appeared to be no other link between Austria and the f­uture IAEA. What sense would it make to build a new institution in a place that still bore the scars of World War II? Why establish an international organ­ization in a city occupied by foreign military powers and with no other international organ­izations? How could one seriously consider storing fissionable material—as the original proposal for pooling nuclear materials suggested—so close to the Iron Curtain? Eisenhower said in his speech that the IAEA would work ­under the aegis of the United Nations. Regardless, neither the Americans nor the Soviets took for granted that the IAEA had to be located in ­either Geneva or New York, the two official UN headquarters at the time. In fact, the question of the IAEA’s location received ­little attention at all; even during the Washington talks, it had not been an official item on the agenda.12 Perhaps no one wanted to get into a fight over where to locate the agency.13 Discussions on the agency’s ­future headquarters gained momentum only in spring and summer 1956, in the months before the Conference on the Statute in New York. When the Americans suggested Chicago as a pos­si­ble site, the Soviets countered with Moscow. When the Americans floated Canada in the discussions, the Soviets responded by proposing Czecho­slo­va­kia. Early on, the Soviets, supported by India, suggested a neutral country as a compromise solution, and put forward Geneva, Stockholm, or Vienna, from which the Allied powers had by then withdrawn their military forces.14 Large parts of the Eisenhower administration, by contrast, hoped to have the IAEA on US territory. Within the State Department, however, opinions varied. The Bureau of Inter-­ American Affairs suggested Latin Amer­i­ca. Brazil had already offered to host the Conference on the Statute in Rio de Janeiro. The Bureau of Far Eastern Affairs made clear that no country that had diplomatic relations with communist China should be considered. The Bureau of Eu­ro­pean Affairs favored Vienna.15 The Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) was the strongest critic in the United States against Vienna. Its influential chairman, Lewis Strauss, would have

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accepted Geneva, London, Rome, or Brussels (in this order, he pointed out), but he favored a US location.16 This led to long and contentious discussions between the AEC and the State Department, the latter objecting far less than Strauss to a location outside the United States. In the eyes of the State Department, it made no sense to jeopardize the IAEA’s creation by insisting on having the agency headquartered in the United States. Was it not more impor­tant to solve the ­really impor­t ant issues, such as safeguards techniques and procedures? What if the agency turned out to be a failure, and the United States de­cided to withdraw from it? Would it not then be better to have it situated elsewhere? Anyway, what ­were the odds of the Soviet government agreeing to a US location?17 Secretary of State John Foster Dulles could live with the Soviet suggestion of a neutral site, but initially preferred Geneva over Vienna for technical and security reasons.18 This was in line with Dulles’s ­earlier reservations about Vienna hosting the 1955 four-­power meeting, which eventually took place in Geneva; he feared it might look as if the Austrians ­were being thanked for their neutrality.19 Another advantage of Geneva was that Eu­rope’s most prestigious nuclear research initiative, CERN, was located ­t here. The Austrians reacted enthusiastically when they heard that Vienna was being considered as the pos­si­ble site for the IAEA headquarters. Heinz Haymerle, po­liti­cal director at the Austrian Foreign Office, had previously told the British ambassador in Vienna that he feared neutral Austria becoming some “sort of provincial back-­water.” Having the IAEA based in Austria, however, would anchor the country firmly in the international arena.20 The Austrians, having fostered a reputation as excellent diplomats, tried to prove the cliché right. They lobbied passionately to bring the IAEA to Vienna. The Austrian ambassador to the United States, Karl Gruber, took e­ very pos­ si­ble chance to praise the advantages of an Austrian location. In Gruber’s eyes, having the IAEA in Vienna would help redefine Austria’s place in international relations. In meetings at the State Department, he expressed his hope that the IAEA “would contribute to making Vienna once again a center of world affairs.”21 Gruber also had a personal interest in the ­matter, thinking the establishment of the IAEA might offer him an opportunity to regain po­liti­cal capital in Austria, ­after he had fallen from f­ avor with many of his party colleagues a­ fter publishing his controversial memoirs while still in office.22 The move had cost him his job as foreign minister in 1953, a position he had held since 1945. As one of the most committed Westerners in the conservative Austrian ­People’s Party, Gruber had a good po­liti­cal reputation in the United States. Gruber’s conversations with US officials also demonstrate that at the time, the IAEA was still expected to main-

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tain a pool of fissionable materials in line with Eisenhower’s vision. Some worried that a stockpile of nuclear material in Vienna might be a temptation for the Soviets to “move in.” Gruber tried to c­ ounter this argument by suggesting that the nuclear material could be stored at another location rather than the administrative seat of the agency.23 The State Department viewed Austria as “strongly anti-­Communist, and . . . ​ even though military neutral . . . ​part of the Western World.”24 More impor­tant, it considered it po­liti­cally unwise to deny neutral Austria the kind of support the Soviet government was willing to offer. In the end, Strauss accepted the State Department’s commitment to Vienna, even though he believed it to be a m ­ istake and an unnecessary concession to the Soviets.25 In early June  1956, the United States informed its allies that it would support Austria’s candidacy as the site of the new IAEA. Copenhagen had also received some attention as a pos­si­ble site, but Denmark was a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organ­ization (NATO), making it unlikely that the Soviets would support it as the IAEA’s host. To most ­people involved, it became obvious that the superpowers’ understanding on Vienna would carry the day.26 The IAEA negotiator Homi Bhabha, who loved Eu­ro­pean ­music and the arts, was another early supporter of Austria.27 In August 1956, Bhabha had traveled to Austria to visit the library of the University of Vienna’s physics department; the well-­equipped research library was an asset in Vienna’s campaign to host the IAEA. During the agency’s early years, this library basically served as the organ­ization’s ­house library. IAEA staff used it on a regular basis, and a courier traveled daily between the library, in the city’s ninth district, and the IAEA’s provisional headquarters, in the first district.28 According to Weisskopf, in 1960 it was still “one of the most complete physics libraries in Eu­rope.”29 Although a firm international consensus to locate the IAEA in Vienna had existed since mid-1956, its official nomination took several more steps. In late October 1956, the Conference on the Statute unanimously ­adopted a resolution to locate the IAEA headquarters in Vienna.30 The speech delivered by the leader of the Austrian del­e­ga­tion, Ambassador Franz Matsch, underlined the Austrians’ eagerness to host the new atomic organ­ization as the well the victim myth that characterized the state’s diplomacy. Only a de­cade a­ fter the end of World War II, and just one year a­ fter the four-­power occupation of Austria had ended, Matsch raved about the country’s past without any reference to the Holocaust: “Vienna has a proud tradition of scientific research and pro­gress . . . ​[W]e believe that Vienna, with its atmosphere of tolerance and re­spect for other ­people’ points of view can make a valuable contribution ­towards that end.”31 Citing Vienna’s “atmosphere

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of tolerance” and praising its achievements in physics without mentioning the expulsion of Jewish scientists ­under National Socialism, stands as a cynical example of the Austrians’ refusal to take responsibility for Nazi crimes. Even though the delegates of the Conference on the Statute nominated Vienna as the f­ uture site of the IAEA, they agreed that the formal decision could only be made by the new agency itself. Thus, throughout the first half of 1957, officials from the Foreign Office in Vienna and the Austrian embassy in Washington regularly asked the State Department ­whether American support for Vienna remained firm. Despite the de­cided diplomatic support for Vienna at the Conference on the Statute, the Austrians feared that the international community might select another option. Gruber worried that the Soviets would withdraw their backing for Vienna ­because of the Austrians’ reaction to the Hungarian Uprising, when Soviet troops brutally crushed the demo­cratic rebellion in neighboring Hungary in early November 1956. By the end of the month, Austria had taken in almost 200,000 Hungarian refugees, and merely by helping the refugees—an “anti-­Soviet” action—­ Austria put its postwar in­de­pen­dence at risk and feared losing Soviet support.32 The Austrian government also worried about pos­si­ble intrigue against Vienna plotted by the United Nations in Geneva and several UN del­e­ga­t ions.33 ­T here ­were indeed officials at the United Nations who did not want to see the new agency ­housed in Vienna. UN secretary-­general Dag Hammarskjöld hoped that the IAEA would cooperate closely with the United Nations and was therefore in ­favor of having the offices near each other.34 Technical considerations ­were impor­ tant as well. Housing, conference facilities, offices, and interpreters could all be better or­ga­nized if located in New York or Geneva. The IAEA’s Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) operated on the assumption that both the agency’s first General Conference as well as its permanent headquarters would be established in Vienna. In February  1957, the PrepCom de­ cided to or­ga­nize the first General Conference in Vienna during the summer or fall of 1957. In early September, it moved from New York to Vienna.35 ­Under the leadership of the Brazilian Carlos Bernardes and his deputy Pavel Winkler, from Czecho­slo­va­kia, the PrepCom became the nucleus of the IAEA’s Board of Governors; 18 PrepCom members served on the ­later 23-­member board.36 The PrepCom rented offices at the ­Music Acad­emy (Musikakademie), in the city center, and a representative of the Austrian Foreign Office, Hans Thalberg, participated in its meetings. One month ­later, the IAEA’s inaugural General Conference ­adopted a resolution approving the text of an agreement negotiated by the PrepCom and Austrian authorities regarding the agency’s permanent headquarters. Austria was officially the IAEA’s home.37

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The UN secretariat, however, had its original skepticism t­oward Vienna confirmed. Ralph Bunche, Hammarskjöld’s po­liti­cal advisor, attended the General Conference and wrote to his boss, “Vienna is a charming place but I am no less convinced that t­ here is no sound reason to have the Agency located h ­ ere.”38 According to an Austrian press correspondent in New York, del­e­ga­tions primarily criticized the lack of apartments and the closeness of the Iron Curtain, which the Hungarian refugee crisis had shown could have an immediate impact on Vienna.39 During the negotiations over the IAEA statute, the type of orga­nizational relationship the IAEA would have with the UN system had been a point of controversy. While the United States argued that the IAEA should be a UN specialized agency, the Soviet Union wanted it to be u ­ nder the UN Security Council—­where Moscow could exercise veto power, a critical point ever since the UNAEC negotiations in the second half of the 1940s. Most of the developing countries wanted the IAEA to be an integral part of the UN secretariat, while colonial powers, such as South Africa, opposed close ties to the UN system, which was viewed as a forum for newly in­de­pen­dent nations. A compromise was ultimately reached, according to which the IAEA would be an autonomous international organ­ization related to the UN ­family through its own, separate agreement. The General Conference of 1957 approved the final text affirming the relationship between the IAEA and the United Nations.40 The draft of the agreement had mainly been prepared by Hammarskjöld’s United Nations Standing Advisory Committee (UNSAC) and the PrepCom. All of Hammarskjöld’s advisors ­were also members of the PrepCom. The main difference between the two entities was that UNSAC acted on behalf of Hammarskjöld and the PrepCom on behalf of the IAEA member states. One of the most controversial issues regarding the relationship agreement had been the IAEA’s relationship to the UN specialized agencies. In contrast to such UN organ­izations as the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organ­ization (UNESCO) and the World Health Organ­ization (WHO), the IAEA’s job was not defined by a specific field of activity but by a specific technology.41 One of the early draft relationship agreements had described the agency as “primarily responsible for international activities concerned with the peaceful uses of atomic energy.” The UN secretariat opposed this prioritization, as it would make the IAEA the lead authority in the development of the field although other UN organ­izations dealt with nuclear issues as well; the secretariat perceived it as “a claim g ­ oing beyond the terms of the Statute itself.”42 The final text of the relationship agreement omitted the word “primarily,” preventing the IAEA from assuming a superior position vis-­à-­vis the nuclear branches of other UN-­related organ­izations.43

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The relationship established by mutual agreement meant that unlike the UN specialized agencies, the IAEA would not report to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), but to the General Assembly, and on issues of international peace and security, to the Security Council.44 The relationship agreement endorses the safeguards article of the IAEA statute (Article XII, paragraph C), which instructs the IAEA Board of Governors to report to the UN General Conference and to the Security Council any cases of a member state’s noncompliance with its safeguards obligations. This confirmed that the agency itself would have no power to punish member states caught using civilian nuclear assistance for military purposes. While the IAEA would be linked to the work of the Security Council, it would not be subjugated to it. The new organ­ization or­ga­nized itself in the city center in the offices of the ­Music Acad­emy and its Konzerthaus (concert hall), the imperial Hofburg palace, and the former ­Grand ­Hotel on the ­grand Ringstraße. In early 1960, ­after several failed attempts to find a building suitable as permanent headquarters, the IAEA and the Austrian administration agreed that it would be best to renovate the former ­Grand ­Hotel, for long-­term use by the agency. The ­hotel, once one of the best addresses in Vienna, had previously ­housed Soviet troops during the four-­power military occupation. Renovation of the G ­ rand H ­ otel wrapped up in 45 1963. The building would serve as the IAEA headquarters ­until 1979, when the agency moved to the new building outside the city center where it remains ­today.

An American Director General Choosing the IAEA’s first director general was the most impor­tant decision to be made at the inaugural Board of Governors and General Conference meetings, in the fall of 1957. The job would eventually go to William Sterling Cole—­t he congressional representative from New York who had tried to convince Lewis Strauss of the need for a new Baruch Plan during a car ­r ide in late 1953. It is tempting to believe that the choice of Cole was part of a Cold War trade-­off. In such a scenario, the Americans gave in to the Soviets’ demand that the agency be headquartered in a neutral country, and in exchange, the Soviets agreed to an American director general.46 In truth, however, the two decisions ­were discussed and de­c ided in­de­pen­dently of each other. In fall 1956, ­after international consensus had already been reached on the choice of Vienna as IAEA headquarters, the Americans began to compile a list of pos­si­ble candidates from friendly states for the agency’s top job. Many officials within the Eisenhower administration wanted to see an American get the position, but t­ here was no agreement on the topic. The US embassy in Vienna sug-

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gested Gruber, reflecting his excellent contacts with the Americans and underlining his burning ambition to launch a second ­career in Austria.47 Eisenhower did not think the United States should push for an American or even a Canadian director general, but instead should vote for someone from a “like-­minded” Western country, like Belgium.48 In July 1957, more than a year ­after the Eisenhower administration had de­c ided to support Vienna as the site of the new agency’s headquarters, the Americans still had not made up their minds on ­whether to press for an American director general. In the months before the IAEA’s opening conference, the Americans and the Soviets discussed several other key se­nior positions at the agency. US officials hoped that the Soviets would accept director posts in the isotopes and technical assistance divisions and in turn support an American director general. They also wondered w ­ hether the po­liti­cal price might be too high, ultimately forcing them to give in to too many Soviet demands.49 The talks between them produced no concrete results. On 2 August 1957, two months before the General Conference—­ which had to approve the director general selected by the board—­Eisenhower announced his decision to nominate Cole, a choice mostly based on domestic considerations.50 As the long ratification pro­cess of the IAEA statute had highlighted, the Eisenhower administration needed the support of Congress to make the IAEA work, in par­tic­u­lar to ensure funding for it. Cole, the respected chairman of the Joint Committee on Atomic Energy, seemed to be the perfect person for the job.51 Strauss had worked as the architect of the plan to put Cole in the IAEA’s top spot. Most members of the PrepCom believed that the head of the new organ­ization should not be a politician or come from a nuclear weapon state. Harry Brynielsson, a Swedish scientist and research laboratory man­ag­er, was widely regarded as an ideal candidate, and his name had been on the initial US list of potential candidates. An accompanying short remark stated, “He is pro-­Western, friendly in manner, and possesses administrative ability.”52 Brian Urquhart, a British ­career diplomat turned UN se­nior official, was Hammarskjöld’s man in the negotiations. Two weeks before the scheduled board meeting to select the agency’s leadership, Urquhart wrote to Bunche that t­ here was “no agreement at all about the Director General.” He continued, “Sterling Cole is still a candidate, but the Rus­sians have announced their undying opposition to him, and his candidacy is not very popu­lar with a number of other countries.”53 As the board meeting approached, the ­battle lines had hardened, with the Soviets and their allies showing ever-­growing opposition to the American candidate. When Bunche arrived in Vienna, Paul Jolles, the Swiss executive secretary

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of the PrepCom, asked him to help find a compromise. On the eve­ning of 2 October  1957, Bunche met privately with Soviet delegate Vassily Emelyanov and Strauss to resolve the deadlock. Their discussion lasted an hour and forty minutes. Bunche left thinking that both men had wanted to talk with the other, but neither would have taken the initiative to do so on his own.54 Two days ­later, on 4 October, the Board of Governors met to select the director general. Japan nominated Cole, and the friends and allies of the United States expressed their support. A ­ fter that, it all came down to the Soviets. Emelyanov explained that the Soviet Union preferred a director general from a neutral country, but that it would not oppose Cole out of re­spect for the businesslike atmosphere of the meetings and “to preserve the spirit of cooperation” that had prevailed during the Conference on the Statute and the PrepCom meetings.55 Having made it clear that the Soviets ­were unhappy with the choice of Cole, Emelyanov kept his statement short and soft. Czecho­slo­va­kia and Romania expressed views similar to the Soviets, as did India and Indonesia. No formal vote took place.56 As Bhabha underlined, the choice of the agency’s founding director general was not a “­matter in which a majority decision was adequate, but where a unan­i­mous decision was in order.”57 The pro­cess turned out to be a diplomatic success for the Soviet Union, which had appeared to be cooperative, while the United States had missed a chance to curry ­favor among the agency’s member states by being inflexible in its insistence on an American director general. For Cole, the circumstances of his ultimate election proved to be embarrassing, and in the words of Bunche, reached “the peak of ludicrousness” at the board’s second meeting. ­Because Cole remained a member of Congress, he could only assume his duties as the director general in early December 1957. Cole therefore suggested making Jolles, the ­PrepCom secretary, the acting director general in the meantime. Many board members found it off-­putting that Cole would take it upon himself to make such a suggestion. One representative asserted that “the Director General could not designate an alternate before he himself had assumed office,” a comment that found support among several other governors.58 Eventually the board approved Cole, who quickly took his oath and gave a short ac­cep­tance speech, all in less than 30 minutes. Bhabha noted that neither the board nor the General Conference had approved the text of the oath.59 Bunche wrote to Hammarskjöld, “I am sure that no head of an international organ­ization ever took office in an atmosphere so frigid and so devoid of any gesture of friendliness.” He continued, “I felt rather sorry for Cole, who is personable and congenial, but who, I fear, is cast in the role of a sacrificial lamb in this episode.”60 Thus, one year ­after the

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Conference on the Statute in New York, the mood among IAEA del­e­ga­tions was far from enthusiastic.

A House Divided The Cold War rivalry not only affected the election of the IAEA’s leader, but the atmosphere within the organ­ization’s diplomatic bodies as well, especially the General Conference.61 Since the agency’s inception, po­liti­cal tensions ­were the most vis­i­ble in this public forum, in which delegates did not hold back on Cold War propaganda. The first Cold War shock came during the inaugural General Conference, in October 1957. With international delegates convened in Vienna to usher in the new world nuclear institution, the Soviet Union announced the launch of the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik I. The successful launch caught the Americans by surprise and left them worried about their ability to keep up with or outbid the Soviets in science and technology. This triggered the space race, one of the most defining competitions of the Cold War. IAEA negotiator James Goodby would ­later describe it as “akin in some psychological ways to the shock of September 11, 2001.”62 The arrival of a del­e­ga­t ion from communist China only exacerbated tensions at the agency’s inaugural gathering. The Austrian press reported that the Chinese stood ready in case continuous Soviet calls for communist China’s IAEA membership ­were eventually accepted.63 At the second meeting of the General Conference, in fall 1958, the del­e­ga­tions from the East and West fought an ideological b ­ attle over the agency’s potential role in nuclear disarmament. In line with Petra Goedde’s observation on the notion of peace during the Cold War, the superpowers’ rivalry had also turned disarmament “into a po­liti­cal volleyball, at once universal and meaningless.”64 The debate was triggered by a large Pugwash meeting in Austria just days prior.65 The Pugwash Conferences of Science and World Affairs ­were part of the evolving global nuclear disarmament movement; the organ­ization’s roots stem from an emphatic warning about the dangers of nuclear weapons published in London in July 1955. The noted British phi­los­o­pher and mathematician Bertrand Russell drafted the text, which 10 other prominent scientists signed, among them Albert Einstein, who added his signature a few days before his death in April 1955.66 Most sessions of the 1958 Pugwash meeting took place in the small village of Kitzbühel, in Tyrol, but the concluding public event convened at the Viennese Stadthalle and featured Russell and other renowned scientists. The event attracted some 10,000 ­people and a lot of media attention.67 The IAEA’s General Conference began almost immediately ­after the Pugwash meeting ended.

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Jolles, by then deputy director general for administration, was worried about Pugwash’s potential influence on the second General Conference.68 For him, as for most other Westerners in the office of the American director general, the IAEA was concerned with peaceful uses of nuclear energy, not disarmament or a nuclear weapon ban. Therefore, they perceived the Pugwash meeting as a serious challenge to the General Conference gathering that same month. The closeness in time and location of the two meetings heightened fears that the IAEA might come to be associated with Pugwash and, following from that, be widely regarded as a disarmament organ­ization.69 ­Because of Pugwash’s advocacy for nuclear disarmament, many suspected it of being a Soviet-­leaning endeavor even though anti-­communists dominated the Austrian branch.70 The US State Department became particularly concerned that one of the Soviet participants might use statements from the Pugwash conference as an opportunity to talk about nuclear disarmament at the General Conference.71 Indeed, the Soviets seized the opportunity. Emelyanov sharply criticized the IAEA as an agency “set up mainly for propaganda reasons” and suggested that it should instead “draw practical conclusions” from the findings of the “eminent scientists” who had participated in the Pugwash conference.72 The US delegate did not mention Pugwash at all. The differing views on how to talk about nuclear disarmament in the IAEA remained a recurring source of disagreement between East and West. Yet a year l­ater, in fall 1959, at the meeting of the third General Conference, delegates from East and West clashed over the conference presidency. In 1957, the body had elected Gruber, and in 1958, Tjondronegoro Sudjarwo, from Indonesia. In 1959, the Soviet del­e­ga­tion thought it time for their candidate to be elected and suggested Emil Nadjakov, a physicist from Bulgaria. The Americans, on the other hand, wanted to see Hiroo Furuuchi of Japan preside over the conference. B ­ ehind closed doors, several US allies sharply criticized the Americans’ stubborn insistence on Furuuchi. The discussions preceding the vote highlighted the Cold War mentality within the IAEA’s policymaking organs. Bunche, who participated in the meetings, called Emelyanov’s remarks “a b ­ itter speech of sharpness of tone 73 rarely heard at the UN in recent years.” The Pakistani delegate, Nazir Ahmad, a reliable supporter of US interests at the IAEA, incautiously stated that his country supported Japan ­because it had been the victim of the first atom bomb, not realizing that this provided an opening for the Eastern bloc to veer back to the agency’s potential role in nuclear disarmament. The Polish delegate, Adam Meller-­Conrad, responded that he had “not forgotten Hiroshima,” but that “­there was ­little ground for believing that the election of Mr. Furuuchi would be of much

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Left to right, IAEA director general William Sterling Cole, Austrian chancellor Julius Raab, and IAEA deputy director general for administration Paul R. Jolles during a moment of silence at the opening of the IAEA’s second annual General Conference, Vienna, 22 September 1958. © IAEA

value in avoiding f­ uture Hiroshimas.”74 The US del­e­ga­tion continued to press for Furuuchi and eventually managed to procure a majority for him. The compromise-­oriented “spirit of Vienna” that would l­ater become proverbial at the IAEA could only rarely be found during the agency’s early years. Even at the Board of Governors meetings, which w ­ ere usually more businesslike than the General Conference sessions, Cold War tensions could turn the board into “a ­house divided.” 75 Alongside the East-­West confrontation, the postcolonial states demanded more influence in shaping the nuclear world order. While the UN General Assembly developed into a forum to advocate the interests of the so-­ called Third World, however, the IAEA board remained dominated by the East-­ West conflict. The new agency’s status and situation disappointed Bhabha, who had hoped that it would eventually be fully integrated into the United Nations.76 The IAEA Board of Governors is a unique international forum and was especially so early on. The member states’ delegates had mostly known each other for years, and many of them had worked together during the negotiations over the

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agency’s statute. A core group of participants also met regularly in other settings, for example in Hammarskjöld’s UNSAC. While t­ oday the Board of Governors usually meets five times a year, during 1957 and 1958 alone it held 104 plenary meetings. In short, it was almost continually in session, practically making it an extension of the agency’s secretariat. ­After lively debate, the initial board had de­ cided that all board meetings would be closed, u ­ nless de­cided other­w ise. The Soviet Union and its allies favored open board meetings, but ­were in the minority.77 What happened on the board, therefore remained a black box to most outsiders. The board had the responsibility of deciding on the agency’s proj­ects and thus circumscribing its activities. It soon found that the line between atoms for peace and atoms for war was hard to draw. One of Cole’s initial proposals to the board in 1958 was to conduct research into the effects of strontium-90 on living organisms.78 Cole appeared not to realize that with strontium-90 being a product of fission from nuclear tests, research on it would touch upon the issue of nuclear testing. The British del­e­ga­tion expressed surprise that Cole had not realized the “unwisdomness” of including such research on the list of proposed agency proj­ ects. Seizing on Cole’s proposal, the speakers of the Soviet bloc put the IAEA’s potential role in nuclear disarmament on the agenda and argued that the best “way to eliminate strontium ­hazards was to stop bomb tests.” 79 Even the US del­ e­ga­tion criticized the proj­ect, ­because of the cost and b ­ ecause “in the public mind, radio-­strontium effects ­were associated with the testing of weapons.”80 Cole found zero support for a strontium research proj­ect, and its rejection was somewhat typical of the board’s early caution not to get too involved in questions perceived as highly “po­liti­cal.” In addition, as the controversy over the Pugwash meeting in the same year demonstrated, the Western bloc tried to distance the agency from disarmament negotiations, a minefield of Cold War b ­ attles. As for research on the effects of radioactivity on the environment, the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, established in 1955, was the responsible international forum (it moved to Vienna in 1974).

Politics and Symbols Discussions about the design of the IAEA’s logo resulted in turbulence as well.81 Around the time of the 12-­nation talks in Washington in 1956, the negotiators had started using a schematic pre­sen­ta­tion of the chemical ele­ment lithium as an informal logo for the new agency. In 1958, the IAEA discretely added an extra ellipsis to the emblem, so that it looked like beryllium rather than lithium, which, as the secretariat had come to realize, was used in hydrogen bombs.

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Cole—­w ith bigger ideas in mind and preferring inspirational symbolism—­ came up with his own design that included vari­ous symbols for the atom’s peaceful uses: a dove of peace, a microscope, the staff of Aesculapius, a power plant, and a crop. This design echoed much of the enthusiasm surrounding the atom that characterized the zeitgeist of the 1950s. Without consulting board members or se­nior officials in the secretariat about his new logo, Cole had a prototype flag bearing it raised next to the flags of the UN and IAEA member states at the 1959 meeting of the General Conference. A shocked Bunche, who thought that it looked “like the mysteries of extravagant

Director General Sterling Cole’s original suggestion for the IAEA’s official logo, 1959. © IAEA

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Masonic symbolism,” further observed, “Worse still, the flag is indescribably ugly, in both colors (dark blue and limpid gold) and over-­busy design.”82 Despite the less than enthusiastic reception at the General Conference, Cole—­nicknamed “Stub,” as in “stubborn”—­reintroduced the design months ­later, at a January 1960 board meeting.83 At l­ ater meetings, he suggested a revised version with less symbolism, but at one point was outvoted by a suggestion of the Norwegian governor to include the laurel wreath from the UN logo.84 While IAEA delegates and staff members from all over the world discussed the nuclear ­f uture in Vienna, the IAEA’s host country entered the nuclear age. In September 1960, the Austrians completed construction on a swimming pool–­ type research reactor in Seibersdorf, near Vienna. They celebrated it as a ­great success. Austria’s famous Philharmoniker performed a concert for the occasion, and the government or­ga­nized a party at Schloss Schönbrunn, the imperial ­castle.85 Prob­ably the most notable guest was the former Soviet foreign minister Vyacheslav Molotov, who had fallen out of f­avor with the party leadership in Moscow and had therefore recently been assigned to Vienna, as the Soviet representa-

The Soviet del­e­ga­t ion at the IAEA’s fourth annual General Conference: left to right, head delegate Vassily Emelyanov along with N. V. Novikov and Vyacheslav Molotov, Vienna, 24 September 1960. © IAEA

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tive to the IAEA.86 To humiliate Molotov, Emelyanov remained head delegate on the Board of Governors, with instructions by Moscow not to miss a single session, to ensure that Molotov never occupied the delegate’s prestigious front-­ row seat.87 Board rec­ords show that Molotov led the Soviet del­e­ga­tion on the board only once, on 3 February 1961.88 For IAEA staff members and delegates who had lived through World War II, it felt strange to run into Molotov in the elevators of the IAEA.89 He could also be found frequenting Viennese coffee­houses.90 The US ambassador to the IAEA, Paul F. Foster, described the Soviet diplomat as “cordial, talkative.” Foster found Molotov and his wife surprisingly frank “for Soviets.”91 In the early 1960s, amid international Cold War tensions, Austria would further position its capital as an international meeting place, a vision of the country that played a role in the negotiations on the IAEA’s location. In April 1961, the United Nations or­ga­nized a conference in Vienna to develop a new convention laying out almost universally accepted rules for global diplomacy. For two days in June 1961, Vienna was again the center of world attention. The new US president, John F. Kennedy, and his Soviet counterpart, Nikita Khrushchev, also met in the city. The Vienna Summit of 1961, although a largely unsuccessful meeting of the two statesmen—­t hey could find no common ground on the situation in Berlin—­set a further pre­ce­dent for Austria hosting high-­level diplomatic meetings.92 More than 1,500 journalists registered for the summit. IAEA staff members with street-­facing offices could see Kennedy’s motorcade from their win­dows.93 The year was eventful in other ways as well: the Soviets tested the largest nuclear bomb in history, the Tsar Bomba, and in August the Berlin Wall began to rise.

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chapter four

Science, Safeguards, and Bureaucracy

Compared to the high expectations at the time of the IAEA’s creation, the agency’s orga­nizational development was slow ­going. The plans of the Preparatory Commission (PrepCom) had to be realized, staff hired, divisions created, rooms and offices assigned. The IAEA’s “chief scientist,” Henry Seligman, was in charge of the agency’s early research and isotopes department. When he first visited his new office in the Viennese concert hall building, he heard musicians rehears­ rand H ­ otel’s ing next door; but he had no chair to sit on.1 Seligman found the G basement, with its thick, shielding walls, suitable for a small nuclear laboratory and imported most of the equipment for the agency’s lab from the Atomic Energy Research Establishment, also known as Harwell, his scientific home institution in the United Kingdom.2 The new international organ­ization had to be built from scratch on a modest bud­get. The “dualistic architecture” of international organ­izations ­shaped the actions of the newly founded IAEA: its work was conducted by a staff of international civil servants—­the secretariat, headed by Director General William Sterling Cole—­ and two diplomatic bodies, the General Conference and the Board of Governors.3 Based on the work of the PrepCom, the Board of Governors de­cided in its first meetings to divide the organ­ization into departments of training and information; technical operations; research and isotopes; and administration, liaison, and secretariat.4 This structure reflected an emphasis on nuclear science and technology. Originally, the US government had suggested creating an additional department with a primarily administrative agenda, but the majority of board members felt that it would undermine the IAEA’s scientific character. The early drafts of the orga­nizational charts also include a department of safeguards and inspection, consisting of a safeguards division and an inspection unit.5 The 1958

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board report to the General Conference does not, however, include a safeguards department. In fact, in contrast to the role the safeguards branch has ­today, it was “rudimentary” and somewhat “dormant” during the IAEA’s first years.6 Before 1964, ­there was also no department of technical assistance.7 This chapter traces the evolution of the IAEA’s early activities in technical assistance, safeguards, and science from the late 1950s to the mid-1960s. Technical constraints, much improvisation, and sometimes frustration characterized the IAEA’s institutional beginnings. While the larger po­liti­cal questions ­were discussed in the agency’s diplomatic forums, the vari­ous departments and divisions of the secretariat needed to ascertain what exactly they should do and what the member states expected from them. Tensions between the industrialized and the developing states affected orga­nizational issues, such as the geo­graph­i­cal diversity of staff and the agency’s bud­get. The distinction between technical and po­liti­cal m ­ atters grew in importance in the emerging relationship between the secretariat and the diplomatic bodies, becoming particularly salient in the establishment of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC) in 1958 and the choice of Director General William Sterling Cole’s successor, Sigvard Eklund, in 1961.

A Staff of International Civil Servants The IAEA’s early organ­ization revolved as much around how many director posts would be created and their areas of activity as finding a workable administrative structure for the agency’s bureaucracy. A “most frantic bargaining” on the nationality of the IAEA’s top officials accompanied this early planning.8 In contrast, at the United Nations’ founding a de­cade e­ arlier, no deputy secretary-­general posts ­were created, ­because they stood to potentially dilution the secretary-­general’s authority.9 In December 1957, ­after Cole took office, he appointed the first generation of IAEA deputy director generals, often simply referred to as DDGs. Once it was settled which group of states would pull the strings in which departments, rather than opting for an extensive and transparent pro­cess to fill se­nior positions, candidates w ­ ere approached directly, as with Seligman, who was recruited by John Cockcroft, his fellow countryman and Nobel laureate in physics.10 Paul Jolles, who had stood in for Cole during the agency’s first three months, became head of the Department of Administration; Hubert de Laboulaye, a nuclear physicist and po­liti­cal advisor from France, oversaw the Department of Technical Operations; V. V. Migulin, a physics professor from Moscow, was put in charge of the Department of Training and Information; and Seligman, from the United Kingdom, was appointed director for research and isotopes.11 The Department of

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Safeguards and Inspection was supposed to be run by an “inspector general,” but in July 1958, Cole appointed Roger M. Smith, a Canadian, as director of the Division of Safeguards and left the inspector general post vacant for the time being.12 Of the near 250 staff members in 1958, the vast majority came from only a few countries. By far the largest group hailed from Austria, followed by the United Kingdom, the United States, and the Soviet Union.13 The developing countries criticized the imbalance, especially in regard to se­nior posts, while Western states tended to consider personnel from Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer­i­ca unqualified for top positions.14 For instance, Donald Sole, a South African diplomat, lamented that if the princi­ple of geo­graph­i­cal distribution ­were to be applied to the agency’s leadership it would “inevitably result in a cumbersome, inefficient, and wasteful organ­ization.”15 This echoed South Africa’s overall hostility ­toward the newly in­de­pen­dent states’ influence in the IAEA. Carlos Büchler, an Argentine hired in 1959 as the agency’s first safeguards inspector, acknowledged that, indeed, his colleagues from the industrialized states had much more experience than he did, but also noted that “the condescending attitude” of his “more ‘developed’ colleagues” truly annoyed him.16 During the agency’s development, certain traditions emerged regarding the hiring of staff for se­nior posts. Even t­ oday, certain countries or regions have dibs on most top-­level positions. In 1961, Jolles left the agency to resume his po­liti­cal ­career in Switzerland, ­later becoming chair of the Nestlé Corporation. ­After Jolles left, the head of the Department of Administration, ­later the Department of Management, has always been an American. This position has developed into a primus inter pares among the DDGs, thus securing the United States a power base in the agency. The Soviet Union, and ­later Rus­sia, claimed the deputy director general post in the Department of Technical Operations (­later Nuclear Energy). The Department of Technical Assistance, established in 1964, is headed by a representative from a developing country, ­today the Global South. The first Canadian director of the safeguards division was briefly succeeded by an American interim director. In March  1961, Cole appointed Dragoslav Popović, a reactor physicist from Yugo­slavia, as director of the division.17 Over the years, it became an unwritten rule that the agency’s safeguards activities should not be directed ­ oman to beby a person from a nuclear weapon state.18 It took five de­cades for a w come a DDG. In 2003, Ana Maria Cetto, from Mexico, became deputy director general of the Department of Technical Cooperation.19 From Cole to Raphael Grossi, director generals have usually gathered their deputies for a weekly meeting, resembling “a type of cabinet.”20

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Comparable to other international organ­izations, the staff of the IAEA from the start ­were divided into two groups: the general staff (G-­level) and the professional staff (P-­level). While recruitment for G-­level positions has been and remains mostly local, applicants from around the world fill P-­level jobs. In contrast with ­today’s 2,500-­plus employees, the early IAEA staff numbers ­were low and did not grow substantially for a number of years. This fell in line with the IAEA statute, which states that the agency’s “permanent staff should be kept to a minimum.”21 In the mid-1960s, the agency still had no more than a few hundred employees. In 1960, it counted 465 ­people on the payroll, and in 1965, a total of 648.22 The concierge in the former ­Grand ­Hotel’s lobby and the “newspaper lady,” Ms. Friedrichs, would greet staff members, and even their ­children, by name.23 ­T hese ­were the days before identity cards and security checks.24 Only on the streets of Vienna could agency employees be recognized—by their license plates.25

Scientist Diplomats Since the IAEA’s establishment, it has prided itself on being a scientific and technical organ­ization, not a po­liti­cal one. Yet, as ­those who negotiated its statute realized, the distinction between politics and science is often hard to maintain. The contested boundary between perceptions of the po­liti­cal versus the technical or scientific became clear in 1958 when the IAEA Board of Governors de­ cided to establish the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC). To create such a committee—­bringing together the best and brightest in the field to share their expertise and knowledge with the new atomic agency—­would appear to be a no-­ brainer. UN secretary-­general Dag Hammarskjöld had had a group of scientific advisors, the United Nations Scientific Advisory Committee (UNSAC), since 1954, and its members—­including Homi Bhabha, Vassily Emelyanov, and Isidor Rabi, among ­others—­were all involved in IAEA affairs as well. During the IAEA PrepCom meetings in 1956 and 1957, Emelyanov had been the first to suggest the creation of a scientific advisory committee for the IAEA. He argued that it would be an opportunity to have outstanding scientists participate in the agency’s work. They could provide advice on a variety of topics and help develop agency proj­ects in such areas as isotopes and radiation sources, nuclear reactors, fissionable materials, and health and safety mea­sures.26 Some of the Western PrepCom members, on the other hand, worried that the Soviets would use such a committee as a “vehicle of Rus­sian propaganda” rather than for scientific advice.27 Michael Michaels, a British c­ areer public servant, agreed with his American counter­parts that although the IAEA would indeed need scientific

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expertise, such advice should not come from a standing committee, b ­ ecause it might develop too much influence over the agency and possibly evoke a “conflict of competence” with the Board of Governors.28 ­After an initial round of discussions, the PrepCom de­cided that establishing such a committee exceeded its competence. Instead, the topic should be addressed ­after the IAEA opened its doors.29 A few months into the IAEA’s existence, Valeriu Novacu, the governor from Romania, brought the question of an advisory committee to the agenda of the Board of Governors. The Americans remained skeptical of a standing advisory group, especially if it would report to the board, as the Czech governor, Emanuel Brázda, suggested. The American governor, Robert McKinney, feared that with the establishment of SAC, “two boards would evolve, one for po­liti­cal ­matters and one for the scientific side.”30 According to Michaels, ­t here was no such ­t hing as a purely technical question: “It would indeed be rare for any question likely to be submitted to the Agency not to possess a po­liti­cal aspect.”31 In Cole’s eyes, the scientific staff of the IAEA, and not a committee of state-­sponsored experts, should be in charge of providing the organ­ization’s leadership with scientific advice.32 By contrast, rather than rejecting the idea b ­ ecause it was an Eastern proposal, some prominent Western scientists, among them Bertrand Goldschmidt and John Cockcroft, backed creating a scientific advisory committee for the new agency. Both Goldschmidt and Cockcroft served on Hammarskjöld’s UNSAC, and contrary to the concerns of some Western diplomats, the Western scientists’ experience was that expert forums usually did not “dabble in politics.”33 The US del­e­ga­t ion opposed the proposal most vehemently, fearing that the committee might undermine the power of the American director general. When opposition by other countries t­ oward SAC began to wane, they tried to postpone the decision to the following year, but to no avail.34 In the meantime, the board asked the secretariat to prepare a study on the idea. The Americans’ re­sis­tance to establishing a scientific advisory committee infuriated the Soviet del­e­ga­tion. Emelyanov, still the leading Soviet scientist, went as far as to bind the establishment of a committee to his own ­future at the IAEA. In an eve­ning discussion at the residence of US resident representative Robert M. McKinney, Emelyanov, in a rage over the issue, let it be known “that he had better ­things to do in his laboratory than to waste so much time in Vienna.” He declared it a ­mistake that the IAEA was not run by a scientist and that the Soviet Union needed the agency “like a dog needs a fifth leg.”35 The study by the secretariat listed the pros and cons of having a scientific advisory committee. With rapid developments taking place in nuclear science, the IAEA needed the advice of experts. The possibility was raised that the establish-

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ment of such a committee might bring member states closer to the agency’s work and help in obtaining their support. Overall, SAC “would increase the agency’s scientific prestige and authority.”36 On the downside, the study foresaw difficulties when SAC would have to deal “with other than purely technical and scientific subjects.” It recommended that SAC report directly to the director general, who would be in charge of selecting SAC members. The United States found this approach acceptable. Following the pre­sen­ta­tion of the study, Brazil, Canada, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States presented a supporting resolution to the board, which approved it in November 1958.37 Thus, although the United States could not prevent the Soviet-­initiated creation of SAC, it did manage to revise the Eastern bloc proposal in having SAC report to the director general and only through the director general to the board. This brought the competitive dynamics between the policy-­making organs and the secretariat to light. SAC, like the Board of Governors, was a forum of representatives from member states, not a unit of the agency’s professional staff.38 While the original Eastern bloc proposal foresaw the committee working ­u nder the board’s control, the Americans and their supporters increased the director general’s influence over SAC and thus the secretariat’s as well. Cole selected seven renowned scientists to serve on the first SAC, none of them a surprise and all of them UNSAC members: Bhabha, Cockcroft, Emelyanov, Goldschmidt, Bernhard Gross (from Brazil), W. B. Lewis (from Canada), and Rabi. The members w ­ ere appointed in their personal capacity and “with the concurrence of their respective governments.”39 Notably, Bhabha, Emelyanov, and Goldschmidt—­three of the most influential scientists in the IAEA’s early history—­were also members of the Board of Governors. SAC was smaller than the board and would convene less frequently, usually twice a year, while the board met almost continuously during the agency’s first two years. SAC sometimes met outside Vienna—­for example, at the Palais de Nations in Geneva and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tashkent—­when more con­ve­nient.40 SAC passed transcripts of its meetings among participants only, and ­until 1968, the notes indicated what had been said but not by whom. SAC’s meetings therefore allowed for more confidentiality than ­t hose of the Board of Governors, whose transcripts identified speakers by name. The IAEA only declassified SAC rec­ords in 2015, thirty years a­ fter the committee’s dissolution in the 1980s. While the rec­ords remain s­ ilent on why the committee omitted names, the decision was in line with the understanding that SAC’s job was technical. Including the names of participants—­all of them also diplomats of their respective countries and board governors—­would have made it pos­si­ble to associate individual positions with

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certain states, thus increasing the potential of crossing SAC’s self-­imposed restriction of only addressing technical issues. SAC proved to be successful despite its contested origins ­because it helped in managing the normative distinction between the IAEA’s scientific and po­liti­cal domains.41 Its members conducted their meetings in a businesslike, if not friendly, atmosphere, and they all knew each other well. Leaving aside SAC’s technical nature, Seligman once said that it could have been renamed PAC—­ Political Advisory Committee—­because of its influence on IAEA affairs.42 None of SAC’s members doubted that technical and po­liti­cal m ­ atters sometimes overlapped in the agency’s work, but SAC provided a framework where key questions of international nuclear cooperation and control could be discussed in a scientific and technical fashion. SAC members who ­were also governors often discussed the same topics in more po­liti­cal contexts at board meetings. SAC and board members ­were generally mindful in differentiating diplomat-­governors and scientist colleagues. Emelyanov, leaving a board gathering to meet with some of his Western colleagues from SAC, at one point remarked, “­We’re scientists, not politi-

The IAEA’s Scientific Advisory Committee meets in Vienna, ( left to right) Robert Spence (filling in for John Cockcroft), Isidor Rabi, IAEA director general William Sterling Cole, Vassily Emelyanov, Homi Bhabha, Bertrand Goldschmidt, Henry Seligman, and W. B. Lewis, Vienna, 4 June 1959. © IAEA

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cians.”43 Seligman, the secretariat’s top scientist, was notorious for irreverently addressing board members as “you ­people,” and Goldschmidt was known for reading the newspaper during board discussions.44 The members of SAC and the board used the words “po­liti­cal,” “technical,” and “scientific” not only to indicate ­whether they w ­ ere talking diplomacy or science, but also to thwart oppositional views. Calling something “po­liti­cal” was often just another way of saying “I d ­ on’t agree.”

The Beginnings of Technical Assistance Technical assistance was at the heart of what made the world interested in the IAEA’s Atoms for Peace mission, and it was the agency’s fastest-­growing activity. The focus on technical assistance was in line with other initiatives for developmental assistance within the UN framework. In 1958, the UN General Assembly established the Special United Nations Fund for Economic Development (­later the United Nations Special Fund), and in 1961, the world organ­ization announced a “de­cade of development.”45 The historian Mark Mazower has described this entanglement between development aid and global governance as “development as world-­making.”46 In October 1958, the IAEA General Conference ­adopted a resolution that underlined the need for providing technical assistance to less developed countries. The resolution placed par­tic­u­lar emphasis on the production of power, which was seen “as an impor­t ant ele­ment in the promotion of their economic development, enabling them to meet the pressure of population growth.”47 ­T hese words echoed the modernization theory of the time. For most developing countries, however, nuclear applications did not take priority in their economic and agricultural plans.48 Overall, the generation of energy from nuclear power made far less pro­g ress than had been expected at the time of President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech. In 1959, Sigvard Eklund—­ secretary-­general for the 1958 UN Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy—­remarked that it had become “evident—if one wants to be quite honest—­ that atomic energy has been sold ten years too early.” He did not even believe that it made sense to hold another UN conference on nuclear issues anytime soon, as technological pro­gress on atomic energy had been slow.49 In fact, Eklund asked Hammarskjöld for support in organ­izing a large conference on the life sciences, rather than another one on nuclear m ­ atters, as this field appeared to be more promising.50 Despite some curbed enthusiasm for nuclear energy, in 1958—­four years prior to the dispatch of the first IAEA safeguards inspectors—­t he IAEA had undertaken fact-­finding missions to many parts of the world. The first was to Latin

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Amer­i­ca, the second mission to four Asian countries, and o ­ thers to the M ­ iddle 51 East and Africa to establish contacts with local authorities. In 1959, the Board of Governors agreed on a mission to the Republic of China, South Vietnam, and South ­Korea. While the Soviets initially rejected it—­arguing that the three countries did not truly represent China, Vietnam, or K ­ orea—­t hey did not exert much 52 effort in preventing it. In ­t hese early years, the use of radiation and isotopes for scientific, technical, medical, and agricultural purposes, as well as equivalent training for scientists—­not nuclear energy production—­stood at the heart of IAEA’s technical assistance activities.53 The same holds true ­today. Usually, a group of five to eight staff members from dif­fer­ent divisions, such as reactor research, agricultural applications, and nuclear power, went on t­ hese trips. The agency’s technical assistance activities ­were “scattered throughout the ­ eople from dif­fer­ent Secretariat.”54 ­Because the secretariat was so small, p branches often knew each other well. The job of the mission teams was to evaluate the situation in the member states they visited: Did the state have a keen interest in nuclear power generation? What w ­ ere local conditions like and how advanced ­were scientific programs? What kind of technical assistance would make sense in that par­tic­u­lar country? The pioneering spirit of the time comes to life in letters that secretariat staff sent from their missions back to headquarters. In fall 1959, during a mission to Yugo­slavia, Iran, Turkey, Af­ghan­i­stan, and Iraq, the head of it relayed his impressions to Vienna: “The Mission has been having a very in­ter­est­ing time so far, but the high adventure begins on November 7th, when we depart for the mysterious city of Kabul. If we survive Af­ghan­i­stan and ­later Bagdad, we hope to see you on November 18th and report to you in person about all the developments.”55 The author of the letter was none other than ­Munir Ahmad Khan, who would become the key figure in Pakistan’s nuclear program, including chairing the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission from 1972 to 1991 (with his rival, A. Q. Khan, replacing him as head of the enrichment program in 1976).56 The IAEA’s technical assistance activities primarily targeted less industrially advanced states, but this group was not ­limited to the states that usually referred to as “the developing states” at the agency. The first official request for source material, for instance, came from Japan, which in late 1958 asked the agency for three tons of natu­ral uranium. Director General Cole then brought the m ­ atter to the attention of the Board of Governors, as the agency’s statute demanded.57 Even though several member states had already offered material for agency proj­ects, this first request led to a number of lengthy board debates. It was clear to all that the way the h ­ andling of the Japa­nese request would set an impor­tant pre­ce­dent.

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The board agreed on Canada to supply the uranium requested. Several l­egal steps ­were necessary ­after that, including the signing of a supply agreement, proj­ect agreement, and safeguards letter.58 It also became apparent that the IAEA would act mainly as a broker between member states’ governments and less as a supplier of nuclear material itself. This suggested the real-­world impracticality of Eisenhower’s original concept of an atomic pool. The Japa­nese request was also the first time that the board discussed a specific safeguards agreement, but the final safeguards agreement was never implemented. In the mid-1960s, however, an assessment of individual facilities ­under safeguards showed that most IAEA inspection efforts involved Japan.59 In 1965, to thank member state Japan for its critical role in laying the foundations for international safeguards, the agency, for the first time, held the General Conference off-­site, in Tokyo. The board only established a Department of Technical Assistance in 1964. Its first leader was U­pen­dra Lal Goswami, an Indian, a fitting choice given India’s lobbying for technical assistance during the drafting of the agency’s statute.60 Goswami had previously held se­nior positions in the Indian civil ser­v ice. The new department worked closely with the United Nations and the UN specialized agencies. One-­third of the IAEA’s technical assistance activities at the time took place as part of the United Nations Expanded Program for Technical Assistance and the United Nations Special Fund.61 In 1964, the IAEA formed a Joint Division with the Food and Agriculture Organ­ization (FAO), a UN specialized agency, headquartered in Rome.62 In the years before the commercial breakthrough of nuclear power plants, most proj­ects related to the agency’s scientific activities. Like other UN development proj­ects, the training and exchange of experts formed a key pillar. The IAEA trained hundreds of scientists from developing countries. In January 1960, it awarded its first research fellowship to R. P. Agarvala, an Indian scientist, who was offered the opportunity to spend 12 months at the Mas­sa­chu­ setts Institute of Technology (MIT).63 In 1964, the IAEA funded 360 fellowships in 59 countries, and sent 27 visiting professors to 16 countries.64 Like the United Nations, the IAEA was not simply a “selfless, self-­effacing institution solely at the ser­v ice of its members.”65 The technical assistance program represented part of the agency’s broader view ­toward defining its own role and relevance in international affairs.

A Safeguards Division without Inspectors The agency’s cata­log of initial staff listed 80 ­people in the Division of General and Conference Ser­v ices, but not a single one in the Division of Safeguards, an indication of the slow development of nuclear safeguards. When, in 1959, Büchler

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became the IAEA’s first nuclear inspector, the agency’s safeguards activities remained ­humble. The Department of Safeguards and Inspection still existed mostly on paper. Five professionals and two secretaries worked in the d ­ epartment’s safeguards division, which had not conducted a single safeguards inspection; the first inspection would take place in 1962 at the Norwegian research reactor NORA. Both the po­liti­cal and technical prob­lems related to safeguarding nuclear materials appeared to be as complicated as at the time of the technical talks in Geneva in 1955. The division’s first staff members initially had to ascertain what exactly safeguards would be able to accomplish.66 In addition, how much nuclear material was militarily significant and needed to fall ­under IAEA safeguards? Would nuclear safeguards apply to successive generations of nuclear material once a technical assistance proj­ect ended?67 The offices occupied by the safeguards division reflected the division’s modest beginnings. Other IAEA divisions resided in the more luxurious parts of the former ­Grand ­Hotel, while safeguards was assigned to the former staff quarters and had no elevator access.68 Prob­ably no other section of the IAEA has changed more over time than the safeguards division. ­Today the Department of Safeguards is one of the most protected areas in the IAEA building, with access controls to the floors and secure offices. Nothing like that existed in the 1950s and 1960s. Eisenhower had not mentioned “nuclear safeguards” in his “Atoms for Peace” speech—­nor had he envisaged a system of external nuclear safeguards on national nuclear programs—­but it had been part of the Americans’ discourse since the early postwar proposals on nuclear control. What t­hese safeguards would actually do, however, which tools they might involve, and what role on-­the-­ ground inspections might play remained unanswered. General agreement existed that nuclear safeguards should prevent the agency’s peaceful nuclear assistance from being used for military purposes, but it was not clear how safeguards would achieve that or what exactly would represent a “military purpose.” In 1959, the Board of Governors handled a request by Thailand for assistance in radioisotope research, a crucial field for medicine. When the board discussed ­whether the proj­ect required safeguards, the Indian governor, who opposed safeguards, asked the other governors w ­ hether it would be considered a “military purpose” if wounded combatants ­were treated with radioisotopes.69 With the sarcastic remark, he reminded his colleagues of the blurry line between the atom’s peaceful and military uses. The IAEA’s statute outlined the basic functions of safeguards as well as the rights and obligations of inspectors, but like so many other aspects of the agency’s mandate, the details would have to be worked out at a ­later date.70 Specifically, the negotiators of the statute had not

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made safeguards mandatory for states “simply by virtue of membership in the IAEA.” Safeguards could only be implemented in states that had signed an equivalent safeguards agreement.71 Decoupling safeguards agreements from the statute satisfied the United States’ plea for strong safeguards while also recognizing the skepticism t­oward inspections expressed by India, France, and some o ­ thers. Accordingly, while the Board of Governors usually tried to make consensus decisions, safeguards issues w ­ ere often de­cided by a vote, an indication of safeguards being a difficult and controversial topic. The first safeguards document, GOV/334, drafted by the safeguards division staff, was the product of two years of work, yet the board rejected the 40-­page report a­ fter half an hour of discussion.72 Nuclear safeguards came as a burden with the IAEA’s promise of nuclear sharing, or at least that was how most recipients of technical assistance viewed it. While developing states saw safeguards as discriminatory, many industrialized nations feared that the agency’s inspections would lead to industrial espionage. The role of safeguards was controversial even within the secretariat. Some viewed safeguards as a “disruptive ele­ment,” a “minor function of the agency,” and a distraction from the IAEA’s main job of fostering and accelerating the civilian uses of nuclear energy worldwide.73 Technical assistance, not safeguards, was the IAEA’s selling point. Even ­after de­cades, other departments would see safeguards inspectors as spies that w ­ ere nosing around in member states.74 The idea of safeguards had to be translated into concrete l­egal and technical terms. ­Legal agreements w ­ ere needed to confirm both the agency’s and member states’ rights and obligations in applying safeguards; technical discussions ­were required to determine which tools would be adequate for each job. It was also understood that the implementation of safeguards would mean much more work for reactor operators, who would have to keep rec­ords in one of the board’s working languages. Some of the safeguards staff found themselves in the odd situation of possessing critical knowledge about nuclear weapons from previous job experience. While they w ­ ere not supposed to share and discuss this knowledge with their colleagues at the agency, it was of course crucial in designing early safeguards mea­sures.75 Safeguards ­were therefore po­liti­cally controversial, technologically and administratively challenging, and legally complex, and the combination of t­ hese ­factors explained why not much happened in the development of safeguards during the early years of the agency. In the mid-1950s, the Americans and the Soviets through correspondences and meetings had, however, agreed that safeguards would focus on detecting the diversion of nuclear materials supplied by the agency, or u ­ nder its control, from civilian to military purposes.

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The secretariat and member states in support of safeguards favored the development of general guidelines from which to produce standardized safeguards agreements. By contrast, t­ hose critical of safeguards, led by the Soviet Union, preferred to negotiate agreements on a case-­by-­case basis. In May 1958, Cole asked SAC to develop princi­ples and regulations for the application of IAEA safeguards. As at the Geneva technical meetings of 1955, SAC found itself confronted with the prob­lem that IAEA safeguards depended “upon policy as well as scientific considerations.” Yet, Cole had asked his science advisors to deal solely with the technical prob­lems; the Board of Governors would resolve the po­liti­cal issues.76 While honorable, Cole’s approach was somewhat naïve, especially since several SAC members also represented their countries on the board. “[T]he air in the boardroom was reminiscent of Agincourt,” wrote Allan McKnight, the agency’s first inspector general.77 Despite the prevailing skepticism ­toward safeguards, the majority of member states eventually agreed that it made sense to develop standardized safeguards regulations and agreements rather than drafting each safeguards agreement from scratch. The IAEA’s first safeguards guidelines, agreed upon by the board in early 1961, w ­ ere ­limited in scope. The agency’s first safeguards document, ­INFCIRC/26 (Information Circular 26), only applied to research and small power reactors (less than 100 megawatts) and to materials placed voluntarily ­under IAEA safeguards.78 As noted above, the Soviet Union and India had been against ­these guidelines, and even during negotiations on the IAEA’s statute, France had criticized them as a threat to national sovereignty. Uranium-­producing Australia and South Africa, despite their usual support for US policies on the IAEA, feared that mandatory safeguards would have negative effects on their uranium sales.79 The lukewarm support for INFCIRC/26 was even more obvious at the General Conference, where only 43 member states w ­ ere in f­avor of it, while 19  states voted against it, and two abstained. The corresponding “Inspectors Document” outlined very specific limitations to the work of agency inspectors, as on-­site inspections w ­ ere the most controversial aspect of safeguards activities: the agency had to announce routine inspections at least a week in advance; member states had the right to refuse certain inspectors; and national officials could accompany the inspectors.80 The idea of resident inspectors, something that the US Atomic Energy Commission had fought for, was not ­adopted.81 Early on, the IAEA also concerned itself with the safety risks involved in the ­handling of nuclear materials. The IAEA statute suggests that the agency’s responsibilities in nuclear safeguards and nuclear safety are interwoven.82 In the late 1950s, the secretariat even envisioned sending “health safeguards” inspectors

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to member states.83 Or­gan­i­za­t ion­a lly, however, safeguards and safety drifted apart ­after the first nuclear safety crises. An initial blow to the optimism surrounding nuclear energy came in October 1957, when a fire at the Windscale nuclear power plant, in the United Kingdom, raised public concerns about the safety of nuclear energy. A year l­ater, in October 1958, during a series of experiments involving a research reactor, six workers ­were exposed to very high doses of radiation at the Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, near Belgrade. One worker died. The Vinca accident gave birth to discussions at the IAEA about operational safety and led to cooperation among the agency, Yugo­slavia, and other member states in analyzing how the accident occurred as well as conducting a dosimetry experiment to ascertain the pos­si­ble health consequences of the accident. This was the agency’s first “big science” proj­ect.84 Nuclear reactor safety, waste disposal, and the safe transport of radioactive materials constituted additional purviews of the agency’s work on nuclear safety. In 1962, the Board of Governors approved the IAEA’s Basic Safety Standards for Radiation Protection.85 The broad opposition to safeguards on one hand but the obvious need for safety standards on the other resulted in separating safeguards from health and safety. As McKnight recalled, the lack of support for safeguards should not be allowed to slow the development of health and safety mea­sures.86 Despite such a commitment, pro­gress in setting binding rules for nuclear safety lagged; health and safety ­were seen as the domain of the individual member states. The vision of health safeguards inspectors never materialized.87 While the agency’s first director general, Cole, strongly supported safeguards, the system would only reach maturity ­under his successor, Eklund. Cole believed that if the IAEA was to play an impor­tant role in international affairs, it had to exercise strong safeguards powers. In this regard, he was not afraid to take the policies of his own country to task. He criticized the United States for not transferring all its bilateral technical assistance agreements ­under the Atoms for Peace program to the agency and for supporting Euratom—­t he Eu­ro­pean Community’s nuclear organ­ization—in its demand to retain the right to inspect nuclear facilities in Euratom member states rather than agreeing with the IAEA to conduct inspections. It set a negative example for other regions of the world. Preferential treatment of Euratom by the United States could create inequalities among the agency’s member states and thus harm the young organ­ization: “[I]f Euratom is to be granted self-­inspection, what reason is ­there to deny self-­inspection to ‘Asiatom,’ ‘Africatom,’ and ‘Latinatom,” Cole stated.88 As the leader of the agency’s staff, he knew how much sensitivity t­ here was regarding inequalities among member states.

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At around the same time, the disclosure of Israel’s secret nuclear reactor proj­ ect near Dimona, in the Negev Desert, aided by the French, reinforced fears of peaceful nuclear programs being misused for military purposes.89 Israel had joined the IAEA at its creation, but the Dimona reactor was not part of an IAEA technical assistance proj­ect and therefore not u ­ nder international safeguards. Israel claimed that the fa­cil­i­t y was for peaceful purposes only. Still, Cole found it troubling that the reactor might be part of an attempt to launch an Israeli nuclear weapon program. What role would the IAEA play in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to further states? One year a­ fter France had joined the club of nuclear weapon states in 1960, Dimona and fears of yet another nuclear weapon state on the horizon made this question even more acute. Cole revealed his concerns in a letter to his friend Lewis Strauss. In his opinion, Dimona should be placed ­under IAEA safeguards, an aim shared by the US government.90 While the international community had no ­legal means to enforce safeguards at Dimona, the IAEA statute foresaw the possibility of a state voluntarily putting its national nuclear program ­under the agency’s supervision. For Cole, Dimona fundamentally challenged the IAEA’s dual mandate of promotion and control. He was certain that an Israeli nuclear weapon program would have “disturbing implications” on the M ­ iddle East, with Arab countries also perhaps seeking a nuclear bomb. This was an early expression of the so-­ called nuclear domino theory, whereby states are likely to proliferate in response to the emergence of new nuclear powers, especially if they are in their neighborhood. Thus, as far as Cole was concerned, the IAEA had to do something. Contrary to the majority perception of the agency as a technical assistance organ­ization, he saw it as a nonproliferation agency as well: “If governments fail to use the agency as a vehicle to curtail nuclear weapon expansion, it should be abolished.”91 That was a bold and visionary statement for the director general, who was widely thought of as an administrator and not a politician. Cole also doubted that the agency should primarily concern itself with the peaceful atom, but he emphasized that it had both promotional and regulatory functions. “Handing out some fellowships and sponsoring scientific meetings,” was not an impor­t ant enough purpose to justify the IAEA’s existence.92 While Cole made ­t hese comments in private letters and at the end of his tenure at the IAEA, he foresaw a role for the agency that it would play in years to come.

Finances and Priorities The first donation the IAEA ever received ­were two dollars and one cent, contributed by Joseph Santore, a school boy from New York State. Excited about the

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new global atomic organ­ization, he had collected the money from his classmates. The IAEA’s press division highlighted the heart-­warming story in the agency’s first official press release in late 1957.93 Joseph’s two dollars and one cent went into the modest $125,000 bud­get for the 1958 technical assistance program.94 The IAEA’s technical assistance activities depended on additional, voluntary financial contributions from member states; mandatory contributions to the agency’s regular bud­get covered safeguards. The emerging competition between t­ hese two divisions therefore also centered around money. The IAEA’s two-­budget system had come about during the Washington talks, in 1956. Since that time, the developing states had argued that technical assistance activities should be covered by the regular bud­get to ensure continuous and sufficient funding.95 The developing countries argued that the statute described two equally impor­t ant jobs for the IAEA—­technical assistance and safeguards. If t­ here was priority to be given to one of ­t hese jobs, it should be to technical assistance.96 The industrialized states usually opposed this perspective. In 1962, the General Conference asked the Board of Governors for the first time to revisit the finance article of the IAEA statute. Two impor­tant donor states, the United Kingdom and the United States, suggested merging the two bud­gets into one. The Soviet Union, usually a supporter of proposals in ­favor of the developing world, strongly opposed the plan. Some African and Asian states reminded the Eastern bloc states that if the industrialized member states ­were serious about their commitment to technical assistance, they should have no objection to making financial contributions to t­ hese activities mandatory. A ­ fter all, the US-­ British proposal would also increase the developing states’ mandatory contributions to the agency.97 P. Dasgupta, the Indian governor, explained that his country had asked other member states to increase their financial support of the agency’s technical assistance activities, but since the appeal had been “virtually ignored,” he empathized with the US and British proposals for a revised bud­ ­ ehind the Eastern bloc opposition was that getary system.98 The reasoning b other than extra-­budgetary and voluntary contributions, ­those to the regular bud­ get had to be made in hard, convertible currency. This was a serious prob­lem for the Soviet Union, whose ruble was not freely convertible on the world market, leaving the Soviet Union constantly short of hard currency.99 The question of IAEA funding led to unusual alliances, with US ally South Africa in support of the Eastern bloc proposal, and India, even though it abstained in the final vote, generally in f­avor of the Western plans. While a two-­thirds majority of the Western-­dominated Board of Governors ­adopted the proposal to revise the

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bud­getary system, the following General Conference, where the Soviet Union could assem­ble more voting power, killed it.100 From the late 1950s to 1965, the value of member states’ voluntary contributions multiplied tenfold.101 IAEA technical assistance mostly translated into support for engineering and technology, nuclear science, and isotope applications, by providing equipment and expertise as well as training.102 Overall, at that time, about $1 million of the regular bud­get went into information and technical ser­vices, $800,000 into research ser­vices and physical sciences, $660,000 into isotopes and radiation sources, $620,000 into technical assistance, $580,000 into nuclear power and reactors, and $335,000 into safeguards.103

Regional Dynamics and Repre­sen­ta­tion The early 1960s ­were the era of decolonization on the African continent, and many of the young states in Africa applied for membership in the agency—­not only b ­ ecause they w ­ ere interested in nuclear energy and applications, but also ­because they wanted to participate in international affairs more generally. ­Every year, new states became members, among them, Ghana and Senegal in 1960; the Demo­cratic Republic of Congo in 1961; Cameroon, Gabon, and Nigeria in 1964.104 In 1965, the agency had 91 member states, compared to 56 in 1957, while the United Nations had 117 member states that year.105 As part of the technical assistance program, the IAEA supported the establishment of regional training centers for h ­ andling radioisotopes. In 1959, Turkey became the first state to receive IAEA support to establish a regional training center. Cairo applied for the program as well, but Ankara had used its membership in NATO to sway enough votes in its ­favor. Israel had opposed Egypt being awarded the center.106 In 1960, the Board of Governors de­cided to open a second training center in the “Africa and the M ­ iddle East” region, and a­ fter a series of preliminary training courses, did so, in Cairo, in 1963.107 South Africa, included in the Africa and ­Middle East region and at that time the most influential member state within the IAEA from the African continent, closely followed ­these developments. The South African government worried that the establishment of the regional center in Cairo was part of a larger Egyptian strategy to gain more influence in the IAEA. Egypt, with a keen interest in nuclear energy, represented a potential threat to South Africa’s seat on the Board of Governors—­t he only one designated for the Africa and ­Middle East region and reserved for the state in the region “most advanced in the technology of atomic energy, including the production of source materials.” B ­ ecause of South Africa’s international isolation, it had no chance of securing a place on the board by win-

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ning one elected by the General Conference. It was therefore critical for South Africa to secure its seat by other means: the board reaffirming the country’s status as the “most advanced” for the Africa and M ­ iddle East region.108 In 1956, the South African del­e­ga­tion had made sure that “the production of source materials” was included in the statute as an indicator of what it meant to be “advanced” in nuclear m ­ atters. Nothing ­else in the statute defines what it means to be “advanced in the technology of atomic energy,” thus leaving the article open to interpretation. The South Africans knew that it was no guarantee of continuous board membership. For 1959–60, Donald Sole, a South African, served as chair of the Board of Governors. As the next board term approached, Pretoria felt international diplomatic support for it slipping. On 21 March 1960 in the Sharpeville township, in Transvaal province, police killed 69 black South Africans.109 The ever-­g rowing brutality of the apartheid regime shocked the world, making cooperation with it in international organ­izations much more difficult. South Africa therefore “canvassed” several Western board members about its redesignation, to make sure it had a safe and overriding majority of supporters for its board membership.110 In a statement distributed to friendly nations, Pretoria listed the reasons why it should be considered the most advanced nuclear state in the region.111 The lobbying effort worked. Egypt never even expressed interest in having a seat on the board. In the eyes of India, the most out­spoken advocate of the interests of the developing states, the agency’s board did not represent the geographic realities of the world. In light of decolonization in Africa and Asia, the Indian del­e­ga­tion argued that it was “necessary to revise the constitution of the Board of Governors . . . ​ so that it more truly reflects the world as it is to-­day [sic].” The composition of the board was “contrary to the existing state of affairs and the trends in the modern world.”112 The Soviets backed the Indians’ position. It was an “obvious fact,” explained Emelyanov, that “enormous changes had taken place in the world since 1956,” when the text of the statute had been finalized.113 Africa and the ­Middle East wanted their “voice to be heard on the Board; the countries in that area, which would become the main beneficiaries of agency assistance, ­ought to have the opportunity of expressing their voices,” argued the Iraqi governor.114 In 1960, four years a­ fter the statute had been finalized, the General Conference asked the Board of Governors to consider amending Article VI, regulating the composition of the board. In September 1962, the board invited the representatives of two young African states, Tunisia and Ghana, to participate in the next series of meetings to discuss the issue.115 In 1963, the number of board members was increased

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from 23 to 25, adding 2 additional seats to be elected by the General Conference. The amendment required that the board at all times include three members from the Africa and M ­ iddle East region and three from Latin Amer­i­ca.116 The list of geographic areas and number of board members has been amended several times. In fact, Article VI is the only article that has been successfully amended; the o ­ thers stand as they ­were drafted and approved between 1954 and 1956.117 Also in 1963, Sole feared that the South African del­e­ga­tion would be excluded from the IAEA’s other policy-­making organ, the General Conference. Requests to reject South Africa’s credentials had been made at other international organ­ izations. In an address to the 1963 General Conference, Sole underscored the South African position that the agency had an entirely scientific, as opposed to a po­liti­cal, mission. He even claimed that the agency was “prob­ably the most scientific and technical of all the United Nations organ­izations” and called on member states to “put aside the po­liti­cal differences that might divide Member States in other forums.”118 Ironically, the new Ghanaian governor, R. P. Baffour, was presiding over this session. He had to juggle his roles as a representative of an African state and the custodian of protocol. No m ­ atter how “profound his personal disapproval . . . ​of the racial policies of certain countries,” in his role as the temporary president of the conference, he felt obliged to support the South African appeal, as the IAEA’s “concerns lay outside politics.”119 When Baffour had finished, his fellow countryman, Emmanuel Kodjoe Dadzie, spoke as the head of the Ghanaian del­e­ga­tion. He underlined that his “compliance with the Temporary President’s appeal should not be taken as meaning that his del­e­ga­tion condoned the atrocities which had been, and ­were still being perpetrated against the African p ­ eoples by the Government of South Africa.”120 ­T hese kinds of verbal exchanges about the technical and po­liti­cal aspects of the agency’s work became a rhetorical pattern. The more po­liti­cal a question, the more impor­tant it was to underline the agency’s technical character—­and to stick to formal procedure—­and only t­ hose who stressed this technical character ­were permitted to make a po­liti­cal argument.

A Scientist Takes Over By 1961, Cole’s initial term was over. According to the statute, the head of the agency is appointed for five years by the Board of Governors, but can be reappointed.121 ­T here are no term limits, but a­ fter the agency’s rough first years and the controversies over Cole’s appointment in 1957, it seemed unlikely that he would be asked to stand for a second term even though he wanted to stay.122 In

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the words of John Hall, deputy director general for administration, “[The] situation within the agency was terrible. The morale was low—no clear lines of authority and the D.G. himself was appointing the smallest detail.”123 Cole, a notorious micromanager, was criticized for being “excessively bureaucratic” and for showing a “lack of direction” as well as for his “heavyhandedness [sic].”124 Against this backdrop, in thinking about the next director general, the Americans returned to a plan from 1957—­have a scientist run the agency, preferably one from a neutral country.125 Most member states had favored this solution at that time, so it seemed likely that the idea would receive support in 1961. The names of potential candidates w ­ ere bandied about in the hallways of the IAEA in Vienna and at the United Nations in New York, among them Henry Brynielsson, the top candidate from 1957, Gunnar Randers from Norway, and Eklund, a reactor specialist who had also served as director of the Swedish Atomic Energy Com­pany for several years.126 The Soviet government, which in the past supported the idea of a scientist as director general, had changed its position. It proposed that the IAEA be run by a “commission of three,” composed of a representative from the West, the East, and the nonaligned states.127 The Soviets had presented a similar proposal to the United Nations in 1960, when they wanted to replace the secretary-­general with a “troika.” As at the United Nations, the idea failed to gain support at the IAEA.128 The Soviets then de­cided to support the position of India and other developing states to have someone from an African or Asian state run the IAEA. India favored Tjondronegoro Sudjarwo, an Indonesian c­ areer diplomat who had served on the PrepCom and was well known at the IAEA. The debate over Cole’s successor again revealed that the answer to the question of ­whether the agency’s job was po­liti­cal or technical was po­liti­cal in itself. By April 1961, the list of potential candidates had narrowed to Sudjarwo, the candidate of the postcolonial states and the Eastern bloc, and Eklund, the Western candidate. Given the Western majority on the Board of Governors, Eklund was sworn in as the new director general on 6 October 1961. The Soviet del­e­ga­t ion was enraged, especially Emelyanov, who at other times had wanted the IAEA to be run by a scientist. On the other hand, and contrary to the discussions surrounding Cole’s nomination in 1957, the American governor, Henry DeWolf Smyth, said that, while he appreciated Sudjarwo’s abilities as a diplomat, the agency would benefit from having a scientist like Eklund as its leader.129 This change in the American argument did not go unnoticed. The Indian governor reminded the board that the US administration had argued the opposite at the time of Cole’s appointment. He also stated that it was “an undoubted fact that almost

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e­ very international organ­ization had as its head a first-­class administrator, with diplomatic experience.”130 Similarly, Emelyanov argued that “the appointment of the Director General of an international organ­ization involved a decision of a po­liti­cal character, and that fact should be frankly recognized.”131 Emelyanov emphasized that he had recently had a conversation with Eklund at the Swedish embassy in Moscow, and that Eklund had reassured him that he would only accept his nomination if a large majority of member states supported it. Behind the scenes, the Soviets had tried to convince Eklund to decline the nomination. Emelyanov’s re­sis­tance t­oward Eklund did not stem from personal antipathy—­even though Eklund had left a rather annoying impression during a visit to the Obninsk reactor in 1955—­but from the politics that surrounded the nomination.132 The Soviet scientist argued that by accepting Eklund, the IAEA had proven to be a “tool of the Western powers.” Emelyanov stalked out of the conference hall and remarked that the Soviet del­e­ga­t ion would not speak with Eklund and that he personally would avoid contact with him.133 Privately, however, he indicated to his American counter­parts that the Soviets would accept Eklund if necessary.134 Eklund arrived in Vienna in late November 1961 and took office on 1 December. Hall, the director of the administration department and a Cole critic, liked Eklund and was confident that he would do a good job and perhaps sharpen the IAEA’s profile. Hall wrote to Isidor Rabi, “I think that Eklund ­w ill have, within 60 days a­ fter his term begins, a very good team. The basic prob­lem, of course, is: What ­w ill this team do?”135 At the beginning of the second director general’s term, it was still not clear what role the world’s nuclear organ­ization would play in the development of nuclear power and ­whether its inspection and control functions would ever rise to the level of having a meaningful impact. Although Eklund arrived at the IAEA with the professional image of a scientist from a neutral country, his background was more complex. Prior to leading the agency, he had held director positions in the Swedish state-­owned com­pany AB Atomenergi and was well informed about some of the most secret aspects of Sweden’s ambition to develop the bomb.136 Sweden never built a nuclear bomb, but its nuclear weapon program—­strongly opposed by the United States and the Swedish public—­had been ambitious, and the plans for a Swedish bomb ­were only shelved several years a­ fter Eklund became IAEA director general.137 The foundation of IAEA safeguards was therefore laid ­under the directorship of someone who had primary insights into a national nuclear weapon program. Such a professional history was not unusual among the diplomats on the Board of Governors or key personnel in the safeguards division, but it was somewhat dif­fer­ent

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IAEA director general William Sterling Cole (right) welcomes his successor, Sigvard Eklund, at the airport, Vienna, 5 October 1961. © IAEA

to choose someone with such a background as the director general of an international organ­ization required to distance itself from nuclear weapons–­related endeavors. Interestingly, however, this aspect of Eklund’s previous c­ areer caused almost no controversy, with the exception of Emelyanov spreading the rumor that the new director general had leaked information about the Swedish program to Western states.138 By and large, however, during the early 1960s, it was not seen as a contradiction in the agency’s mission to have someone at the helm who had been intrinsically involved in a nuclear weapon program. Despite the drama that preceded Eklund’s election, Emelyanov sought peace with the new director general in early 1962.139 The Iraqi governor, Baquir Hasani, who was on good terms with his Soviet counterpart, helped facilitate the rapprochement between the Soviets and Eklund.140 Over the next few years, Cold War tensions would ease in the IAEA’s boardroom, and in ­later elections—­Eklund would direct the IAEA ­until 1981—­the Soviets backed him fully.141 He would never be as approachable as his successor, Hans Blix, but mostly was a respected leader of the agency’s staff. His disciplined personality was reflected by his habit of taking the stairs, rather than elevators, to stay fit.142 Eklund developed a good relationship

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with Bruno Kreisky, the Austrian foreign minister (1959–66) and ­later federal chancellor (1970–83). A Viennese socialist from a Jewish ­family, Kreisky had fled in 1938 to Sweden, where he remained in exile ­until 1946. He married a Swede, Vera Fürth, and spoke Swedish fluently.143 Austria and Sweden, two of the Eu­ro­ pean neutral states during the Cold War, had close po­liti­cal and cultural ties, and the presence of Eklund in Vienna fostered good bilateral relations.

A Palliative to Nonproliferation Although Cole had been an advocate for strong agency safeguards, the main foundations of the system ­were laid ­under his successor. During Eklund’s tenure, the nuclear industry fi­nally began to develop some momentum. Given this, the existing, rather rudimentary agency safeguards w ­ ere “looked upon by some as futile and by o ­ thers as more a façade.”144 ­After the Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962, US-­Soviet relations improved notably. The dramatic events in the Ca­rib­bean had shaken the international community and increased fears of a nuclear war. The agency’s member states ­were fi­nally willing to give the IAEA’s inspectorate more power. Goldschmidt recalled how the head of the Soviet atomic committee, in 1962, would describe the agency’s safeguards system as an American “spider’s web.” A few months ­later, ­after the end of the crisis, the same Soviet official would support US proposals to expand safeguards.145 Roland Timerbaev, a Soviet ­career diplomat with long and distinguished experience in arms control and nonproliferation, recalled that around 1963 and 1964, “Rus­sia became more Catholic than the Pope of Rome, in terms of safeguards.” Fears that West Germany might develop a nuclear weapon program and worries over China’s nuclear ambitions exacerbated the Soviets’ fears. Timerbaev remembered that time as one of “very active, very constructive” superpower cooperation on safeguards in the Board of Governors.146 The first tangible result of the new US-­Soviet alignment at the IAEA was the expansion of the previous safeguards guidelines to apply to larger reactors. In February 1964, the board took a roll call vote on the issue. No member state voted against it, and none abstained. The board also established a working group ­under the Norwegian governor, Randers, the foremost figure in his country’s nuclear research establishment who had already taken the lead in developing and revising e­ arlier safeguards guidelines.147 Also in 1964, the Division of Safeguards and the Inspection Unit w ­ ere merged into the Division of Safeguards and Inspection, a practical step symbolizing the institutional consolidation of nuclear safeguards inspections.

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Shortly a­ fter the board’s decision to expand the safeguards guidelines, Eklund asked the members of SAC for their input on the review pro­cess. The request was accompanied by a copy of a short paper, “The Safeguards System of the IAEA,” representing the secretariat’s official stance on nuclear safeguards.148 Up top, the secretariat’s paper stated that the agency’s purview was “­limited only to items which fall ­under its safeguards . . . ​not to the entire nuclear energy activity of the State.” L ­ ater it notes that the IAEA’s control system, “while restricted to certain items only, suffers from a lack of evidence or knowledge of other activities in the state which influence the possibilities of diversion.” The secretariat’s paper thus explic­itly considered the possibility that nuclear weapon technology could be developed in­de­pen­dent of the safeguarded activities of a member state.149 Thus, at the time, the agency viewed its own safeguards system as not very power­ful. It could not detect clandestine nuclear weapon programs, or as Goldschmidt put it, was “only a palliative to nonproliferation”.150 The secretariat, aware of the limits of agency safeguards, made it crystal-­c lear that “restricted Agency safeguards” was not a system of “overall control.”151 The internal paper nevertheless also emphasized the strengths of safeguards. Specifically, and despite the system’s flaws and limitations, nuclear safeguards ­were now framed as a deterrent: “even an imperfect system of control can be effective in practice since it represents a substantial threat to a country.” The secretariat argued that the application of safeguards would prob­ably deter a state from diverting materials out of fear of po­liti­cal consequences: the “chances of being detected weighed against the sanctions which would follow the detection of diversion would certainly make the diversion less attractive. To decrease the probability of diversion, one has, therefore, e­ ither to increase the effectiveness of the control system or to provide more rigorous sanctions, or, of course, to do both.”152 Another limitation of agency safeguards, however, was that the diversion of nuclear knowledge and information could not be prevented, and the secretariat implicitly admitted that the distribution of civilian assistance might be harmful.153 The first generation of agency officials and diplomats carved out the IAEA’s role as a nonproliferation organ­ization—­one that could help reduce the threat posed by the spread of nuclear weapons, but only in one distinct way: by verifying that sensitive agency assistance, or assistance placed voluntarily ­under IAEA safeguards, was not being diverted to military uses. With this, the IAEA had developed a much more l­imited mandate than Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace had actually envisaged. The original idea had been that the agency would receive custody of significant amounts of fissionable materials and in that way help in

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reducing the military stockpiles of fissionable materials of both the East and the West. During the negotiations of the statute, the original proposal had been watered down and, once the IAEA was established, the lower-­than-­expected number of requests from member states made the pool concept even less relevant. Throughout the agency’s history, however, the developing countries have called on the IAEA to protect the supply of nuclear fuel. In 1965, new safeguards guidelines (INFCIRC/66) replaced the 1961 agreement and for the first time enabled IAEA safeguards inspections of all types of reactors, not just research and smaller power reactors.154 In the ­middle of the Cold War, the Board of Governors and the General Conference unanimously endorsed the new safeguards guidelines. The language used in INFCIRC/66 contributed to making it more po­liti­cally acceptable than INFCIRC/26. In short, it was written in a way that politicians and diplomats without technical backgrounds could better grasp its content.155 With INFCIRC/66, the Department of Safeguards began to grow in proj­ects ­ ere u ­ nder safeguards, and sevand staff.156 By mid-1966, nine agency proj­ects w enteen mostly US bilateral nuclear cooperation agreements had been placed ­under IAEA safeguards. In addition, the United Kingdom and the United States voluntarily placed four of their civilian nuclear installations ­under agency safeguards (so-­called voluntary offer agreements). The Americans tried to sell this as an expression of trust in the agency’s safeguards system and as proof of their commitment to the agency. Wanting to demonstrate to their Western allies that safeguards did not pre­sent a threat to industrial secrets, they voluntarily placed part of their nuclear program ­under international verification. In more ideological rhe­toric, the Americans and the British called the voluntary offer agreements an expression of their wish to “further pro­gress t­oward internationally verified ­ attles of the late 1950s had disarmament.”157 The Soviets, who, as the ideological b shown, ­were usually the biggest supporters of linking the IAEA to nuclear disarmament initiatives, asked the Americans to delete all references to disarmament from their voluntary offer agreements. For the Soviet government, the opening of US installations to IAEA safeguards represented a po­liti­cal challenge, ­because it was unwilling to open its own facilities to international verification. In the boardroom, the Soviets argued that the purpose of the US offer to apply agency safeguards voluntarily to its Yankee reactor “was to create illusions in the mind of the public by giving the impression that it would be a means of averting or at least of reducing the danger of nuclear war.”158 Despite this Cold War propaganda exchange, the Americans accommodated the Soviets’ wish to remain ­silent on the disarmament issue. US-­Soviet cooperation on safeguards had been

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good in the preceding years, so ­t here was no desire to endanger it in ideological ­battles.

Institutional Consolidation The IAEA soon expanded its analytical capacities beyond Seligman’s lab in the basement. In 1958, the United States had donated two buses that ­were converted into mobile laboratories for training scientists in member states in how to ­handle radioisotopes. In 1961, the agency opened a laboratory in the small town of Seibers­­ dorf, about 35 kilo­meters outside of Vienna, where the Austrian Institute of Technology operated a research reactor. One of the buses was eventually parked in Seibersdorf to expand the l­imited lab space.159 The new laboratories began work with an initial staff of 20 scientists and 30 technicians. Also in 1961, the IAEA signed a research agreement with the Oceanographic Institute in Monaco, run by the famous explorer and filmmaker Jacques Cousteau, a cooperation that led to the creation of the IAEA Marine Environmental Laboratories. In October

The first routine IAEA safeguards inspection of the AS­TRA research reactor at the Austrian Research Center, Seibersdorf, 2 March 1966. Agency staff members Otto Lendvai ( far left, back to the camera) and Bernard Sharpe (third from the left) conducted the inspection. © IAEA

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1964, the IAEA established the International Center for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy. The center was an initiative to train scientists from the developing world.160 The agency’s scientific activities became manifold, with research on nuclear fusion, agriculture, medicine, desalination of seawater, eradication of insect pests, and the environment. This was reflected in the numerous conferences and symposiums held at the agency’s headquarters in Vienna as well as abroad. Despite Eklund’s ­earlier criticism, the IAEA took charge of the scientific aspects of the third Geneva Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, in 1964. Compared to the agency’s image at the time of the second conference, in 1958, when the IAEA had played only a ­limited role, it was now widely regarded as the key scientific organ­ization in the nuclear field. Meanwhile, in Vienna, the computer age provided new opportunities for the management of knowledge. In 1963, Seligman initiated a nuclear data program that became the forerunner of a Nuclear Data Unit and ­later a Nuclear Data Section. In the spirit of the declassification of nuclear research that had characterized the 1958 Geneva Peaceful Uses conference, the program’s aim was to build a scientific database for nuclear research. Seligman hired a small group of p ­ eople to get the program up and r­ unning, but the IAEA had no computer at the time. Instead, the staff had to book “computer slots” at the Technical University of Vienna, a short tram ­r ide from IAEA headquarters. Unfortunately, however, the nearest IBM office—­and thus help in the event of a technical prob­lem—­was in Paris. In this age of the punch card, an additional prob­lem was that the Americans and the Soviets used dif­fer­ent ways of coding.161 The 1960s ­were also the beginning of what would become the International Nuclear Information System (INIS), t­ oday one of the largest collections of publications on all aspects of the civilian use of nuclear energy. Beginning in the mid-1960s, the IAEA Division of Scientific and Technical Information intensified its attempts to store, index, and manage nuclear information from member states in a structured way, despite some reluctance among a number of Western states to share nuclear knowledge with the Soviet Union. The secretariat first held consultations with the Americans and Soviets before opening the discussion on the establishment of INIS and the acquisition of a computer—­regarded as sensitive technology—­w ith other member states.162 Fi­nally, in 1967, the IAEA established a computer section, acquiring its first computer, an IBM 360/model 30 with 64K memory. In 1970, INIS launched operations. The young IAEA became a center for the exchange of nuclear data and information, and one of the rare places where scientists from East and

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West closely cooperated. Some of most famous nuclear physicists of the time—­ from Robert Oppenheimer to Lise Meitner—­v isited the IAEA or participated in its work in advisory functions. Seligman, the IAEA’s highest-­ranking staff scientist, retired in 1970, but stayed on in Vienna and became instrumental in setting up the Association of Retired Civil Servants in Austria (ARICSA). The organ­ization still represents many former employees of the IAEA and other international organ­izations. For Eastern and Western scientists on the agency’s staff, the open exchange and collaboration with colleagues from the other side of the Iron Curtain was a new and positive experience. Some of the Westerners in the Physics Department knew some Rus­sian, and during coffee breaks, Cold War topics w ­ ere openly discussed. Hans Lemmel, a West German in the Data Unit at the time, recalled that the first Rus­sian colleague to be hired was a most pleasant colleague, but oddly, not a genuine expert on nuclear data. He turned out to be a KGB man.163 Throughout the Cold War, the life of staff members from the Soviet bloc was very dif­fer­ent from that of their colleagues from other countries. The Soviets lived in the so-­called Rus­sian compound in Vienna and, like staff members from other

IAEA director general Sigvard Eklund welcomes the physicist Lise Meitner at the airport, Vienna, 19 May 1963. © IAEA

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socialist countries, needed to render most of their IAEA salary to their home country. In cases where an expert from an Eastern Eu­ro­pean country did not have permission to travel to Vienna, conferences would sometimes be held in nearby Bratislava, in Czecho­slo­va­k ia, a one-­hour train ­r ide from Vienna. ­Because the agency was not allowed to take Western technical equipment outside the country, and the conference venue in Bratislava did not provide a copy machine, Lemmel drove to Vienna each night to copy documents needed the following day. Even with a UN passport, it was not easy to cross the Iron Curtain in ­either direction, so Lemmel had to get an extra visa for this mission.164 The 1960s w ­ ere a time of institutional consolidation for the IAEA. Some of the orga­nizational decisions from the era had a long-­lasting influence, u ­ ntil the 1980s, when Eklund retired as director general, and SAC was dissolved. Some of Eklund’s early personnel choices would remain key staff members ­after his departure, among them Nina Alonso, who advised him and three of his successors. While US influence remained strong, an increasing number of states in Africa, Asia, and Latin Amer­i­ca wanted to have a say in an organ­ization that promised to become a hub for the global exchange of nuclear technology and knowledge. Around 1963, the Soviet Union began to cooperate more closely with the United States on the Board of Governors, eventually supporting the improvement of IAEA safeguards. While the Soviets had backed the developing countries’ criticism t­ oward safeguards, they then began to pay more attention to the agency’s verification role rather than focusing primarily on its promotional activities. Despite the major steps taken in building safeguards, it took another international crisis—­the first Chinese nuclear test, in 1964—­and a forum outside the IAEA—­the Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament in Geneva—to develop the document that would make the IAEA a key player in the emerging global nonproliferation regime: the Treaty on the Nuclear Non-­ Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.

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chapter five

The Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty

On 30 September 1963, as the seventh annual General Conference of the IAEA convened in Vienna, six men met in New York for dinner with Sithu U Thant, secretary-­general of the United Nations, to discuss the looming threat of nuclear weapons proliferation. U Thant had taken office in late 1961, ­after the death of his pre­de­ces­sor, Dag Hammarskjöld, in a mysterious airplane crash.1 The other men at the dinner t­ able w ­ ere Soviet foreign minister Andrei Gromyko and Soviet ambassador to the United Nations Nikolai Fedorenko; US secretary of state Dean Rusk and US ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson; and British foreign secretary Alec Douglas-­Home and the British ambassador to the United Nations Sir Patrick Dean.2 By 1963, four states had developed national nuclear weapon capabilities, and the men at U Thant’s ­table feared that even more states would acquire the world’s most destructive weapons. France had joined the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and United States in the nuclear weapons club in 1960, and the P ­ eople’s Republic of China was expected to follow soon, and did, in 1964. Both the United States and the Soviet Union considered the situation alarming. Already in 1960, amid the looming Sino-­Soviet ideological split, the Soviet Union terminated its nuclear-­related technical assistance to China out of concern over the country’s nuclear aspirations.3 During the US presidential campaign in 1960, John  F. Kennedy expressed his own concern that in the near f­uture “ten, fifteen, or twenty nations” would “have a nuclear capacity.”4 The New York meeting with U Thant opened a new chapter in the security dialog between the Cold War antagonists. The talk that night convinced Rusk that his dinner companions from the United Kingdom and the Soviet Union ­were as worried as the Americans about the potential global spread of nuclear weapons and that ­t here was “complete agreement on objectives between East and West.”

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He was certain that “none of the nuclear powers wanted any addition to their number.” According to Rusk, the only outstanding issue was “on methods.”5 Shortly a­ fter the New York meeting, Gromyko and President Kennedy met on 10 October 1963 in the Oval Office of the White House to continue the East-­West dialog on world security m ­ atters.6 Conversations like the one in New York, though initially not linked to the IAEA, would soon become about the Vienna-­based agency. This chapter explores how the IAEA became a key arena for nuclear nonproliferation. Before the mid1960s, nonproliferation discussions had taken place primarily within the United Nations and in private diplomatic conversations among the major players; the IAEA’s work was considered peripheral. The agency’s early safeguards system evolved in parallel to, but not as an integral part of nonproliferation discussions at the United Nations. More than ten years ­after its creation, however, the IAEA would become the verification institution of the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). As the IAEA stepped into its new role, controversy over verification methods and the objectives of nuclear safeguards simmered. The agency’s found­ers had neither envisioned, nor explic­itly excluded, a global nonproliferation mandate for the IAEA. ­After the Soviet Union changed its stance critical of nuclear safeguards in 1963, however, ­t here was a growing understanding that the IAEA could become the institution in charge of verifying that parties to the NPT adhered to their nonproliferation obligations. This chapter looks at why the agency’s member states w ­ ere at odds with each other over certain details of the treaty, and why it proved to be difficult for the IAEA secretariat to translate the final treaty into concrete safeguards procedures. A heated debate among member states about the relationship between technical assistance and nuclear nonproliferation exacerbated tensions over the technical and po­liti­cal aspects of the agency’s work as well as over which states or groups of states would dominate the organ­ization. The NPT consolidated the dual mandate that had characterized the IAEA since its inception, but at the same time complicated the mandate in strengthening the agency’s functions in the nonproliferation arena.

The Irish Resolution, the Multilateral Force, and the IAEA In 1959, inspired by an Irish initiative, the UN General Assembly a­ dopted Resolution 1380, called “Prevention of the Wider Dissemination of Nuclear Weapons,” requesting that the Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee in Geneva “consider appropriate means” to prevent the global spread of nuclear capabilities. Also on the agenda would be “the feasibility of an international agreement, subject to in-

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spection and control, whereby the Powers producing nuclear weapons would refrain from handing over the control of such weapons to any nation not possessing them and whereby the Powers not possessing such weapons would refrain from manufacturing them.”7 Two years l­ ater, in 1961, the UN General Assembly ­adopted the related Resolution 1665, with the same title, and put additional emphasis on the “necessity of an international agreement, subject to inspection and control.”8 This latter resolution, known as the Irish Resolution, was the nucleus of what would become the NPT, an international treaty allowing for peaceful nuclear cooperation but aiming to freeze the number of existing nuclear weapon states and prevent the emergence of new ones.9 In the wake of the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962, global fears of a nuclear-­armed war helped to improve US-­Soviet relations inside and outside the IAEA. Beginning in April 1963, when the Soviet Union began to support IAEA safeguards, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev also supported concluding a nuclear test ban treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons testing in the atmosphere, outer space, and ­under ­water. On 10 June 1963, in a commencement address at American University, in Washington, DC, Kennedy publicly affirmed the Cold War enemies’ common interest in arms control. Ten years ­after Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech, it stood as a new and power­ful message on peace and international security in the nuclear age. “Both the United States and its allies, and the Soviet Union and its allies, have a mutually deep interest in a just and genuine peace and in halting the arms race,” Kennedy declared, referring to the ongoing test ban negotiations. Two months a­ fter Kennedy’s speech, on 5 August 1963, the three foreign ministers Gromyko, Rusk, and Douglas-­Home signed the ­Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) in Moscow.10 At the time of the U Thant dinner in fall 1963, the remaining po­liti­cal disagreements about how to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons to other states centered primarily on three initials: MLF, short for Multilateral Force, a fleet of nuclear-­armed ballistic missile submarines manned by Eu­ro­pe­ans. To the United States, which was proposing the fleet, such an outfit would help satisfy the desire of its Eu­ro­pean allies for a stronger security environment. It would also allow for deeper participation of the Eu­ro­pean partners in NATO, but not lead to the creation of more in­de­pen­dent Eu­ro­pean nuclear forces. Thus it promised the best of both worlds.11 According to this line of argument, the MLF was a nonproliferation tool. The plan to station US nuclear weapons in Eu­rope originated with Eisenhower, who saw nuclear sharing as an apt strategy to integrate non-­ communist Eu­rope more firmly into the Western alliance. Even though this was contested within the US government as well as among the Eu­ro­pean allies,

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Eisenhower’s successors, Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, went along with the MLF proposal. They believed that it could help prevent West Germany, widely regarded as a likely candidate to launch its own nuclear weapon program, from acquiring national nuclear capabilities. As the historian Marc Trachtenberg has explained, the American rationale for the MLF was to “absorb and deflect the pressure for national nuclear forces, which, if unchecked, would lead sooner or ­later to a German nuclear capability.”12 The historian Shane Maddock has described the MLF proposal as an expression of “the oxymoronic belief in American policy circles that increasing access to nuclear weapons would inhibit their spread.”13 Research now indicates that West Germany had no serious ambition to develop nuclear weapons; the question of how close it was to embarking on a nuclear weapons program remains a source of debate.14 Less than twenty years ­after the end of World War II, the memory of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, which left over 25 million dead, more than explained the Soviets’ fear of West Germany obtaining access to nuclear capabilities, even if only in a multilateral setting.15 The Soviet government’s fear of a nuclear-­ armed West Germany lay at the heart of its po­liti­cal views on nonproliferation in the 1960s. According to Moscow, giving NATO partners access to the US nuclear arsenal was not the way to prevent West Germany from becoming a nuclear weapon state, but would simply bring it closer to the nuclear trigger. The Soviets ­were “fighting like hell against the multilateral nuclear force,” recalled the Soviet negotiator Roland Timerbaev.16 Unsurprisingly, at U Thant’s dinner ­table, Gromyko had expressed “his emphatic objection” to the MLF proposal.17 The Irish Resolution of 1961 was a­ dopted the same year that the IAEA introduced its first safeguards system, but it did not mention the nuclear agency. An Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) in Geneva, not the IAEA in Vienna, would negotiate the NPT. In addition to the Cold War superpowers, other states became heavi­ly involved in this new diplomatic initiative on nonproliferation, particularly the United Kingdom, but also an increasing number of states from what is now called the Global South. The ENDC consisted of representatives from the era’s three po­liti­cal “blocs”: the East, the West, and the nonaligned states. ­Earlier in 1961, at a summit meeting in Belgrade, leaders of 25 states launched a group to represent the interests of the countries that w ­ ere not part of one of the two large military alliances of the time. The group ­later called itself the Non-­Aligned Movement (NAM).18 The newly established ENDC was an expression of the rising influence of the nonaligned states. Its institutional pre­de­ces­sor, the Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee, had been composed of the two superpowers and their allies: Canada, France, ­Great

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Britain, and Italy along with Bulgaria, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, and Romania. Eight additional states ­were added to them to form the ENDC: Brazil, Burma, Egypt (the United Arab Republic), Ethiopia, India, Mexico, Nigeria, and Sweden.19 While some of t­ hese countries leaned closer to one of the two superpowers, four of them—­Burma, Egypt, Ethiopia, and India—­had participated in the Belgrade Conference and saw themselves as bound to neither of the superpower camps. The two Cold War superpowers served as the permanent co-­c hairs of the ENDC meetings.20 Despite its membership in the Warsaw Pact, Romania took a somewhat in­de­pen­dent position in the ENDC, often aligning itself with the positions of the postcolonial states.21 France, although officially a member of the ENDC, did not participate in the negotiations on the NPT. It argued that the treaty would only help secure the superpowers’ privileged position in the global nuclear order and was therefore discriminatory in nature, a criticism Paris had previously articulated vis-­à-­v is the LTBT.22 China was not involved at all. Over the course of the 1960s, the ENDC met regularly at UN offices in Geneva. Although at the time of the Irish Resolution, it was not a foregone conclusion that the IAEA would emerge as the verification institution of the treaty, ­t here ­were hints of the possibility, at least from the US government. As early as 1962, Henry DeWolf Smyth, the Prince­ton physicist and newly appointed American governor on the IAEA’s board, prepared a report summarizing the IAEA’s per­ for­mance and recommending its further strengthening.23 In nuclear policy circles, Smyth was well known as the author of the so-­called Smyth Report, the first official document on the Manhattan Proj­ect, published in 1945.24 He was a good example of the kind of distinguished expert that the leading member states sent as diplomats to the young IAEA. Besides someone of Smyth’s caliber, ­t here ­were other signs indicating that more and more states regarded the IAEA as an institution that might assume new responsibilities in the near ­future. T ­ here had also been discussion about giving the IAEA a verification mandate ­u nder the LTBT, and the Austrian foreign minister, Bruno Kreisky, as the representative of the agency’s host country, had publicly supported such a plan. The international community could not, however, agree on a verification mechanism for the LTBT.25 In contrast to the LTBT, which dealt with nuclear weapons testing—­a topic traditionally regarded as too po­liti­cal for the IAEA—it would prove to be less sensitive to establish a verification authority for the NPT. The idea of giving the IAEA a verification role ­under the new nonproliferation treaty became tangible in 1964. The US government, wrestling with the question of the treaty’s verification, started to mention the IAEA’s safeguards system as an appropriate tool to

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help prevent the further spread of nuclear weapons. On 21 January 1964, William  C. Foster, director of the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), established in 1961, read a short statement by President Johnson to the ENDC linking the disarmament discussions in Geneva more closely to the fate of the IAEA. To prevent the emergence of new nuclear weapon states, Johnson envisioned “that all transfers of nuclear materials for peaceful purposes take place ­under effective international safeguards,” an indirect reference to the IAEA’s inspection system, as the IAEA was the only institution that could implement safeguards globally.26 The ACDA identified the agency’s inspection system as an example of what the president had in mind.27 Within the Johnson administration, the NPT was discussed as providing an opportunity to bolster the IAEA’s role in international affairs. The United States had not only been ­behind the agency’s establishment, but had also been “the chief promoter of the IAEA since it was founded, as well as its principal financial backer.”28 At stake was the success of the US prestige proj­ect. Roger Fisher, a Harvard professor who would become known for negotiation theory, was at the time a con­sul­tant for the Defense Department on international security affairs.29 In 1964 in a memorandum, he suggested that the United States strengthen the IAEA to make it a pillar of nonproliferation policies: “We w ­ ill increase our efforts to build up the IAEA, including broader responsibilities, increased operational activities, a larger bud­get, and improved technical capabilities.” He recommended that the United States exert greater pressure on all countries to accept IAEA safeguards. In turn, the United States should open more of its own civilian nuclear installations to IAEA safeguards.30 Thus, seven years ­after the IAEA’s creation, and only three years ­after the introduction of the agency’s first safeguards system, administration experts pinned “a ­g reat deal of hope” on the IAEA, even though they realized that for the time being it was “­little more than a token operation.”31 While Fisher’s draft was equivalent to a national security memorandum, it was never signed and thus did not become an official policy document. His ideas would nevertheless carry the day, and by the mid-1960s, the United States had transferred its bilateral safeguards agreements to the IAEA.

Pro­gress in the Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament During the NPT negotiations, tensions arose over ­whether the new nonproliferation regime would become a truly international organ­ization or if it would be dominated by what West German finance minister Franz Joseph Strauss described as a “super-­cartel of the world powers.”32 This related closely to the issue of verification and the potential inspection role of IAEA. Beginning in 1965, the

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shape of the f­ uture nonproliferation regime became clearer. The Americans, based on exchanges with the British, and the Soviets each introduced draft treaty texts. In line with Johnson’s statement the year before, the US proposal, dated 17 August 1965, mentioned IAEA safeguards. The Soviet draft, presented a month ­later, on 24 September 1965, did not; in fact, ­there was no reference to inspection provisions. Mohamed Shaker, a diplomat and l­ ater head of the IAEA office in New York, participated in the negotiations as part of the Egyptian del­e­ga­tion. He argued that the Soviets’ hesitation “was due rather to a wait-­and-­see approach as to the nature and scope of safeguards than to a lack of interest in safeguards.”33 In the eyes of the Soviets, the prob­lem with the safeguards provisions in the American draft was that while the text referred to IAEA safeguards, it did not make their application mandatory. Particularly, the draft treaty did not preclude the possibility that Euratom inspectors, instead of IAEA inspectors, would carry out inspections on the territory of Euratom member states.34 Similarly to the US-­Soviet disagreement over the MLF, the controversies over the treaty centered largely on Eu­rope. Eu­ro­pean “self-­inspection”—­the idea that Euratom member states would verify compliance with the treaty only by applying its own safeguards—­was anathema

UN secretary-­general Sithu U Thant (center) presides at the official opening of the new Board of Governors room of the IAEA, Vienna, April 1965. © IAEA

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to the Soviets, who themselves appeared willing to open the Eastern bloc to the IAEA. The Eu­ro­pean states on the other hand, particularly Italy and West Germany, expected to have a privileged position in world nuclear affairs.35 From 1965 to 1968, spurred by the 1964 Chinese nuclear test and heightened fears that other states might follow soon, the ENDC concentrated its efforts almost entirely on the timely conclusion of the NPT. The United States also began to prioritize agreement with the Soviet Union on a nonproliferation treaty over its plans for nuclear sharing with the Eu­ro­pean allies. In 1966, the Johnson administration abandoned the MLF proposal altogether.36 This po­liti­cal shift in US policy stemmed from rising international opposition to the American nuclear-­ sharing plans, growing fears within the US administration of a nuclear domino effect, and the realization that US and Soviet fears of nuclear proliferation w ­ ere similar. This shift proved pivotal in paving the way for the successful conclusion of the NPT. It also signaled that when it came to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons to additional states, the United States was willing to prioritize cooperation in an international organ­ization over alliance policies. A few months ­after the introduction of the two draft treaties, the UN General Assembly expressed its support for the international effort to conclude a nonproliferation agreement. The resolution—­t itled “Non-­proliferation of Nuclear Weapons”—­marked the first mention of “non-­proliferation,” rather than “non-­ dissemination” in official terminology. The resolution urged the ENDC to produce a joined draft “void of any loop-­holes which might permit nuclear or non-­nuclear Powers to proliferate, directly or indirectly, nuclear weapons in any form.” It also stated that “the treaty should be a step ­towards the achievement of general and complete disarmament and, more particularly, nuclear disarmament.”37 Next to nuclear nonproliferation, nuclear disarmament—­particularly pushed by Sweden and Mexico—­and access to civilian nuclear technologies constituted the other key pillars of the treaty. Article VI of the final treaty requires that the signatories pursue “negotiations in good faith” ­toward nuclear disarmament. The superpowers dominated the treaty negotiations, and the other ENDC members ­were displeased by what they perceived as superpower collusion on the NPT.38 ­T here was indeed reason for suspicion. As top negotiators from the Soviet Union and the United States ­later confirmed, they reached a number of agreements during informal bilateral meetings, such as on a hike in the mountains near Geneva or an excursion on a yacht.39 “I saw no Cold War,” Shaker said in his recollections of the negotiations in Geneva.40 By 1967, some of the NPT’s provisions still elicited contentious discussions, but the atmosphere in the ENDC had become much more productive. Major in-

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ternational conflicts, such as the war in Vietnam and the 1967 Arab-­Israeli War, ­were mostly kept out of the discussions.41 In addition, the (traditionally hostile) attitude of the Warsaw Pact States t­ oward West Germany ebbed.42 A turning point arrived in August 1967, when the Americans and the Soviets presented two new draft treaties. This time, they ­were identical. As a UN situation report noted, it “infused new life into the conference.”43 The superpowers presenting two identical texts, rather than a single joint draft, was meant to signal their consensus, rather than hegemony, over the negotiations. Also in 1967, the Treaty of Tlatelolco established a nuclear weapons ­free zone in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Ca­r ib­be­an.44 A newly established Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Ca­r ib­bean received the mandate to oversee compliance by participating states, all of which had to sign safeguards agreements with the IAEA. As a result, the agency began to expand into new domains. Despite growing consensus over the terms of the NPT in the ENDC, disagreement remained about the treaty’s verification through international safeguards. The preamble of the US-­Soviet draft treaty of 1967 referred to IAEA safeguards, but the corresponding article, Article III, was left blank. The Eu­ro­pean issue was still the sticking point. The Euratom member states wanted to remain ­under Euratom inspections and feared that IAEA inspectors might conduct industrial espionage. The West Germans w ­ ere afraid that Soviet or East German nationals would search through their nuclear facilities u ­ nder the guise of IAEA inspectors. To the Soviets, Euratom self-­inspection was not equivalent to truly international safeguards, a point that former IAEA director general William Sterling Cole had made in the late 1950s when writing to Lewis Strauss, chairman of the US Atomic Energy Commission, about the potential emergence of an “Africatom” or “Asiatom.”45 The issue remained unresolved when the NPT was eventually a­ dopted in 1968, and the responsibility for a solution fell to Euratom and the IAEA. It took ­u ntil 1973 to reach a cooperation agreement involving the safeguards systems of both organ­izations.46 In the end, the solution was comparable to the drafting pro­cess of the IAEA statute, in that some controversial issues, such as the IAEA’s relationship to the United Nations, had to be postponed u ­ ntil a­ fter adoption and implementation.

A New Role for Vienna As noted, the IAEA was not at the ­table during the NPT negotiations in Geneva. The agency was regarded as the international community’s technical bureaucracy for ­handling nuclear technology and knowledge exchange, not a po­liti­cal body with the authority to set par­ameters for nuclear policy. In an interview with the

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German daily Handelsblatt, IAEA director general Sigvard Eklund even said, clearly exaggerating, that newspapers ­were his only source of information about pro­g ress in the NPT negotiations.47 At the IAEA General Conference of 1968, ­after the NPT had been signed, Eklund gave a rather ­bitter statement, expressing his dis­plea­sure about the UN Conference of Non-­Nuclear Weapon States in fall 1968, a­ fter the conclusion of the NPT. Eklund perceived a lack of understanding about the IAEA and lamented that the UN secretariat had not included the IAEA in the conference.48 The agency’s potential new responsibilities ­under the NPT had been discussed in the IAEA’s policy-­making organs since the mid-1960s. Following the General Conference in fall 1966, IAEA inspector general Allan McKnight told officials in Washington “that never before had IAEA safeguards received such widespread support.”49 One year a­ fter the Board of Governors unanimously endorsed the agency’s second, and expanded, nuclear safeguards guidelines, INFCIRC/66, the Soviets still fully supported safeguards.50 France and India, traditionally in opposition to strong safeguards, also tamped down their usual criticism. Two Warsaw Pact states, Poland and Czecho­slo­va­kia, declared that they would accept IAEA safeguards on their nuclear installations if West Germany did likewise. While for the moment the proposal remained without consequence, it was nonetheless the first time that countries from the Eastern bloc expressed their willingness to accept IAEA safeguards on their national nuclear programs, another indicator of the growing ac­cep­tance of the safeguards regime.51 In 1967, Glenn T. Seaborg, chair of the US Atomic Energy Commission, wrote to President Johnson about that year’s IAEA General Conference: “It took place in an atmosphere of greatly increased importance for the Agency’s role in world affairs as a result of responsibilities it is expected to assume in connection with a non-­proliferation treaty.”52 Seaborg’s overall judgment about the IAEA at the end of its first de­cade was equally positive: “I believe that the Agency has demonstrated once again its value as an impor­tant international forum which is more immune than many ­others to temporary po­liti­cal pressures, and that it is capable of playing the vital role which is contemplated for it in the implementation of the non-­proliferation treaty.”53 In 1968, the IAEA Board of Governors agreed to revise INFCIRC/66 to include conversion and fabrication facilities in the IAEA safeguards regime, further strengthening the system.54 Officers at IAEA headquarters in Vienna strug­gled to understand what was ­going on in the ENDC. Country del­e­ga­tions kept IAEA officials informed about developments at the ENDC since it had no institutional participation in the NPT negotiations.55 Even though the agency operated a small liaison office in Geneva

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where the negotiations w ­ ere taking place, the staff consisted of just two p ­ eople, and the head was a technical specialist. The small team mainly dealt with the IAEA’s scientific collaboration with the Geneva-­based World Health Organ­ ization; no one in the office had the professional background to keep track of the (po­liti­cal) NPT negotiations. Therefore officers at the headquarters in Vienna had to try to make sense of what was g ­ oing on with the ENDC in Geneva. Merle Opelz, a young po­liti­cal science gradu­ate from Johns Hopkins University, became the secretary of the joint staff working group that brought together ­people from the ­legal division, safeguards, external relations, and the director general’s office. She l­ater recalled how the group summarized the latest news from Geneva and tried to analyze what t­hese developments meant for the agency.56 The IAEA had been preparing to assume responsibilities ­u nder the NPT since the mid-1960s, but it remained in a holding pattern ­until the treaty’s signing. Despite the broad support for strengthened IAEA safeguards, the agency only had 13 inspectors working for it at the time.57 Observers described their existence at the agency’s headquarters as “almost the poor relations, their presence barely tolerated.”58 To prepare for a new role ­under the NPT, in 1967, the IAEA or­ga­nized a forum of representatives from member states.59 Inspector General McKnight presided over the Panel on Safeguards, with seven participants and sixteen observers. It was the first of a number of meetings on safeguards techniques that the IAEA secretariat or­ga­nized in light of the ENDC negotiations. At the start of the meeting, McKnight underlined the challenges of building a new and comprehensive safeguards system able to verify member states’ compliance with the treaty. He asserted that the system needed to be “credible, effective, economic and as ­little intrusive as pos­si­ble.”60 The last aspect referred to a number of controversial issues: The industrially advanced states feared that safeguards risked exposing industrial secrets, while the developing states had (early on) criticized safeguards as a threat to national sovereignty. For operators of nuclear power plants, safeguards inspections w ­ ere a nuisance and meant more work. For them, it was impor­tant that safeguards interfered as ­little as pos­si­ble with routine procedures.61 McKnight’s four princi­ples became universally accepted tenets of the safeguards system, often repeated in discussions over IAEA safeguards. To speed t­ hings up in Geneva, at the 1967 General Conference the Soviet del­ e­ga­tion to the IAEA suggested a resolution calling for the rapid adoption of the NPT. The Soviets discussed the idea with their American counter­parts, who while agreeing with the message ­were highly skeptical about the wisdom of introducing such a resolution. A number of impor­tant member states, particularly

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t­ hose not planning to sign the NPT, perceived the treaty as too po­liti­cal to be dealt with by the agency’s General Conference. In the spirit of the “constructive and cordial” cooperation that had characterized US-­Soviet relations at the IAEA for a number of years, the Soviets listened to the Americans’ concerns and agreed to refrain from introducing a resolution on the NPT.62 Following the signing of the NPT in 1968, McKnight announced the establishment of a seven-­person NPT Task Force at the IAEA, composed of staff members from the Department of Administration and the Department of Safeguards and Inspection.63 IAEA deputy director general John Hall wrote to his fellow American and IAEA science advisor Isidor Rabi, “The IAEA seems to have developed a meaning, even to many of our critics.”64 Even more so than the establishment of the IAEA a de­cade ­earlier, the conclusion of the NPT was the result of successful superpower cooperation on nuclear m ­ atters. The Cold War antagonists had managed to get the treaty signed in the face of the skepticism of some of their closest allies. A mutual interest in nonproliferation continued to characterize US-­Soviet relations u ­ ntil the end of the Cold War. No m ­ atter how tense relations between the two became—­sometimes completely stalling other po­liti­cal negotiations—­nonproliferation talks continued.65 Not all IAEA member states shared the superpower’s enthusiasm about the NPT. Some impor­tant members did not sign the treaty (or only did so much ­later), among them five of the agency’s twelve founding states: Brazil, France, India, Portugal, and South Africa. That India, one of the leaders of the Non-­Aligned Movement, did not become party to the treaty was particularly noteworthy ­because nuclear disarmament had been a defining po­liti­cal claim of NAM. Israel, a first-­generation IAEA member state—­then suspected of secretly developing a nuclear weapon program ­after the disclosure of the existence of its Dimona reactor—­also did not sign. The P ­ eople’s Republic of China remained outside the global nonproliferation regime ­until 1984, when it became a member state of the IAEA. Nevertheless, the entry of the NPT into force in 1970 gave the IAEA new and unpre­ce­dented powers. In the m ­ iddle of the Cold War, it was unusual for an international organ­ization to be authorized such a pivotal role in international security. At a press conference, Eklund explained, “For the first time in history, an international organ­ization has been entrusted with the control functions in a treaty for arms limitation.”66 As the NPT raised the profile of the IAEA, however, it also deepened its involvement in po­liti­cal affairs.

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The Safeguards Committee The time between the NPT’s entry into force in 1970 and India’s first nuclear explosion in 1974—­the first big blow to the new nonproliferation regime—­were years of lively multilateral negotiations to translate the treaty’s l­egal requirements into a workable safeguards system. The day the NPT entered into force, on 5 March 1970, the agency’s new inspector general, Rudolph Rometsch, from Switzerland, reminded journalists at an IAEA press conference that the conclusion of the treaty did not mean “that the Agency ­will swing into action next Monday, spreading a net of safeguards over the w ­ hole world.”67 The draf­ters of the treaty charged the IAEA with a new and far-­reaching responsibility, as each participating non-­nuclear weapon state would be subject to nuclear safeguards. The agency would have to apply safeguards “on all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities” within the territory of the respective party to the treaty. How might the IAEA fulfill this task? The most impor­tant venue for discussions on the f­uture role of IAEA safeguards was the Safeguards Committee, or Committee 22 in official IAEA terminology ­because it was the 22nd committee the board established. The committee’s negotiations offer impor­tant insight into how, at a time of rising hopes in nuclear power generation and growing fears of nuclear weapons proliferation, nuclear experts envisioned a global nonproliferation regime. Convening from June 1970 to March 1971, the committee laid out princi­ples to shape safeguards activities and cultures for de­cades to come. The results w ­ ere published in 1972 as INFCIRC/153, the acronym still used by the agency for NPT-­style safeguards agreements, which flowed from ­these guidelines.68 Most participants of the Safeguards Committee referred to INFCIRC/153 as a “model safeguards agreement,” but strictly speaking, the blue booklet was merely a “highly standardized” guideline of almost 30 pages on the negotiation of comprehensive safeguards agreements, not a model agreement.69 A number of member states wanted to wait ­u ntil the IAEA released such a standardized text, so they would know what kind of requirements to expect before signing the treaty, but the treaty provided a time horizon for this step: negotiations for the new NPT-­compatible safeguards agreements should begin within 180 days ­after the treaty’s entry into force.70 IAEA veteran Bertrand Goldschmidt described this as “one of the most complicated and delicate prob­lems” the IAEA ever faced.71 The new “comprehensive safeguards” represented a major extension of the IAEA’s traditional safeguards system, which was previously mandatory only for recipients of technical assistance from the agency and only applied to

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specified facilities.72 Early on, both the secretariat and the member states realized that this quantitative and qualitative expansion would result in an increased workload for the Department of Safeguards and Inspection. When in the late 1960s George H. Quester, a young po­liti­cal science professor from Harvard, conducted research interviews in Vienna, ­people told him that the agency would prob­ably need to hire 200 inspectors by 1973.73 Given that the IAEA only had 354 professional staff members in total, the projected increase was huge.74 The Safeguards Committee consisted of representatives from member states rather than agency staff. Kurt Waldheim’s leadership of the group underscored the diplomatic nature of the meetings. Waldheim had just resigned as Austria’s foreign minister (and would soon succeed U Thant as UN secretary-­general). Interestingly, the committee was open to all IAEA member states, not just to ­t hose represented on the Board of Governors or signatories of the NPT. Even out­spoken critics of the treaty with ­little or no intention of signing, such as Argentina, France, India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa, actively participated in the meetings and left their imprints on the new safeguards system. Among the most committed participants ­were some of the leading experts on nonproliferation of the time, such as Myron Kratzer, a long-­standing official with the US Atomic Energy Commission, and Claude Zangger, a Swiss professor of nuclear physics soon to become the chair of the so-­called Zangger Committee, a group of states exporting nuclear technology.75 Sigvard Eklund and Rudolph Rometsch attended from the IAEA secretariat. Eklund interpreted his role as that of an officer and as a servant of the member states. Safeguards related to “highly po­liti­cal” questions, and Eklund wanted to hew “to the princi­ple that the Secretariat should act only on instructions from the governing bodies.”76 Committee 22 was an overwhelmingly male club, the exceptions being Simone Herpels, the alternate representative from Belgium, and L. Corretjer Palomo, a Spanish delegate who participated in the concluding session. Along with the United States and the Soviet Union, advanced industrial states of the West, notably the two big nuclear energy players West Germany and Japan, counted among the states that left the most distinct imprints on the new safeguards regime.77 The Soviet del­e­ga­tion based its input largely on theory; even though the Soviets supported safeguards since around 1963, they lacked practical experience with the m ­ atter. This was dif­fer­ent from the United States, which had long implemented bilateral safeguards agreements. At the time, Japan was the most experienced country in terms of having had nuclear safeguards applied to its facilities, within the framework of bilateral agreements and agency projects. The question of w ­ hether West Germany would go nuclear stood at the

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heart of the nonproliferation issue; it was critical that the country widely regarded as a likely f­ uture proliferator ratified the treaty and concluded a safeguards agreement with the agency. The committee therefore allowed Bonn to play a leading role in the negotiations, which succeeded in having routine IAEA inspections ­limited to so-­called strategic points.78 The uranium-­producing states, adopting a tactic they had used in ­earlier stages of the IAEA’s existence, joined forces to lobby for their interests, in par­tic­u­lar to ensure that source material would not fall ­u nder safeguards. Most of the non-­a ligned states, on the other hand, ­were primarily concerned about the po­liti­cal and financial aspects of safeguards, rather than the technical details. When, in September 1970, a small group of IAEA member states formed a group to discuss the methods of verifying nuclear materials, none of the postcolonial states from Asia or Africa participated.79 The negotiations in the Safeguards Committee touched upon a multitude of technical and l­egal questions that essentially turned the discussions into an intense renegotiation of the NPT’s very objectives. The meetings revolved around two fundamental questions: First, how would the IAEA know the location and amount of “all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities” in signatory states? To put all material ­under safeguards was one ­t hing on paper, but knowing the location of all the material in a state and actually verifying it was another. Second, what did the negotiators expect comprehensive safeguards to accomplish? Was it to prevent the emergence of new nuclear weapon states or only to detect eventual violations once they had taken place? How would nuclear safeguards actually help achieve the NPT’s aims? Could safeguards r­ eally be foolproof? Less controversial than such questions was how, in more practical terms, would the Safeguards Department do its new job. By now, the concept of nuclear safeguards had come to mean three main types of inspectors’ work: material accountancy (through operators’ rec­ords), containment (of material), and surveillance (of installations), with the emphasis on accountancy.80 The answer to the first question, regarding where to look, would define the agency’s executive powers. The options on how to learn about states’ nuclear activities ranged from seeking and examining intelligence information to merely trusting states’ own declarations about their nuclear activities. The American Kratzer was the most out­spoken advocate for providing the IAEA with as much access to information as pos­si­ble, a position for which he failed to generate explicit support. Kratzer explained that “he had had some reservations . . . ​concerning the concept of ‘verifying’ as opposed to ‘obtaining’ information.” In his opinion, it was not “outside the scope of an inspector’s duties to obtain information in­de­pen­dently.” The agency could only fulfil its nonproliferation mandate

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­ nder the NPT if it scrutinized state declarations carefully, argued Kratzer, even if u this meant using intelligence information: “In carry­ing out that duty, the Agency must be able to obtain information which need not necessarily be the same as the information provided to it by the State.”81 The final version of INFCIRC/153, however, underlined not only the importance of protecting information, but also that “the Agency ­shall require only the minimum amount of information and data consistent with carry­ing out its responsibilities u ­ nder the Agreement.”82 What constituted “minimal information,” however? A careful reading of the Committee 22 rec­ords shows that a majority of the participating states agreed that the IAEA should have the right to scrutinize states’ declarations about their nuclear activities. This became evident in the first set of meetings, when the South African del­e­ga­tion introduced a proposal that would deny agency safeguards l­egal means to access information beyond the declarations of states. The South Africans proposed “that the safeguarding and inspection functions of the Agency . . . ​­shall be concerned solely with the material reported upon by the State concerned to the Agency in the initial and subsequent reports and materials derived therefrom.”83 In plain En­glish, the proposal suggested that it was not the IAEA’s business to look beyond states’ declarations about their nuclear activities or to doubt their completeness. The South Africans and the Americans had already made their opposing views explicit in letters to Eklund. The Americans argued that the “guiding princi­ple of all nuclear safeguards systems is that ­t here must be adequate in­de­pen­dent verification that material is not diverted.” Relying “solely on unverified data provided by the inspected party” was insufficient to confirm that t­ here had been no diversion.84 South Africa, on the other hand, asserted that the agency should have “no powers of supervision or inspection other than ­those which the State itself entrusts the Agency in terms of the agreement which the State negotiates with the Agency.”85 It should trust its member states. The Hungarian delegate, Otto Lendvai, strongly opposed the South African proposal as he believed it would steal much of the NPT’s thunder. Relying entirely on states’ declarations “would be tantamount to allowing the State to decide unilaterally what materials it wished to declare to the Agency.”86 It would make it easy for states to intentionally withhold relevant information from the agency as they could be assured that inspectors would not have access to additional information. The majority of other del­e­ga­tions in the Safeguards Committee also rejected the South African proposal, thus refusing to limit safeguards legally to the verification of state declarations.

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Significantly, while the agency’s new safeguards ­under the treaty centered on verification of non-­d iversion, the final guidelines failed to offer a definition of what the key concept of “verification” actually meant. This is particularly noteworthy as in other areas INFCIRC/153 offers a number of definitions of key technical and l­egal terms.87 Yet the absence of a definition of “verification” was no mere oversight. In November 1970, the US del­e­ga­t ion suggested defining the term verification as it was central to the IAEA’s new role: “Verification means the pro­cess whereby the validity of information available to the Agency . . . ​can be established. This requires that correctness, accuracy and credibility of the information be determined by applications of the three safeguards mea­sures.”88 The proposal elicited mixed reactions in the committee. The Australian delegate feared that the definition was too broad, as it did not exclude the use of national intelligence information nor the use of intelligence gathered by the IAEA. Imagining f­ uture conflicts between member states, he explained, “To take one hy­po­ thet­i­cal case: relations between two States might be deteriorating, and might supply ‘information’ to the Agency that the other was accumulating large quantities of weapons-­grade nuclear fuel; ­under the proposed definition, the Agency would be authorized to initiate what would amount to police procedures to establish the validity of that ‘information.’ ”89 Rather than settling on a compromise formula, the committee de­cided not to include a definition of verification.90 This was similar to the fate of the South African proposal limiting the IAEA’s access to information beyond state declarations: When ­t here was disagreement over very specific modifications to the text, ­these modifications tended to be deleted without replacement or clarification, thus leaving room for interpretation. Such vagueness helped enable diplomatic consensus. Despite the above omissions, INFCIRC/153 spelled out some far-­reaching rights for obtaining safeguards information. Of par­tic­u­lar note, the IAEA would have the right to conduct special inspections in states when routine inspections pointed to irregularities. The participants of the Safeguards Committee realized that such special inspections “represented the most delicate area in the w ­ hole inspection pro­cess,” as the West German delegate, Werner Ungerer, put it.91 Following how the IAEA would know what to inspect, the second major question for Committee 22 concerned what the new comprehensive safeguards w ­ ere intended to accomplish. According to Article III of the NPT, the IAEA should exercise safeguards mea­sures “with a view to preventing diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices.”92 Sir Alex Baxter, the Australian representative, underlined that ­there was a crucial

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gap between what the NPT aimed to achieve and what the IAEA could do in supporting the treaty’s objectives. Baxter explained that “though the purpose of the Treaty was to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons by any means,” the agency’s safeguards system had “the sole objective” of preventing nuclear energy from being diverted to military uses.93 His counterpart from Italy, Massimo Cassili, went a step further and argued that the application of agency safeguards could not even prevent the diversion of nuclear materials; it could only verify that states did not divert nuclear materials (and detect an eventual diversion), but not stop a state from diverting nuclear materials.94 If safeguards could not prevent nuclear weapons proliferation, what was their objective? The committee acknowledged that although safeguards would not be able to prevent the potential diversion of nuclear materials from civilian to military uses, they could “detect and thereby deter.”95 INFCIRC/153 therefore contained a watered-­ down version of the NPT’s overall nonproliferation goal. The objective of safeguards was “the timely detection of diversion of significant quantities of nuclear material . . . ​and deterrence of such diversion by the risk of early detection.”96 The concept of deterrence by detection was a weak solution, in line with the ­limited powers granted to the IAEA. What exactly would deter states? First, the negotiators believed, the risk of being exposed as a violator of the treaty would stop states from illegally diverting nuclear materials, a concept of safeguards recognized in the IAEA negotiations during the mid-1960s. Second, the safeguards article of the agency’s statute rooted deterrence in the denial of agency resources, assistance, and participation. “In the event of non-­compliance,” the agency had the right “to suspend or terminate assistance and withdraw any materials and equipment made available by the Agency or a member.” In addition, the agency could “suspend any non-­complying member from the exercise of the privileges and rights of membership.”97 Third, the IAEA could report cases of noncompliance to the UN Security Council.98 The IAEA had no other powers to punish violating signatories of the NPT, let alone means to coerce states to adhere to the treaty. In addition, the NPT had a withdrawal clause that gave signatories the right to leave the treaty with three-­months advance notice.99 The question was the ability, or strength, of t­ hese l­ imited po­liti­cal consequences to deter. Related to the framing of nuclear safeguards as a deterrent was the view of safeguards as a confidence-­building mea­sure between states. This framing of international safeguards attempted to distance the IAEA’s work from what could be perceived as international policing activities. In the first round of meetings, when the heads of the participating states outlined their overall visions for f­ uture nuclear safeguards, many of them centered their remarks on the idea of confi-

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dence. The recurring use of the expression “climate of confidence” was almost as prominent as the emphasis on the “spirit of cooperation” at the time of the Conference on the Statute in the mid-1950s. The industrialized states of the West and the producers of source material framed nuclear safeguards primarily as a confidence-­ building mea­sure; t­hese states originally feared that strengthened nuclear safeguards would interfere in national affairs and pose a potential threat to industrial secrets. The South African delegate Donald Sole regarded this kind of “climate of confidence” between member states as “absolutely essential.” The delegates from Italy, Turkey, Switzerland, and West Germany also similarly used the phrase.100 The Japa­nese delegate, in summarizing his governments’ position in the meetings, said that agency safeguards w ­ ere “dif­fer­ent from internationally-­sponsored spy activities . . . ​and should not be conceived of as Big ­Brother’s watch over every­ body’s shoulder.”101 “Climate of confidence” thus became the catchphrase for support of the idea of an unintrusive safeguards system that mainly relied on states’ declarations. The delegate from Spain, Jesus Riosalido, argued “that the idea of an inventory drawn up by the States themselves was evidence of ­great confidence in the latter; one could not but welcome that demonstration of confidence.”102 The climate of confidence was also to shape relations between IAEA inspectors and reactor operators in states: “the frequency with which audit samples are analyzed ­will depend on the mutual confidence established between operator and inspector.”103 Yet, po­liti­cal analysts of the time worried that this approach might preclude effective inspection. National nuclear safeguards had revealed a “tendency of regulatory agencies to become cooperative (or even overly cooperative) with the industries regulated.”104 In the 1980s this would lead to the introduction of a rotation policy for safeguards inspectors at the agency.105 Back in the 1970s, however, ­there was also the belief that inspectors would not find many instances of illegal diversions of nuclear material and equipment from civilian to military uses anyway, such that safeguards inspectors might be bored by their job: as Quester anticipated, “Watching for violations w ­ ill be dull work in any event, for 106 ­t here may well never be any to detect.”

A Delicate Balance When the Safeguards Committee concluded its work, the participants celebrated it as a major success. The West German governor, Werner Ungerer, paid tribute to the newly drafted INFCIRC/153 with an impromptu musical composition on the safeguards negotiations. Sitting at the piano, he played a song culminating in the optimistic chorus “We agree!”107 Despite the celebrated spirit of cooperation, the committee negotiations had brought to the fore po­liti­cal conflicts that

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went beyond the technical and l­egal disagreements over safeguards. This was largely due to the NPT’s expected effects on member state relations at the agency, the funding of technical assistance, and the relationship between nuclear promotion and denial. The nature of the NPT was discriminatory in that it allowed five states—­those that had openly tested a nuclear device by 1967—to possess nuclear weapons while denying all o ­ thers that same right.108 Some of the non-­nuclear weapon states perceived this as “nuclear apartheid.”109 ­Because a number of recipients of IAEA technical assistance had not signed the NPT, the agency would have a “mixed mandate” in terms of safeguards: alongside the new comprehensive safeguards agreements, the older facility-­based safeguards agreements would remain in place for ­t hose states that did not sign the treaty.110 As an intergovernmental organ­ization, the IAEA had to serve the interests of the nuclear weapon states and the non-­nuclear weapon states alike. ­T here being member states who had signed the treaty and ­others who had not made the situation even more complex. Furthermore, some states had signed and ratified the treaty but ­were not members of the IAEA, notably East Germany.111 The Western Eu­ro­pean states wanted to have a larger say in IAEA affairs in turn for signing and ratifying the NPT. Italy was particularly influential in demanding a larger Board of Governors, and a quasi-­permanent seat for itself, in the IAEA’s main policy-­making organ. ­A fter lengthy discussions, in 1973, a majority of states eventually accepted the Italian proposal for an amendment of the agency’s statute and increased Board membership to 34.112 The new dynamics between dif­fer­ent groups of member states triggered two debates about the IAEA’s mandate more generally. The first debate related to the recurring question of money: Who was g ­ oing to finance the new and increased safeguards efforts—­all member states, the nuclear weapons states, or all countries? Second, and related to the first debate, would the new responsibilities u ­ nder the NPT shift the IAEA’s role from being primarily a facilitator of technical assistance to that of a nonproliferation watchdog? What was the main job of the agency—­promotion or control? The diplomatic negotiations surrounding the conclusion of the NPT showed that the IAEA stood at a crossroads regarding the further development of its dual mandate. The conclusion of the treaty marked the end of a period that had begun in 1963, when the Soviets abandoned their skeptical stance on safeguards. Whereas before the NPT, a technical assistance agreement was the only means of enforcing safeguards, nuclear verification now applied to all non-­nuclear weapon states that entered the treaty.

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The funding of safeguards affected all IAEA member states—­NPT signatories and non-­signatories, nuclear weapon states and non-­nuclear weapon states. In addition, for the non-­nuclear weapon states that signed and ratified the NPT, this new financial burden was not confined to potentially higher national contributions to the IAEA’s annual bud­get, but also extended to expenses to make individual nuclear facilities “inspectable.”113 This included costs for national experts to accompany IAEA safeguards inspectors during visits, for alterations at facilities to make surveillance mea­sures pos­si­ble, and for introducing new bookkeeping mea­sures in one of the IAEA’s official languages. The developing states ­were most concerned about the financial aspects of safeguards, as they suspected that safeguards would divert resources from technical assistance. For several states, this was a key reason for taking an active role in Committee 22 even if not planning to ratify the NPT. The postcolonial states in par­tic­u­lar wanted to ensure that they would not be saddled with the increased financial burden that came with strengthened safeguards and sought to remind their colleagues of the agency’s responsibilities in terms of technical assistance. How to finance the new comprehensive safeguards was therefore one of the most controversial discussions in the Safeguards Committee; it took ­until the final session to agree to a solution. A number of non-­nuclear weapon states, particularly from the developing world, argued that the nuclear weapon states had a “moral obligation” to pay the largest share of NPT-­related safeguards activities.114 The three depository states of the NPT—­the Soviet Union, United Kingdom, and the United States—­argued against this view. The British delegate emphasized that NPT safeguards ­were a “contribution to world peace,” and therefore, the IAEA’s regular bud­get should pay for them.115 His American counterpart reminded his fellow negotiators that the nuclear weapon states already paid the most into the regular bud­get, almost 60% (with the United States being the most impor­ tant financer).116 The Soviet delegate supported the argument that the NPT was in the interests of all states, another alignment between the Cold War adversaries.117 The final paragraph on finance in INFCIRC/153 confirmed the agency’s two-­budget system as expressed in its statute. It explic­itly differentiated between agency member states and non-­member states, but not between signatories and non-­signatories of the NPT—­a ­matter criticized by France, an IAEA founding state that had not signed the NPT.118 Some participants described the final compromise as “a very delicate balance between opposing views.”119 A few days before the NPT entered into force, Isharat Hussain Usmani, the Pakistani representative to the Board of Governors, underlined vis-­à-­vis the other governors that the treaty must “not jeopardize the exercise by the Agency of its

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other principal function: the rendering of technical assistance.”120 Strikingly, the question of the IAEA’s primary objective was not only hotly debated among member states in the agency’s diplomatic organs, but individual IAEA officials offered dif­fer­ent answers. U­pen­dra Goswami, from India, head of the Department of Technical Assistance, feared that the focus on safeguards would siphon resources from technical assistance. This had concerned the Indian del­e­ga­tions on the Board of Governors and at the General Conference since the agency’s inception, but Goswami was in this instance articulating this position in his role as a deputy director general of the agency. In a 1972 article in the IAEA Bulletin, he criticized the IAEA for presenting “to the outside world the aspect of an organ­ ization in which the control activities loom large and the promotional activities appear as a bit of thin icing on a ‘safeguards’ cake.”121 Perceiving the NPT as a potential threat to the IAEA’s technical assistance activities, the developing states used the conferences surrounding the treaty negotiations to emphasize the agency’s promotional activities, particularly at the UN Conference of Non-­Nuclear Weapon States in fall 1968. Director General Eklund set up a group to discuss the role of nuclear energy in advancing economic growth and science in developing states. The group’s report, released in 1969, spelled out the promotional activities of the IAEA.122 While in total staff and bud­get the Department of Safeguards was smaller than the Department of Technical Assistance, trends in the preceding years indicated that safeguards had begun to grow faster than promotional activities, as the Indian governor, V. C. Trivedi, had worried in a letter to Eklund.123 At the turn of the 1970s, the promotional activities of the IAEA shifted. The agency’s nuclear energy activities began to focus increasingly on small and medium-­sized nuclear reactors, which seemed to make more sense eco­nom­ically, especially in the developing countries. In 1973, the IAEA Bulletin reported that although the agency’s technical assistance activities had initially focused on fellowship programs and smaller applications, the emphasis had since shifted to power and food, “in line with the general needs of world development.”124 Some criticized the IAEA’s promotional role in agriculture, arguing that conventional methods would be cheaper and more efficient than nuclear applications, such as for instance the use of irradiation to breed more robust crops.125 Developing states, however, had shown a keen interest in nuclear technologies, and in India, scientific experiments appeared to meet expectations.126 The argument that conventional methods ­were sufficient to fulfill the agricultural needs of the developing states was deconstructed as the hubris of the industrialized nations. Goswami noted, “Scientific pundits used to say that the vari­ous applications of atomic

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energy ­were much too sophisticated and the infrastructure required for their effective utilization much too complex to justify their widespread use in less-­ developed countries.”127 At the time of the NPT’s entry into force, much of the nuclear energy optimism of Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace remained alive. ­People still widely believed in the plentiful civilian applications of nuclear technology, such as futuristic “atomic” cardiac pacemakers.128 While the potentially dangerous link between technical assistance and nuclear weapons proliferation was well understood before and during the NPT negotiations, the Americans began trying to justify the agency’s dual mandate by interpreting technical assistance as a nonproliferation tool. Nuclear proliferation could best be prevented “through the broadest pos­si­ble dissemination of technological knowledge coupled with international regulation of the peaceful uses of atomic energy.”129 Without technical assistance ­there would be less motivation for states to forgo the nuclear weapons option and enter the nonproliferation regime. Benjamin Schiff described the American position as a risky lottery: “The United States ­gambles that disseminating the technology helps it to retain moral influence, if not a­ ctual control, over the path taken by new entries into the nuclear marketplace; the IAEA holds the bets.”130 While the entry into force of the NPT strengthened the IAEA’s verification role in the name of nonproliferation, the developing states in par­tic­u­lar continued to advocate technical assistance as the IAEA’s primary agenda. At the same time, the agency’s technical assistance mandate played an instrumental role in its work on nonproliferation: the provision of technical assistance was the main reason ­behind the organ­ization’s broad and geo­g raph­i­cally diverse membership. The IAEA’s focus not only on inspection and control, but also on aiding the economic pro­gress of its member states, provided serious motivation for states to remain involved in the agency or to join it. Making an already established international institution the key verification institution of the NPT helped in legitimizing the new nonproliferation regime. Having the agency in charge underlined that nonproliferation was more than the interest of a superpower “cartel.” Over the course of the first half of the 1970s, however, new po­liti­cal developments triggered intense discussions about ­whether technical assistance programs increased the risk of nuclear weapons proliferation.

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chapter six

Gaps in the System

In the early 1970s, the Viennese international organ­ization attracting the world’s attention was not the International Atomic Energy Agency but the Organ­ization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Founded in 1960, OPEC had moved its headquarters from Geneva to Vienna in 1965. Austria offered the organ­ization attractive privileges, with proximity to the IAEA and its diplomatic missions of added benefit.1 OPEC’s member states sought to dominate the international petroleum market by regulating the production and supply of crude oil. In response to Western support of Israel during the 1973 Arab-­Israeli War, the Organ­ization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC) cut oil production and embargoed oil sales to the United States and other Western countries in an attempt to build international pressure on Israel to withdraw from occupied territories. The other members of OPEC supported the Arabs’ desired course of action to drastically increase petroleum prices. A number of Western Eu­ro­pean states introduced car-­free Sundays to reduce oil consumption and alert their citizens to the shortage of petroleum, which had come to replace coal as the primary energy source in several countries. To save heating oil in public buildings, Austria introduced a one-­week winter school break still widely referred to as Energieferien (energy holidays).2 The 1970s are widely remembered as the de­cade of the “energy crisis,” and they gave rise to several developments that affected the work of the IAEA, including an increase in terrorism and the emergence of anti-­ nuclear environmentalism.3 From a nuclear nonproliferation perspective, the oil price shock had two potentially dangerous consequences. First, states without natu­ral oil reservoirs began looking for alternative sources of energy to ensure national energy in­de­ pen­dence. This led to more interest around the world in establishing nuclear power programs and acquiring uranium enrichment and plutonium repro­

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cessing technology. Having an indigenous enrichment and repro­cessing capability made states more in­de­pen­dent from suppliers of nuclear fuel, but also furthered their ability to produce nuclear bombs, should they decide to do so. Second, the oil-­producing states took in enough revenue to buy the technology they needed to establish their own nuclear power programs.4 Prerevolutionary Iran invested in a national nuclear energy program with advice from the IAEA’s technical assistance program.5 As the historian Jacob Hamblin has shown, for US secretary of state Henry Kissinger, selling nuclear technology to oil producers, including Iran, was part of a “petroleum cartel-­breaking strategy.” To keep new, costly nuclear activities up and ­running, the petroleum producers still needed to sell oil.6 Iraq and Libya secretly tried to build nuclear weapons during the 1970s with the help of foreign suppliers.7 ­Toward the end of the 1970s, in the context of revelations about Pakistan’s military nuclear ambitions, Western media began to speculate about the threat of an “Islamic bomb.”8 This added yet another dimension to the nonproliferation discourse: some states ­were widely judged as being more responsible o ­ wners of nuclear technology than ­others. In the wake of the entry into force of the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, the IAEA strengthened its profile in nuclear safeguards. It hired more inspectors and built a safeguards analytical laboratory. Yet, it took years of negotiations to conclude the new NPT-­required comprehensive safeguards agreements with individual states. In the meantime, IAEA inspectors ­were mostly working according to the “old rules,” which meant that most inspection efforts still followed the more ­limited safeguards agreements from the pre-­ NPT era.9 ­A fter years of fast-­g rowing membership, only nine states joined the agency over the entire de­cade of the 1970s. Among them was the state that initiated the NPT, Ireland, which joined in 1970; North K ­ orea entered in 1974; and the United Arab Emirates, a member of OPEC, joined in 1976. In 1972, the IAEA had expelled Taiwan, following the lead of the UN General Assembly, which had designated the ­People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the rightful representative of the Chinese p ­ eople.10 The Chinese seat in the IAEA’s policy-­making organs never­ theless remained vacant u ­ ntil 1984, when the PRC overcame its hesitation to participate in the agency. The PRC disapproved of the IAEA continuing to conduct safeguards inspections in Taiwan, which it viewed as part of its own territory, on which the IAEA had no l­egal mandate to conduct inspections.11 This chapter examines some of the dangerous gaps in the system established with the NPT, especially in the regulation of proliferation-­sensitive nuclear exports to non-­NPT states. The Indian under­g round nuclear explosion of 18 May 1974 demonstrated the limits of both the NPT’s and the IAEA’s powers to

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deter, let alone prevent, the emergence of new nuclear weapon states. It fueled efforts to establish stricter export controls, changed the once largely positive attitude ­toward nuclear explosives for civilian purposes, and encouraged a reassessment of the IAEA’s provisions for granting technical assistance.12 IAEA member states not party to the treaty carefully watched w ­ hether the agency would become biased t­oward safeguards to the neglect of the IAEA’s mandate to provide technical assistance.

First Attempts to Control Nuclear Exports The new nonproliferation regime and the growth of the nuclear industry forced individual states, the IAEA’s secretariat, and the agency’s policy-­making organs to think hard about the risks associated with the IAEA’s nuclear energy promotion. Thus over the course of the 1970s, experts and officials took a closer look at differentiating technical assistance: What kind of nuclear cooperation might help states develop nuclear weapon programs (and was therefore “sensitive”) and which would not? Also, the commercialization of gas centrifuge enrichment ­technology—­a method to enrich uranium faster and cheaper than previously—­ emerged as a par­tic­u­lar proliferation risk. ­T hese new enrichment facilities ­were smaller than traditional enrichment plants and thus easier to hide. The British had warned the Americans since the late 1960s that this pro­cess might lead to clandestine enrichment activities by states.13 Both the Soviet Union and the United States wanted to strengthen the IAEA’s safeguards role, but to do so they had to juggle some competing po­liti­cal aims. The two superpowers wanted to maintain their cooperation on nonproliferation, as they had done since the early 1960s, but despite cooperating on nuclear issues, the Cold War adversaries continued to fight propaganda b ­ attles for hearts and minds in the developing countries, presenting themselves as strong supporters of technical assistance. Related to t­ hese first two issues, both countries had to cultivate good relationships within their respective alliances. This was difficult, ­because, as had become apparent during the negotiations on the NPT in the 1960s, a number of states in the East and the West did not like the tighter nonproliferation rules advocated by the superpowers. Ultimately, both recipients and suppliers of nuclear-­related technical assistance shared the responsibility of inhibiting the further spread of nuclear weapons. In terms of nuclear exports, the parties to the NPT promised to make IAEA safeguards mandatory for sales of “source or special fissionable material” as well as “equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the pro­cessing, use

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or production of special fissionable material.”14 Non-­nuclear weapon states party to the NPT would have a signed, comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA, but how should suppliers proceed if they did business with states not party to the treaty and that therefore had no obligation to declare nuclear materials and activities to the IAEA?15 Similar to the negotiations on the ­legal and technical foundations of comprehensive safeguards in the Safeguards Committee in 1970 and 1971, the NPT’s export stipulations also demanded in-­depth discussion. The Soviets and Americans wanted safeguards to apply to nuclear-­related sales, but other states that supplied nuclear materials and technology, such as France and West Germany, feared that this would put them at a disadvantage vis-­à-­v is competitors that had not signed and ratified the treaty and therefore could make sales void of export controls.16 Ideally, the major nuclear suppliers that had not signed the treaty would be convinced to put their exports ­under IAEA safeguards as well, to prevent safeguards provisions from becoming a “bargaining chip” and to avoid suppliers that did not demand safeguards from becoming the most attractive to customers.17 The states involved in nuclear sales needed to make decisions where the treaty remained vague and develop a concrete list of exports that would require—­t he negotiators used the supposedly less po­liti­cal and more technical expression “to trigger”—­IAEA safeguards. In addition, the NPT did not establish what type of safeguards—­item-­specific or comprehensive—­would cover sensitive nuclear exports to non-­NPT states. The prob­lem was made more complex ­because the existing safeguards had only been developed to cover nuclear reactors and nuclear materials, not what the NPT called “equipment or material especially designed or prepared for the pro­cessing, use or production of special fissionable material.”18 This theoretically included many items that had civilian and military uses, for example graphite, which could be used as a moderator in nuclear reactors, and electrical inverters, which had applications in gas centrifuge plants.19 A clarifying amendment to the NPT was considered “practically impossible,” so the regime needed to be “upgraded in some other way.”20 Before the 1974 Indian test unsettled international nuclear relations, suppliers had begun to look into pos­si­ble ways to upgrade the nonproliferation regime through export controls. As early as 1970, Switzerland made clear that it would only ratify the NPT ­after the issue of export regulations had been addressed and proposed holding informal meetings in Vienna on this ­matter. Thus, Claude Zangger, a Swiss professor of nuclear physics, came to coordinate the so-­called Zangger Committee, or the Nuclear Exporters Committee.21 Zangger’s diplomatic

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experience stemmed from having served on the IAEA Board of Governors in the mid-1960s and representing Switzerland on the Safeguards Committee.22 The Zangger Committee met in parallel to the Safeguards Committee in Vienna.23 The UK mission to the international organ­izations in Vienna usually provided the secretary for the Zangger Committee meetings, but the latter committee was not IAEA business.24 Whereas the board’s Safeguards Committee discussed regulations and procedures for safeguards, that is, IAEA concerns, the task of the Zangger Committee extended beyond the scope of the agency’s core activities. The committee originally consisted of 15 states. ­T here ­were two nuclear weapon states that had signed and ratified the NPT—­t he United States and the United Kingdom—­and five non-­nuclear weapon states that had also done so: Austria, Canada, Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. In addition, ­t here ­were states that had not yet ratified the NPT but intended to: Japan, Switzerland, and the Euratom states, with the exception of France. Even West Germany, which had been one of the most critical regarding the envisioned export controls, took part.25 A few impor­tant nuclear supplier states w ­ ere, however, missing from the Zangger Committee, most notably France and the Soviet Union. The Soviets, while in ­favor of strict export controls, ­were skeptical of setting rules for nuclear exports outside the IAEA and feared such an arrangement would further alienate the nonaligned and developing states. ­T hese states already viewed any restrictions on nuclear imports with suspicion, and the Zangger setup bypassing the IAEA appeared to be a cartel-­like enterprise. The committee kept both France and the Soviet Union informed about the proceedings.26 By mid-1972, the Zangger Committee had agreed on the first version of a trigger list, which the Soviets would decide to support in October 1973. Committee members largely stalemated on the scope of the trigger list, with some Western Eu­ro­pean states objecting to certain items that the Americans and the Soviets wanted covered. Though not officially sponsoring the Zangger Committee, the IAEA published the trigger list as an Information Circular, INFCIRC/209, in September 1974, reprinting the letters that committee members had individually sent to the IAEA.27 Some impor­tant questions, such as which kind of IAEA safeguards would apply to nuclear exports, remained unanswered.28 The historian Isabelle Anstey therefore concluded that “from a nonproliferation perspective the contents of the list ­were irrelevant: it was appearance that mattered most.”29 Thus, by 1974 key states had demonstrated the need for institutions outside the IAEA to regulate nuclear exports, a role the Zangger Committee came to fulfill. It was due to differing po­liti­cal positions that the supplier states had not yet agreed upon legally binding regulations that could be enforced.

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Smiling Bud­dha Peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs) posed an especially complicated prob­lem for the IAEA’s dual mandate of promoting civilian nuclear technologies without furthering its military uses. Envisioned since the mid-1950s, when the term peaceful nuclear explosions was first coined, and promoted during the 1960s and 1970s by the United States and the Soviet Union, PNEs promised to revolutionize large-­ scale excavation proj­ects. The development of natu­ral resources, such as gas and oil fields, and the construction of canals and w ­ ater reservoirs, ­were expected to be f­ uture areas of application for PNEs, creating hopes reminiscent of the postwar euphoria about the “peaceful atom.”30 It was widely understood, however, that the technology used for PNEs could also be used to build nuclear weapons. What separated nuclear bombs from PNEs w ­ ere delivery systems (which w ­ ere not covered by safeguards) and intended uses, not necessarily the technical foundations of the explosive (along with some other technical considerations). The science historian Robert Anderson called the international negotiations on the use of PNEs “the working frontier between the benign and the lethal part of the nuclear business.”31 The NPT dealt with PNEs ­because of their ambiguity, and it treated PNEs and nuclear bombs in many regards equally: the treaty reserved the right to develop “nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices” to the nuclear weapon states alone, and they promised not to assist or encourage other states to acquire nuclear explosives. The non-­nuclear weapon states pledged not to seek nuclear explosive devices of any kind. While the NPT banned them from developing PNEs, it allowed ­these states to benefit from their practical applications (Article V). The NPT was the first example of international law based on the assumption of t­ here being ­little technical difference between civilian and military nuclear explosives (Articles I, II). The other international treaty that put restrictions on nuclear testing—­ the ­Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT) of 1963—­did not prohibit under­ground nuclear tests as long as the radioactive fallout did not reach other states.32 Around the time of the NPT’s conclusion, the IAEA began to pay increasing attention to PNEs as well as the agency’s potential role in facilitating access to their benefits. In 1969, Director General Sigvard Eklund established the Ad Hoc Committee on the Use of Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes, or Committee 21, of the Board of Governors. It consisted of representatives from member states. India, an active member of the committee, repeatedly expressed its desire to develop and use PNEs. In addition to the board committee, the IAEA secretariat established an internal body to deal with PNEs, the Advisory Board on Peaceful

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Uses of Nuclear Explosions in the Department of Technical Operations. (“Nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes” was the IAEA’s official term for PNEs.) Four ­people from dif­fer­ent divisions of the department constituted the board.33 In March 1970, 60 experts and observers from 30 countries gathered in Vienna to discuss the potential of PNEs.34 When India conducted the Smiling Bud­dha nuclear test in May 1974, the timing and the circumstances surprised the international community, not that India was interested in PNEs.35 The test was nevertheless a watershed moment for the IAEA, as the first instance a­ fter the conclusion of the NPT of peaceful nuclear assistance being used to build and test a nuclear explosive.36 The plutonium for the test had been produced at the unsafeguarded, Canadian-­supplied CIRUS reactor, at Trombay, near then Bombay. It ran on Indian natu­ral uranium and used US-­supplied heavy ­water as a moderator. The Indians then repro­cessed the plutonium at a repro­cessing fa­cil­i­t y that they had built.37 It was not a foregone conclusion that the agency’s Board of Governors would address the Indian test. As an international bureaucracy, the IAEA was bound by an extensive and complicated set of rules of procedure. Even if an event ­were of potential interest to the IAEA’s work, the Board of Governors was not necessarily f­ ree to discuss it. Each topic first had to be inserted into the board’s agenda as an official item. Following the Smiling Bud­dha explosion ­under the Rajasthan Desert, India’s neighbor and rival Pakistan, outraged and worried about a test so close to its border, wanted to raise the issue at the board’s traditional June meeting. India vehemently, but ultimately unsuccessfully, opposed the move.38 The agenda items for the last day of meetings included “The impact of the under­ ground nuclear explosion carried out by India on the ­future programme and policies of the Agency.”39 The wording of the item exemplifies how controversial and highly po­liti­cal events made it to the board: the phrasing had to be ­free of ­accusations t­oward other member states and the focus on the event’s consequences for the agency’s work, not on the consequences for a member state. Munir Ahmad Khan, the IAEA’s first se­nior staff member from a developing country in the late 1950s, now headed the Pakistani del­e­ga­tion as a diplomat.40 Khan opened the discussion with a long and angry statement about the Indian test. He expressed doubt that India had solely peaceful nuclear intensions and reminded his fellow governors that from “a purely technical standpoint ­there was hardly any distinction between a so-­called peaceful nuclear device and a nuclear weapon.” This argument invoked the NPT, which neither Pakistan nor India had signed. Khan added that if the test truly had no military connections, ­there would

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have been “no need for the secrecy surrounding it.”41 In the eyes of the Pakistani diplomat, the Indian explosion must necessarily impact the IAEA’s ­future technical assistance and safeguards activities. He argued that technical assistance should serve developing countries and that a country like India, which had managed to build a nuclear explosive, needed no technical assistance.42 Khan had another point of criticism: he accused India of having ­v iolated international law. He stated that an increased level of radiation had been mea­sured in Pakistan a­ fter the test, which constituted a violation of the LTBT, which India had signed and ratified in 1963.43 Khan ended his statement by asking India to place all its nuclear facilities u ­ nder IAEA safeguards.44 Pakistan’s case against India relied heavi­ly on ­legal accusations, so the Indian del­e­ga­tion in its response wanted to prove that it had in fact acted in line with international law. According to the Indian ambassador, Rikhi Jaipal, the nuclear test had been conducted more than 100 meters ­under the ground; no radiation had been released; and Indian engineers had built the explosive without foreign aid. Several times during his statement, Jaipal emphasized that his country had not “­v iolated any international treaty or agreement.”45 Jaipal also explained that India supported nuclear nonproliferation, but had not signed the NPT b ­ ecause the treaty imposed discriminatory practices on international nuclear relations. To ­counter Khan’s argument about the secrecy of the test, Jaipal reminded the board that over the past years India had been transparent about its interest in PNEs.46 In this confrontation, the neighboring states of Pakistan and India exploited the IAEA’s boardroom to act out their rivalry over leadership in South Asia. They both used arguments built on international nuclear legislation, though neither had signed the NPT. Shortly ­after the Indian test, Pakistan began to move forward with its own plans to develop a clandestine nuclear weapon program.47 Although no one in the boardroom except for the Pakistani and Canadian del­ e­ga­tions was “happy” about the Indian test, nobody was particularly furious about it ­either. Not even the United States seemed very upset; though like the Canadians, the Americans had involuntarily helped India build the PNE, in 1974 they ­were preoccupied with the Watergate scandal and the impeachment pro­cess against President Richard Nixon. Most state representatives pointed to it hardly being pos­si­ble to distinguish between peaceful and military explosives on technical grounds, and explic­itly said they accepted India’s declaration that the test had served peaceful purposes. The Soviet Union—­torn between its established policies of defending the princi­ples of the NPT and its support of the developing countries in their aim to benefit from civilian nuclear technologies—­issued a

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brief general statement in which it repeated its “explicit and definite” stance on nonproliferation.48 Many states expressed support for Pakistan in asking India to place its entire nuclear program ­under IAEA safeguards. The superpowers’ restraint frustrated Eklund. He had been in Moscow at the time of the explosion, and it irritated him that the Soviets did not publicly condemn the test. He was shocked to find the Americans equally reserved.49 Eklund worried not only that the superpowers’ be­hav­ior would undermine the NPT, but also that t­ here was no way for the IAEA to respond to the test as long as the Americans and the Soviets refused to condemn it. He left a meeting with US ambassador Gerard Smith “with an almost anguished appeal for action on the part of the US and the USSR to turn the Indian action into a positive effect to salvage the NPT.”50 Both the Americans and the Soviets perceived the Indian test as a major setback for nonproliferation, but they had wanted to avoid a public campaign against India for broader geostrategic reasons. The Soviets and Indians had signed a Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation in 1971. As the CIRUS reactor was not u ­ nder IAEA safeguards, the secretariat might have been worried about the Indian test (like Eklund); it may have been convinced that India had a secret nuclear weapon program, but regardless, it could not accuse India of having broken an international safeguards agreement. T ­ here was 51 no “explicit violation of safeguards.” Tellingly, the IAEA’s 75-­page annual report did not even mention the Indian test.52 ­A fter India’s controversial peaceful nuclear explosion, the IAEA initially continued its work on PNEs, and the board established a new iteration of the PNE committee.53 The agency initiated and conducted studies on the potential use of PNEs for concrete proj­ects, the feasibility of which was discussed within the secretariat and the policy-­making organs. For instance, during the 1970s and 1980s, the Egyptian government planned to link the Qattara Desert with the Mediterranean Sea as part of a gigantic hydroelectric power proj­ect, and it considered using PNEs for the construction of the necessary channels and tunnels.54 In 1977, Eklund attended a test for removing rock in the Egyptian desert. The IAEA and the nuclear weapon states gradually distanced themselves from promoting access to PNEs. The IAEA’s Ad Hoc Committee on the Use of Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes held its last meeting in 1977. The change in the attitude ­toward PNEs was part of a more general reassessment inside and outside the IAEA of the relationship between technical assistance and nuclear weapons proliferation.

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The London Club One impor­t ant impact of the Indian test was that it encouraged major nuclear supplier states to cooperate on export control. The Soviets, initially reluctant to set export controls outside an IAEA setting, came to realize that it was unrealistic to try to negotiate lasting agreements between exporters and importers through a formal institution such as the IAEA. At the same time, the situation called for arrangements even more informal than the Zangger Committee.55 In late 1974, the Soviets and the Americans held confidential meetings in Moscow to discuss how to further strengthen export controls and agreed to establish what became known as the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG).56 The British government supported the plan and, in February 1975, the NSG came together for the first time in London, where they would continue to meet regularly. The press referred to the group as the London Club.57 Unlike the Zangger Committee, France participated in the NSG, not least due to US pressure.58 France, Japan, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Germany constituted the original members and ­were soon joined by Belgium, Czecho­slo­va­kia, East Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, and Switzerland.59 The NSG met in closed sessions, largely ­because France insisted. It was a “voluntary, secretive, elite club of countries that offered nonbinding guidelines for national nuclear supply practice.”60 In November 1975, the participants agreed on Guidelines for the Export of Nuclear Material, Equipment and Technology.61 Following the procedure established by the Zangger Committee, each state sent them individually to Eklund on 11 January 1978, and the IAEA published them as INFCIRC/254.62 Some crucial questions remained unanswered. Most impor­tant, the NSG had not reached an agreement on what kind of safeguards agreements should cover exports to non-­signatories of the NPT. The Soviet government was dissatisfied with this outcome and stated in its letter to Eklund that it considered “full control”—­ meaning “full-­scope safeguards”—­necessary. The United Kingdom and Canada shared the Soviets’ position.63 Japan, Switzerland, West Germany, and especially France opposed this specification. While the United States agreed with the Soviets in princi­ple, it eventually gave in to France’s opposition.64 Only in 1992, a­ fter the revelations about Iraq’s secret nuclear weapon program, did the NSG follow the original Soviet recommendation to demand full-­scope safeguards, which a number of states had already implemented unilaterally in the late 1970s.65 Despite ­these shortcomings, the NSG’s trigger list went beyond that of the Zangger Committee. Of importance, it included provisions for the physical protection of nuclear materials,

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echoing the growing awareness of the potential threat of terror attacks, which for diplomats in Vienna ceased being theoretical in 1975 when a group led by Carlos the Jackal stormed OPEC headquarters, killing three and taking sixty hostages. On 31 October 1977, representatives of 40 governments met at the IAEA to draft an agreement to deter the hijacking, sabotage, and theft of nuclear material.66 With the establishment of the Zangger Committee and the NSG, the regulation of nuclear exports was gradually removed from the IAEA’s immediate domain. Nuclear nonproliferation thereafter became compartmentalized among a set of multilateral and international institutions of which the IAEA was central but not alone. The NSG’s trigger list was not a binding agreement and had the character of a “gentlemen’s agreement.”67 As Henry Sokolowski has argued, the NSG “worked when supplier nations used it.” While the NSG helped to prevent France and Belgium from selling plutonium enrichment technology and equipment to Pakistan and South K ­ orea, it did not prevent Switzerland and West Germany from selling enrichment and plutonium repro­cessing technology to Brazil and Argentina, both of which possessed nuclear technology and w ­ ere suspected of having nuclear weapons ambitions. The NSG also did not prevent France and Italy from making deals with Iraq.68 The suppliers constituted a group that was “explic­itly discriminatory,” as only nuclear supplier states had a say in it.69 Benjamin Schiff argues that the establishment of the NSG pointed to “a weakness of the IAEA, and universalist institutions in general.” According to him, the NSG’s creation demonstrated po­liti­cal consensus building in general to be “harder among a large group of disparate states than among a smaller group of more similar ones.” While the IAEA’s publication of the trigger list enhanced the NSG’s legitimacy, it also ran the risk of threatening the agency’s credibility.70 Lawrence Scheinman has similarly argued that non-­NPT members criticized “the agency’s growing role as a vehicle for articulation of NPT or nonproliferation regime agreements reached by states outside the framework of the agency.”71 Yet, to establish a forum for nuclear suppliers outside the IAEA helped protect the agency from being deadlocked by discussions over export controls. In that sense, with the creation of the NSG, nuclear supplier states acknowledged one impor­tant aspect of the IAEA’s success: its design as an institution that executes mandates it receives from member states, not as an organ­ization fulfilling a po­ liti­cal mission of its own.

The NPT versus the IAEA Statute ­ oward the end of the 1970s, both the IAEA’s secretariat and the policy-­making T organs began reconsidering the agency’s role in preventing the diversion of tech-

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nical nuclear assistance to nuclear weapon programs. In 1979, the Soviets declared boldly at a Board of Governors meeting that technical assistance should mainly be granted to states that had signed the NPT.72 They had first used this argument in the early 1970s to attack their ideological rivals, in par­tic­u­lar South ­Korea and Taiwan—­which they suspected of secretly exploring the nuclear weapons option (and they ­were)—­and Israel, which had an advanced, but not publicly acknowledged, nuclear weapon program. By the end of the 1970s, the Soviets had expanded the argument and used it not just to confront opponents, but all the states that remained outside the NPT. In 1977 and 1978, the secretariat and the policy-­making organs took a fresh look at the agency’s guiding princi­ples for the provision of technical assistance, which had been unchanged since 1960.73 The secretariat took the lead in the revision pro­cess, and the board was in charge of approving the end product. ­A fter numerous informal meetings outside the boardroom, and despite agreement being reached on many parts of the new document, Argentina, Brazil, and India disagreed with the majority on certain provisions, making a consensus decision impossible. The three power­ful states from the developing world, all with advanced nuclear programs, complained that the new guidelines incorrectly equalized the IAEA and the NPT, making the agency’s provision of technical assistance subject to nonproliferation regulations defined by the treaty. They w ­ ere particularly dissatisfied with the paragraph stating that IAEA technical assistance should only support peaceful purposes and not “uses which are readily converted to the furtherance of military purposes or which could contribute to the proliferation of nuclear weapons, such as research on, development of, testing of or manufacture of a nuclear explosive device.” In such a situation, all “forms of technical assistance in all forms of sensitive technical assistance” would require safeguards.74 In the eyes of the governor from Argentina, Carlos Castro Madero, this formulation was “entirely out of keeping with the Statute and was based on a treaty that his country considered discriminatory.”75 That the new guidelines declared PNEs as technically indistinguishable from nuclear weapons, was also a product of the NPT, not the statute.76 Argentina, Brazil, and India therefore voted against the new guidelines, and Guatemala, South ­Korea, Tanzania, and Venezuela abstained.77 As a result of the voting outcome in support of the new guidelines, India and Argentina withdrew from the agency’s technical assistance program with the exception of a few training activities.78 The secretariat still had “a certain amount of flexibility” to make decisions about technical assistance on a case-­by-­case basis concerning sensitive areas, such as uranium enrichment technology, repro­cessing facilities for spent fuel,

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production of heavy ­water, and ­handling of plutonium.79 Yet, for Argentina, Brazil, and India, the adoption of the new guidelines represented the amendment of the IAEA’s statute in disguise.80 Ironically, Argentina had voluntarily negotiated a safeguards agreement in line with the new guidelines, but it did not want to normalize ­those rules, a position shared by Brazil and India. Dismissing the re­ sis­tance by t­ hose three states as inappropriate “politicization” of the board is too simplistic. By establishing updated guidelines, the agency adjusted its dual mandate by connecting technical assistance and safeguards similarly to the NPT. The statute prioritized technical assistance and made safeguards an adjunct, while the NPT made this a quid pro quo, offering technical assistance only with a comprehensive nuclear safeguards agreement. The statute required the agency to prevent technical assistance from being misused for nuclear weapon programs; the NPT demanded that non-­nuclear weapon states forgo the nuclear weapons option. Experts in the US administration clearly understood ­t hese prob­lems. The deputy of the US mission, Philipp J. Farley, who knew the IAEA well, having participated in the Conference on the Statute in 1956, asserted to Ambassador Smith that while the Americans accused “the majority of (IAEA) members of undue politicization,” they needed to recognize that if they took “primary interest in the po­liti­cal and security role of the agency,” states ­were “­going to want to politicize it rather than treat it as a technical agency.”81 In short, he accused his own government of politicizing the IAEA. Farley believed that the United States’ emphasis on safeguards as well as on regulatory functions in nuclear safety and security should be compensated “by shoring up the IAEA’s role in nuclear power and other peaceful atomic energy cooperation, and by beefing up IAEA Technical ­Assistance—or both.”82 Only renewed emphasis on technical assistance could help make the agency’s increased nonproliferation role po­liti­cally more acceptable. Meanwhile, within the IAEA bureaucracy, technical assistance and safeguards remained “silos,” separated by dif­fer­ent departmental cultures, the absence of institutionalized cooperation on proj­ects, and a lack of interest in what the other was d ­ oing. The inspectors ­were often regarded as spies by staff outside their department, or at the least, as standoffish officials who believed they ­were more impor­tant than every­one ­else at the agency.83 The safeguards department did not actively seek information from the technical assistance department. This led to some paradoxical situations, such as when Pakistan, which was developing a secret nuclear weapon program, received technical assistance in uranium development from the agency.84 Despite the IAEA’s increased emphasis on nonproliferation, the agency was still not looking for clandestine nuclear activities by member states. A related

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prob­lem, also revealed by the case of Pakistan, was that the IAEA had no established procedures for officially receiving (and making use of) intelligence information from member states. In 1979, the Americans told Eklund about a secret and “large scale Pakistani shopping effort” to buy components for a uranium enrichment program. According to the Americans, Pakistan’s efforts hinted at the development of a clandestine weapon program. Eklund, “shocked and upset” when he heard the news, strongly suggested to the Americans “that the world be informed” about ­these developments. He hoped that ­going public would increase international pressure on Pakistan.85 Eklund feared ­t here was broad “Moslem solidarity” for Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions and worried that countries like Libya would finance the introduction of nuclear weapons to the ­Middle East. The director general tried on several occasions to convince US diplomats that the worrying news about Pakistan needed public disclosure, but the Americans asked him not to share the information, even within the agency.86 Smith tried to convince Eklund that t­here was sufficient time to observe Pakistan’s attempts to buy the equipment for its secret enrichment program, but Eklund believed that “­t here was no such time.”87 In short, the Americans’ attitude ­toward the IAEA was mixed: they wanted to strengthen the agency’s safeguards activities, and therefore believed it was necessary for the director general to be informed about what was happening in Pakistan, but at the same time, they did not want Eklund to use this information, nor did they accept his judgement on what to do with the information. As the historian William Burr has recently shown, Smith—­whom President Car­ter had made ambassador-­at-­large for nuclear nonproliferation in Vienna—­himself felt that the world should be informed about Pakistan’s nuclear ambitions, but was overruled by the White House.88

The Nuclear Inspector: From Job to Profession The IAEA’s rapidly expanding safeguards obligations forced it to hire more ­people, especially inspectors, but scientific and supporting staff for the safeguards department as well. To reduce the burden of safeguards activities—­the IAEA had to safeguard all activities and materials covered by the NPT in all non-­ nuclear weapon states—­t he agency introduced so-­called Small Quantities Protocols for treaty signatories that had ­little or no nuclear activities. Despite the agency’s pre-­NPT experience with safeguards, the job profile for inspectors remained somewhat unclear. The agency usually hired ­people with a professional background in nuclear physics or chemistry and prior work experience in national atomic energy commissions or research institutes. Having previously participated in an IAEA fellowship was another possibility.89 The first

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The entrance of the IAEA’s first headquarters, the former ­Grand ­Hotel on Ringstraße, Vienna, September 1977. © IAEA

generation of NPT-­era inspectors, regardless of professional background, hardly knew what to expect about the new job for which they had applied. Professional curiosity about this newly emerging field and the attraction of an international work environment ­were possibly often more impor­tant as motivating f­ actors in the decision to move to Vienna than the idealistic aim of serving the objectives of the IAEA. Even in 1978, Hans Grümm—­former director of the Austrian nuclear research institute in Seibersdorf and incoming head of the safeguards department—­could not grasp the full dimension of the job he had just accepted.

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He only knew safeguards “from hearsay.”90 In fact, Grümm had been surprised to be offered the job at all. He was a Sta­lin­grad survivor who had become a committed communist while in Soviet captivity, and then disavowed communism ­after living in postwar East Germany. Grümm, convinced that both the CIA and the KGB had suspicions about his past, was surely one of the most surprising personnel choices that the IAEA has ever made.91 Inspectors applied to the IAEA through their governments. In the 1970s, the IAEA hired inspectors based purely on their application files; t­ here w ­ ere no interviews. The new staff members entered the agency on fixed-­term contracts for an initial two years, with the option of renewal for another two years. In practice, many contracts w ­ ere extended u ­ ntil retirement. As part of the UN f­ amily, the IAEA offered attractive tax-­free salaries, six weeks of annual vacation, and financial compensation for the time spent on work travel. ­Women applicants faced steep odds, as the work was widely viewed as men’s work. The agency hired the first w ­ omen to fill positions as inspectors in the early 1980s, among them Shirley Johnson, an American chemist. Unlike her male colleagues, Johnson was interviewed before she got the job.92 Once in Vienna, incoming inspectors participated in a three-­month training course. It introduced the new staff to the agency’s inspection mandate, taught them the l­egal foundations of dif­fer­ent types of safeguards agreements and the basics of nuclear material accountancy, and trained them on the scientific tools used in the verification pro­cess. The new inspectors learned how to apply agency seals and set up cameras in nuclear facilities.93 The seals helped verify the containment and integrity of nuclear material between inspector visits, and the cameras w ­ ere installed for surveillance purposes.94 The inspectors developed negatives and photo­graphs while onsite, setting up makeshift photo labs in their ­hotel bathrooms. For this generation of IAEA inspectors, traveling the world was a new experience. It was before the age of mass air travel, and they l­ater often recalled their first trips to foreign countries as adventurous. They wrote their reports by hand and often brought them back to Vienna in the paper bags from the IAEA’s tax-­ free supermarket (the commissary). T ­ here ­were no computer-­based or other uniform evaluation pro­cesses for inspection data in place in the early days.95 In 1977, the Division of Safeguards Information Treatment was set up ­u nder the leadership of Victor Scheljev from the Soviet Union.96 Some of the inspectors’ introduction to politics was once they ­were on the job. When the IAEA negotiated a safeguards agreement with Euratom, staff from the inspection unit in Vienna traveled back and forth to Luxembourg harmonizing

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the inspection administrations of the two organ­izations. The agreement was concluded in 1973 and entered into force in 1977.97 This gave a boost to the growth of safeguards. While, in 1970, the Department of Safeguards had 69 staff members—­including inspectors and general ser­vice staff—­the number had multiplied to 215 by 1979.98 In 1977, the inspector general of safeguards, like the heads of other departments, assumed the title of deputy director general, but unlike the ­others, was not allowed to serve as acting director general in the absence of the agency’s leader. This reservation underscored the po­liti­cally contested nature of the IAEA’s safeguards activities at the time.99 The Americans and Soviets felt the urge to control the hiring of safeguards personnel. Given their strong stance on safeguards, the Soviets preferred to fill vacancies with p ­ eople who supported nonproliferation policies, but eventually agreed with the Americans that “optically it was far preferable . . . ​to have non­ ehind U.S. and U.S.S.R. nationals in the key positions.”100 While the princi­ple b international organ­izations relied on distinguishing between diplomats and international civil servants, IAEA member states nevertheless tried to foster contacts among their nationals in the two professions. For instance, in 1977, Vladimir Erofeev, the Soviet ambassador to the international organ­izations in Austria, initiated meetings between safeguards staff from socialist countries and Soviet officials at the mission with the hope that ­these events—­officially billed as movie nights and cocktail hours—­might lead to discussions strengthening socialist influence in the department.101 In 1975, to help member states understand the latest scientific and technical developments in safeguards and to support the safeguards department in learning about member states’ technical experience and expertise, the IAEA set up a Standing Advisory Committee on Safeguards Implementation (SAGSI). The committee originally had 10 members (now around 20) whom the director general appointed based on recommendations by member states.102 The tensions felt in other parts of the agency’s work also affected SAGSI, where nuclear suppliers observed with reservation the superpowers’ strong stance on nonproliferation.103 One of SAGSI’s first tasks was to help define the agency’s detection goals by agreeing on precise definitions for key terms of comprehensive safeguards agreements, such as timely detection (of diversion) and significant quantities (of nuclear material).

Making the Safeguards System Work The Department of Safeguards not only needed new staff and expertise from member states, but also new infrastructure and, in par­tic­u­lar, a state-­of-­t he-­art

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laboratory. The existing lab in Seibersdorf was part of the agency’s research and isotope division, not safeguards. It primarily served the agency’s scientific and technical assistance activities. The laboratory had a small uranium and a small plutonium laboratory, a few square meters each, staffed by a group of less than 10 ­people. Inspectors in the field collected nuclear material samples, packaged them, and then shipped them by air to Seibersdorf. A ­ fter the NPT’s entry into force, the Seibersdorf facilities did not have the capacity to h ­ andle the mass of material samples arriving. As part of material accountancy, not only did the IAEA need to verify the initial inventories of nuclear material provided by NPT member states, but with the growing number of NPT signatories, the IAEA was expecting to receive an ever larger volume of samples. In 1973 alone, the number of samples that arrived at Seibersdorf was double that from the previous year.104 In 1975, with financial support of the Austrian government, the agency began building the Safeguards Analytical Laboratory at Seibersdorf.105 The new fa­cil­i­t y could analyze up to 2,000 samples a year.106 While Seibersdorf operated as part of the larger Network of Analytical Laboratories across member states, it carried the major burden of sample analyses. Meanwhile, the IAEA’s leadership and the Department of Safeguards realized that the changes in the nuclear industry ­were not just abstract prob­lems that policymakers had to address. They confronted the agency with very concrete prob­ lems, especially the issue of how to inspect uranium enrichment facilities. Gas centrifuge enrichment facilities have cascades of fast-­spinning centrifuges that separate U-235 and U-238. They enrich uranium for use in civilian nuclear power plants but can also produce high enriched uranium for nuclear weapons, so they are considered proliferation sensitive. Uranium enrichment facilities had not previously been subject to IAEA safeguards. The once-­common gaseous diffusion uranium technology required large amounts of energy, making them less eco­ nom­ical than the gas centrifuge pro­cess. Only nuclear weapon states used them, so they w ­ ere not subject to inspection.107 The entry into force of the IAEA agreement with Euratom meant that Urenco, the commercial Dutch-­German-­British uranium enrichment consortium, would come u ­ nder IAEA safeguards. When agency inspectors first went to inspect the com­pany’s site in the Netherlands, they did not know what degree of access they would be granted; ­there was no pre­ce­dent for such an inspection visit. The operators allowed agency officials to conduct inspections in the fa­cil­i­ty, but they did not grant them entry to the cascade halls housing the sensitive, sought-­after, and technologically complex spinning centrifuges.108 They did not want outsiders to have access to such technology.109 The fear of inspectors conducting espionage was not

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entirely groundless. T ­ here w ­ ere sporadic cases of agency inspectors being caught engaging in activities that made no sense from a safeguards perspective, such as mea­sur­ing the thickness of fuel plates or copying instruction manuals.110 The IAEA could not, however, treat an enrichment fa­cil­i­t y like a “black box” ­ ere to whose inner workings inspectors w ­ ere denied.111 What if the facilities w used to make high enriched uranium instead of low enriched uranium as declared? This prob­lem was not ­limited to Urenco. Japan, another NPT member state that had invested in commercial gas centrifuge enrichment technology, and Australia, a major exporter of uranium, ­were considering the production and export of enriched uranium as well. Somewhat comparable to the establishment of the Zangger Committee, the member states involved could not solve the prob­lem at the IAEA, so they outsourced discussions to a new forum. In November 1980, Euratom, the IAEA, Australia, Japan, the United States, and the three URENCO states formed the Hexapartite Safeguards Proj­ect (HSP), named ­after the six states party to the discussions. The topic was considered too sensitive to be discussed at the IAEA, where ­every member state could have participated if interested. The first HSP meeting took place at the Urenco facilities in Marlow, in the United Kingdom.112 Over the next three years, proj­ect members met around the world to study how to conduct effective and efficient safeguards activities in gas centrifuge facilities without putting commercial secrets at risk. The participants tried to keep the meetings as technical as pos­si­ble, which was not always easy. For instance, some participants felt that operators w ­ ere being put u ­ nder suspicion when IAEA inspectors dared assert that they needed to verify that ­there was no undeclared production of HEU at the facilities. Thus, the pro­cess had to be spun in a positive way: safeguards w ­ ere to verify that a fa­cil­i­t y was “operating as declared.”113 The six parties eventually agreed on what they called ­limited frequency unannounced access. While IAEA inspectors did not enter sensitive areas of facilities on ­every visit, they had the right to access them without prior announcement a number of times during the normal inspection schedule.114 This approach was not implemented automatically ­after the HSP concluded its work, but when the IAEA negotiated fa­cil­i­t y agreements with the individual parties.115 Only inspectors from HSP countries would be allowed to conduct such inspections.116 Ironically, A. Q. Khan, a former employee of one of Urenco’s subcontractors, was building the Pakistani nuclear weapon program based on information he had stolen for the design of gas centrifuge enrichment facilities while working in the Netherlands. Dutch British and American intelligence agencies ­were monitoring his activities.

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The End of a Comfortable Era Nuclear power plants routinely produce so-­called reactor-­g rade plutonium as a by-­product of normal operations, which thus is in easy reach for many non-­ nuclear weapon states. The administration of President Jimmy Car­ter strictly limited the commercial repro­cessing of plutonium from spent fuel ­because of the inherent proliferation risk, in spite of its impor­tant civilian uses and protests by several Western Eu­ro­pean allies and Japan. The 1978 Non-­Proliferation Act laid out new l­egal grounds for a tougher US nonproliferation policy and for tighter restrictions on nuclear exports.117 To gain support for this unilateral action, the US government looked to multilateral settings to discuss how the nuclear fuel cycle as a ­whole could become more proliferation-­resistant. For this purpose, in April 1977, the Americans proposed the International Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE) to study the issue. The IAEA, which participated in INFCE, once again found itself being both part of yet outside developments. In the first two weeks of May, the IAEA or­ga­nized its own conference on the topic, held in Salzburg, focusing on the backend of the fuel cycle—­reprocessing, the storage of fuel, and waste management. More than 2,000 ­people attended.118 The era of mega nuclear conferences, which had begun with the Geneva conferences in the 1950s, ended with Salzburg.119 The conference revealed that the IAEA’s work as a promoter of nuclear energy faced increasing public opposition, and the IAEA had not been able to ­counter what it perceived as “anti-­nuclear propaganda.”120 The United Nations Environment Program had been launched in 1972, and the IAEA had tried to position itself in the context of growing concerns over environmental pollution from the burning of fossil fuels by promoting nuclear energy as a solution.121 The IAEA argument that nuclear power was a clean and environment friendly source of energy was unconvincing to the anti-­nuclear energy movement, which pointed to the unsolved prob­lem of the permanent storage of nuclear waste and exposed the idea of a nuclear fuel “cycle” as a euphemism. International organ­izations, and especially the IAEA, became targets for criticism by transnational civil society movements.122 At the beginning of the IAEA’s Salzburg conference, a number of dif­fer­ent transnational nongovernmental organ­izations held a counter-­conference featuring speakers from academia, politics, and the NGO sector.123 The name of the conference—­the Salzburg Conference for a Non-­Nuclear ­Future—­referred to the popu­lar book on non-­nuclear energy paths by Amory B. Lovins and John H. Prize.124 Eklund worried that the agency had “failed to convey to the ­peoples of the world the message that nuclear

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energy represents no larger, and indeed often smaller, risks than many other technologies that have been accepted by modern society.”125 In contrast, the INFCE meetings convened in a pleasant atmosphere in Vi­ ecause enna, from 1977 to 1980.126 The initiative proceeded smoothly prob­ably b most states did not expect much to come from it; even Argentina, Brazil, India, Israel, Pakistan, and South Africa—­states skeptical of ever stricter nonproliferation policies—­participated.127 The forum served as a venue for articulating perspectives rather than accomplishing tangible results.128 In the context of INFCE, ­there was also discussion of w ­ hether the IAEA should have a custodial role in nuclear waste or fuel materials.129 The topic was discussed within the Car­ter administration, generating some controversy, but no uniform opinion emerged on ­whether such a role for the IAEA was in line with the agency’s statute. Some believed that “the Statute ­really spells out a verification role and not a custodial role.”130 While Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech had foreseen a certain custodian role for the IAEA, this historical reference was not prominent in the debate. Many states, however, ­were worried about the f­ uture of nuclear fuel supplies ­because of stricter nonproliferation policies, the fear of a shortage of enriched uranium, and increased uranium prices. Rather than setting up a fuel bank, the Board of Governors established the Committee of Assurances of Supply in response to ­t hese debates. On 28 March 1979, a partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island nuclear power plant on the East Coast of the United States appeared to confirm the environmental movement’s warnings.131 The accident received international attention, not least ­because it occurred 10 days ­after The China Syndrome premiered in cinemas. The movie’s plot of a reporter witnessing the failure of a nuclear power plant and becoming entangled in a subsequent cover-up had surprising similarities to the real-­life accident. The star-­studded cast, including Michael Douglas, Jane Fonda, and Jack Lemmon, increased the movie’s appeal. At around this time, journalists and writers also began to raise critical questions regarding the IAEA’s safeguards mission. The IAEA’s external relations and public information offices tried somewhat hopelessly to ­counter the criticism. When the British Observer published “A-­bombs May Slip through Net,” a critical article on the effectiveness of international safeguards, David Fischer, head of the IAEA’s external relations division, wrote an angry letter to the editor.132 In 1978 the IAEA tried to prevent damage to its public image a­ fter a German newspaper asked the IAEA’s public information office about the death of Pierre Noir, a French inspector who had died during an inspection visit to Taiwan. Robert Jungk, an Austrian writer and nuclear critic, suggested during a public talk that

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Noir had detected irregularities at the inspected fa­cil­i­ty and was subsequently assassinated a­ fter reporting the inconsistencies. The IAEA rebutted the claim, stating that Noir had died of a heart attack, which seems to be confirmed by the now available historical rec­ord. Nonetheless, rumors about Noir’s supposedly suspicious death continue to this ­today.133 All told, by the advent of the 1980s, the IAEA’s rather comfortable position as a technical bureaucracy—­and regard as one of the most efficient international organ­izations—­was coming to an end.

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chapter seven

North-­South Tensions

Diplomatic meetings are not detached from where they take place. The conference venue itself can influence the spirit of a meeting and may even play a role in its outcome.1 In theory, the list of potential locations for conferences and summits is large, but practical, po­liti­cal, and symbolic considerations reduce the number of seriously considered candidates. T ­ hose in charge of organ­izing diplomatic meetings have to weigh local costs against security ­matters and ­whether travel restrictions apply for any of the participants, a critical issue during the Cold War. ­T hose responsible also have to be aware that what­ever decision they make ­w ill please some states and prob­ably upset ­others. Despite all costs and effort, governments often want to host high-­level diplomatic meetings to associate themselves with certain topics and institutions or b ­ ecause they like the prestige that comes with being a host. During the 1970s, the International Atomic Energy Agency selected a few conference locations for their highly symbolic nature. The annual General Conference, usually held at headquarters in Vienna, convened on three occasions in countries of the Global South: in 1972, the representatives of IAEA member states met in Mexico City; in 1976, in Rio de Janeiro; and, in 1979, in New Delhi. The IAEA was not the only institution within the UN f­ amily that responded to pressure from the Non-­A ligned Movement (NAM) to bypass the usual sites in the North as the site for diplomatic meetings. ­After gathering exclusively at UN headquarters in New York for 20 years, the Security Council or­ga­nized special sessions in Addis Ababa in 1972 and in Panama City in 1973.2 Holding high-­profile diplomatic meetings at off-­site locations is a costly and cumbersome endeavor. For the IAEA, the logistical burden only made sense in light of the growing influence of the Global South within the agency.3 The developing states in Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer­i­ca had been involved in IAEA

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­ atters since its creation, and their expectations of the agency echoed in the m agency’s founding documents. Yet only during the mid-1970s, notably ­after the 1976 General Conference in Rio de Janeiro, did this rather heterogeneous group of member states or­ga­nize themselves as a united interest group that lobbied collectively for greater access to technical nuclear assistance. The new meeting venues reflected this shift. In addition, the number of African and ­Middle Eastern member states in the IAEA continued to grow. While, in general, the IAEA’s membership was fairly steady in the 1970s, in 1976 alone Qatar, Tanzania, and the United Arab Emirates joined the agency. In the same year, the Palestine Liberation Organ­ization gained observer status in the General Conference. While technical assistance to the ­Middle East had been moderate since the agency’s beginnings and continued to be small during the 1970s and 1980s, technical assistance to Africa expanded. Latin American countries topped the list of major recipients of technical assistance.4 The tensions between the “nuclear haves” and the “nuclear have-­nots” eventually evolved into open hostility in the IAEA’s policy-­making organs. The arguments often revolved around two countries: South Africa and Israel. Over the course of the 1970s, suspicions grew that apartheid South Africa had established a clandestine nuclear weapon program. That Pretoria had not signed the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) increased such concerns.5 The apartheid regime’s influential role within the IAEA—­long criticized by the postcolonial states but backed by the Western industrialized nations—­began to crumble. In addition, anti-­Israeli sentiment became pervasive in the IAEA’s policy-­making organs ­after a squadron of Israeli fighter jets destroyed Iraq’s Osirak research reactor, near Baghdad in 1981.6 Not only did the actions and policies of certain countries, such as Israel and South Africa, intensify North-­South tensions in the IAEA, so did controversies over the agency’s responsibilities ­u nder the NPT. ­A fter the NPT’s entry into force in 1970, the IAEA had spent increasingly more resources on building up its international nuclear safeguards activities. The developing countries demanded that additional funds for the IAEA’s technical assistance mission balance the rapidly growing costs of the safeguards system. As Benjamin Schiff has argued, the NPT’s promise of access to civilian nuclear technologies for ­those states that renounced nuclear weapons was a “tactical linkage forged by the North” to convince states to join the treaty. By the mid-1970s, however, this tactical linkage had become “a power­ful weapon of Southern nuclear diplomacy” and was used to increase the IAEA’s technical assistance activities.7 Many of the developing states tried to focus attention on the NPT’s promise of access to civilian

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nuclear technologies, which they often saw overshadowed by its nonproliferation mission. At the same time, nuclear weapons proliferation evolved from a mostly academic topic into a concrete prob­lem. ­A fter India tested a nuclear device in 1974, debate turned to Iraq, Israel, and South Africa, and ­after long negotiations between the IAEA and Euratom over safeguards in Eu­rope, the agency began to pay more attention to the M ­ iddle East. What was rarely said, but embodied in most of the debates was that some countries seemed “to be trusted less with nuclear technology than o ­ thers” in the eyes of the Western industrialized states.8 This put developing states ­under general suspicion, a situation that Hugh Gusterson has called “nuclear orientalism.”9 Amid t­ hese crises, which transformed the IAEA from a mainly technical bureaucracy into a center for debate on international security, Hans Blix succeeded Sigvard Eklund as director general and moved to give IAEA safeguards a new and improved image.

Atoms for Development IAEA member states with similar interests had always coordinated their positions among each other. B ­ ecause of this, informal consultations before official meetings had characterized decision-­making pro­cesses within the agency from the start. What changed in the mid-1970s was that Asian, African, and Latin American states, often supported by Yugo­slavia and Romania, made regular statements at the IAEA’s policy-­making organs on behalf of the Group of 77 (G-77), rather than just on behalf of their own governments. The G-77 took its name from the original number of states that signed a joint declaration at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva in 1964. The group sought to strengthen the developing states’ role in the global economy and called for a New International Economic Order in the mid1970s.10 While the G-77’s influence could be felt at the United Nations in New York and Geneva soon ­after the group’s formation, it took another de­cade for it to have a major impact on IAEA affairs.11 The developing states’ demand for access to technical assistance as well as their criticism of the discriminatory global order of the NPT had been topics of North-­South controversy at the IAEA in previous years, but as the US Mission to the International Organ­izations in Vienna reported to Washington, other North-­South issues had “­little spill-­over effect on the IAEA or on the United States’ ability to achieve its objectives in that organ­ ization.” While the Americans hoped to keep nuclear ­matters apart from other global issues, they realized that the increasing conflicts between the North and South at the agency “resulted primarily from developments in the nuclear field

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itself, e.g. the Indian test and the stricter nuclear export criteria subsequently developed by suppliers.”12 In the second half of the 1970s, the question of which countries belonged to the developing world became a point of contention in the IAEA boardroom. The notion of “developing countries” was widely used in the agency—by the secretariat, by the states that identified themselves as developing countries, and by ­t hose that did not. Was the group of developing states identical with the G-77 or with the recipients of IAEA technical assistance? Alternatively, should the Board of Governors stick to the categorization used in official UN statistics?13 ­T hese attempts at clarification w ­ ere mostly unsatisfactory; even the United Nations had not come up with an elaborated definition of what constituted a developing country. Categorizing all recipients of IAEA technical assistance as part of the developing world was also misleading. South K ­ orea, Taiwan, and Israel received technical nuclear assistance, but did not share the main po­liti­cal goals of the non-­a ligned states. Talking about the G-77 or the non-­a ligned states was more precise than simply referring to the developing countries, even though delegates often used the three notions interchangeably in the debates. Domingo Siazon, the Philippine representative to the IAEA and a dedicated speaker of the non-­aligned states in Asia and Africa, characterized the group as t­ hose states “regarded as developing countries by the UNDP [United Nations Development Programme] with the exception of ­t hose, apart from Romania and Yugo­slavia, in Eastern Eu­rope.”14 This definition combined economic and po­liti­cal aspects. The primary function of ­these group denominations was not to create a precise list of states, but to assem­ ble ­under one name as much po­liti­cal momentum for development assistance as pos­si­ble. By 1980, even without a clear-­cut definition, “no one was unaware of the existence of the Group of 77” in the IAEA boardroom.15 What also distinguished the developing states’ new lobbying efforts from ­earlier initiatives was the field of technical assistance being at the center of their attention. A large number of developing states now specifically demanded access to technical assistance related to the nuclear fuel cycle with the goal of eventually building nuclear power reactors. President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech in 1953 had nourished the vision of providing “abundant electrical energy in the power-­starved areas of the world.”16 The real­ity of technical assistance, however, was far less ­grand. By the late 1970s among the developing countries, only Argentina, Brazil, India, South ­Korea, and Taiwan—­which ­were undergoing rapid industrial development—­seemed capable of meeting conditions for the successful introduction of nuclear power programs. While many more countries of the South showed an interest in nuclear power generation, they

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did not possess a sufficiently advanced electricity distribution system to introduce it, nor did they have the necessary demand to absorb the expected output. At the time, the estimated minimum output for a nuclear reactor to be eco­nom­ically ­viable was 700 to 1,300 MW(e), and most reactor manufacturers had standardized units for 600 MW(e) and above.17 In response to the developing countries interest in nuclear power, the IAEA secretariat together with the member states put considerable effort into assessing the potential role of small and medium-­sized reactors.18 During the mid-1970s, the developing countries reinvigorated the debate on ­whether technical assistance should be covered by the member states’ mandatory contributions to the IAEA bud­get rather than by their voluntary contributions. This was a long-­standing issue, ­going back to the IAEA’s creation, and for the developing states, one aimed at securing the financial stability of the agency’s technical assistance activities. The debate over the agency’s bud­get gained momentum again in the early 1980s, when the Board of Governors recommended a zero real growth bud­get for 1981. Since then, zero real growth restrictions have ­shaped the agency’s bud­get and that of other UN organ­izations for most years.19 This meant that—­apart from accommodating inflation and despite the agency’s growing responsibilities—­t he bud­get would not be increased.20 Another way for the developing countries to make their interests heard was to get more ­people from Asia, Africa, and Latin Amer­i­ca on the agency’s staff, particularly in leadership positions and in the Department of Safeguards. This stemmed from the geopo­liti­cal importance of safeguards, as well as the hope that it would provide opportunities for professionals from the South to obtain further work experience and expertise in Vienna. It was not always easy, however, to find enough qualified technical personnel from countries without considerable nuclear programs.21 The debates about civilian nuclear assistance w ­ ere anchored in the IAEA’s official narrative of nuclear power being quintessentially good. As director general, Eklund became irritated by the growing anti-­nuclear power sentiment in Western socie­ties, and at times he sounded more like a supporter of the power­ ful nuclear industry than an impartial head of an international bureaucracy. In the eyes of the trained nuclear physicist, e­ very reasonable person should be in f­ avor of nuclear power. At the IAEA General Conference in 1980, a year a­ fter the Three Mile Island nuclear accident in the United States, Eklund pointed to the “wealth of objective material” demonstrating that nuclear power had “significantly lower overall risks” than other forms of energy generation. For Eklund, nuclear power’s bad reputation was not due to facts, but to bad media coverage: “It is

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astonishing that the media did not pick up this fact: the absence of a singly radiation induced fatility [sic] in nearly 2000 reactor years of operating experience at 235 commercial nuclear power plants.”22 Eklund’s success story ignored any discussion of fatalities resulting from long-­term radiation exposure. ­A fter Three Mile Island and due to the growth of the anti-­nuclear movement, the optimism of the 1950s surrounding nuclear energy had faded in much of Western Eu­rope and North Amer­i­ca, but it remained on the rise in other parts of the world. That non-­Westerners “tended to be keener on industrialization” was a major f­ actor in the debates about technical assistance not just in the IAEA, but in other UN-­related organ­izations as well.23 S. K. Singh, an Indian diplomat on the IAEA board, regarded nuclear energy as the only reliable path to industrial pro­g ress. In 1985, in a long programmatic speech to the Board of Governors, Singh called atomic energy “the epitome of modern science and technology.” He reminded his fellow governors that the developing states “wanted to see their populations rise from the abyss of poverty through modern science and industrialization” and that “the establishment of a central electricity generation system was essential” for this purpose. Despite the economic benefits of nuclear energy, intellectuals from the Western industrialized states propagated the “view that atomic energy had many negative aspects and that it would be better for the developing world to opt for ‘alternative,’ ‘appropriate,’ or ‘small-­scale’ technology.” Singh accused Western governments of being patronizing ­toward the South and of attempting to instrumentalize the discussion about the environmental and health risks of nuclear energy to keep the Global South away from sophisticated nuclear technologies.24 He also accused the IAEA of being complacent in this regard. The agency “had done l­ittle to encourage the least developed of its Member States to develop the know-­how for nuclear power generation.”25 In a small but symbolic step, the Department of Technical Assistance was renamed the more inclusive-­sounding Department of Technical Cooperation in 1981. Somewhat typical of large bureaucracies’ ­handling of complicated issues, the IAEA leadership responded to the developing states’ allegations by preparing large reports, in their case on the prospects for nuclear energy in developing countries.26 In December 1985, the IAEA announced “its largest-­ever technical assistance and cooperation programme” for the following year. Sold through superlatives by the IAEA’s press releases, the initiative was large, with a bud­get of $38.6 million, representing about one-­fourth of the agency’s overall bud­get.27 In spring 1987 in Geneva, the United Nations held the Conference for the Promotion of International Co-­operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, a major diplomatic gathering to discuss the introduction of nuclear power in

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developing countries.28 The non-­aligned states had been calling for such a conference since the late 1970s, when many countries in Africa, Asia, and Latin Amer­i­ca began to show a keen interest in nuclear power. The choice of Geneva as the location for the conference indicated that it was largely considered a po­ liti­cal event, rather than a technical meeting and concerned the agenda of the United Nations more than the IAEA. The initiators of the conference believed they could achieve more at the United Nations than at the IAEA.29 In addition, the developing countries tried to increase their influence on the Board of Governor’s decision-­making. They had held a ­simple, numerical majority in the agency’s most power­ful policy-­making organ since the early 1970s, and they could obtain a two-­t hirds majority on issues supported by the Soviet Union and its allies. Equipped with this leverage, ­t hese states challenged what had become an essential part of the board’s decision-­making pro­cesses: attaining consensus. Traditionally, the board, dominated by superpower concerns, tried to solve controversial issues by consensus instead of pressing for a vote (some of the notable exceptions however being decisions on critical safeguards issues, which ­were often put to a vote). ­Because of this approach, the board managed to operate rather smoothly, even during tenser phases of the Cold War, and was much less s­ haped by propaganda ­battles than other international forums. Usually, before impor­t ant board meetings, the representatives of the Soviet Union and the United States met bilaterally as well as with their respective allies to sort ­t hings out. This traditional consensus procedure, now being challenged by new majorities on the board, had been to the advantage of the two superpowers and the major industrialized states.30 In 1985, Singh again provided the most attention-­grabbing assessment of the IAEA’s established routines. He criticized the advance consultations between certain groups of states as well as the informal consultations ­behind closed doors in the office of the board’s chair. For Singh, t­ hese practices had nothing to do with “the normal demo­cratic pro­cess of healthy and reasoned debate, resolutions and, when necessary, voting.” He regretted that the Board only met four or five times a year and not as frequently as during the agency’s early years; fewer board meetings meant fewer occasions for decision-­making by vote. The Board of Governors had “moved away from the youthful, occasionally contentious and vigorous functioning of its e­ arlier days to an elitist, easy-­going approach—­perhaps the somnolent ways of ­middle life.”31 The debates over technical assistance in the 1970s and 1980s, and the developing countries’ desire for more input in IAEA decision-­making, became the backdrop for the crises that developed around the South African and Iraqi nuclear programs.

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Nuclear Frankenstein In late February 1979, the United Nations Special Committee against Apartheid or­ga­nized a two-­day seminar in London. The British capital, an impor­tant center of the global anti-­apartheid movement, was home to a number of leading South African anti-­apartheid activists in exile. T ­ hese international initiatives included the World Campaign against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa, founded by Abdul Minty, a South African exile, in 1979. The anti-­ apartheid movement had been warning the international community about Pretoria’s nuclear weapons ambitions since the late 1960s, but only during the course of the 1970s would worldwide suspicions about South Africa’s nuclear weapons become a point of international concern. It seemed likely that South Africa—­politically isolated on the African continent, not far from civil war in postcolonial Angola (and involved in it since 1975), and equipped with an advanced nuclear infrastructure—­might indeed be enhancing its weaponry. Declassified rec­ords from the South African archives have since confirmed that by the end of the 1970s, as the historian Anna-­Mart van Wyk notes, “South Africa could be considered a de facto nuclear weapon state.”32 By then, Pretoria had made the official decision to develop nuclear weapons and had assembled enough high enriched uranium (HEU) to build its first gun-­t ype nuclear weapon. While at that time the international community did not know the extent or state of South Africa’s military nuclear capabilities, ­there w ­ ere a number of worrying signs that it had more than peaceful nuclear intentions. In July 1977, Soviet satellites photographed what looked like and was ­later confirmed to be an under­ground nuclear test site in the Kalahari Desert. The Soviets shared this information with the Americans, who agreed on their alarming interpretation of the imagery.33 In September 1979, an American satellite, Vela, detected a mysterious flash in the South Atlantic that experts believed might be a nuclear weapon test and a potential sign of Israeli-­South African nuclear cooperation. The “Vela incident” remains a topic of controversy ­today.34 At the UN seminar in London, Minty called South Africa a “nuclear Frankenstein,” a manmade evil creature brought to life by the West.35 Minty was certain that South Africa had nuclear weapon capabilities, that it could not have managed to build the weapons without the support of the Western industrialized states, and that the IAEA and other organ­izations should halt all nuclear collaboration with South Africa. It was not surprising that the United Nations, which had initiated campaigns against apartheid South Africa since 1950, sponsored the London seminar. By contrast, the IAEA had traditionally been softer on Pretoria than other UN

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organ­izations. The South African government had secured itself a rather comfortable seat at the agency due to its active involvement in the organ­ization’s establishment as well as having huge uranium mines and being of geostrategic importance for the West. Even as a non-­signatory of the NPT, South Africa participated in many IAEA activities, including nuclear safeguards. The SAFARI-1 research reactor in South Africa, built as part of an Atoms for Peace agreement with the United States and commissioned in the 1960s, had been put u ­ nder 36 IAEA safeguards in 1976. International solidarity with the anti-­apartheid movement grew ­after the South African police brutally suppressed a student demonstration in Soweto in June 1976, killing hundreds, and security forces tortured and killed the anti-­ apartheid activist Steve Biko in detention in September 1977.37 ­Because of the apartheid regime’s increasing vio­lence, even South Africa’s allies and friends ­were less willing to publicly stand beside Pretoria. In 1977, the UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on South Africa.38 ­Because of the international pressure and Pretoria’s nuclear ambitions, South Africa’s status in the IAEA grew shaky, with the anti-­apartheid movement playing a key role in developments. Minty regularly traveled to Vienna to try to convince representatives of IAEA member states and the secretariat to cut Pretoria off from foreign nuclear materials and equipment.39 A new form of transnational diplomacy, conducted by nongovernmental organ­izations and other civil society actors, began playing out at the IAEA, transforming it from a forum for science diplomacy among national del­e­ga­tions to a global platform for a host of po­liti­cal actors.40

Apartheid or Apartheid with the Atomic Bomb The office of IAEA director general Eklund observed South Africa’s growing isolation in the agency’s policy-­making organs with concern, worried that it might drag the agency into the ­middle of a conflict between member states. In fall 1976, the IAEA General Conference in Rio de Janeiro ­adopted a resolution, introduced by the G-77 and supported by other member states, requesting that the Board of Governors review the long-­standing designation of South Africa as the member state representing the Africa region. By statute, the seat on the board should be assigned to the country in Africa determined to be the “most advanced in the technology of atomic energy including the production of source materials.”41 The resolution asserted, however, that South Africa was not a legitimate candidate to represent African interests on the Board of Governors as ­t here was “no form of co-­operation whatsoever in the peaceful uses of atomic energy between South Africa on the one hand and the rest of Africa on the other.” It also cited UN General

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Assembly resolutions against South Africa and condemned “apartheid as a crime against humanity.”42 The government in Pretoria had good connections in the director general’s office in Vienna. David Fischer, a former South African diplomat involved in IAEA m ­ atters since the agency’s inception, was the division director for external relations. Fischer’s ­career at the IAEA was made pos­si­ble by the organ­ization’s formal distinction between diplomacy and bureaucracy. As an international civil servant, Fischer served the interests of the agency, not ­t hose of his home country, which despite its eventual expulsion from the Board of Governors, remained an IAEA member state. (Fischer was promoted to assistant director general for external relations in 1977, the year his government would lose its seat on the board.) In early summer 1977, Merle Opelz, head of the IAEA’s Geneva office and who had guided the agency through the NPT negotiations, prepared a list documenting South Africa’s membership status in other international organ­izations. In terms of international cooperation with the UN system, South Africa’s international rec­ord was damning. Its established, cushy position in the IAEA stood in stark contrast to the country’s poor standing in other UN organ­izations and specialized agencies. Opelz’s list revealed that South Africa had withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organ­ization in 1956 and from the International ­Labour Organ­ization in 1966. It had also been a member of the World Health Organ­ization u ­ ntil the 17th World Health Assembly suspended its voting rights in 1964. The International Telecommunication Union expelled the apartheid state in 1965, and the Universal Postal Union followed suit in 1974.43 In light of South Africa’s isolation in most UN organ­izations, it is in­ ter­est­ing to recall that during the negotiations on the IAEA’s statute, the South African del­e­ga­t ion worked hard to convince the other found­ers to permit the agency to operate as in­de­pen­dently as pos­si­ble from the United Nations. Obviously, establishing the IAEA as an autonomous international organ­ization allowed Pretoria to maintain its involvement in the agency’s policy-­making organs for longer than it had in similar international bodies.44 Around the time that Opelz compiled her list, an internal IAEA memorandum revealed that South Africa apparently had a sympathetic ear in the director general’s office. According to the anonymous writer of the memorandum, it would constitute a “clear violation” of the IAEA statute should South Africa lose its quasi-­permanent seat on the Board of Governors. The country had held the position since 1957, a situation that the non-­a ligned states and the Eastern bloc ­vehemently criticized. The author of the memorandum argued that any further

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debate of more general po­liti­cal developments would dangerously harm the IAEA, which was supposed to be a technical organ­ization. She or he emphasized that it was essential for the IAEA to inspire “confidence in its objectivity, in its impartiality and in its imperviousness to po­liti­cal prejudice.” Given this, only South Africa’s rec­ord with the agency, not its domestic politics, mattered: “South Africa has, throughout, scrupulously honoured all its obligations ­under the Statute of the Agency. ­T here is ample evidence of the constructive role South Africa has played . . . ​in the Agency from its founding days.”45 Rec­ords from the South African Foreign Ministry reveal that Pretoria had access to inside information at the IAEA secretariat. The South African ambassador in Bonn, K. R. S. von Schirnding, received on “a personal basis” memoranda of conversation that concerned South Africa from “a contact in the IAEA Secretariat.”46 Von Schirnding, previously based in Vienna, continued to represent South Africa on the Board of Governors a­ fter being transferred to Bonn; a number of governors w ­ ere not based in Vienna, but flew in for board sessions.47 A “se­ nior official of the IAEA” also informed Pretoria about the activities of their “old friend” Abdul Minty in Vienna.48 South Africa’s good standing in parts of the secretariat could not prevent its gradual decline in the agency’s policy-­making organs. That South Africa had not signed the NPT complicated the issue, but this mattered much more for the Western countries than for the non-­aligned states. While the West considered the Arab states, particularly Libya and Egypt, to be likely ­f uture proliferators, they eventually became parties to the NPT. Libya, which signed the treaty in 1968, ratified it in 1975, Egypt in 1981. For the Americans, South Africa signing the NPT also took priority, and they ­were willing to reward such a step by again providing it high enriched uranium, which they had ­stopped ­doing in 1975. The US ambassador to the international organ­izations in Vienna, Gerard Smith, who played a key role in shaping President Jimmy Car­ter’s nonproliferation policy, expected that black members of Congress would oppose such a deal, but he believed in “the justification of his formula—­apartheid or apartheid with the atomic bomb.”49 If South Africa’s domestic politics could not be changed, at least its defense policy might be. For the non-­aligned states, particularly the African countries, South Africa’s potential accession to the NPT was not the divisive ­factor. Two weeks before the crucial board session to determine South Africa’s f­ uture in the policy-­making body, the Nigerian ambassador to Austria, Oluyemi Adeniji, explained his position to American and British representatives at a meeting in Vienna that representatives of Australia, Pakistan, Egypt, and Libya also attended. According to a

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British embassy report on the meeting, Adeniji explained that “the African countries would prefer South Africa to sign the Non-­Proliferation Treaty but they ­were not worried if she did not so [sic] ­because they did not believe that South Africa would use nuclear weapons against her neighbours.”50 The main reason for the growing opposition to South Africa within the IAEA was not fear of a South African bomb, or any other nuclear-­related issue, but the condemnation of apartheid. For the African states, Smith’s formula of “apartheid or apartheid without the atomic bomb” was not convincing. In Adeniji’s opinion, the only t­ hing that could change the opposition to Pretoria’s influence in the IAEA was “a change of internal policies by the South African government.”51 ­T here tended to be mutual agreement on the Board of Governors about which states ­were “most advanced” in a certain region. Pre­ce­dents involving more controversial decisions did, however, exist. In the early 1960s, for instance, Argentina and Brazil had competed for the spot reserved for the Latin Amer­i­ca region. The board had then installed a small committee to gather technical data to help it decide which of the two countries was most advanced in nuclear technology and source material production.52 The two regional rivals eventually resolved the issue among themselves and agreed to alternate among the designated and elected seats on the board. In 1976 and 1977, however, the board did not instate such a committee. To the supporters of South Africa and to its opponents, the case seemed clear. South Africa, backed by the West, pointed to its vast uranium reserves and its nuclear infrastructure, the state of which was unmatched by any other African country. For the developing states, on the other hand, South Africa’s racist policy of apartheid, not the state of its nuclear program, was the main argument for not designating it the Africa representative. On 16 June 1977, the day the board met to discuss South Africa’s case, Adeniji reminded the other board members that it was the first anniversary of the Soweto massacre. Like South Africa’s supporters, the non-­a ligned states buttressed their argument by referring to the agency’s ­legal foundations.53 For Adeniji, the IAEA’s framework of division by geographic regions meant that a state should not be designated for a certain area “without the goodwill and consent of the rest of the countries in that area.” The designated member state had to have some “representative character” of the region.54 Although Adeniji’s interpretation was not a literal reading of the statute, it could arguably be the spirit of it. The board voted 19–12 to grant Egypt the Africa seat as the “most advanced” member state in the region.55 Western Eu­rope and the United States had sided with South Africa, while the developing countries and the Eastern bloc supported Egypt; Chile and Japan abstained. Western attempts to forge a traditional consensus

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decision in f­avor of South Africa and to prevent a decision by vote failed. The non-­a ligned states, with their growing repre­sen­t a­t ion among the IAEA member states in general and on the board specifically, made use of procedural questions and ­matters of protocol to achieve their aims. The Western states often dismissed ­these tactics as violations of the IAEA statute, invoked to make po­liti­ cal statements.56 In the eyes of the South Africans, its expulsion from the board represented an unwanted and dangerous “politicization” of the agency, as Egypt’s small nuclear program could not compare to the South African one.57 Von Schirnding delivered a long and ­bitter speech to the board, in which he castigated the decision, the pro­ cess, fellow board members, and the agency. For the South African diplomat, his country was the only rightful candidate for the Africa seat: South Africa was the “third largest supplier of uranium in the western world” and had “a large nuclear research establishment with a 20-­MW reactor.” It was also building more facilities, including two power reactors and “a large commercial enrichment plant” (the latter of which was never realized). All this made South Africa the most advanced in terms of nuclear technology and source material production in the Africa region. In relation to South Africa’s nuclear program, Egypt’s was modest, but compared to other nuclear programs in the region it was not. Egypt had begun its nuclear program in the 1950s with the Soviets’ help, but took “a non-­ ideological stance” in terms of the technology’s origin. Gamal Abdel Nasser had established the Egyptian Atomic Energy Commission in 1955, but found it increasingly hard to obtain assistance for its nuclear ambitions, not least ­because of its initial re­sis­tance t­ oward IAEA safeguards, which it only accepted in 1965. Egypt also tried to build nuclear reactors for power generation, but had been unable to convince suppliers due to it not ratifying the NPT u ­ ntil 1981.58 The entire board session was, according to von Schirnding, a “shabby and grotesque masquerade” and the designation of Egypt “a completely illegal action based on internal domestic considerations”—­a “po­liti­cal vendetta” initiated by states of which only few “could escape the charge of dictatorship, oppression and bloodshed in their recent past.” Von Schirnding’s rant culminated in a preposterous declaration: “South Africa was more impor­t ant to the Agency than the Agency was to South Africa.”59 The Western countries all condemned South Africa’s apartheid policies, but they also insisted on resolving the issue before them on technical grounds, which in the context of the debates meant that only qualitative and quantitative data about the South African civilian nuclear program, including mining and sources, would feature. For the governor from Bangladesh, Anwar Hossain, whose coun-

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try had joined the agency shortly ­after its in­de­pen­dence in 1972, such a perspective distorted the agency’s mission. He was “unable to agree that the Agency was a purely technical and not a po­liti­cal body; it was, ­after all not a committee of experts but a policy-­making body concerned with h ­ uman issues.”60 The governor from Yugo­slavia, Milan Osredkar, agreed that the “technical character of the Agency . . . ​could surely not be so technical as to justify ignoring the basic princi­ ples of h ­ uman rights.”61 Two years ­after South Africa lost the Africa seat on the board to Egypt, delegates at the 1979 General Conference meeting in New Delhi, barred the South African del­e­ga­tion from taking its seat (for that year). In short, the industrialized states of the “ideological” West w ­ ere against the proposal, while the so-­called developing countries of the South and East voted in f­avor: similar to the 1977 board decision, the del­e­ga­tion’s credentials ­were rejected on the grounds that the South African apartheid regime did not represent the majority of the South African ­people. Thus, ­here too, South Africa’s domestic politics, not its nuclear capabilities, stood as the primary reason for the action taken. Nigeria had led the initiative with the support of other developing countries plus the Soviet Union. India, the conference host and a fierce critic of South Africa’s racist policies, strongly committed to the proposal.62 Australia, Japan, the United States, and the Western Eu­ro­pean states voted against rejecting the South Africans’ credentials. Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Greece, Spain, Uruguay, the Vatican, and Venezuela abstained. With few exceptions, the vote fell along decolonization and Cold War lines. Turkey made for an in­ter­est­ing case, however, being a NATO member but also participating in the inaugural conference of the Non-­A ligned Movement in Bandung. It voted in ­favor of the Nigerian proposal.

An Attack on the IAEA’s Safeguards System The M ­ iddle East experienced several crises in the late 1970s and early 1980s. At that time, it stood at the center of the world’s attention with the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon in 1978, the Ira­nian Revolution and Soviet invasion of Af­ghan­i­stan in 1979, followed by the outbreak of the Iran-­Iraq War in 1980. Then on 7 June 1981, eight F-16 fighter jets, accompanied by six F-15 jets, flew over Jordan and Saudi Arabia to Iraq, where their missiles destroyed the 40 MW(th) Tammuz-1 research reactor at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, just outside Baghdad. Ten Iraqi soldiers and a French reactor specialist died in the air strike, which the Israelis planned and executed in utmost secrecy. The attack even caught US intelligence agencies by surprise.63

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Rich in oil, Iraq had sufficient financial resources to invest in the development of a nuclear energy program and to acquire fuel and technology from abroad. France, at the time one of the world’s most active nuclear suppliers, had provided the Iraqis with the reactor, motivated by the prospect of privileged access to Iraqi oil. The French provenance of the reactor was also reflected in its name, Osirak, an Osiris reactor. The Israeli government justified the operation based on its suspicion that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein would use the reactor to build nuclear weapons, which he could then use to threaten Israel. The Arab-­Israeli conflict had been ongoing for more than 30  years, and Iraq had been involved in three major Arab wars against Israel, in 1948, 1967, and 1973. Israel therefore viewed Iraq as a threat and refused to take the chance of Baghdad acquiring nuclear weapons. According to Israeli intelligence estimates, Iraq’s Osirak reactor, in the final stages of construction when Israel destroyed it, would have been operational by July  1981. Israeli prime minister Menachem Begin believed that fast, unilateral action was the only way to end Iraq’s nuclear weapons aspirations and argued that Israel had to attack when it did to eliminate the risk of releasing radiation once the reactor came online. Observers also believed that the timing of the attack had some relevance to Israeli domestic politics, with parliamentary elections set for the end of June.64 Both Israel and Iraq had been IAEA members since 1957, but unlike Iraq, Israel had not signed the NPT. While Israel has never officially acknowledged having nuclear weapons, its clandestine nuclear weapon program, established in the 1950s, became the “worst-­kept secret” in the international nuclear order.65 The Israelis believed that the IAEA was not strong enough to prohibit a secret Iraqi nuclear weapon program. ­Until the Osirak strike, the IAEA had never been in the m ­ iddle of such high-­power politics, and never had a state destroyed a nuclear reactor in a military attack in the name of nonproliferation.66 (Eight months prior, at the beginning of the Iran-­Iraq War, Iran had flown an air strike against the Tuwaitha site, damaging the reactor, but not destroying it.) As Hans Grümm, director of the Department of Safeguards, put it, “[O]ur fantasy did not move us to expect an event like the Israeli attack on Iraq’s Tamuz research reactor.”67 The strike was soon acknowledged as the beginning of a new era in the IAEA’s history. A de­cade ­after the international community introduced a global nonproliferation regime in the provisions of the NPT, the Israelis categorized their air raid as an act of what in the 1990s would be called “counterproliferation.” Disregarding efforts to prevent the distribution and development of nuclear weapons through ­legal means, individual states or groups of states now began to act outside international frameworks in the name of proliferation prevention.

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On 9 June 1981, two days ­after the Israeli attack, IAEA director general Eklund opened the traditional June meeting of the Board of Governors with a long statement on the situation. He sharply condemned the air strike and said it could have serious implications for the nonproliferation regime in par­tic­u­lar and international peace more generally. During his time at the IAEA, “he did not think the Agency had faced a more serious question than the long-­term implications of the pre­sent development.” Eklund assured the governors that the IAEA “had inspected the Iraqi reactors and had not found evidence of any activity which was not in conformity with the Non-­Proliferation Treaty.” He criticized Israel, a “non-­ NPT country,” for mistrusting the effectiveness of IAEA safeguards and then bluntly stated, “From [a] point of princi­ple, one could only conclude that it was the Agency’s safeguards regime which had also been attacked.”68 Eklund thus accused an IAEA member state of damaging the agency, an unusually harsh assertion for Eklund, who had a reputation of being “restrained.”69 The director general was not alone with his assessment. The international community, including the United States, Israel’s most impor­tant international partner, condemned the attack. Austrian federal chancellor Bruno Kreisky accused Israel of having acted according to the “law of the jungle.” 70 Bertrand Goldschmidt, the long-­ standing IAEA board member from France, echoed Kreisky’s thinking.71 From another perspective, the Israeli air raid was a military attack by one IAEA member state on the nuclear fa­cil­i­t y of another member state. ­T here was nothing on the books about how the agency should respond. Although the attack was obviously a ­matter of concern for the IAEA, strictly speaking, military attacks ­were none of the agency’s business. Eklund dwelled on the strike at the opening of the board session, but the governors could only discuss it further if they added it to the official agenda. The director general signaled that he wanted the governors to discuss the m ­ atter, declaring it an attack on IAEA safeguards. The Swedish representative, Carl Tham, agreed, but emphasized the necessary focus on implications for the IAEA’s safeguards systems. To deal with broader consequences, he said, would be “outside the Agency’s sphere of competence.”72 The West German representative, Reinhard Loosch, similarly reminded his fellow governors of the IAEA’s founding princi­ple of being a technical organ­ization. Other po­liti­cal forums, such as the UN Security Council, ­were responsible for looking into the Osirak case “from a po­liti­cal a­ ngle.” 73 The Iraqi repre­sen­ta­tion, keen to discuss the attack, proposed the agenda item “Military Attacks on Peaceful Nuclear Facilities of a Member State of the Agency.” The Egyptian delegate, Essam El-­Din Hawas, was the first to support the Iraqi proposal.74 ­A fter some discussion, the issue was added to the agenda, but in line

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with the traditional, non-­accusatory culture of the IAEA, it was listed as “Military Attack on Iraqi Nuclear Research Center and Its Implications for the Agency,” thus limiting the agenda item to this specific case.75 Heated discussion about the Israeli air raid continued at the next day’s board session. Tham pointed out that the attack was in violation of international law: since 1977, a supplementary protocol to the Geneva Convention on Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflict banned attacks on nuclear installations.76 The African states linked Israel to South Africa, asserting that Israel had secretly became a nuclear weapon state and had collaborated with apartheid South Africa.77 Moreover, in the eyes of the non-­aligned states, both South Africa and Israel ­were colonial powers that enforced similar systems of apartheid on large parts of their population and against their neighbors. According to Hawas, the attack set a “very dangerous pre­ce­dent, for the South African regime would, in order to prevent any attempt by African States to engage in peaceful nuclear activities, gladly copy what Israel had done.” He added, “[T]he military experts of the two countries ­were no doubt already exchanging information (as they had done in the past) with a view to similar actions against African states.” 78 Iraq wanted the IAEA to respond strongly to Israel and proposed a resolution for adoption by the board.79 Although a majority of board members wanted to pass a resolution that condemned the Israeli attack, for many of them, especially for the United States, the tone and the content of the Iraqi proposal ­were too strong. ­T here was a general understanding that in light of the extraordinary situation, the agency should display una­nim­i­t y to the world. Yugo­slavia thus introduced a new draft resolution ­after consultations with other del­e­ga­tions.80 Whereas the Iraqi resolution recommended to the 1982 General Conference “the suspension of the membership of Israel in the Agency,” the toned-­down Yugo­slav version only asked the conference “to consider all the implications of this attack, including suspending the exercise by Israel of the privileges and rights of membership.”81 The United States and Canada ­were the only states to vote against the Yugo­ slavs’ resolution; Sweden, Switzerland, and Australia abstained.82 The other Western members of the board, among them the Federal Republic of Germany and the United Kingdom, criticized parts of the Yugo­slav resolution but never­ theless voted for it. This was the first time that a large majority of IAEA board members across po­liti­cal, ideological bound­aries agreed on reconsidering the membership status of a member state. Israel, which was not a board member, asked to be heard by the board—­most likely to try to justify the strike—­but the request was denied. While the United States and its friends voted in ­favor of

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the Israeli request, the Soviet bloc as well as the non-­aligned states and Pakistan voted against it. Brazil abstained.83 Five days a­ fter the attack on Osirak, on 12 June, Eklund shared with the board the latest information from the Department of Safeguards. Safeguards information was usually confidential, but ­because of the seriousness of the situation, the secretariat de­cided to share the information with the press.84 When Grümm published an article about Osirak in the IAEA Bulletin, he explic­itly stated that “in this case” he could “go beyond the very tight rules for protecting safeguards information,” b ­ ecause so much of it was already in the public domain.85 ­Until then, the IAEA had l­ ittle experience with sharing this kind of confidential safeguards information with the media. Both the safeguards department’s report and Grümm’s article summarized the IAEA’s technical verification responsibilities and discussed the likelihood of Iraq having v­ iolated its obligations u ­ nder the NPT. In regard to the latter, Iraq may have illegally tried to divert HEU fuel ele­ ments, delivered by France, from declared civilian nuclear facilities to secret military ones, and as Israel suspected, might be able to produce plutonium without declaring it to the agency. While Tammuz-1 could not be used to separate large amounts of plutonium from spent nuclear fuel, the Israelis argued that it could be quickly modified to produce more plutonium. The report by the safeguards department concluded that both possibilities ­were unlikely. The reactor was designed in a way that the diversion of fuel ele­ments “would be detected with very high probability,” and the production of significant quantities of plutonium “would be easily detected.”86 In addition, the French HEU was pre-­irradiated, which made its h ­ andling hazardous. In short, the report did not claim that t­ hese two methods ­were impossible, but that they could not be “technically excluded.”87 The bottom line of the IAEA’s official statements at the time was that its safeguards system was reliable and that Israel’s assessment was incorrect.

A Nuclear Inspector Resigns The attack on Osirak occupied not only the IAEA’s policy-­making organs, but its staff of international civil servants as well. Agency inspectors had visited Tammuz-1 in January 1981, and another inspection had been scheduled for June.88 A week ­after the Israeli air strike, the crisis took on a new dimension when the Roger Richter, an American IAEA inspector, resigned, linking his decision to the agency’s per­for­mance in Iraq.89 Causing a scandal, Richter—an international civil servant who was supposed to act on the agency’s behalf, not that of a government—­publicly agreed with Israeli prime minister Begin that IAEA had

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failed in its job at Osirak. Less than two weeks ­after the Israeli attack and three days ­after submitting his resignation, he appeared for public testimony in front of the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Never in the history of the IAEA had a letter of resignation by a staff member caused as much uproar as the one Richter sent to Director General Eklund on 16 June 1981.90 Richter had joined the IAEA’s Department of Safeguards in early 1978, and ­after a short stint in the section responsible for Euratom, he worked as a security officer in the section responsible for the ­Middle East; he had been involved in the negotiation of the safeguards agreement that covered Osirak.91 Richter was not a very se­nior staff member of the safeguards department.92 He admitted to the Senate committee that he had never been on an inspection team in Iraq, a fact that he blamed on the agency.93 “Since 1976, all inspections performed in Iraq have been conducted by Soviet and Hungarian nationals,” Richter said in his devastating review of the agency’s safeguards system. He noted that despite the international composition of the agency’s inspectorate, the country being inspected had “the right to veto inspectors from what­ever country they choose.” This was a standard feature of all safeguards agreements. Richter’s strategy to convince the committee members of his view was to have them picture themselves as agency inspectors. He took them on an imaginative tour to Iraq, step by step, to show them how ­limited their authority was as international inspectors: the dates of the inspections had to be announced weeks before the visit, and the available documentation for preparing for the visit was fragmentary. Once in Iraq, inspectors ­were only allowed to look at what had been declared to the agency, and as Richter was quick to add, safeguards did not cover all nuclear materials. For instance, yellowcake, powdery uranium oxide, was not subject to safeguards although its production was an early step ­toward making nuclear fuel. Richter said that the IAEA had “perhaps the most impor­tant job of all international agencies,” but he described the inspector’s job as dull and futile: “The difficult part of the job is that you must prepare yourself mentally to ignore the many signs that may indicate the presence of clandestine activities ­going on in the facilities adjacent to the reactor.”94 Richter’s portrait of the agency’s inspectorate was far from the “UN’s nuclear cops,” as a New York Times article described it.95 In Richter’s eyes, the agency’s safeguards system was “totally incapable” of preventing the secret development of nuclear weapons: “The IAEA does not look for clandestine operations. The IAEA in effect conducts an accounting opera­ ere a key part of the agency’s nuclear tion.”96 While accounting procedures w verification activities, Richter’s testimony conjured a negative ste­reo­t ype of in-

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spectors as blinkered pencil-­pushers. The former inspector also criticized the NPT’s promise of peaceful nuclear assistance. For exporting states, pointing to the fact that a recipient of nuclear-­related technical assistance had signed the NPT was an easy way to silence doubts about the recipient’s peaceful intentions. The treaty thus absolved the nuclear suppliers “of their moral responsibility by shifting it to the IAEA.”97 Eklund responded to Richter’s accusations in a 6 July statement to the Board of Governors. He could hardly hide his fury over the “misconduct” of the former staff member.98 Eklund accused Richter of having v­ iolated the IAEA’s staff regulations by sharing confidential safeguards documents with the US Mission to the International Organ­izations in Vienna before his resignation. To ­counter Richter’s allegations that the IAEA had been unable to prevent Iraq from building nuclear weapons, Eklund emphasized that Tammuz-1 would have been subject to much more rigorous safeguards mea­sures ­after it began operating. Eklund was worried that the military attack on the reactor might have lasting consequences for the global nuclear order. The fading confidence in the agency’s safeguards system among nuclear suppliers could result in the decline of nuclear sharing and possibly lead to emphasizing nuclear denial, unsettling the priorities of the IAEA’s dual mandate: “I am afraid that following the Baghdad incident, ­t here may be renewed attempts to impose new restrictions and constraints on certain areas of peaceful nuclear technology with a view to preserving them exclusively for certain countries.”99 For Eklund, the promises of the NPT’s bargain had to be kept by both the nuclear haves and the nuclear have-­nots. In this par­t ic­u ­lar case, however, his thinking was not balanced ­toward the two state parties. At least publicly, he did not doubt that Iraq, which had signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA in 1973, was keeping its side of the bargain, while he did not hold back on criticism of Israel.100 The Richter case brought to the fore the issue of civil servants’ po­liti­cal neutrality. Richter was married to an Israeli and had forwarded safeguards documents on Iraq to the US mission in 1980. The question of ­whether international civil servants w ­ ere f­ ree of national interests was an old one. The Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had once famously said that while t­here w ­ ere neutral coun101 tries, t­ here ­were “no neutral men.” In fact, the IAEA and other international organ­izations ­were widely suspected of being full of spies, with some of the cases making headlines. In 1975, the Austrians uncovered that Wadim Rasbitnoi, an IAEA nuclear physicist and local resident, was a KGB agent.102 The East German IAEA official Peter Adler, a section head in the Department of Technical Assistance,

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defected to West Germany with his f­ amily in 1985, and a­ fter the fall of the Iron Curtain, he learned from East German secret police (STASI) files that he and his friends had been closely monitored in Vienna. A ­ fter Adler’s escape to the West, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), the West German foreign intelligence ser­v ice, interviewed him over a number of weeks.103 While sources on the activities of intelligence agencies at the IAEA are spotty, it is clear that member states took the opportunity to put intelligence staff on the agency’s payroll to gather information.

The IAEA’s Debut at the Security Council The Osirak incident catapulted the IAEA to the center of international power diplomacy. For the first time in the agency’s history, its director general appeared before the UN Security Council.104 The IAEA statute determined and the NPT confirmed that the agency had no means to enforce or punish violators. It only had the power to report any cases of state noncompliance to the Security Council. That aside, the Osirak incident brought the director general to the Security Council for a dif­fer­ent reason—­not ­because Iraq, as the state ­under suspicion of bypassing IAEA safeguards, had to explain itself before the United Nations, but ­because Iraq accused Israel of circumventing the international system. Shortly a­ fter the Israeli attack, Iraq had called for an emergency session of the Security Council.105 For one of the meetings, held 19 June, Eklund had been invited to give testimony. According to Eklund, Iraq “complied fully with the inspections.” He repeated his view that the Israeli air raid was an attack on the IAEA’s safeguards system. The Security Council unanimously a­ dopted Resolution 487 in which it “strongly” condemned the Israeli attack as a “clear violation of the Charter of the United Nations.” Even the UN representative of Israel’s closest international partner, US Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, supported the international community’s condemnation of the attack. Resolution 487 echoed Eklund’s view that the attack constituted “a serious threat to the entire safeguards regime.” In line with the NPT, the resolution confirmed the “inalienable sovereign right of Iraq and all other States, especially the developing countries” to use “nuclear technology for their economic and industrial development.” It “urgently” called on Israel to place all its nuclear facilities u ­ nder IAEA safeguards.106 Despite the unan­i­mous condemnation of the Israeli attack, a number of states shared Israel’s concerns about Iraq’s nuclear intentions. Since 1979, Saddam Hussein had hinted that Iraq might embark on a nuclear weapon program. While ­there was no precise plan at the time, Iraqi scientists had been tasked with exploring the technical aspects of building a national nuclear weapon program.107

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On 19 June 1981, the UN Security Council unanimously a­ dopted Resolution 487, “strongly” condemning Israel’s 7 June 1981 attack on Iraqi nuclear installations near Baghdad. © UN

France, as the provider of Tammuz-1, had been concerned about Iraq’s pos­si­ble nuclear weapons ambitions, and therefore, in discussions with the Iraqis, had recommended that they use so-­called caramel fuel—­which was only enriched to 9% U235 and hence less proliferation sensitive—­instead of HEU for the reactor. The Iraqis insisted, however, on the initial deal with the French, which involved the use of HEU. By June 1981, 12 kilograms of HEU had been delivered to Baghdad and stored at the smaller neighboring fa­c il­i­t y, Tammuz-2, rather than at Tammuz-1. France would deliver additional HEU as needed to avoid stockpiling. In mid-­June  1981, France revealed that French technicians would have been involved in the operation of Tammuz-1 u ­ ntil 1989, which would have been an additional safeguard.108 France was not alone in helping build Iraq’s nuclear program. The Soviet Union had delivered a small research reactor in the 1960s. Italy provided uranium fuel and radiochemical laboratories, as well as 4,000 kilograms of natu­ ral uranium and 508 kilograms of uranium fuel pellets. Portugal and Niger each provided 100 kilograms of natu­ral uranium. In summer 1979 in light of t­ hese sales, the US Arms Control and Disarmament Agency concluded that Iraq’s cooperation with Italy and France posed “a potentially dangerous situation.”109

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The US State Department, equally concerned about Osirak, asked the IAEA to press Iraq for more insight into its nuclear activities.110 The State Department requested that the US mission in Vienna “inform the agency at appropriately high levels of this concern.”111 According to US sources, the IAEA’s bureaucracy may already have been concerned itself. A mission cable to Washington reported that according to the director general’s office, the IAEA was “considering suggesting to French not rpt [repeat] not ship any further fuel to Iraq at pre­sent.”112

A Diplomat at the Top In summer 1979, the IAEA moved its headquarters from the former G ­ rand ­Hotel in Vienna’s city center to the Vienna International Centre (VIC), a newly constructed building complex on the Danube. In addition to the IAEA, the VIC also ­housed the young United Nations Industrial Development Organ­ization and a small UN administrative office. Other UN-­related organ­izations would follow. The UN office made Vienna the third official site of the world organ­ization, ­after New York and Geneva. Nairobi would become the fourth in the 1990s. While the Austrian government’s se­lection of the architect Johann Staber to design the VIC and the im­mense costs of an adjacent congress center created domestic turmoil, the two major Austrian po­liti­cal parties—­the governing Socialists and opposition Conservatives—­agreed that neutral Austria would benefit from being a home to the United Nations. Soon a­ fter the IAEA’s relocation to its new headquarters building, the agency elected a new director general. In 1979, Eklund, approaching his 70th birthday, announced that he would not run for another term.113 Eklund had been at the top of the agency for almost 20 years, during which time he ­shaped the organ­ization’s profile as a scientific and technical organ­ization and himself symbolized continuity. The change in leadership would overlap with the Iraq crisis. Eklund’s term was scheduled to end in late 1981, but the search for potential successors began soon a­ fter his announced retirement. The non-­aligned states ­were the first to commit themselves to a candidate: Domingo L. Siazon, the Philippine ambassador to Austria and delegate on the IAEA’s board. Siazon was not only experienced in IAEA ­matters, but was also an energetic speaker for the interests of the South, or as the US State Department put it, “an aggressive G-77 spokesmen.”114 The United States and the Soviet Union exchanged opinions early on about who they thought should succeed Eklund but feared that a candidate introduced too soon might be easily shot down over the course of the race. The two heads of the countries’ UN missions in Vienna, Smith for the Americans and I. G. Morozov

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for the Soviets, coordinated their government’s activities to find a successor acceptable to the East and the West. This candidate, presumed to be a man, had to have a realistic chance of winning the support of two-­thirds of the board, which would recommend Eklund’s successor to the General Conference. In a somewhat patriarchal but also self-­preserving manner, Eklund interjected himself in the early discussions about his successor, fearing that if the major powers de­cided on their top candidate too early, it would negatively affect his authority as director general.115 The American and Soviet expectations for the agency’s new leader w ­ ere remarkably similar. The Soviets, who often supported non-­aligned positions on the board, made it clear to the Americans that they did not want a NAM representative to run the agency. To help get the IAEA through the tough times, the Soviets hoped to strengthen the NPT regime by prioritizing superpower cooperation over alliance politics and the IAEA’s nonproliferation mandate over its technical assistance mission. They sought a number of key criteria in a director general. He should come from a state that had signed the NPT but was not a developing country or a nuclear weapon state, “someone from Sweden, Finland, or Canada might be good.”116 In addition, the candidate should be knowledgeable about nuclear programs and the IAEA. Interestingly, the Soviets did not rule out an American candidate, in contrast to 1957 and 1961.117 The United States, however, had no interest in putting forward an American candidate, a decision that was linked to another personnel question: John A. Hall, the IAEA’s deputy director general for management, de facto the most influential of the deputy director generals, was about to retire. The Americans wanted to fill that vacancy with one of their nationals, but the spot would likely be claimed by the non-­a ligned states should the director general be an American.118 The Americans found the Soviet criteria “generally unobjectable [sic],” yet “too narrowly defined.”119 In par­tic­u­lar, the Americans thought that knowledge of nuclear programs was not that impor­tant. They preferred someone with a background in management or politics, a perspective shared by most Western states. The Australian ambassador to Austria, James Cumes, believed that the IAEA required a po­liti­cal leader of somewhat high regard: “You need a person of stature who can deal with Foreign Ministers.”120 He mentioned the former West German chancellor Willy Brandt as an example, to illustrate the kind of personality he had in mind, not as a recommendation.121 The US ambassador, Roger Kirk, agreed that it would be “advisable to have someone of substantial stature.”122 ­T here was also consensus that the successful candidate had to be a supporter of nuclear power, an aspect that in light of the growing anti-­nuclear movement

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was more critical than when Eklund entered office in 1961 and nuclear power optimism was mainstream.123 Following some initial restraint, in spring 1979 the Americans supported the candidacy of West German state secretary Hans-­Hilger Haunschild, a somewhat unexpected choice since he came from a NATO country, which was widely regarded as a disadvantage.124 The Soviets wanted neither Haunschild nor Siazon, and eventually Haunschild withdrew. By 1981, the Americans had committed themselves to looking for a Swedish candidate, an idea the Soviets liked. While the names of a few potential Swedish candidates had been debated since 1979, the Americans came up with a new name: Hans Blix, an international l­awyer by training and Swedish ­career diplomat who had briefly held office as foreign minister. Blix had represented Sweden at numerous UN General Conferences and was dedicated to dialog between the developing countries and the industrialized states. Not least impor­tant was that Blix had opposed an anti-­nuclear power referendum in Sweden. Blix was approached rather late in the debate, in spring 1981. While he initially hesitated, as he saw himself as more of an expert in “humanities and history” than in nuclear m ­ atters, he de­cided to give it a try, if only for four years, as he promised his wife.125 According to Goldschmidt’s recollections, “the board of governors was bogged down . . . ​in an unbelievable electoral psychodrama” b ­ ecause of the ongoing and hardened discussions over Eklund’s successor.126 Historians can only rely on ­these recollections of participants and reports of national del­e­ga­tions to ascertain what was g ­ oing on at the board. Most board rec­ords on the debate about Eklund’s successor remain sealed; only the rec­ords on final votes are accessible to researchers. On 18 September 1981, with the General Conference already in session, the board had still not reached consensus.127 On 20 September, a number of candidates whose names had been floated over the previous two years declared that they ­were still interested, among them Blix, Haunschild, and Siazon, but also Claude Zangger.128 On 26 September, the list had been narrowed to Blix and Siazon so a vote was taken. The successful candidate needed a majority, 22 votes, but in the first round Blix received 18 votes and Siazon 15. In the next round, Blix won 23 votes to Siazon’s 10.129 Siazon, experienced in IAEA traditions and the desire for consensus, recommended the nomination of Blix to the General Conference by acclamation rather than a final vote.130 At the General Conference, Algeria, Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and Yugo­slavia urged the board to commit itself to the se­lection of a candidate from a developing country ­after Blix’s term.131 The initiative was watered down to a resolution that called for the consideration of candidates from developing countries

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in the f­ uture.132 On 26 September 1981, the General Conference approved Blix’s nomination.133 Blix represented a new type of leader, personally and professionally: he was approachable, welcomed communications from the IAEA staff, and regularly shopped for groceries in the agency’s commissary. Blix’s wife was a ­career diplomat whose work kept her elsewhere, so Blix had moved to Vienna with one of their sons. Blix’s election corresponded with the gradual replacement of scientific experts with c­ areer diplomats on the Board of Governors. T ­ hese developments showed that many governments no longer viewed the nuclear arena as a circumscribed, technical issue that could be handled by scientists. It was now closely linked to much larger po­liti­cal questions and thus required suitable expertise. The choice of Blix raised the IAEA’s new profile as a po­liti­cal organ­ization. Blix made a few personnel and institutional decisions early on in response to the non-­a ligned states’ criticisms of Israel and their desire for more influence within the IAEA. In 1982, Israel lost its seat on the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), a position it had held since 1973 and that had compensated for it never being a board member.134 Also in 1982, Blix made Mohamed Shaker, an Egyptian,

IAEA director general Sigvard Eklund (left) and his successor, Hans Blix, at agency headquarters, Vienna International Centre, 1 December 1981. © IAEA

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the IAEA’s representative to the United Nations in New York, a post that had typically been held by a KGB officer.135 Shaker had authored an in-­depth study on the NPT and was a respected representative of a non-­aligned country.136 Blix was less cautious than his pre­de­ces­sor and did not always fill positions according to the established traditions and superpower demands. ­These decisions sent an impor­tant message to the developing world and showed that the East-­West conflict was losing its relevance in structuring relations among states on a global scale.

The United States Takes a Break Shortly a­ fter Blix took office, he had to deal with ramifications from the Osirak crisis. Immediately ­after the Israeli attack, the Board of Governors had postponed the final decision on Israel’s ­future IAEA membership to the following year. At the General Conference meeting in September 1982, the attempt to expel Israel from the agency failed to attract the necessary two-­t hirds majority in support.137 Israel’s critics then used an alternative approach to limit its influence in the agency—by rejecting its credentials. Such an approach had been used successfully vis-­à-­v is South Africa in 1977, and unlike the attempt to expel Israel from the agency altogether, it required only a s­ imple majority.138 On the last day of the 1982 session, the General Conference debated withdrawing Israel’s credentials.139 Siazon chaired the meeting. As South Africa had argued, Israel asserted that the IAEA should remain a purely technical organ­ ization. The Israeli representative, Uzi Eilam, director general of the Israeli Atomic Energy Commission, said to the del­e­ga­tions, “­There could be no greater damage to the international non-­proliferation regime than a politicized International Atomic Energy Agency.”140 The Western camp, led by the United States, supported the Israeli stance and claimed that the attempt to reject its del­e­ga­tion’s credentials was “inspired by po­liti­cal considerations that had nothing to do with the Agency’s work.” The Americans announced that they would reconsider their own participation in the IAEA if the conference rejected the Israeli del­e­ga­tion’s credentials.141 The Arab, Eastern Eu­ro­pean, and non-­aligned states from Asia and Africa supported the move against Israel, and the Western Eu­ro­pean states along with US allies in Asia and Africa plus Romania opposed it.142 With the number of supporters and opponents equal, Siazon concluded that the resolution to reject the Israeli del­e­ga­tion’s credentials had not been approved. Confusion, however, ensued. When the secretary read out the names of the states that had participated in the vote, Madagascar’s Hubert Andrianasolo complained that his country’s vote had not been recorded, even though at the time of the vote he had not been in the room. He stated that he was in support of rejecting the credentials of the Israeli

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del­e­ga­tion.143 The director of the IAEA’s ­legal division, L. W. Herron, when asked how to proceed, advised that Madagascar’s vote be counted. Siazon accepted his advice. The United States found it unacceptable and asked for a roll call vote on the ­matter. By a small margin, the General Conference rejected the US appeal.144 A new vote on the question of the Israeli credentials was held, and as expected, the del­e­ga­tion’s credentials ­were rejected.145 Furious, the US del­e­ga­tion left the meeting, as did its allies Italy and the United Kingdom. From September 1982 to February 1983, the United States boycotted the IAEA, a tactic it had used at other UN organ­izations.146 It was in line with a policy to withdraw from any UN body that suspended Israel (or rejected its credentials) and to withhold financial contributions. Since the United States was the IAEA’s most impor­tant sponsor, it had potentially serious implications. The United States did not, however, withdraw its membership. Over the next six months, Blix tried to coax the Americans back into full cooperation with the IAEA. The State Department was open to his initiatives, but Congress was reluctant and wanted the Board of Governors to confirm that Israel remained a fully participating ­ ere rejected on the member state.147 Although the Israeli del­e­ga­tion’s credentials w last day of the General Conference, and the IAEA halted technical assistance proj­ ects with Israel, the country’s membership status had not changed. The conditions laid out by Congress w ­ ere met, but it was hard to convince the Board of Governors to provide the desired statement. Blix came up with a pragmatic solution. On 22 February 1983, he gave the board a statement confirming Israel’s participation in the IAEA, and the board noted it.148 The United States was ready to resume full cooperation with the IAEA. The Ronald Reagan administration used the pullout from the IAEA to review the agency’s benefit to US nonproliferation policies. In October 1982, a CIA memorandum identified three main areas in which the IAEA offered impor­tant advantages over US bilateral safeguards agreements. First, the agency’s safeguards system was widely accepted as it was “administered by an international institution that is po­liti­cally neutral.” Second, the IAEA was a source of intelligence, allowing the United States to obtain “information, not other­wise available, concerning the informal perceptions of IAEA inspectors about the danger of nuclear proliferation in member countries.” Third, the IAEA provided “a con­ve­nient and po­liti­ cally acceptable forum for addressing major proliferation prob­lems posed by certain countries.” The latter aspect was especially impor­tant concerning countries over which the United States had ­little po­liti­cal leverage.149 ­After reengaging at the agency, the United States financed an evaluation of the IAEA’s safeguards per­for­mances, conducted by the British-­A merican-­Canadian

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consultancy firm Coopers and Lybrand. It resulted in, among other t­ hings, the hiring of an American man­ag­er for the safeguards department.150

Reframing Safeguards The Israeli attack on Osirak and apartheid South Africa’s nuclear capabilities continued to occupy the Board of Governors and the General Conference in the coming years. The IAEA continued its inspections at the site ­after Tammuz-1 was again safe to visit. In November 1981, the safeguards department confirmed that ­t here was “no non-­compliance with the Safeguards Agreement concluded between Iraq and the IAEA.”151 Scholars still contentiously debate what effect Israel’s attack on Osirak had on the global nonproliferation regime. While some argue that Israel’s concerns ­were legitimate and action was needed, ­others have concluded that the attack on Osirak encouraged Iraq to follow through with its nuclear weapon ambitions.152 Within the IAEA, the episode launched debate on how to strengthen safeguards. The Department of Safeguards realized that it needed a full understanding of the nuclear programs of member states, not just a list of individual facilities. Although the Iraq case underscored the potential proliferation risks inherent in peaceful nuclear assistance, the IAEA did not carry out a comprehensive review of its technical assistance program ­until 1983. Israel’s air raid also intensified concerns that non-­state actors, that is, terrorists, might attack nuclear ­facilities—­a topic that had first emerged over the course of the 1970s. In 1985, Blix told the board that “the threat of armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities, and how to provide assurances against such attacks” was one “of the most serious prob­lems facing the Agency in recent years.”153 In response to the Israeli attack on Osirak, Blix introduced a new framing of IAEA safeguards. His pre­de­ces­sor, Eklund, shocked by the event and in defense of the agency’s reputation, had stressed the effectiveness of IAEA safeguards, but Blix chose to be more cautious. Soon a­ fter taking up his new job, Blix began to establish a narrative of safeguards as being “a ser­v ice to States wishing to demonstrate through credible safeguards that they are fulfilling their non-­proliferation pledges.”154 While Blix continued to defend the importance of the agency’s safeguards mandate, he was publicly frank about safeguards not being foolproof. At one point, he compared the IAEA’s ser­vices to an “ordinary elevator” that is regularly inspected by a credible com­pany: “If you had a sign saying that the owner of the ­house has inspected it, maybe ­t here w ­ ouldn’t be the same credibility.”155 Blix’s positive framing of safeguards offered a number of advantages over the defensive insistence that IAEA safeguards worked. Indeed, the narrative of safe-

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guards as a ser­v ice spoke to the majority of states that regarded them as a threat to their national sovereignty, especially the growing number of developing countries that ­were disappointed with the NPT regime. By saying that the IAEA “was not a police force,” but an institution that provided a ser­v ice for states to demonstrate their good intentions, Blix focused on the advantages that safeguards could offer them.156 This framing also envisaged potential new roles for the IAEA in nuclear disarmament (more precisely, the verification of nuclear disarmament), a field ­earlier regarded as too po­liti­cal for the agency. In a speech at the New York Bar Association in New York, Blix explained, “I think governments should give some thought to the question ­whether this unique verification system which they have created might not be used—or be used as a model—­for verification in impor­tant nuclear disarmament mea­sures.”157 The late 1970s and early 1980s changed the IAEA in many re­spects. While previously the agency had built a reputation of being a productive and efficient international organ­ization, its “unhealthy” dual mandate of promotional and inhibiting functions came to be increasingly criticized as a nuclear proliferation risk.158 The Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak reactor ended the era of “the IAEA’s historic low profile,” as the media became interested in the Vienna agency’s workings.159 The notion of the IAEA as a “technical organ­ization” evolved from a formula to facilitate consensus on po­liti­cally controversial questions into a buzzword employed by the Western industrialized states to stifle the demands of the Global South. The continuing emphasis on the IAEA’s technical character increasingly turned into a new form of po­liti­cal debate in and of itself.

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chapter eight

Chernobyl

On the morning of 28 April 1986, operators at the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, on the east coast of Sweden, detected unusually high levels of radiation. They soon realized that the alarming numbers w ­ ere not from a local prob­lem. Meteorological analyses suggested that the radiation originated somewhere southeast of Sweden, and chemical testing pointed to a nuclear power plant in the Soviet Union as the likely source. The Swedish minister of energy, Birgitta Dahl, called the International Atomic Energy Agency to ask Director General Hans Blix ­whether the IAEA had any explanations for the worrying data. It did not. Dahl’s call was the first time that the agency had heard about the worst accident at a nuclear power plant to date.1 Two days ­earlier, during the night of 25–26 April, the core of one of four high-­power channel-­t ype reactors (Reaktor Bolschoi Moschtschnosti Kanalny, or RBMK) exploded at the V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, built in northern Ukraine with the intent that it would become the world’s largest such fa­cil­i­ty.2 The RBMKs, a class of graphite moderated light-­water reactors, ­were of military origin and built only in the Soviet Union. During a routine per­for­mance test of the unit’s safety system, the reactor went out of control. A sudden power increase caused an explosion in the reactor core, blowing off the reactor cover and igniting the graphite moderator. Two ­people died immediately from trauma and radiation burns. Highly radioactive particles released into the atmosphere spread as fallout across Eu­rope but most severely contaminated Ukraine, Belarus, and parts of the Soviet Rus­sian Republic.3 If nuclear energy was ever regarded as a “conventional” or “ordinary” source of power, the Chernobyl accident largely dispelled that notion, especially among large segments of the socie­ties in the West as well as in Eastern Eu­rope. Along with photo­graphs of the so-­called liquidators fighting to contain the disaster, the

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information emerging about the accident confirmed the anti-­nuclear movement’s warnings that nuclear power bore ungovernable risks. In March 1979, the partial meltdown at the Three Mile Island Nuclear Power Plant, in Pennsylvania, had invigorated the anti-­nuclear movement across the Western industrialized countries, but the exploded reactor in Ukraine, commonly referred to by the name of the neighboring city of Chernobyl, fundamentally changed the public and po­liti­ cal discourse on nuclear power.4 The Chernobyl disaster forced the IAEA into a defensive posture. The secretariat tried to reinforce that nuclear energy was benign, a message central to the agency’s raison d’être. Yet the growing public rejection of nuclear energy, exacerbated by the accident, called into question the agency’s dual mandate. It challenged the credibility of the IAEA’s promotional mission, which assumed the buildup of civilian nuclear industries to be to the benefit of humanity, and other than the spread of nuclear weapons, not to its harm. The IAEA tried to contain the growing criticism of nuclear power by strengthening its agenda on nuclear reactor safety, u ­ ntil that time typically regarded as the preserve of individual states. The secretariat and the member states worked hard to draft new nuclear safety-­related conventions, but in the eyes of nuclear power opponents, the IAEA’s attempts to reassure the world about the safety of nuclear power plants often came across as a lobbying effort on behalf of the nuclear industry if not outright cynicism. ­A fter the news about Chernobyl broke, the world’s attention turned to the IAEA. For the secretariat and its press office, the ever-­growing public interest in the agency’s job—­first experienced a­ fter the Israeli attack on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor in 1981—­resounded as a culture shock. Known for its tedious and boring press releases, the IAEA’s official updates had previously been considered mostly useless by Vienna-­based journalists.5 During the first few days ­after Chernobyl, the agency could barely ­handle the attention. The IAEA’s functions and responsibilities in such a disaster remained opaque to journalists and the general public, which often thought the world nuclear agency had more regulatory powers than it actually possessed.6 It lacked detailed information about what had happened in Ukraine, how many casualties ­there ­were, and the extent of the damage and pollution caused. The Soviet representative in Vienna, Ambassador Oleg Khlestov, informed the agency about the accident several hours a­ fter Dahl’s call to Blix—­t hat is, three days ­after the explosion. The Soviet government tried to withhold the severity and consequences of the accident from the outside world and from its own citizens. Pripyat, the city built to h ­ ouse the power plant workers, was only evacuated on 27 April. Other heavi­ly contaminated areas ­were evacuated even ­later.

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Fears of radioactive contamination influenced everyday life in large parts of Western Eu­rope during the spring and summer of 1986. Western states recalled their nationals from Ukraine and Belarus. Across Eu­rope, parents kept their ­c hildren off playgrounds and instructed them to stay indoors when it rained.7 Worried farmers in Seibersdorf, near Vienna, brought their produce to the neighboring IAEA laboratories, hoping that the scientists could tell them what of it was safe to eat.8 News of the accident filtered through the Iron Curtain from West to East, where l­ittle information had been shared with the public. While media reports in Western Eu­rope and the United States focused on the drastic consequences of the accident, the IAEA’s press office tried to rebuff “rumours that thousands of ­people, allegedly, perished during the accident.” In its first press release about the accident, on 30 April, the IAEA stated that contrary to the reported large number of victims, “in real­ity two persons died,” and “only 197 ­people w ­ ere hospitalized. . . . ​Enterprises, collective farms and institutions are functioning normally.”9 This was the official information available at the time. The casualty count would soon prove to be overly optimistic and the pacifying tone at odds with the truly catastrophic events. Thirty-­one ­people died in hospital in the first weeks ­after the accident. Many more died months and years ­later or suffered from long-­term illnesses caused by the radiation released. The IAEA was a reluctant messenger in informing the world about the devastating health consequences of Chernobyl.

Public Relations in the Face of Disaster IAEA officials w ­ ere the first non-­Soviet authorities to visit the site of the destroyed reactor, not ­because the agency had the right or an obligation to carry out on-­site inspections in the case of a nuclear accident, but b ­ ecause the Soviets had invited Blix to do so. He received the invitation through the resident Soviet IAEA representative on 4 May. Visas w ­ ere issued overnight, and the next day Blix and two se­nior staff members left for Ukraine via Moscow.10 Accompanying Blix was Leonard Konstantinov, head of the Department of Nuclear Energy and Safety, a position traditionally held by a Soviet, and Morris Rosen, director of the nuclear safety division in Konstantinov’s department, and like his pre­de­ces­sors in that position, an American.11 The leadership of the Department of Nuclear Energy and Safety reflected the typical personnel structure that the Americans and the Soviets had established early on at the agency: wherever t­ here was a Soviet in charge, an American held a key position close to him (on occasion her) and vice versa.12 On 8 May, Blix, Konstantinov, and Rosen toured the site of the accident by he­ li­cop­ter. Black smoke still streamed from the reactor. The three had de­cided to

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wait ­until receiving a full briefing about the most recent events before giving interviews, but when they stepped out of the he­li­cop­ter, a Ukrainian tele­v i­sion team awaited them. “I’m usually a friendly soul,” explained Blix recalling the day, “so I smiled and said that I ­d idn’t r­ eally want to speak. But I ­shouldn’t have smiled, ­because the Swedish media jumped at me and said how can you smile ­after having been ­t here?”13 This anecdote somewhat characterizes IAEA public relations a­ fter the Chernobyl disaster. In the IAEA’s own narrative, the agency managed to provide the world with much needed technical information about the accident, and as its official history puts it, “greatly helped to deepen international understanding of what went wrong.”14 The public statements on the solid safety rec­ord of nuclear energy in the weeks and months a­ fter the accident often made by the IAEA’s leadership came across as eerily out of touch, just as Blix’s smile appeared incongruous to the Swedish press. The IAEA team returned to Vienna on 9 May. As the next regular Board of Governors meeting would not take place ­until mid-­June, the West German mission requested a special meeting to discuss the accident, initially without much success. The ­matter was of par­tic­u­lar urgency for West Germany. The country was an impor­tant member state of the IAEA, having a power­ful nuclear industry and being one of the agency’s top funders.15 At the same time, West Germany was home to a strong anti-­nuclear energy movement that had managed to unite urban left-­w ingers and rural dwellers in the vicinity of nuclear power plants. Frustrated by the lack of pro­g ress, movement activists had entered politics, founding the Green Party and winning seats in the parliament in 1983.16 Ten weeks ­after Chernobyl, the radical Red Army Faction assassinated Karl Heinz Beckurts, the West German nuclear industry man­ag­er and former member of the IAEA’s Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC).17 A long interview with the influential West German weekly Der Spiegel demonstrated Blix and Rosen’s difficulty in speaking convincingly to the Western Eu­ ro­pean public, among whom anxiety ran high.18 The magazine was known for its in-­depth po­liti­cal coverage, usually from a social demo­cratic perspective. During the interview, for the 19 May issue, Blix and Rosen mostly offered vague responses, appearing to evade critical questions. When the two interviewers asked ­whether the Soviets had developed emergency plans for large-­scale nuclear accidents such as the one at Chernobyl, Blix replied that he did not know: “Maybe ­t here w ­ ere such plans, but we did not talk with the Rus­sians about it.” The journalists wanted to know why the IAEA had not asked the Soviets about such plans. “We did not go as a fact-­finding mission, but wanted to talk about international cooperation,” Blix responded.19 The two of them came across as inactive

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bureaucrats, desperately cleaving to dry, neutral language, careful not to make premature statements about the still unfolding disaster. On 12 May, three days ­after returning from Chernobyl, Blix informally briefed the foreign missions in Vienna about his trip. On 21 May, four weeks a­ fter the accident and much ­later than the West Germans had requested, the Board of Governors fi­nally met for a special session on Chernobyl.20 Artati Sudirdjo, from Indonesia, chaired the one-­day meeting; she was the only ­woman heading a del­ e­ga­tion at the session and only the second ­woman to preside over the board.21 By the time of the meeting, the Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, had fi­nally delivered a public statement about the accident, waiting ­until 14 May to do so; it would be three years before he visited the site of the accident. The text of Gorbachev’s statement was circulated among board members as an official board document.22 At the beginning of the meeting, the West German representative, Reinhard Loosch, explained that he had called for the meeting b ­ ecause “fears for personal safety and suspicion about nuclear energy as a w ­ hole” had gripped the West German public.23 Like Loosch, other governors expressed not only worries about the effect of the accident on ­human health and the environment, but also concern about the shaken confidence in nuclear power. Most governors ­were anxious that a­fter Chernobyl, large segments of their countries’ citizenry would not support nuclear power. ­These similarities aside, the governors’ statements also revealed national differences in perceptions of nuclear power’s f­ uture. The French representative, Gérard Errera, warned against putting “nuclear energy itself on trial.” Speaking on behalf of the pro-­nuclear government in Paris, and for the country home to the global nuclear power com­pany Areva, Errera argued against confusing nuclear energy “with an inexorable evil which could not be controlled by ­human hand.”24 France produced 60% of its electricity from nuclear power; the highest percentage by any member state. In contrast to Errera, Finn Erskov, from Denmark, warned against taking the Chernobyl accident lightly. He represented a country without a nuclear energy program, and that like the rest of Scandinavia, was being affected by the radioactive fallout from the incident. In the wake of Chernobyl, the Danish anti-­nuclear energy movement launched an extensive effort to collect signatures to halt nuclear power in neighboring countries.25 Erskov elaborated on the IAEA’s responsibility to inform the public and warned that “if attempts w ­ ere made to conceal, deny or minimize the pos­si­ble ­hazards by saying that they ­were imaginary, purely theoretical or unlikely, the Agency would lose all credibility.”26 Blix frequently cited the argument that nuclear energy did not pollute the air and was carbon-­free. He was prob­ably influenced by the Swedish nuclear energy

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debate of the 1970s, when pro-­nuclear po­liti­cal parties emphasized the environmental advantages of nuclear energy over fossil fuels. The debate about acid rain from burning high-­sulfur coal was central to the rise of Swedish environmentalism.27 In an address to the Eu­ro­pean Nuclear Conference in June  1986, Blix compared the risks involved in nuclear energy production with that of other energy sources, particularly coal: “The Chernobyl plants generated 4000 megawatts of electricity. The same amount of electricity produced by coal w ­ ill cost a certain number of casualties among miners and transport workers, and through pollution it w ­ ill inflict some death or damage upon woods, lakes, land, and cities and cause a certain number of cancer cases. And this w ­ ill happen not as a result of an accident, but u ­ nder quite normal operating circumstances.”28 The use of nuclear energy was “a real­ity,” explained Blix, and would not dis­appear a­ fter Chernobyl, just as other large-­scale industrial and technical proj­ects had not been rejected outright a­ fter major accidents. “Nuclear power is not a luxury we can drop like a garment. Rather it is a real­ity we s­ hall continue to live with.” He referenced the chemical accident at a pesticide plant in Bhopal, India, in 1984, and the explosion of the Challenger space shut­t le in the United States in early 1986: “The Bhopal disaster, with some 2000 deaths, did not stop the chemical industry; it is indispensable. And the Challenger catastrophe is not stopping the US shut­t le programme, w ­ hether indispensable or not. Nuclear power responds to very real needs and w ­ ill also not be s­ topped.”29 Blix’s argument focused on the singularity of the Chernobyl nuclear accident and implicitly argued that the risks involved in nuclear energy generation w ­ ere not exceptionally high. Nuclear power proponents used this as a staple argument to c­ ounter the anti-­nuclear movements’ warnings. Blix referred to examples from outside the nuclear industry to suggest that nuclear power was comparable to other large-­scale technologies, not exceptional, but ordinary. While Blix did not explic­itly call nuclear energy an indispensable source of energy, his comments suggested that he perceived it as such. Some IAEA member states and the anti-­ nuclear movement challenged this framing of the issue. For instance, John Kelso, the Australian governor, emphasized that “a nuclear accident was unlike any other industrial accident.”30 For the IAEA as an institution, nuclear energy was indispensable. Without the existence of nuclear power programs, the agency’s mandate would become nebulous. The high expectations for the development of nuclear power generation had motivated the agency’s creation in the first place. International nuclear cooperation in fields such as agriculture, medicine, and science could be handled by other organ­izations in the UN f­ amily, as the nuclear-­related activities of the

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WHO, FAO, and UNESCO demonstrated. The development of food preservation techniques and other practical applications of nuclear science, though established programs, did not necessarily legitimate the IAEA as a separate international body.31 What is more, beginning in the 1970s, many member states saw the promise of access to fuel cycle–­related technical assistance as the main reason to sign the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and to accept IAEA safeguards at their nuclear facilities. The promise of nuclear power generation made it pos­si­ble to sell the NPT as “a g ­ rand bargain” rather than as a ­grand liability. Also, in 1986, news of impending “UN bankruptcy” made headlines, and the question of the IAEA’s relevance became even more acute. The United States, ­under the Ronald Reagan administration, withheld contributions to the United Nations and criticized the world organ­ization as in­effec­tive; in 1985 it withdrew from UNESCO, a specialized agency.32 For the IAEA’s leadership, it was therefore crucial to emphasize both the benefits of nuclear power and the agency’s relevance as an international institution. To assess the Chernobyl disaster, the IAEA, in cooperation with the Soviet Union, convened the Post-­Accident Review Meeting in Vienna, 25–29 August. Around 600 experts, including 28 delegates from the Soviet Union, gathered at IAEA headquarters to discuss the c­ auses and consequences of the disaster. The participants produced a 382-­page report of their findings and briefed 230 journalists from 20 countries. Only the opening and closing sessions of the conference ­were open.33 Rudolf Rometsch, the Swiss nuclear technology expert and former IAEA governor, chaired the event. It fit the logic of the Cold War to have a scientist from a neutral country preside over the conference. Observers nonetheless believed that Rosen was actually “orchestrating the meeting.” The American had just been promoted to the position of assistant deputy director, and his nuclear safety division had received a bud­get increase of $2.1 million.34 ­After the Post-­Accident Review Meeting, IAEA officials continued to downplay the disaster at Chernobyl. This approach reached its peak in a remark by Rosen to a journalist from Le Monde: even if ­there was a Chernobyl-­like accident e­ very year, Rosen declared boldly, he would still consider nuclear energy an “in­ter­est­ing” source of power.35 Rosen’s crude optimism outmatched that of the other pro-­nuclear diplomats and experts at the IAEA. For example, Georges Vendryes, an influential French nuclear scientist and member of SAC, had come to the conclusion that although nuclear power would survive the recent accident, it “would run a very high risk of being killed off if another Chernobyl occurred in the near f­uture.”36 Although Rosen’s Le Monde comment was one of the most exaggerated public remarks by an IAEA official at the time, over the course of 1986 both he and Blix

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Left to right, Leonard Konstantinov, head of the IAEA’s Department of Nuclear Energy and Safety, Director General Hans Blix, and Morris Rosen, director of the Nuclear Safety Division at the Post-­Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, IAEA headquarters, Vienna, August 1986. © Stefan Katholitzky / IAEA

Journalists at the Post-­Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, IAEA headquarters, Vienna, August 1986. © Stefan Katholitzky / IAEA

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remained fairly consistent in their declarations that nuclear energy was a safe and ecologically friendly source of power generation. This was the central message the IAEA secretariat employed to manage the “nuclear controversy,” as the agency labeled its internal files on the nuclear energy discourse. In November 1986 at a televised speech at the National Press Club, in Washington, DC, Blix argued that nuclear energy was “reliable and economic,” that nuclear waste did not pose a “permanent prob­lem,” and that “Chernobyl was not the worst accident in history.”37 The IAEA’s public relations activities ­after the Chernobyl accident revealed that 30 years a­ fter the agency’s founding, the logic of its dual mandate was increasingly difficult to justify. Traditionally, the IAEA defined its mandate as balancing between the civilian uses of nuclear technologies, regarded as benign, and the military uses, which w ­ ere seen as bad but too po­liti­cal a topic for the agency to tackle. With the growing momentum of the anti-­nuclear power movements in the late 1970s, however, and especially a­ fter Chernobyl, the civilian uses of nuclear energy became a contested topic as well. The IAEA secretariat held tight to the established narrative that the benign aspects of nuclear technology could be separated from the bad, and that its po­liti­cal components could be distinguished from technical ones. A remark by Blix at the conclusion of the Post-­Accident Review Meeting in August 1986 succinctly revealed this mindset. To the participating scientists, he said, “You have not addressed the po­liti­cal question—­which you w ­ ere not asked—­whether risks connected with nuclear power are unacceptably high.”38 In the secretariat’s view, it was not the IAEA’s job to ask the question, but that of the individual member states and their socie­ties.

East-­West Tensions “A nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere.” In the weeks and months following the Chernobyl accident, this became an expression often heard around the IAEA.39 In other words, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, or any nuclear accident, had implications for the nuclear energy discourse globally, and the IAEA as an organ­ization had to draw conclusions from it for its ­future work. Ironically—­and contrary to the agency’s interpretation of “A nuclear accident anywhere is a nuclear accident everywhere”—­the West German anti-­nuclear energy movement ­adopted “Tschernobyl ist überall!” (Chernobyl is everywhere!) as its slogan. Chernobyl was not, however, an unforeseen disaster “anywhere,” but one in the Eastern bloc. In the waning years of the Cold War, the accident refocused the IAEA’s attention away from the ­Middle East and the Global South to the two superpowers and the Iron Curtain dividing their respective zones of influence in Eu­rope.

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That the accident occurred in the Soviet Union s­ haped responses in at least three regards. First, the Western industrialized countries came to view Soviet technology as inferior and disdained the Soviet politics of secrecy and withholding information. In contrast, in Gorbachev’s eyes, the United States had used Chernobyl to launch “an unrestrained anti-­Soviet campaign” that obscured the Americans’ own complacency in coming forward about what had happened at Three Mile Island.40 Second, ­because the Chernobyl reactor was in the Soviet Union, the disaster sparked another round of ideological Cold War ­battles over nuclear disarmament and arms control in the IAEA’s policy-­making bodies. Third, the impact on the po­liti­cal debate about the f­ uture of nuclear power was more significant in Eu­rope and the “Global West,” including for instance Taiwan and South K ­ orea, than it was on the same discourse in the developing states.41 The radioactive fallout from the accident mostly effected Eu­ro­pean countries, and the new nuclear fears boosted the already influential anti-­nuclear power movement in the West. While Moscow tried to suppress an anti-­nuclear energy movement in the Soviet republics, some of its allies, such as Poland and the German Demo­cratic Republic, began to criticize the Soviets’ reluctance to share information about Chernobyl.42 Starting in the late 1970s, the ­human rights movement Charter 77 accused the Czechoslovak government of allowing lax safety standards at nuclear power plants. The beginnings of openness and reform in the Soviet Union also brought to the fore greater public demand for more candor.43 Over the course of the late 1980s, the risk of chemical and nuclear accidents became an impor­tant motivator of civil rights movements in the Eastern bloc, a development that Bulgarians called “eco glasnost.”44 Meanwhile, nuclear energy optimism remained largely alive and well in many parts of the Global South, as the Conference for the Promotion of International Co-­operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy demonstrated one year ­after the Chernobyl accident. While in 1986 almost 80% of the world’s operating nuclear reactors ­were located in member states of the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development, the percentage of new reactors u ­ nder construction was higher in the Eastern bloc and the developing countries of the South. Fifty p ­ ercent of all reactors ­under construction lay outside the West, including in China, an IAEA member state since 1984 and subsequently a permanent board member.45 As an intergovernmental organ­ization, the IAEA had to avoid prioritizing the interests of one group of member states over ­t hose of ­others. The Chernobyl accident increased Western distrust in Soviet technology. Many Western politicians and experts regarded the accident as a consequence of

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the poor safety standards of the eco­nom­ically failing Soviet Union and its politics of secrecy. They believed that the Soviet government cared less for the safety of its citizens than Western governments cared for theirs, a suspicion that seemed to be confirmed by the delayed evacuation of Pripyat, three kilo­meters from the reactor, and other endangered areas. While this view neglected the commitment of many Soviet scientists and reactor operators to nuclear safety, a number of Soviet nuclear experts l­ ater confirmed the Western suspicions as correct. In a 1993 essay for Foreign Affairs, the Russian nuclear physicist Sergei P. Kapitzka charged that “from its inception the Soviet nuclear effort, aimed primarily at making an atomic bomb, was carried out with utter disregard for h ­ uman life.”46 The safety 47 prob­lems at Chernobyl had been known for years. The negative perception of Soviet technology and safety culture offered Western governments and industry representatives an ave­nue to assuage their own nuclear-­skeptic publics. Attributing the accident to poor Soviet standards allowed them to argue the improbability of a similar accident occurring outside the Soviet bloc, where RBMK reactors did not exist. A questionnaire from the Federation of Electric Power Companies of Japan to the IAEA’s press office revealed this Cold War differentiation between Eastern and Western nuclear technologies while implying, such as through its use of the buzz phrase “­free world,” that the conditions on the two sides of the Iron Curtain w ­ ere not comparable: “What is the lesson to be learned by the f­ ree world from the Chernobyl accident? . . . ​Does IAEA think that nuclear reactors of the ­free world are assured of safety considering the Chernobyl accident?”48 At the Post-­Accident Review Meeting, the Americans and the Soviets disagreed over the question of w ­ hether Soviet technology or h ­ uman error was to blame for the accident. The Soviet Union had an interest in pushing the interpretation that the careless be­hav­ior of operators at the plant had caused the accident, even though Soviet authorities knew early on of the dangerous flaws in the reactor design.49 The Americans, on the other hand, held Soviet technology responsible. If the horrible accident had been the result of h ­ uman error, it could happen in the United States and elsewhere as well. Such a message had to be avoided. In the end, the superpowers reached a tacit compromise by attributing the accident to “men-­machine interface” errors.50 The discussions about Chernobyl in the IAEA’s policy-­making organs intersected with debates about the Cold War arms race and prospects for arms control. In November 1985, Reagan and Gorbachev met in Geneva and de­cided to resume negotiations on a bilateral treaty to eliminate their intermediate-­range nuclear missiles (INF Treaty). The two Cold War rivals ­were also in discussions on a

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comprehensive nuclear test ban, and the Soviet government announced a nuclear testing moratorium in July  1985.51 Gorbachev’s advertising of glasnost (opening) and perestroika (restructuring) had not, however, prevented him from waiting 19 days a­ fter the Chernobyl accident to speak to the public.52 When the Soviet leader fi­nally spoke, he referred to the dangers of nuclear war, which he saw as an even bigger threat than a nuclear accident at a civilian fa­cil­i­t y. He used the accident as an opportunity to support nuclear disarmament. In his post-­ Chernobyl speech, Gorbachev announced an extension of the Soviet testing moratorium, which would last ­until 6 August to commemorate the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima.53 Ideological disputes over arms control and disarmament also took place in the IAEA’s policy-­making organs. Representatives of the developing countries, including Mexico’s alternate representative, Victor Manuel Solano, joined the Soviet Union and its Eastern Eu­ro­pean allies in arguing that “the tragedy of Chernobyl should contribute to the stopping of the arms race.”54 He accused the nuclear weapon states of continuous testing, which “in truth . . . ​­were tests in mass killing.”55 Most Western representatives tried to silence any connections between nuclear power and nuclear weapons. The American governor, Richard Kennedy, “did not want to become involved in a debate on arms control.”56 ­T hese parts of the Chernobyl debate strikingly resembled discussions that took place between the Cold War rivals on the board during the late 1950s, when the Soviet Union tried to link the IAEA to nuclear disarmament initiatives while the United States emphasized the agency’s purely civilian agenda.57 The RBMK reactor class had military origins and u ­ nder normal operation produced plutonium as a by-­product. Did the Soviets use plutonium produced in the reactor to build nuclear bombs? The historian Kate Brown wrote in her path-­ breaking study on the Chernobyl accident that international organ­izations “worked for years to make careful distinctions between reactors created to produce nuclear bombs and reactors for ‘peaceful’ production of electricity and isotopes for medical uses.” The Chernobyl reactor type, a “civilian reactor that also manufactured plutonium for bomb cores and accidentally blew up (like a bomb) . . . ​greatly muddied ­t hese distinctions.”58 Remarkably, however, the proliferation risk inherent in dual-­use technology, and apparent in the case of the Chernobyl reactor, was not at the forefront of po­liti­cal and public debate about the accident.59 Blix and Rosen’s early interview with Der Spiegel—­during which the German reporters confronted the two agency officials with the statement that the Chernobyl reactor was not solely used for peaceful purposes—­stands as one instance in which the subject was discussed. Blix countered half-­heartedly, “We

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­ on’t know that. ­T here have been reports about it,” but Rosen admitted, “We can d clearly say that it can be used for military purposes.” The reporters wanted to know w ­ hether the IAEA team had asked the Soviets about potential military use of the Chernobyl plant. Blix gave an elusive answer: “No, but it was on the list of reactors that the Soviet Union offered for inspections by the safeguards depart­ ere was referring to the Soviet government’s 1985 decision to place ment.”60 Blix h some of its civilian nuclear installations ­under IAEA safeguards as a voluntary offer agreement. As a nuclear-­weapon state party to the NPT, the Soviet Union was not obliged to open its nuclear facilities to the IAEA, but it had done so to increase the non-­nuclear weapon states’ trust in the safeguards regime—­a step that the United States, the United Kingdom, and France had taken as well. Blix explained, however, that the safeguards department had de­cided not to inspect the reactor. What is known suggests that it was not impor­tant to any of the involved parties to ascertain w ­ hether the Chernobyl reactor was part of the Soviet’s military program. For the Western governments, the Soviet Union was an acknowledged nuclear weapon state. ­After the accident, the bad safety rec­ord of the RBMK reactor class, not its dual-­use potential, was seen as the main issue. As for the Soviet Union, it pushed nuclear disarmament as a topic to distract from the terrible consequences of the accident, and had no intentions to talk about its own nuclear weapon program. For the anti-­nuclear energy movement, all nuclear reactors w ­ ere anathema, irrespective of their peaceful or military use. For the IAEA, its nonproliferation inspections—­which did not cover the Soviet Union anyway—­had nothing to do with reactor safety, and the agency’s leadership did not want to see t­ hese two fields conflated in the public debate. In fact, the dual-­ use potential of the RBMK reactor design had been an impor­tant f­ actor for the Soviet decision to develop that par­tic­u­lar reactor class. Ultimately, however, the Soviets did not use the Chernobyl reactor to produce plutonium for weapons.61

The Tale of Nuclear Glasnost Although the IAEA secretariat and most member states resented the Soviets’ habit of restricting information, a narrative developed that the Soviets’ ­handling of Chernobyl exemplified the new spirit of glasnost. This story of nuclear glasnost ­after Chernobyl becomes particularly salient in l­ ater recollections of participants. On the Post-­Accident Review Meeting, the IAEA’s official history states, “The meeting had been a breakthrough for glasnost, noteworthy for some of the frank and comprehensive reports given by the Soviet participants and for the ­free and open discussions that had followed.”62

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Thirty years ­after the accident, Blix recalled that when the Soviets told him that Valery Legasov, head of the commission to investigate the accident, planned to give a three-­hour speech at the meeting, he reminded the Soviets that the IAEA meeting was “not a party conference.” While Legasov indeed spoke for three hours—­some sources say five—­his appearance left Blix impressed: “He spoke without a manuscript, he had points and illustrated it, and it was a tremendous experience for p ­ eople. This was at the beginning of the opening, of glasnost.”63 Thus Blix linked the Soviets’ active participation in the IAEA conference to the po­liti­cal developments ­toward more openness in the Soviet Union. While Legasov had to follow Soviet instructions and was not able to talk freely about the full extent of the accident’s dramatic consequences, nuclear-­friendly Western representatives still feared that his elaborate pre­sen­ta­tion would have a damaging effect on the global nuclear industry.64 In a tragic turn of events, Legasov committed suicide two years ­after the accident, tormented by the nuclear disaster and its devastating consequences.65 In 2019 Legasov’s fate became the subject of Chernobyl, a popu­lar HBO (Home Box Office) miniseries. The story of nuclear glasnost, also praised as an open scientific exchange between East and West, was not just a retrospective interpretation. The majority of participants at the Post-­Accident Review Meeting lauded the Soviets’ candor, and the US ambassador, Kennedy, told the US press, “We very largely heard what we came for, and heard more than we expected.”66 In the New Scientist, a con­ temporary observer called it “Glasnost in Action.”67 It was not entirely new that the Soviets shared technical information with other states—­t he IAEA was a place of scientific cooperation across the Cold War divide—­but the level of openness ­after the Chernobyl accident was unpre­ce­ dented. Some observers in the IAEA secretariat recognized that the Soviets opened up and shared information b ­ ecause they had no other choice: “The Soviets are intelligent enough . . . ​to realize t­ here is more to gain from an honest exposition of the facts than from hiding them.”68 Also, the story of nuclear glasnost papered over the fact that within the Soviet Union, ­t here was no glasnost about the accident. Communications with the IAEA ­were led by the Soviet government, not Ukraine, an in­de­pen­dent member state of the IAEA since its inception, at least on paper. Alexander R. Sich, a nuclear engineer who studied the Chernobyl accident for his doctoral thesis at the Mas­sa­chu­setts Institute of  Technology, regarded this as a major m ­ istake by the IAEA secretariat. He explained, “Dealing almost exclusively with the Rus­sians . . . ​not only restricted IAEA access to information, it alienated the IAEA from the p ­ eople of Ukraine and the Belarus, 69 the republics most affected by the accident.”

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For the IAEA, the tale of nuclear glasnost offered an opportunity to demonstrate that international organ­izations mattered in global affairs. T ­ oward the end of 1986, an IAEA press release painted the following picture: “Chernobyl was a traumatic experience not only for the Soviet Union, but for Eu­rope and the world as a ­whole. . . . ​But Chernobyl has also become the symbol of a new openness on the part of the Soviet Union, of a willingness on the part of the governments concerned to turn to international institutions and of an international solidarity that brought States together in common efforts.”70 The historian Serhii Plokhy has emphasized how ­after the Chernobyl accident the Soviets used the IAEA in their propaganda war with the West, first demonstrated by Blix’s carefully planned visit to the reactor site. Yet, the agency was no less reserved in taking advantage of having established a cooperative relationship with the Soviets.71 The IAEA put a positive spin on its relations with the Soviet Union and presented itself as a neutral place where East and West came together in the name of science and technology.

Nuclear Safety ­after Chernobyl The story of nuclear glasnost withstanding, the IAEA secretariat and most member states w ­ ere frustrated with the Soviet’s initial silence about the Chernobyl explosion. As noted above, the Soviets confirmed the accident only ­after Sweden and other states alerted the agency to increased levels of radiation. Other than diplomatic and intelligence channels, alternative ways to receive immediate information about nuclear accidents, peaceful or military, ­were rare. Only ­after the UN General Assembly a­ dopted the Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty in 1996 was a global monitoring network established to mea­sure radioactive particles in the atmosphere. In 1986, ­t here was no social media to rapidly distribute news about local events around the world, and the Iron Curtain hindered the flow of information from East to West. What is more, t­ here was no obligation for IAEA member states to report nuclear accidents to the agency or to any other international authority. States set their own safety standards for the design and operation of nuclear reactors, and IAEA safeguards checked nuclear facilities solely to verify that materials ­were not diverted from civilian to military use. The IAEA only reviewed the safety of t­ hese facilities in the very few instances when member states specifically asked them to do so. Each of the Euratom states had their own individual nuclear safety policies; the first “emergency preparedness arrangements” encompassing the Eu­ro­pean Community w ­ ere created only ­after Chernobyl.72 No global nuclear safety regime existed that was remotely comparable to the nuclear nonproliferation regime.73

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With individual states responsible for the safe operation of their reactors, it was naturally their responsibility to respond to any safety breaches. Nuclear safety was a sensitive issue as it related to reactor designs and operative pro­cesses; it was also expensive. On the ­whole, national governments had much higher bud­gets for nuclear safety than the IAEA. Moreover, outside safety controls bore the risk of jeopardizing national industrial secrets. While the IAEA’s secretariat developed guidelines, committees, and a division on nuclear safety, member states ­were traditionally reluctant to remove responsibility for the safe operation of nuclear installations from national control. The IAEA’s role in nuclear safety was advisory, not regulatory.74 Even before Chernobyl, the anti-­nuclear energy movement had questioned individual states’ autonomy on the issue of nuclear reactor safety. In Austria, the movement worried about the safety of power plants in neighboring Czecho­slo­ va­kia, fearing contamination of parts of Austria in the event of a nuclear accident. Following a national referendum in 1978, Austria prohibited the use of nuclear energy, leading to some “uncomfortable moments” between the world organ­ ization responsible for nuclear energy generation and its “anti-­nuclear” host country.75 In West Germany and Luxembourg, civilians worried about French nuclear proj­ects close to their border. ­A fter Chernobyl, public awareness of the transboundary effects of nuclear accidents grew. In fall 1986, more than a million citizens of British-­r uled Hong Kong signed a petition against China’s plans to build the Daya Bay Nuclear Power Plant close to the city; the fa­cil­i­t y began operating in 1994.76 While a few states, among them Denmark and Sweden, established l­imited bilateral exchanges of information on nuclear facilities in border areas, they ­were usually of an informal nature.77 ­After the 1979 accident at Three Mile Island, the US government tried to create a stronger role for the IAEA in nuclear safety. Starting in 1982, an IAEA Operational Safety Review Team began analyzing the safety per­for­mances of individual nuclear facilities, but the number of safety review missions was low. In 1986, the team conducted six inspections, compared to 2,050 nuclear safeguards inspections in the same year.78 In 1984, the IAEA begun developing the Nuclear Safety Standards.79 The following year, Blix established the International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, composed of experts from member states, but the objective was to establish institutional frameworks for nuclear safety rather than binding rules. ­After Chernobyl, the United States tried again to increase the IAEA’s regulatory role in nuclear safety.80 The radioactive fallout from Chernobyl that spread over Eu­rope drastically demonstrated the transboundary effects of nuclear accidents.

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Radioactive particles crossed national borders, effected ­people’s health, and contaminated the environment in neighboring countries. The situation called for an international body to deal with it. In speaking of “transboundary effects,” the IAEA secretariat ­adopted a functional terminology well established in international law. Other international organ­izations in the UN ­family used the term in other contexts, from ­water resources to diseases.81 Blix, an international ­lawyer, aimed to strengthen the IAEA’s role in international nuclear safety legislation a­ fter Chernobyl. He hoped that member states would soon conclude new international agreements on reactor safety. At the Post-­ Accident Review Meeting, he had asked, “If nuclear clouds do not re­spect national borders, do we need mandatory international rules on safety and international supervision ensuring re­spect for the rules?”82 Almost immediately ­after the accident, he had begun to focus on two very specific proposals: that member states develop an “early warning system to operate in the event of an accident” and that mechanisms be developed for providing emergency assistance following an accident.83 While Blix wanted to introduce more comprehensive international safety regulations in the f­ uture, the IAEA first proceeded with ­t hese two rather uncontroversial ideas for safety conventions. Within the IAEA secretariat, the Office of L ­ egal Affairs handled the drafting of the two conventions, or­ga­nized into three groups composed of experts from member states. One group worked on the early notification draft, another developed the convention on emergency assistance, and the other group discussed ­legal provisions for nuclear safety. The division of l­ abor among the three helpfully expedited the pro­cess.84 Blix knew that the member states needed to conclude ­t hese conventions before the momentum of the moment was gone.85 The language of the two conventions was cautious and designed not to place added burdens on a member state in which a nuclear accident occurred. Of note, the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident called for the “early” notification of an accident, rather than an “immediate” notification.86 Some member states, especially the developing countries, wanted the early notification agreement to not only cover accidents at civilian nuclear facilities, but to also apply to military accidents. This request was addressed in the final draft of the convention, but in a discreet, non-­binding—­and according to the IAEA’s established logic—­“non-­political” way. While Article 1 lists accidents at civilian nuclear facilities such as nuclear reactors, nuclear fuel-­cycle facilities, and waste management institutions as within the scope of the convention, Article 3 states that with “a view to minimizing the radiological consequences, State Parties may notify in the event of nuclear accidents other than ­t hose specified in Article 1.”87 In

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this case, “other than specified in Article 1” is largely a synonym for military nuclear facilities.88 On 26 September 1986, a special session of the General Conference a­ dopted the Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident (INFCIRC/335) and the Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency (INFCIRC/336). They regulated the conduct of member states in the case of a nuclear accident, but they did not stipulate mea­sures to help prevent such accidents in the first place. Despite overall agreement that international nuclear safety mea­sures should be strengthened, many member states, especially ­those with power­ful nuclear industries, did not want the IAEA to depart “from the princi­ple of sole responsibility of national governments for nuclear safety.”89 The developing countries ­were more open t­ oward strengthening the IAEA’s role in this area. Solano, the governor from Mexico, dismissed the “demon of sovereignty” as “a medieval concept.”90 ­Later that year, at the annual meeting of SAC, Blix looked back at the developments of the previous months and concluded that the IAEA’s program “rested on three main pillars: safeguards, transfer of technology, and safety.”91 Safety was a new addition to the IAEA’s original core agenda of technical assistance and nonproliferation. Giving the agency a bigger say in nuclear safety was an attempt to shift the attention from Chernobyl’s terrible consequences to what member states could learn from the accident. This narrative supported the message that the risks of nuclear power could be controlled and that good international nuclear governance was therefore needed. In other words, nuclear power was not in itself dangerous; the prob­lem lie in the lack of good safety standards and international cooperation. Next to the IAEA’s technical assistance and verification missions, a regulatory mission began to emerge and would be expanded in the following years. Given the IAEA’s self-­image as a servant of the member states, it remained careful not to call itself a regulatory body.

Toxic Links The Chernobyl accident occupied the IAEA far beyond 1986. It took another ten years, and the end of the Cold War, to conclude more comprehensive international conventions in the area of nuclear safety. The Convention on Nuclear Safety (INFCIRC/449) entered into force in 1996, with participating states pledging to observe strict safety regulations at their civilian nuclear facilities. The convention did not cover military installations, and it gave the IAEA no enforcement powers. The IAEA did, however, establish a pro­cess in which participating states send reports on the implementation of the safety princi­ples to the agency

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for peer review by experts from member states. For now, the number of states that have ratified the convention remains much smaller than the total number of IAEA member states.92 In 1997, IAEA member states a­ dopted the Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (INFCIRC/546), which entered into force in 2001. African states promoted the convention due to the prob­lem of corporations and waste traffickers dumping large amounts of radioactive and other toxic waste from Eu­rope and the United States off the coast of West Africa.93 Already in 1988, the Organ­ization of African Unity had ­adopted a resolution condemning the dumping of nuclear waste at sea as “a crime against Africa and the African ­people.”94 Before the conclusion of the convention, existing international law, such as the 1989 Basel Convention on the Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, did not cover nuclear waste.95 ­T hese developments debunked Blix’s 1986 declaration at the National Press Club, in Washington, DC, that nuclear waste did not pose a permanent prob­lem. Quite the contrary, given the long half-­life of some radioactive waste, it poses a prob­lem for many generations to come. This puts in doubt the pre­sen­ta­tion of nuclear energy as an environment-­friendly form of power generation. As of late 2021, t­here was not one site in the world for the permanent storage and disposal of high-­level nuclear waste and spent fuel. Apart from the destroyed unit 4 at Chernobyl, the nuclear power plant remained in operation for years. Even at the IAEA conference “One De­cade a­ fter Chernobyl,” in spring 1996, t­ here was no joint diplomatic pressure to close the entire plant. The conference chair—­German environment minister Angela Merkel, a trained physicist—­criticized this as a failure even though she was generally in ­favor of nuclear power.96 The last Chernobyl unit ceased producing electricity in 2000. The containment of unit 4 poses an enduring prob­lem; in 2016, the original sarcophagus covering the site was replaced with a new construction. IAEA scientists continued to visit Chernobyl for years a­ fter the accident, to take probes of the soil in neighboring areas, and to work with scientists from Ukraine, Belarus, and Rus­sia locally and at the IAEA laboratories in Seibersdorf. Providing data, creating scientific reports, and publishing statistics had traditionally been a rather uncontroversial core function of the IAEA, but the assessment of Chernobyl’s long-­term consequences—an effort still in pro­gress—­ exposed the limitations of the IAEA’s claim to be a neutral administrator of international nuclear affairs. Nuclear safety, like nuclear safeguards, is not just a technical issue but also a po­liti­cal m ­ atter. When it came to the agency

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r­ eleasing figures on confirmed fatalities from Chernobyl and estimates for the years and de­cades to come, its two objectives of being a provider of scientific information and at the same time a supporter of nuclear power clashed. Any numbers it released would have an immediate effect on the po­liti­cal debate about nuclear energy. According to the official list published by the Soviets in 1986, thirty-­one ­people died immediately or shortly ­after the accident in area hospitals due to burns or radiation sickness. The total number of the other victims—­those never hospitalized or who died l­ater from vari­ous forms of cancer—­was and remains less clear, as w ­ ere predictions of how many p ­ eople 97 might succumb in the f­ uture due to the accident. The IAEA’s numbers on expected victims w ­ ere initially inconsistent. The early press releases ­after the accident only named the confirmed number of victims, but at the Post-­Accident Review Meeting, the agency circulated an unofficial number of around 4,000 victims. Rosen estimated that 25,000 ­people could die over the following 70 years due to the accident.98 In the ensuing years, the IAEA bundled its research on Chernobyl into two major initiatives. In 1990, following a request from the Soviet Union, it established the International Chernobyl Proj­ ect to study the consequences of the disaster.99 Belarus and Ukraine increased pressure on the disintegrating Soviet Union to come clean about the accident’s health effects. In 2005, twenty years a­ fter the accident, the IAEA founded the Chernobyl Forum, bringing together several UN-­related organ­izations, among them the Food and Agricultural Organ­ization and the United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, to research the long-­term health effects and consequences of the disaster in cooperation with other international organ­izations.100 ­T hose involved in the initiative came to the conclusion that fewer than 50 ­people died from radiation exposure shortly ­after the accident and that 6,000 c­ hildren had developed thyroid cancer. Kate Brown has shown that the IAEA’s studies ­were based on improperly small samples and often made flawed assumptions. According to her, “denial and delay” characterized the agency’s investigations into the health effects of the ac­ eople would die from cident.101 The IAEA reports assumed that a few thousand p the accident, a number that civil society organ­izations, such as the International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, which had received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1985, strongly criticized as much too low. They noted that, in addition to cancer cases, other related ­causes, such as suicides and unborn ­c hildren, should be counted among the victims. The physicians group estimated 50,000 casualties to be much more realistic. The large gap between the IAEA’s numbers and t­ hose of other expert organ­izations resulted in a “scientific stalemate” that

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left the world without answers.102 Among the harsh criticism heaped on the agency for its low estimates was a Pugwash paper accusing it of “glossing over the dreadful consequences of the Chernobyl catastrophe.”103 The agency became increasingly perceived as part of the nuclear industry lobby.104 The IAEA’s evaluation of the Chernobyl’s long-­term consequences revealed the complex and somewhat controversial relationships between the agency and other international organ­izations involved with nuclear ­matters. The IAEA had relationship agreements with several organ­izations within the UN f­ amily, the case in point being the WHO, in 1959.105 Beginning in 1986, both the IAEA and the WHO had worked closely in assessing the long-­term consequences of the Chernobyl accident. Critics warned, however, that ­because of their relationship agreement, the WHO was not ­free to speak about the health consequences of the accident. The agreement held that whenever one of the two organ­izations proposed to initiate a program or activity on a subject in which “the other organ­ ization has or may have a substantial interest, the first party ­shall consult the other with a view to adjusting the ­matter by mutual agreement.”106 Critics, such as the organ­ization In­de­pen­dent WHO, called the agreement a “toxic link,” preferential to the IAEA. Due to the IAEA’s interest in keeping nuclear energy publicly acceptable, this toxic link led to the WHO being obliged to go along with the pre­sen­ta­tion of artificially low numbers for Chernobyl victims.107 The WHO called this interpretation unfounded.108 “The Other Report on Chernobyl (TORCH)”—­a short in­de­pen­dent evaluation from 2006—­equally criticized the IAEA’s numbers as much too low.109 The IAEA was “­under attack,” one member of SAC claimed.110 In light of mounting criticism, the IAEA lowered the public profile of its promotional activities for nuclear power, while highlighting its activities in the United Nations Environment Program. With the end of the Cold War, a new multipolar nuclear world order emerged that shifted the agency’s attention from the “nuclear controversy” over civilian reactors back to the threat of nuclear weapons proliferation.

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chapter nine

The Nuclear Watchdog

In the early 1990s, the rapid collapse of the Soviet Union took the world by surprise. To the International Atomic Energy Agency, it also took the form of a cash crisis. Struggling with economic instability and depreciation of the ruble, the Rus­sian Federation and the other successor states of the Soviet Union could not fulfill their financial obligations to the agency. As of 31 December 1992, the Rus­ sians had not paid the approximately $20 million they owed for that year’s regular bud­get and ­were in arrears for almost $12 million from previous years.1 This dramatically affected the agency, which had been operating ­under financial constraints since the introduction of a zero real-­growth bud­get in the mid-1980s and was now forced to engage some considerable “bud­getary gymnastics.”2 The drop in funds came at a time when developments around the world required the Department of Safeguards to perform significantly more inspections than in previous years. Over the first half of the 1990s, the successor states of the former Soviet republics in Eastern Eu­rope joined the agency as individual member states and became party to the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). During the Soviet era, they had not been covered by agency safeguards, but as in­de­pen­dent states, they ­were. In addition, in 1991, the IAEA signed an inspection cooperation agreement with Argentina and Brazil. The ambitious nuclear programs of the South American regional powers had concerned the international community.3 While the Soviet Union was in its final throes, international inspectors from the United Nations and the IAEA uncovered Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapon program in the wake of the 1990–91 Persian Gulf War. Two years ­later, in 1993, during the last days of apartheid, South African president F. W. de Klerk admitted that his country had secretly developed a nuclear weapon capability, as the international community had long suspected. Verifying that the program had indeed been dismantled, as claimed, added a g ­ reat

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deal more work to the IAEA’s already rapidly increasing inspection efforts. Also in 1993, North ­Korea announced its intention to withdraw from the NPT. One year ­later, it left the IAEA as a member state, but for the time being, remained a party to the treaty. To manage the concurrence of increased safeguards obligations but tighter bud­gets, the Department of Safeguards had to skip scheduled inspections where deemed pos­si­ble, such as inspections of facilities placed voluntarily ­under agency safeguards.4 The historian David Holloway remarked that nuclear weapons w ­ ere “so central to the history of the Cold War that it can be difficult to disentangle the two.”5 Yet, nuclear weapons ­were not unique to the Cold War. The logic of military nuclear deterrence and the perception of nuclear weapons as an attribute of g ­ reat power status survived the upheavals from 1989 to 1991. The global nuclear order—­which since the first British (1952), French (1960), and Chinese tests (1964) had never been truly bipolar—­now clearly revealed its multipolar face. In May 1998, following the first series of nuclear tests in India since the Smiling Bud­dha explosion of 1974, Pakistan tested a nuclear explosive, thus becoming the world’s next nuclear-­armed state. North ­Korea followed in October 2006. The proliferation crises of the post–­Cold War era led Mohamed ElBaradei, appointed director general in 1997, to speak of an “age of deception,” during which the global nuclear order was not only threatened by states ­eager to bolster their power by building nuclear weapons, but also by individuals set on making money in nuclear trading.6 In early 2004, A. Q. Khan, head of the Pakistani nuclear weapon program, confessed to having established a global black market for nuclear technology and know-­how. This under­ground trade had helped Iran, Libya, and North ­Korea to develop nuclear weapon programs.7 The nuclear statuses of Iran and North ­Korea remained sources of concern to the international community, while in late 2003, Libyan leader Muammar al-­Qaddafi announced that he would dismantle his country’s secret nuclear weapon program in return for ending Libya’s international isolation. ­Because of the IAEA’s prominent involvement in tackling t­ hese international nuclear crises, the media began to increasingly refer to it as the world’s “nuclear watchdog,” a nickname that expresses the growing identification of the agency with its role in uncovering secret nuclear weapon programs. While the dangers of technical assistance related to the nuclear fuel cycle received ever-­growing attention, the agency’s work in other fields of peaceful nuclear applications rarely made headlines in Western media. Nevertheless, ­these remained key activities and ­were especially impor­tant for developing countries, as they helped solve prob­lems in such vital areas as agriculture and health. Using the sterile

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insect technique, in 1997, IAEA scientists succeeded in eradicating the tsetse fly from Zanzibar, where it spread disease among p ­ eople and livestock. The agency’s scientists used irradiation to produce more resilient va­r i­e­ties of produce and crops. Being less sensational and less controversial than stories about inspectors on the hunt for hidden nuclear weapon programs, the IAEA’s achievements in ­t hese areas received ­little public attention. The IAEA’s mandate had been crafted in the 1950s with the intent of supporting the United Nations’ goal “to promote peace and international co-­operation,” but not ­until the early 2000s could its peace mandate be taken that literally.8 In the first de­cade of the 21st ­century, the IAEA and its inspectorate found themselves in a position in which its findings involving Iraq and Iran had the potential to directly impact the maintenance of peace or the outbreak of war.

The Persian Gulf War and a New Type of Inspector In the early 1990s, change could be felt on the streets of Vienna, just a few years prior the epitome of a Cold War city not far from the Iron Curtain. As the borders opened, increasing numbers of Trabants filled the streets, and Vienna began transforming once again into a dynamic cultural and po­liti­cal center in the heart of a united Eu­rope.9 For a brief period, t­ here was even some hope that the end of the Cold War might also bring an end to the nuclear arms race. Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine relinquished the Soviet nuclear weapons stationed on their territories ­after the dissolution of the superpower. In the mid-1980s, when the number of nuclear warheads peaked globally, the Americans and Soviets had resumed bilateral negotiations on arms control. ­A fter Soviet general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev accepted the US demand for on-­site inspections as a tool of verification, the Americans and Soviets concluded the Intermediate-­Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty in late 1987.10 During the presidential administrations of Boris Yeltsin and Bill Clinton, the IAEA became a partner in the Trilateral Initiative, which looked into a potential role for the agency in verifying fissile materials from US and Rus­sian weapon programs. The initiative was phased out in 2002; it had never been more than a feasibility study.11 Ultimately, however, it was a crisis in the M ­ iddle East—­not the end of the Cold War—­t hat landed the IAEA a major new role in the dismantlement of nuclear weapons. On 2 August 1990, the Iraqi army invaded and occupied neighboring Kuwait. The UN Security Council responded with immediate sanctions against Iraq. Authorized by UN Security Council Resolution 678, a US-­led co­ali­tion of 22 states began aerial bombardments of Iraq on 17 January 1991, and in late February, launched a ground offensive to drive Iraqi forces from Kuwait.12 On 3 April 1991,

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the Security Council passed Resolution 687, laying out conditions for postwar Iraq, including that it declare all its biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons activities and permit international inspections to locate and destroy any related components. The IAEA was tasked with the nuclear inspections, and the newly created UN Special Commission (UNSCOM) was given responsibility for chemical and biological weapons as well as Iraq’s missile program.13 The international mandate to look into Iraq’s nuclear activities seemed, and was, an obvious job for the IAEA: the task corresponded with the agency’s long-­ standing portfolio of nuclear verification in the name of international security. Iraq was party to the NPT, and the IAEA conducted safeguards inspections twice a year at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, outside Baghdad.14 ­After the Israeli attack on the Osirak research reactor ­there in 1981, the IAEA had resumed inspections at Tuwaitha, and found no evidence to support Israel’s allegations that the Iraqis ­were working on a secret nuclear weapon program. Ten years l­ater, UN Security Council Resolution 687 cited “reports in the hands of Member States” indicating that Iraq had “attempted to acquire materials for a nuclear-­weapons programme.” With this, the council informed the international community about the potentially illegal nuclear weapon activities of an NPT member state and asked the IAEA to confirm or dispel the suspicions. This was novel. Even more unusual was the unpre­ce­dented and unorthodox move by the Security Council to ask the IAEA’s director general, not the agency per se, to conduct immediate on-­site inspections in Iraq. By taking this approach, the Board of Governors, of which Iraq was a member, would have no formal influence over ­t hese inspections. The United States, suspicious of the agency’s previously favorable assessments on Iraq, had originally hoped to bypass the IAEA altogether. It wanted to delegate all inspections, including ­t hose of Iraq’s nuclear activities, to UNSCOM, which promised to be easier to control than the IAEA and its conflict-­laden policy-­ making organs. UNSCOM acted in­de­pen­dently of the UN bureaucracy and reported directly to the Security Council, not to the UN secretary-­general. Two other permanent members of the Security Council, France and the United Kingdom, had insisted on involving the IAEA in the Iraq inspections.15 Despite ­t hese differences in desired approach, the Security Council acted overall in unity. The Soviet Union, a traditional ally of Iraq and its most impor­tant arms supplier, was at the time more occupied by its internal dissolution than with international security affairs.16 Although UNSCOM and the IAEA appeared to be assigned dif­fer­ent areas of focus, the relationship between them was not a ­simple division of l­ abor between

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nuclear and non-­nuclear-­related inspections. UNSCOM had a somewhat superior role in that it selected locations for inspection and passed this on to the agency to implement. Rolf Ekéus, a Swedish arms control expert, diplomat, and old acquaintance of Blix, directed UNSCOM.17 The IAEA had experience cooperating with other inspection bodies—­a lbeit ­u nder elaborate cooperation agreements very dif­fer­ent from the Iraq situation—­but it had no previous involvement in dismantling nuclear weapon programs.18 In the IAEA’s realm, inspections ­were widely associated with nuclear safeguards, but the agency’s mandate ­under Resolution 687 was not only a safeguards department affair. Blix, personally in charge of the IAEA’s inspection in Iraq, selected staff members from dif­fer­ent departments for what he called, somewhat grandiosely, the Iraq Action Team. He chose Maurizio Zifferero, an Italian who headed the Department of Research and Isotopes since 1980 and was an experienced man­ag­er, to lead the team. Zifferero had represented Italian companies in Iraq in the 1970s, when Italy was still making nuclear deals with Iraq. He thus knew the Iraqi nuclear program well—or maybe too well according to some in the media who would accuse him of being too accommodating ­toward Iraq.19 Blix’s se­lection of David Kay, a US po­liti­cal scientist from the Department of Technical Cooperation, surprised many, ­because he did not work in safeguards. Blix argued that he valued Kay ­because of his writing skills. Given the attention that the reports from Iraq would likely receive, this seemed an impor­tant qualification.20 Blix assigned the first inspection to Dimitri Perricos, a widely respected se­ nior inspector at the agency who at the beginning of his c­ areer had been in India in 1974 at the time of the Smiling Bud­d ha test. William “Bill” Lichliter, a man­ag­er in safeguards, ­later recalled how in spring 1991, Perricos had called him and asked for money and travelers checks for the first mission to Iraq. Ner­vous ­because of the IAEA’s new high-­profile job, Lichliter strug­gled to open the safe in his office.21 Over the years, the IAEA had or­ga­nized a large number of inspection missions around the world, but the Iraq assignment was on another level. Perricos assembled a group of about 30 p ­ eople for the first trip to Iraq.22 ­T here ­were no commercial flights to Baghdad, so the United Nations rented a small plane from the Romanian airline TAROM, painted it white and added “UN” on the side. The small aircraft had to make a layover in Cyprus to make the trip.23 At the Tuwaitha site, extensively damaged in 1991 by bombings during the Persian Gulf War, the IAEA team was able to locate most of the material subject to IAEA safeguards, but did not find proof of a clandestine nuclear weapon program. It was apparent, however, that the Iraqis had burned a large number of

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IAEA inspector Dimitri Perricos making notes during an inspection of the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center, near Baghdad, 1991. © IAEA

documents at the location.24 ­T hose IAEA inspectors who had previously visited the site, among them Perricos, realized that they had missed large installations on their ­earlier, routine inspections. Hidden ­behind huge berms, the facilities had not been among ­t hose to which the IAEA had been granted access during normal inspections.25 In a first, the IAEA received satellite imagery from member states to help in preparing the missions to Iraq. Some of the images revealed that the Iraqis had moved large disc-­shaped objects ­after the first inspection, conducted in May 1991.

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The discs ­were l­ ater identified as magnets used for electromagnetic isotope separation, even at that time an outmoded method of uranium enrichment. Gaseous diffusion and gas centrifuge enrichment had made the technique obsolete; no one expected to find it being used in a secret bomb proj­ect. Kay ­later told Richard Rhodes, author of The Making of the Atom Bomb, a seminal history of the Manhattan Proj­ect, that he had carried a copy of Rhodes’ book to Iraq to convince his colleagues that the Baghdad government had indeed pursued this other­w ise discontinued enrichment technology.26 The inspectors also sought out the expertise of former members of the Manhattan Proj­ect to evaluate photos taken during their mission and to shed light on Iraq’s secret nuclear activities.27 Even though, strictly speaking, the work of the Iraq Action Team was not regular IAEA business, Blix informed the Board of Governors about the inspections’ pro­gress in a special session in the summer of 1991.28 ­A fter all, Iraq had signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA. The five permanent members of the Security Council, all of them also members of the board, presented a resolution in which they asserted that Iraq had v­ iolated its safeguards agreement with the agency. The resolution asked the director general to report Iraq to the Security Council for noncompliance ­u nder the NPT.29 Not surprisingly, Iraq voted against the resolution. Cuba, Nigeria, and Tunisia, members of the Non-­Aligned Movement (NAM), abstained. The remaining 29 board members voted in ­favor of the resolution, which was therefore accepted with one dissenting vote. As the long-­time Soviet nuclear diplomat Roland Timerbaev explained to his fellow board members, this meeting was “the first of its kind in the history of the Agency.” Never before had the board found one of its members in noncompliance with the NPT and referred the case to the Security Council as a ­matter of international peace and security.30 However, since the Security Council had already expressed the suspicion that Iraq had developed a nuclear weapon program, this case of noncompliance came as no surprise to the international community. Iraq’s deception was already known. During this tense period in international relations, the IAEA often had to contend with its image of being a toothless tiger—an international organ­ization that had failed to detect Iraq’s NPT violations, whereas the newly established UNSCOM was able to uncover its secret weapons. This perception annoyed Blix, who was frustrated that member states had not shared the relevant intelligence information with the agency in the first place.31 The relationship between the IAEA and UNSCOM became strained, with the two inspection bodies differing in their views on how intrusive inspections should be and how much they could bend the established rules. Scott Ritter, an American UNSCOM chief inspector

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and initially a hard-­liner, ­later asserted that compared to the professionalism of the IAEA team, UNSCOM inspectors ­were acting like adventurous “Boy Scout troops.” He described the relationship between Blix and Ekéus as extremely difficult, and according to him, the two men “hated each other.”32 ­Others observed that when the two men spoke with each other in Swedish, tensions heightened even more.33 A clash of inspection styles could also be found within the IAEA team. This seemed to be embodied in one man specifically: David Kay. Kay had accompanied the missions in the field since the second inspection, conducted in June 1991. During that inspection trip, a group of seven inspectors, led by Kay, visited the Falluja Military Transportation Fa­cil­i­ty without advance notice, a move out of line with IAEA procedure. When the Iraqis s­ topped the team on the road to the fa­cil­ i­t y, the inspectors followed Kay, who reportedly was driving ahead in an open Land Rover through a field, ­because according to him, the noise of the wind made it difficult to eavesdrop on the occupants of open cars.34 When the international inspectors arrived at the fa­cil­i­t y, the guards denied them access. They w ­ ere, however, able to climb a nearby ­water tower overlooking the area. From ­there they could see p ­ eople at the fa­cil­i­t y loading heavy trucks and leaving through a back entrance that had been unknown to the inspectors. They followed the trucks and

UN and IAEA inspectors examining the remains of a Russian-­made IRTM reactor following the Persian Gulf War, Tuwaitha, Iraq, 1991. © IAEA

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took pictures. As it turned out, the Iraqis had been moving components from their enrichment program. The action movie style in which the inspectors obtained this impor­tant bit of evidence—­t here are several dif­fer­ent versions of the story—­was previously unheard of at the agency.35 For the journalist and IAEA expert Gudrun Harrer, “[The] Falluja episode was more than a dramatic point in the inspection pro­cess, as it also marked the first major clash between two inspection cultures.”36 According to UNSCOM’s Ekéus, the IAEA and UNSCOM stood for two opposing approaches to on-­the-­ground inspections. The IAEA’s attitude ­toward inspected countries, including Iraq, was that they ­were “innocent ­u ntil proven guilty,” while UNSCOM perceived Iraq “guilty ­until proven innocent.”37 The IAEA traditionally cultivated a “no-­blame culture,” in which distrust was not institutionalized. Events in Iraq turned even more dramatic a few months a­ fter the situation at Falluja. During the sixth inspection, in September 1991, Iraqi security guards detained 44 international inspectors for 96 hours in the parking lot of a building in Baghdad. During the inspection, IAEA and UNSCOM inspectors, including participants from member states and their intelligence communities, had searched for and found documents containing details about Iraq’s nuclear ­ ere crucial, b ­ ecause Iraq had refused to weapon program.38 The documents w be forthcoming about its past military nuclear activities. The parking lot incident took place at one of the locations of the document search, b ­ ecause the Iraqis did not want the inspectors to depart with the documents. During the four-­day standoff, Kay became the first IAEA inspector in the organ­ization’s history to report live to broadcast media, via satellite phone, while on an inspection mission.39 In October, Blix presented Kay with an award acknowledging his success in locating crucial information. Iraq, still a member of the IAEA and the Board of Governors, protested the recognition bestowed on Kay and accused him of having misused his role at the agency to gather intelligence for the United States.40 Soon afterwards, Kay, who was unpop­u­lar among many of his agency colleagues for his “Rambo-­style” methods, left the agency.41 In light of the tensions over inspection styles in the 1990s, it is in­ter­est­ing to recall the 1946 Acheson-­Lilienthal Report, in which Robert Oppenheimer had warned about the “serious social frictions” potentially created by international nuclear inspectors, who had “a policing function, one of prohibiting, detecting, and suppressing.”42 In 1995, the IAEA learned that Iraq—­which in the 1970s had explored the nuclear weapon option and in the 1980s had developed a nuclear weapon program—­had launched an ambitious nuclear “crash program” in the months between the invasion of Kuwait in summer 1990 and the US-­led military offensive

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in early 1991.43 ­A fter the defection to Jordan in 1995 by Hussein Kamel, a son-­ in-­law of Saddam Hussein who had supervised Iraq’s nuclear weapon program, the Iraqi president began to cooperate, and inspectors ­were able to locate related equipment and material and to observe that it had been removed, destroyed, and ­ ntil December 1998, when the rendered harmless.44 The inspections continued u IAEA and UNSCOM teams had to leave the country in anticipation of the United States and the United Kingdom bombarding Iraq in Operation Desert Fox, to degrade Iraq’s ability to produce and use weapons of mass destruction. IAEA inspectors would resume their work in Iraq in November 2002, but only for a few months.

The Beginnings of the North Korean Crisis Beginning in the 1980s, the IAEA also had to deal with North K ­ orea as another violator of the NPT. Concerns had begun to grow in the late 1980s that the North Koreans had more than peaceful nuclear ambitions. US intelligence suggested that the North Koreans ­were building a reactor at Yongbyon, about 60 miles north of Pyongyang.45 While North ­Korea had joined the NPT in 1985, it had still not signed a corresponding safeguards agreement with the IAEA by the early 1990s, violating the NPT regulation that new members conclude a safeguards agreement with the agency within 18 months of accession.46 Alongside t­ hese worrying developments, however, ­were signs of potential po­liti­cal normalization on the Korean Peninsula. In 1991, the United States announced that it would withdraw its nuclear-­armed missiles from South K ­ orea, and in 1992, Seoul and Pyongyang signed the Joint Declaration of North K ­ orea and South K ­ orea on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula (but the intended reciprocal inspections w ­ ere never implemented). In 1992, a­ fter the IAEA Board of Governors passed a strongly worded resolution reminding North ­Korea of its obligation to sign a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the agency, it fi­nally did so.47 By the time North K ­ orea complied, the revelations about Iraq’s clandestine nuclear activities had put the IAEA on high alert. The agency’s leadership claimed that it had only missed Iraq’s hidden program due to the l­imited tools at hand, but it nonetheless felt the need to restore the agency’s credibility as a reliable verification authority. The IAEA and its director general, Blix, ­were “wide awake.”48 ­Eager to demonstrate the IAEA’s strength, Blix warned North K ­ orea that if it failed to provide a complete inventory of its nuclear material, the agency would report it to the Security Council as a case of noncompliance.49 The warning was a clear departure from what Ekéus had described elsewhere as the IAEA’s traditional approach of “innocent ­until proven guilty.” IAEA inspections soon revealed

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that North K ­ orea’s inventory of nuclear materials and facilities was incorrect and incomplete. Pyongyang did not list all the plutonium produced in the country or a repro­cessing fa­cil­i­ty ­under construction. Repeated inspections, regular discussions between the IAEA staff and North Korean officials, tough negotiations, and several board meetings did not result in pro­gress. In fact, it seemed to confirm the suspicion that the North Koreans ­were hiding something. On 22 February 1993, in a closed board session, Blix took yet another highly unusual step by presenting satellite imagery provided by the United States indicating North ­Korea’s secret development of a repro­cessing fa­cil­i­t y. At the time, the IAEA had no established and formalized procedures for receiving and using intelligence from member states. Such information was regarded as something that the Security Council might h ­ andle, but not a bureaucracy perceived as a functional, technical institution. While the rec­ords of the board session remain classified, participants ­later offered their recollection of the extraordinary meeting, including the complete silence in the room ­after Blix ended his pre­sen­t a­tion.50 For the diplomats in Vienna, many of whom had no professional background in nuclear science or technology—­a major change from the agency’s early years—it made a tremendous difference to discuss a potential case of noncompliance based on the “vis­i­ble, tangible, undeniable” evidence of satellite imagery rather than pure numbers.51 Using the compelling power of images at a board meeting was a significant shift in the IAEA’s h ­ andling of information and set an impor­tant pre­ce­dent. Participants in the meeting also recall that in contrast to other occasions deviating from established procedure, board members did not insist on standard practice and did not object to Blix’s use of images.52 Based on the photographic evidence, Blix asked the board to agree on a special safeguards inspection of North K ­ orea with additional access to information and facilities. On paper, allowing special inspections was a standard item in the comprehensive safeguards agreements, but nevertheless they ­were quite sensitive ­matters, with such inspections reserved for cases in which the agency found itself unable to confirm that no diversion of nuclear materials had occurred. Thus, they ­were widely regarded as an expression of distrust and an instrument of last resort.53 By then, the IAEA had already begun reconsidering its “untouched” authority to demand special inspections. The previous year, on 25 February 1992, the board had underscored the IAEA’s right to conduct special inspections of member states.54 The reaffirmation of such inspections, laid out in detailed l­ egal studies prepared by the secretariat, was one of the first examples of how the Iraq case helped strengthen IAEA safeguards and demonstrated that the agency

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would first rely on legally prescribed means of verification.55 The board had agreed to reaffirm the use of special inspections by consensus—­interestingly, on the same day that Blix presented a lengthy report on North ­Korea—­but some member states remained somewhat hesitant about such a strong message. The board therefore also stated “that ­t hese special inspections should only occur on rare occasions.”56 Although no reference to North ­Korea appears in the recorded discussion on the use of special inspections, the possibility that such a step might be warranted in the North Korean case was prob­ably one reason for the board’s decision to reaffirm the procedure.57 In spring 1992, the IAEA performed a special inspection in Romania at the request of the government. According to ElBaradei, it was a means for the Romanians in power “to further discredit the former Communist president,” Nicolae Ceausescu, and his secret military nuclear pro­ orea, gram.58 One year l­ ater, when Blix requested a special inspection of North K 59 it became the “first test case for the reformed nonproliferation regime.” North ­Korea rejected a special inspection, but regular safeguards inspections continued. With inconsistencies remaining unresolved and North Korean cooperation worsening, the board in late February 1993 demanded “prompt implementation” of North K ­ orea’s safeguards agreement and requested access to more information and to military sites, a request that Blix also communicated to ­ orea threatened to leave the NPT in the North Koreans.60 In March 1993, North K accordance with the treaty’s three-­month withdrawal clause. Diplomatic pressure from the United States eventually helped to dissuade the North Koreans from following through. As a result of continuing bilateral negotiations between North ­Korea and the United States in Geneva, the two states concluded the so-­called Agreed Framework in October 1994: in return for light w ­ ater reactors and relief from US economic sanctions, the North Koreans promised to freeze their more proliferation-­sensitive nuclear activities. The United States monitored their implementation of the Agreed Framework in cooperation with the IAEA, and to ensure ongoing compliance with it, IAEA inspectors and American experts maintained a presence in Yongbyon.61 The latter constituted another new item on the list of the IAEA’s tasks in the 1990s: it had never previously continuously “monitored” the nuclear activities of a state. The IAEA had discussed the use of permanent inspectors since the 1960s—­a step advocated by the agency’s first chief inspector, Allan McKnight—­but, like special inspections, they ­were largely viewed as putting a state ­under suspicion.62 Meanwhile, ­after controversies over technical assistance, North ­Korea left the agency in June 1994. Given North K ­ orea’s military nuclear secrets, the question of technical assistance might appear to be a minor prob­lem, but the discussions

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in the IAEA boardroom revealed its centrality in international nonproliferation negotiations. The suspension of technical assistance is, apart from the threat to involve the Security Council in a noncompliance case, the only instrument of punishment the IAEA statute provides. Referring to this provision of the statute, on 9 June 1994, 17 board members presented a draft resolution to the full board suggesting the suspension of IAEA technical assistance to North ­Korea.63 The IAEA had recently supported North ­Korea with dosimetry technology and helped modernize a laboratory for radioisotope production.64 Internal US reports asserted that the agency’s technical assistance to Pyongyang was “negligible” and that its halt would not harm the country. The suspension of technical assistance would therefore mainly, but not entirely, be a symbolic mea­sure. The North Korean del­e­ga­tion that participated in the board session—­which was open to representatives of member states not on the board—­regarded the suspension of technical assistance as “sanctions.” A handful of states—­although worried about North K ­ orea’s nuclear be­hav­ior—­doubted w ­ hether ending technical assistance was diplomatically smart. India hoped “to keep a door open,” and China argued similarly that it was “counterproductive” to deny North ­Korea peaceful nuclear assistance. The ­matter was put to a vote, and the resolution passed with 28 votes in f­ avor. One state, Libya, had opposed the resolution, while four (China, India, Lebanon, and Syria) abstained.65 Saudi Arabia and Cuba did not participate. North ­Korea left the agency as a member state on 13 June 1994, three days a­ fter the Board of Governors de­cided to end all “non-­medical assistance” to North K ­ orea.66 By the time of the Agreed Framework’s entry into force, North ­Korea was no longer an IAEA member state.

Change in South Africa In another part of the world, and concurrent to the events in Iraq and North ­Korea, a former outlaw state was seeing steady improvement in its relationship with the IAEA. Over the course of the early 1990s, South Africa began changing internally, and ­after years of growing protests, ended apartheid in 1994. This po­ liti­cal shift improved South Africa’s relations in international affairs and considerably altered its standing in the IAEA. Due to South Africa’s prominent involvement in the agency’s early development, the apartheid government had been able to maintain its influential role in the IAEA throughout the 1980s. Even some IAEA official publications uncritically ­adopted the narrative of the apartheid regime. For instance, South Africa participated in the production of the so-­called Red Book, a co-­publication of the IAEA and the Nuclear Energy Agency (NEA) of the Organisation for Economic Co-­operation

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and Development, which included an overview of uranium resources, production, and demand.67 In 1984, the Red Book still listed Bophuthatswana, Transkei, and Venda—­the Bantustans, areas to which black South Africans ­were moved by the apartheid government—as in­de­pen­dent states.68 ­These areas, however, ­were geo­ graph­i­cal expressions of South Africa’s segregationist policies and ­under the ultimate control of the apartheid government. In 1985, the IAEA General Conference a­ dopted a resolution requiring member states to halt all nuclear collaboration with South Africa. It also asked the director general and the Board of Governors to bring the resolution to the attention of the UN General Assembly and the secretary-­general. In addition, the resolution acknowledged the “illegal mining, utilization, exploitation and sale of Namibian soil” by apartheid South Africa.69 ­Toward the end of the 1980s, the General Conference and the board increased pressure on South Africa and threatened to expel it from the agency. At the same time, and in the face of mounting international pressure and sanctions, South Africa began to indicate that it was considering signing the NPT. This had an immediate impact on overall African participation in the treaty. Several African states had resisted signing the NPT as long as apartheid South Africa remained outside the regime. In 1990, Mozambique acceded to the treaty, and in 1991, Tanzania and Zambia followed. On 10 July 1991, South Africa became a party to the NPT and signed a comprehensive safeguards agreement, as required, in September 1991. The African members of the board made clear, however, that they would not allow the apartheid state, long suspected of having built nuclear weapons, enter the NPT so easily. On 11 September 1991, Egypt, Morocco, Nigeria, and Tunisia presented a resolution that requested the director general “to verify and ensure—­through all the mea­sures available to the Agency, including special inspections—­t he comprehensiveness of the inventory of South Africa’s nuclear installations, equipment, and facilities.” 70 They presented the draft proposal on behalf of the African group in the IAEA’s General Conference. Usually, the IAEA checked the accuracy of NPT member states’ inventories of nuclear material, not ­whether they w ­ ere “comprehensive,” and most notably, the agency did not use “all the mea­sures available” to verify state declarations. This had been a m ­ atter of tradition. The request for a special inspection of South Africa—­five months before the board reaffirmed the procedure—­and the emphasis on the “comprehensiveness” of a state’s initial declaration to the agency was highly unusual and resulted from the widespread belief that South Africa had a clandestine nuclear weapon program. While the general idea of the African resolution was not particularly controversial, the request for a special inspection was. The Egyptian governor,

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Merwat Tallawy, therefore indicated that to facilitate a consensus decision, the sponsors of the resolution w ­ ere willing to delete the reference to special inspections.71 The amended version of the resolution only focused on the verification of the comprehensiveness of South Africa’s declaration.72 The United States, always a strong supporter of South Africa in the IAEA, was still critical of the revised version. The American governor, Richard Kennedy, cited South Africa’s good cooperation with the IAEA in joining the NPT. Therefore, in his view, the resolution could “be considered to be prejudicing the issue in a counterproductive manner.” Despite this criticism, he agreed to support a consensus decision of the version without the reference to special inspections.73 The Iraqi representative, Rahim Al-­K ital, who clearly saw the effect of ongoing international inspections in his own country on the discussion, returned to the original version of the resolution, which had mentioned special inspections. He argued that “the main difference between the two versions was the elimination of any reference to special inspections, which he understood had been intended to secure the support of certain States that advocated special inspections but found them unnecessary in the case of South Africa.”74 The Iraqi governor thus accused his fellow governors of applying double standards by being more accommodating t­oward South Africa than ­toward other states. The states from the East and the West favored strengthening special inspections, but they did not push for them in the case of South Africa. India therefore requested two votes—­one on each version of the resolution—­but the African group de­cided to put forward only the amended version.75 It had made its case nevertheless. In the final balloting, no member state voted against the toned-­down African resolution. Six non-­ aligned states abstained: Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, India, Iran, and Iraq.76 During parts of the board discussion, a consensus decision on a special inspection of South Africa had seemed close. By not requesting a special inspection to South Africa, an ally of the United States, the Board of Governors may have missed an historic opportunity to make this tool po­liti­cally more acceptable.77 ­After more than a year of inspections in South Africa, President de Klerk publicly admitted that South Africa had in the past possessed a l­imited nuclear capability of six nuclear devices, but that the entire nuclear weapon program had been voluntarily dismantled.78 The IAEA inspection team, supported by experts from nuclear weapon states, had to assess the extent of that program, verify that it had been dismantled, and make sure that South Africa’s declaration of nuclear material was correct and complete.79 The IAEA inspectors found themselves confronted by vari­ous prob­lems, ranging from encounters with dangerous snakes—­ attracted by the heat generated by uranium waste—to translation difficulties.

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Most documents relating to the secret program w ­ ere written in Afrikaans. A safeguards colleague who had spent two years in Belgium and understood some Flemish was called in to help out.80 During the inspections, the IAEA officials sealed the shafts of the Pelindaba nuclear test site, spotted by satellite in 1977, and watched the South Africans burn the remaining documents relating to the nuclear program.81 Some South African nuclear weapon experts joined the staff of the Department of Safeguards, where their expertise was increasingly needed. The new South African government became a promoter of a Nuclear Weapon ­Free Zone in Africa and was crucial in facilitating diplomatic consensus among NAM states to agree to the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995, 25 years a­ fter its entry into force as per a treaty provision. It rejoined the board that same year.82 Abdul Minty, who as an exile had spent the 1970s and 1980s lobbying at the IAEA General Conference against the apartheid government’s influence on IAEA affairs, became the country’s new governor. In North Africa, the IAEA dealt with another aspect of the Eu­ro­pean colonial legacy on the African continent, when in 1999 Algeria asked the agency to carry out a study on the radiological situation at former French nuclear test sites in the Sahara.83 When Tunisia had approached the agency with a similar request in the late 1950s, several member states, including the United States, had regarded such a step as outside the IAEA’s purview.84 IAEA scientists conducted similar studies in former Yugo­slavia and Iraq in the late 2000s to determine w ­ hether depleted uranium ammunition from past wars posed health and environmental risks.85

The Additional Protocol The proliferation crises of the 1990s challenged the IAEA as an institution and made the question of its effectiveness more controversial than ever. Eventually, however, ­t hese rough spots helped strengthen IAEA safeguards. The discovery of Iraq’s clandestine nuclear weapon program represented an “epiphany” for many at the agency.86 The experience showed not only the necessity of strengthening nuclear safeguards, but also the ability to do so. That the safeguards regime needed beefing up was not an entirely new discussion. Blix had initiated a pro­ cess to do just that before the Iraq episode, and the Safeguards Committee had discussed w ­ hether the IAEA should use additional information beyond states’ own declarations about their nuclear activities as early as 1970. Even Eklund—­ who in the arms control community is still remembered as being a safeguards skeptic—­lobbied somewhat for a strong role of the IAEA in nonproliferation when he told the Americans in the late 1970s that the world had to know the full extent of Pakistan’s secret nuclear activities.87

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In Iraq, the IAEA’s routine safeguards procedures, which assumed that significant diversions of nuclear material would be detected, had failed. The IAEA only found out about Iraq’s noncompliance ­because the Security Council equipped international inspectors with new powers. The agency also received intelligence information from states, took environmental samples, and gained access to sites beyond the facilities declared by Iraq. Blix argued that the IAEA had to have broader powers in general, not only in exceptional cases. In summer 1991, in a statement to the Board of Governors, he formulated three requirements needed by the IAEA: access to more information about nuclear sites; the “unequivocal right” to access sites “even at short notice;” and “access to the Security Council for backing and support.”88 Other­wise, Blix argued, the IAEA was not properly equipped to discover covert nuclear activities, even if it carried out special inspections, as “no inspectorate” could “roam the entire territory of the State in a blind search for undeclared nuclear facilities.”89 Blix message was clear: it was the member states’ responsibility to make the agency stronger. In September 1991, ­under the discrete heading of “Other Safeguards Issues,” the board discussed how the IAEA could use its Iraq experience to reform nuclear safeguards.90 As the Japa­nese delegate, Tetsuya Endo, explained, the IAEA needed to “restore the credibility and reliability” of safeguards, which w ­ ere criticized for 91 not detecting Iraq’s deception. Yet, as his Polish colleague Roman Kaniewski had explained ­earlier, “Safeguards had been what Member States had wished them to be,” which was primarily the verification of state declarations.92 Even the Italians, who frankly admitted that they “did not welcome a revival of the Safeguards Committee”—of which they had been a most skeptical participant in 1970—­now urged the board to establish “an open-­ended committee” to reconsider the IAEA’s safeguards system.93 Throughout most of the 1990s, beginning with the first inspections in Iraq, the secretariat and the board revisited the mea­sures the IAEA had at hand—­such as special inspections (reaffirmed in 1992)—to verify that states continued to observe their safeguards agreements. They also discussed additional technical methods for the agency’s safeguards toolbox. Environmental sampling emerged as an especially power­ful tool as the Iraq experience had foreshadowed.94 During the Persian Gulf War, the Iraqis had held some Americans hostage at the Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center. ­A fter their release, analy­sis of their clothing revealed high levels of depleted uranium, pointing to Iraq’s secret electromagnetic enrichment program.95 Environmental sampling had also been used during the IAEA and UNSCOM inspections in Iraq in 1991. In April 1993, at Blix’s instruction, the Standing Advisory Committee on

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Safeguards Implementation (SAGSI) drafted recommendations on how to strengthen safeguards in a cost-­effective way.96 Blix shared the proposals with the board, and the secretariat developed suggestions, seven tasks, for implementing them. Task 3 suggested the introduction of “environmental monitoring.”97 ­Water, soil, and crop samples could reveal a ­great deal about a state’s hidden nuclear activities. The secretariat coordinated the activities for conducting the tasks, with responsibility lying notably with Rich Hooper from Safeguards, Laura Rockwood from the l­egal office, and Mohamed ElBaradei, the previous head of the IAEA’s UN Office in New York and at the time assistant director general for external relations. The secretariat wanted the system strengthened in two years, by the time of the 1995 NPT Review and Extension Conference, when the NPT would be subject to indefinite extension. Hence, the initiative was called Program 93 + 2.98 Over the next two years, the agency conducted twelve field t­ rials in eleven member states. To collect environmental samples, inspectors swiped a cotton cloth in an area where undeclared material (if it existed) would likely be found. The cloth was then analyzed using particle analy­sis to detect trace amounts of uranium or plutonium.99 During the ­t rials, IAEA officials took samples inside and outside facilities, including at repro­cessing and centrifuge enrichment plants. The effectiveness of the testing astonished them. The group prepared a long and detailed report, five copies of which w ­ ere produced but never distributed. The results ­were stunning in regard to how much they revealed about the nuclear activities of the surveyed countries. The board only received the executive summary.100 Previously, particle analyses of environmental samples w ­ ere almost exclusively ­limited to military research. Not being involved with military activities had been a long-­established part of the IAEA’s self-­image. The concept of “environmental monitoring,” used in the military context, thus became “environmental sampling” for the IAEA. It sounded less like the continuous observation of state activities. The board approved safeguards’ use of environmental sampling in 1995 and built a clean laboratory in Seibersdorf for analyzing samples.101 In 1996, South Africa, which two years prior had come clean about its past nuclear program, became the first state in which the IAEA used environmental sampling as part of a regular inspection.102 While the Iraq revelations prepared the ground for member states’ productive collaboration on strengthening safeguards, opinions differed on how much new legislation it might require (and in what form) to give safeguards access to more tools and information to make them more efficient. On one hand, it could be argued that comprehensive safeguards included the right to verify the correctness

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of states’ declarations and that the completeness of a state’s declaration was a condition for its correctness, although the practice u ­ ntil then had not focused on verifying its completeness. On the other hand, established IAEA princi­ple held that changes in the safeguards system not be implemented automatically; instead, the secretariat had to negotiate new agreements with a state. The secretariat and the member states therefore de­cided to draft the Model Additional Protocol, a new standard text to complement existing safeguards agreements, confirm established rights, and provide a ­legal framework for the implementation of new mea­sures. Based on this model, member states would negotiate individual Additional Protocols with the agency, which would be in force alongside the existing comprehensive safeguards agreements and other safeguards agreements. (For states with other than comprehensive safeguards agreements, the Model Additional Protocol would not have a binding character—­they could implement certain mea­sures while not accepting o ­ thers.)103 Crucially, it was de­cided not to completely replace the existing comprehensive safeguards agreements. To do so would have implied that the IAEA did not already have the right to verify both the correctness and the completeness of a state’s declaration. If negotiations on strengthening safeguards failed, it could leave the agency “worse off than before.”104 Blix and ElBaradei, one of Blix’s most impor­tant se­nior staff members, disagreed on how much the board should be involved in concluding the Model ­Additional Protocol. While Blix favored the secretariat taking the lead, ElBaradei, as the head of external relations, believed that more participation by the board was necessary.105 ElBaradei proceeded to get the board more involved, a move that upset Blix, who felt run over. U ­ nder the chairmanship of Peter Walker, the Australian governor, the board established Committee 24, which, as the Italian delegate had anticipated a few years ­earlier, became somewhat of a new edition of the 1970 Safeguards Committee (Committee 22).106 The reform pro­cess of the 1990s also had an effect on the IAEA’s bureaucracy. The secretariat had to figure out how to deal with intelligence information from states: who would receive such sensitive information as satellite imagery, and how would it be handled? The person had to be someone whom both the member states and the director general trusted. The IAEA hired a British intelligence officer to receive states’ intelligence information. He worked in the Department of Safeguards but reported directly to Blix.107 Although the IAEA dealing with intelligence information, as well as with commercial satellite imagery and open source information, is commonplace t­oday, back then it was considered a risky development, as it had the potential to harm the agency’s credibility as a neutral international organ­ization.108

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The reform pro­cess also effected working relationships within the agency, including fostering cross-­departmental dialog. The Department of Safeguards had been “insulated” before and was often considered “an agency within the agency.” As a result of the reforms, it worked more closely with other departments in exchanging information on proj­ects and activities, especially with the Department of Technical Cooperation, but also with the Department of Nuclear Energy.109 As the safeguards department began approaching an inspected state as a ­whole rather than only considering individual nuclear facilities, its staff realized that they should also view the IAEA as a ­whole in terms of a source of information. When ElBaradei succeeded Blix as director general in 1997, he called this institutional reform pro­cess the “one ­house approach.”110 For the IAEA, the major crises involving Iraq and North ­Korea and successful reforms at the agency marked the end of the 1990s. The conclusion of the Model Additional Protocol in 1997 strengthened IAEA safeguards, and moreover, a­ fter long years of hesitation, more of the key players in the nuclear order entered the NPT: China and France in 1992; Argentina in 1995; Brazil in 1998. India and Pakistan, which both conducted nuclear tests in 1998, remained outside the regime. On 2 February 2009, however, ­after negotiating a civil nuclear cooperation agreement with the United States, India also signed an agreement with the IAEA to place more of its nuclear facilities ­under agency safeguards.111 Meanwhile the agency turned its attention to ­matters of nuclear security ­after the collapse of the Soviet Union and a brutal act of terrorism raised fears of nuclear knowledge being sold to the highest bidder.112

Blix Not Bombs, ElBaradei for Peace On 11 September 2001, the after­noon session of the Board of Governors’ traditional fall meeting was underway, proceeding normally, ­until panic entered the room. Aides scurried in and out as concerned-­looking delegates and ­others mumbled among themselves. News of al-­Qaeda’s attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon reached IAEA headquarters as the Board of Governors discussed agency activities to improve the security of nuclear and radioactive materials.113 The session was paused so the participants could follow the news on a large screen in the boardroom.114 The consequences for the agency of such a bold and devastating attack w ­ ere understood almost immediately in terms of nuclear security: what if terrorists seized nuclear material and built a dirty bomb? At the time of 9/11, the IAEA’s nuclear security activities could best be described as modest. In the wake of the attacks on the United States, in March 2002, the board approved an “action plan” to expand the IAEA’s small nuclear security branch.

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Events the following year would lead to another and much more challenging task for the IAEA. In Mohamed ElBaradei, a Western-­educated international ­lawyer from Egypt, the IAEA had its first director general from a developing country, a long-­time goal of the Group of 77 and NAM. Also for the first time, in selecting ElBaradei, the board had agreed on an internal candidate, one who in this case had worked for the agency in se­nior positions for more than 10 years before taking charge as director general in 1997. ­Under ElBaradei’s leadership, IAEA inspectors returned to Iraq in November 2002, based on UN Security Council Resolution 1441. Similar to the inspections in the 1990s, the IAEA worked with a UN inspection body, the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC).115 As an indication that UNMOVIC would not operate like the discredited UNSCOM, Blix, now retired from the IAEA, was selected to head it. In a similar vein, at the IAEA the Iraq Nuclear Verification Office (INVO) assumed the role of the e­ arlier Iraq Action Team; it reported to ElBaradei. Nomenclature aside, other aspects of the mission suggested continuity with the previous inspections in Iraq although the situation could not have been more dif­fer­ent. The United States, ­u nder the administration of President George W. Bush, was not willing to let international organ­izations and their inspectors decide how to deal with Iraq. Bush had set out on a mission to confront what he called the “axis of evil”—­the “rogue states” of Iran, Iraq, and North K ­ orea—­which he wanted to prevent from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.116 On the topic of Iraq’s weapons program in an interview with CNN, Condoleezza Rice, Bush’s national security advisor, declared, “We ­don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.”117 Seeking regime change in Iraq, Bush used alleged links between al-­ Qaida and Baghdad to try to justify war on Iraq.118 While the international inspectors could find no evidence of a revived nuclear weapon program in Iraq, the United States increased pressure on the Security Council. The United Kingdom, Spain, and Bulgaria joined in supporting the United States, while permanent members China, France, and Rus­sia, as well as Germany, which was presiding over the council, pushed for a diplomatic solution. Giving inspectors a few more months in Iraq would be an “investment in peace,” ElBaradei told the Security Council in January 2003.119 To achieve its goal, the Bush administration did not shy away from efforts to manipulate the IAEA. Although the agency had by then gained experience making use of outside intelligence information, it realized in the early 2000s that it was vulnerable to receiving forged or incorrect intelligence. The agency had no forensic means to verify intelligence information, but it had sufficient in-­house

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knowledge to detect blatant fakery. In March 2003, with war in Iraq imminent, the IAEA received documents that appeared to confirm one of Bush’s allegations about Iraq: that it had tried to buy significant quantities of uranium from Niger.120 So obvious w ­ ere the m ­ istakes in the documents that Jacques Baute, the Frenchman who headed the IAEA’s Iraq Nuclear Verification Office, quickly determined them to be forged. Rockwood recalled, “Our collective view was how could any intelligence analyst have ever given ­t hose documents credibility, when in the space of half a day, shortly ­after having been fi­nally given ­t hose documents, a non-­analyst was able to draw the conclusion that ­t hese w ­ ere forgeries?”121 Despite ­t hese obvious fakes, the IAEA stuck to its long-­established culture of not being accusatory t­ oward member states. In a report on the incident, Rockwood therefore did not call the documents “forgeries,” which “seemed like an incendiary word to use,” but described them as “not au­then­tic.”122 Typical of large international bureaucracies, the IAEA remained wedded to its official, regulatory language. On 7 March, ElBaradei again spoke before the Security Council. He made clear that the documents on Niger w ­ ere fake, but also used the “not au­then­ tic” formulation. ElBaradei stated that ­after 218 nuclear inspections at 141 sites, the IAEA had to date “no evidence or plausible indication of the revival of a nuclear weapon program in Iraq.”123 Only twelve days ­later, on 19 March, the so-­called “co­ali­tion of the willing,” led by the United States, invaded Iraq, despite ElBaradei’s and Blix’s repeated reports that inspectors had found no evidence of Iraq having revived its nuclear weapon program since its dismantlement in the 1990s.124 Shortly before the invasion, the international inspectors had left the country. The United States then formed its own outfit, the Iraq Survey Group, led by David Kay, to investigate Iraq’s activities involving weapons of mass destruction. The IAEA’s UN mission in Iraq during 2002 and 2003 had lasting consequences. The director general became more involved in power politics than at any other time in the past. Previously, the agency’s leaders had largely remained outside the public’s view, but this had begun to change ­under Blix’s leadership. ElBaradei, however, became a much more contested po­liti­cal figure than Blix. While the United States grew furious at ElBaradei’s tireless efforts to prevent war against Iraq, to ­others ElBaradei and Blix ­were advocates of peace. More than a de­cade ­after the inspections and invasion of Iraq, Blix still had hanging in his Stockholm apartment a poster painted by a New York anti-­Iraq war protester that read “Blix not Bombs.”125 On 7 October 2005, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced that ElBaradei and the IAEA would jointly receive that year’s Nobel Peace Prize.126 The day

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IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei and UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission executive chairman Hans Blix consulting at a UN Security Council meeting on Iraq, New York, 14 February 2003. © UN / Sophia Paris

of the announcement, ElBaradei had stayed at home; he claimed to have been still in his pajamas when he received the news.127 The IAEA had been nominated for the previous year’s prize, and expectations of receiving it had been high, with the press trailing ElBaradei the day of the announcement. The 2004 Nobel Peace Prize instead went to the environmental activist Wagari Maathai, from K ­ enya. In 2005, ElBaradei had wanted to avoid the media circus. Having assumed that the committee typically called recipients ahead of time, he was surprised to hear his name on the televised announcement. The official statement cited the IAEA’s dual mandate, noting that the IAEA and its director general had been selected to receive the “award for their efforts to prevent nuclear energy from being used for military purposes and to ensure that nuclear energy for peaceful purposes is used in the safest pos­si­ble way.”128 ElBaradei, in his ac­cep­tance speech on 10 December, mused about the IAEA’s role in world affairs: “We are l­imited in our authority. We have a very modest bud­get. And we have no armies. But armed with the strength of our convictions, we w ­ ill continue to speak truth to power.”129 The latter is what the IAEA and its director general had indeed done before the Iraq War in telling the US government that Iraq had not restarted its nuclear weapon program, a finding that by then had widely been acknowledged as correct.

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ElBaradei accepted the prize along with the chair of the Board of Governors, Yukiya Amano, the Japa­nese diplomat who in 2009 would succeed ElBaradei as director general.

The Iran Case Beginning in 2002, in parallel to the IAEA’s verification work in Iraq, an emerging crisis over Iran exacerbated the already tense relationship between ElBaradei and the United States. The Nobel Peace Prize arrived as “a shot in the arm” at this critical moment in the IAEA’s history.130 In light of the United States’ still-­ growing opposition to ElBaradei, the prestigious award bolstered the director general’s approach to international diplomacy and the IAEA’s standing in international affairs. The origin of Iran’s nuclear program dates back to the Atoms for Peace initiative. Before the 1979 revolution in Iran, the United States and Western Eu­ro­ pean suppliers had supported Tehran in building a nuclear power program, even though suspicions had been raised about the country’s nuclear ambitions. ­A fter the overthrow of the shah, the postrevolutionary government initially paused the country’s nuclear activities, but beginning in the second half of the 1980s went

The 2005 Nobel Peace Prize was awarded to IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei (left) and the IAEA, represented by Yukiya Amano, chairman of the IAEA Board of Governors, Oslo, December 2005. © Dean Palma / IAEA

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in search of new suppliers and found them in China, the Soviet Union / Rus­sia, and A. Q. Khan’s nuclear black market.131 In the 1990s, some IAEA member states, especially the United States and Israel, warned that Iran, a long-­time member of the NPT, appeared to have more than peaceful nuclear ambitions. Iraq, Iran’s archenemy, also accused Iran of having “nuclear armaments intentions” at IAEA board meetings in the early 1990s.132 In August 2002, an Ira­nian opposition group in exile, the National Council of Re­sis­tance of Iran, publicly revealed information, prob­ably based on intelligence passed to it, about hidden nuclear enrichment facilities and a heavy-­water plant in Iran.133 This was the starting point for the engagement of the international community with Iran’s nuclear program, with the IAEA at its center. Over the course of an intensive inspection effort, the agency strug­gled with a constantly fluctuating relationship with member state Iran, which at times cooperated with it but at ­others obstructed it. ElBaradei sought to maintain a respectful dialogue, but was also shocked by the Ira­ni­ans’ repeated actions to undermine the IAEA’s verification efforts. From the beginning of the Iran crisis, it was clear that the case would grab the world’s attention. The Board of Governors therefore de­cided that it would share the director general’s reports on the Iran investigations with the public. The decision to open some of the agency’s internal files on Iran was an unpre­ce­dented step ­toward transparency and underlined the exceptional character of the case.134 Such reports ­were usually restricted to board members only. While in 1996, the board had agreed that its documents should be made public a­ fter two years—­ with certain exceptions, such as ­t hose classified as “safeguards confidential”—­ apart from the Iran files, the IAEA only implemented this decision in 2016, ­after constant pressure from historians.135 In February 2003, half a year a­ fter the revelations about Iran, ElBaradei was fi­nally invited to visit. The deputy director general for safeguards, Pierre Goldschmidt from Belgium, and the Finn Olli Heinonen, director of Operations B, the regional offices covering Iran, accompanied him. During their visit, the Ira­ni­an’s admitted that they w ­ ere indeed building a large uranium enrichment plant at 136 Natanz. Upon returning to Vienna, ElBaradei reported to the board about the trip. Numerous reports to the board from the director general and the safeguards department would follow over the next few years. The Ira­nian case—­much more complex than other instances of noncompliance with the NPT—­revived the old discussion about discrimination in the global nuclear order. NAM, of which Iran was an influential member, had opened a Vienna Chapter in 2003.137 Supported by NAM, Iran consistently argued, citing

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Article IV of the NPT, that as a member of the treaty, it had the “inalienable right” to make use of civilian nuclear technologies. Since the NPT does not specifically define what constitutes a peaceful purpose, the Ira­ni­ans claimed that they had the right to develop a full nuclear fuel cycle for peaceful purposes.138 In addition, they pointed to double standards in the global nuclear order, in par­tic­u­lar in regard to Israel’s widely acknowledged and accepted nuclear weapon program.139 While a number of NAM states shared the prevailing concerns about Iran’s nuclear program, even a nonproliferation “poster child” like post-­apartheid South Africa used the Iran case to highlight inequalities in the global nuclear order and to demand that the nuclear weapon states keep their pledge to pursue nuclear disarmament, as part of the NPT.140 To explain the dynamics of the controversy between the nuclear weapon states and the non-­nuclear weapon states, the South African governor Abdul Minty presented the image of a smoker who does not want o ­ thers to smoke: “If you smoke, you ­can’t tell other ­people that it’s bad.”141 In 2003, as the Iran crisis was just beginning, the IAEA and its member states had been on edge, not least b ­ ecause of its recent experience involving Iraq and the United States. A slip of the tongue—or worse, a ­mistake—­could have im­ mense consequences on board discussions at that time. In November 2003, ElBaradei presented a report to the board that listed numerous violations of Iran’s safeguards agreement but nonetheless concluded, “To date, t­ here is no evidence that the previously undeclared nuclear material and activities . . . ​­were related to a nuclear weapons programme.” The next sentence clarified that ElBaradei did not mean to imply that t­ here ­were no hints of a covert nuclear weapon program in Iran (­t here ­were), but that this was not enough to prove that the Ira­ni­ans actually had such a program. ElBaradei’s report went on to state that “given Iran’s past pattern of concealment, it ­w ill take some time before the Agency is able to conclude that Iran’s nuclear programme is exclusively for peaceful purposes.”142 ElBaradei’s choice of words, however, provided both sides of the debate with further ammunition for their arguments. The American governor, Kenneth Brill, argued that “it would take time to repair the damage to the Agency’s credibility caused by the misleading word,” while Iran and its supporters gladly picked up the original wording of the report.143 The representatives of the non-­aligned states w ­ ere “pleased that Iran’s co-­operation had resulted in the Agency stating that ­there was no evidence” of a secret nuclear weapon program.144 In an awkward but necessary attempt to justify his choice of words, ElBaradei explained to the board that over the preceding year, the secretariat had been used to referring to “no evidence” of a revived secret nuclear weapon program in Iraq. Somewhat helplessly, he added, “Black’s Law

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Dictionary stated that ‘proof’ and ‘evidence’ may be used interchangeably.”145 The drama surrounding ElBaradei’s word choice enraged him, as the Americans used it to damage the credibility of IAEA. His anger comes across in the agency’s official rec­ords of the board session: In his view, making an issue out of pos­si­ble differences in meaning between “evidence” and “proof” was disingenuous. Also, he took exception to the suggestion that the Agency’s credibility had been damaged. The credibility of the Agency depended on its continuing to be impartial and factual. The Agency had been criticized by some before the recent war in Iraq for its conclusions relating to Iraq. It had stood its ground, however, and in his view its credibility had not only not been damaged, but had been enhanced. The Agency did not jump to conclusions or make leaps of faith, and it would continue acting in that spirit as long as he was at its helm.146

The strained relationship between ElBaradei and the US administration had morphed into an open conflict in the IAEA’s boardroom. ElBaradei recalls in his memoirs how a number of del­e­ga­tions told him that it was a “ ‘historic day’ to see an international civil servant stand up to bullying by the United States.”147 The following year, the United States’ issues with ElBaradei evolved into a campaign against him. In 2004, when ElBaradei’s second term was coming to a close at IAEA, the United States tried, ultimately unsuccessfully, to prevent his staying on as director general. In the pro­cess, the Americans tapped ElBaradei’s phone and bugged his conversations with Ira­nian officials, as the Washington Post revealed that year.148 In 2009, the Japa­nese diplomat Yukiya Amano would succeed ElBaradei at the helm of the agency. The United States supported his candidacy, which was contested by NAM’s choice, Abdul Minty.149 ­A fter Iran’s election of the hardline Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as president in 2005, its relationship with the international community and the IAEA further deteriorated. Diplomatic negotiations pursued by France, Germany, and the United Kingdom, the so-­called EU3, outside the IAEA’s framework eventually failed. Iran then restarted uranium conversion—­before enrichment, uranium oxide needs to be converted into uranium hex­a­fluor­ide—­and in September 2005 the Board of Governors found it in noncompliance with its safeguards agreement. The IAEA stated that Iran, which had hidden its uranium enrichment and plutonium repro­cessing facilities, had deceived the agency for 20 years in a “policy of concealment,” a charge first leveled against Iran in 2003.150 Only in February 2006, however, when Iran also resumed uranium enrichment, did the board officially inform the Security Council of its noncompliance.151 Reporting noncompliance to the council is not an automatic pro­cess. Board members must

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first decide ­whether the safeguards findings justify such a step and then make a decision, taking into consideration po­liti­cal issues, such as ­whether international sanctions w ­ ill help or harm nonproliferation goals.

Continuing Challenges ­ fter the end of the Cold War, the discovery of hidden nuclear weapon activities A in NPT member states challenged the IAEA’s dual mandate in new ways, both due to the severity of the crises and b ­ ecause of their concurrency. Agency safeguards had neither deterred nor precluded the programs; they had also failed to detect them. The Ira­nian case in par­tic­u­lar tested the IAEA’s dual mandate and remains the agency’s diplomatically most complicated and technically most complex verification effort to date. Throughout the investigations, Iran emphasized its right to develop a sophisticated peaceful nuclear program, including enrichment and repro­cessing capabilities, regardless of ­whether other states believed it made economic sense in a country rich in oil and with only one functioning nuclear power plant. From a historical perspective, what makes the Iran case particularly notable are the roots encompassing the crisis. The conflicts between the “nuclear-­haves” and the “nuclear have-­nots” had s­ haped the agency’s history,

The Vienna International Centre has been home to IAEA headquarters since 1979. © Rodolfo Quevenco / IAEA

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making the situation with Iran not only a case about one country but about the global nuclear order more generally. Further, the IAEA had to confront the uncomfortable challenge of determining ­whether Iran’s nuclear program was indeed peaceful, thus scrutinizing the intentions of a member state. For an organ­ization primed to produce “bureaucratic objectivity,” as the anthropologist Anna Weichselbraun calls it, d ­ oing so continues to be a balancing act.152 Over the course of the 1990s and early 2000s, IAEA inspectors went from being “accountants,” relying on quantitative methods to verify states’ declarations to the IAEA, to “detectives,” adopting qualitative methods aimed at discovering potential violations. To get a fuller picture of individual member states’ nuclear activities, since the early 2000s, the IAEA secretariat developed the state-­level concept—­t hat is, the agency sought to understand the state as a ­whole, not just as a list of individual facilities. For states with both an active comprehensive safeguards agreement and an Additional Protocol, the IAEA can draw a so-­called broader conclusion, which allows for the implementation of safeguards mea­sures tailored to the specifics of the respective state. Iran remained a member state of the IAEA and the NPT regime. A ­ fter Barack Obama became president in the United States in 2009 and Hassan Rouhani, considered a moderate, did the same in Iran in 2013, pro­g ress on verifying Iran’s nuclear program seemed pos­si­ble. In July 2015, the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany—­t he P5 + 1 or the EU3 +  3—­used a smaller diplomatic setting outside the IAEA, but in Vienna, to eventually negotiate and sign the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), or the “Iran deal.” The multi-­year agreement, more than 150 pages long, was endorsed by the Security Council. In return for the lifting of UN, US, and EU sanctions, which ­were impeding Iran’s economic development, the Rouhani government agreed to allow curbs on its nuclear program, in par­tic­u­lar its enrichment activities, and permit elaborate inspections of its nuclear facilities. The IAEA was charged with verifying the deal, giving the agency more insight into Iran’s national nuclear program than into that of any other country. As part of the JCPOA, the IAEA investigated the pos­si­ble military dimensions of Iran’s nuclear program, and based on information provided by Tehran, concluded that Iran had pursued a nuclear weapon program from 1985 to 2003.153 In 2018, and despite the IAEA’s reassurance that Iran continued to abide by the deal, US president Donald Trump reneged on the terms of the agreement, which was not a binding treaty. Iran responded with gradual breaches of its commitments, and its relationship with the IAEA worsened. In 2020, the incoming Joe Biden administration signaled that it would try to revive the deal.

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Like the Iran case, North K ­ orea also continued to occupy the IAEA into the 2010s. In October 2006, North K ­ orea tested a nuclear explosive. By then, it had left the NPT, having already exited the IAEA in 1994. In its January 2003 notice to withdraw from the NPT, Pyongyang accused the IAEA of being “a servant and a spokesperson of the U.S.” and condemned “the falsehood and hy­poc­r isy of the signboard of impartiality the I.A.E.A. put up.”154 It removed IAEA seals and turned surveillance cameras around at nuclear installations; it also expelled in­ orea declared that it would spectors from the country.155 In April 2009, North K end what ­little remaining cooperation it had with the IAEA. The next month, North K ­ orea carried out its second nuclear test. By this point, Pyongyang no longer participated in an international l­egal nuclear framework. Since 2009, the IAEA has had no presence in the country. In March 2019, Amano declared that the “IAEA stands ready to undertake verification and monitoring activities in the DPRK if a po­liti­cal agreement is reached among countries concerned.”156 In addition to t­ hese proliferation crises, another major nuclear accident occurred on 11 March 2011, when a tsunami following a massive earthquake hit the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant, on the east coast of Japan. The power supply and the cooling system broke down, resulting in the reactor cores of three units melting and releasing dangerous amounts of radiation. Unlike the Chernobyl accident ­behind the Iron Curtain, the unfolding disaster could be viewed live on tele­v i­sion around the world. The press criticized the IAEA—­t he international organ­ization responsible for civilian nuclear cooperation—­for its slow and ­limited release of information to the public. The Rus­sian nuclear expert, Iouli Andreev, for instance, accused the IAEA of not having learned from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster.157 Although the IAEA conducted a fact-­finding mission to the reactor site, Amano was widely perceived as hesitant and slow in sharing information with the world.158 Despite pro­gress on establishing international rules on nuclear safety ­after Chernobyl and Fukushima, the IAEA’s authority in the field remains l­ imited. The agency’s member states continue to be split over the question of the ­future of nuclear power. As a consequence of the Fukushima disaster, even the initially pro-­nuclear German government u ­ nder Chancellor Angela Merkel de­cided to phase out nuclear energy by 2022.

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Conclusion

 T he Last Man Standing

It would undoubtedly be an in­ter­est­ing task for ­future historians to try to understand how and why a question almost wholly technical should have become an all-­encompassing po­liti­cal theme. —­Sigvard Eklund, December 1979

In New Delhi in late 1979, the year of the Three Mile Island nuclear accident, IAEA director general Sigvard Eklund opened the General Conference meeting with a long, impassioned speech on how to rehabilitate nuclear power. The f­ uture energy situation looked troubling: petroleum reserves would be exhausted within a few de­cades; burning coal was unsustainable ­because it polluted the environment; and solar, wind, and other renewable sources of energy w ­ ere far from being able to meet energy demand resulting from exponential population growth. In light of ­these ­factors, Eklund asserted, nuclear power was “indispensable.”1 In his eyes, t­ hose who responded to the energy crisis with calls for “no growth” policies ­were fortunate enough to enjoy privileged lives but remained ignorant of the needs of the developing world. That the conference took place in New Delhi—­ and not in Vienna as usually—­underscored the message of Eklund’s speech. Eklund was also worried b ­ ecause the IAEA’s dual mandate of promoting and controlling nuclear technology had come ­under attack in the industrialized states. Many discredited the agency’s promotion of nuclear power as lobbying efforts for a dangerous technology with the potential to contaminate large parts of the environment, and the danger always lurked of another nation obtaining nuclear weapons. For the scientist Eklund, t­ hese fears bore no relation to the benefits of nuclear power. Eklund asked his audience w ­ hether ­future historians would be able to explain how and why a “wholly technical” issue like the development of nuclear power could have become “an all-­encompassing po­liti­cal theme.”2 Eklund’s invocation of ­f uture historians served as a rhetorical device to discredit the rejection of nuclear energy. F ­ uture historians, he appeared to imply,

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would deconstruct the growing criticism ­toward nuclear power as anti-­nuclear hysteria. ­Today, some of t­ hose “­future historians” certainly disagree with Eklund, but more impor­tant, he had asked the wrong question. Rather than focusing on how and why nuclear power went from being a technical issue to a po­liti­cal debate, the crucial question for historians is why it was, and continues to be, impor­ tant for the IAEA to distinguish between the po­liti­cal and the technical. The question is all the more pertinent ­because all the involved parties, including director generals, are well aware that t­ here is no such t­ hing in international relations as a purely technical question.

The Buzzword of Politicization From the outset, the IAEA’s dual mandate was highly po­liti­cal. The agency’s found­ers devised the dual mandate to give states access to what they perceived as a key technology of the f­ uture. At the same time, they hoped the agency would be able to limit the spread of the kind of weapon that had killed 200,000 ­people in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and contain the destructive force that gave t­ hose who possessed it unpre­ce­dented powers. When the international community established the IAEA in 1957, it did not overlook the risks inherent in the spread of civilian nuclear technology and knowledge. The Soviets ­were the first to alert the US State Department about the faults of the Atoms for Peace initiative, arguing that the buildup of civilian nuclear programs could actually increase nuclear military capabilities. Nonetheless, the hope prevailed at that time that international nuclear safeguards—­a set of inspection, accounting, surveillance, and containment measures—­could keep the atom’s peaceful power and its military might separate. While some worried that the expectations raised by nuclear power generation ­were being overstated, ­there was almost unan­i­mous agreement that civilian nuclear applications should not be restricted and should even be promoted. This narrative of the beneficial atom particularly appealed to states of the developing world—­many of them recently f­ ree from colonial rule—­based on the expectation that nuclear applications in agriculture, medicine, science, and power generation could help them advance eco­nom­ically. Almost a de­cade before Eklund’s speech in New Delhi, the entry into force of the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), in 1970, had strengthened the IAEA’s responsibility to alert the world to the spread of nuclear weapons. The agency received a mandate to send inspectors around the world to verify that parties to the treaty continued to fulfill their pledge not to develop a certain type of weapon; such access was unpre­ce­dented for an international organ­ization. Beginning in the 1970s, however, many ­people did not regard nuclear

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bombs as the only peril stemming from nuclear technology. A power­ful civil society movement, mostly in the industrialized states of the West, emerged in opposition to nuclear energy. The controversies that Eklund described would intensify in the de­cades to come. The 1986 Chernobyl accident confirmed the anti-­nuclear energy movement’s warnings about the major risks posed by nuclear power plants. While the supporters of nuclear power in the West attributed the accident in Ukraine to supposedly inferior Soviet technology and management, the 2011 disaster at the Fukushima nuclear power plant in Japan demonstrated that even the most technically mature nuclear energy programs can experience catastrophic events. Nuclear power has since been in decline in much of Western Eu­rope, but this trend is not a global phenomenon. Nuclear power reactors are u ­ nder construction in many parts of the world, particularly in Asia, including in India and China. In the United Arab Emirates, the first nuclear power plant went online in 2020, and neighboring Saudi Arabia is in the planning stages of building a nuclear energy program. Despite the Saudis’ bold ambitions, as of 2021 their nuclear program is only covered by a Small Quantities Protocol, which compared to comprehensive safeguards agreements allows a reduced level of safeguards for countries with relatively l­ittle nuclear activity. Thus the IAEA finds itself confronted with the task of convincing the Saudis to upgrade its safeguards obligations.3 IAEA safeguards are no guarantee that states ­will abstain from secretly building nuclear weapons. If all goes well, their existence alone deters states from developing nuclear weapons ­because they fear being caught. Safeguards ­under the NPT w ­ ere designed to verify that member states are not diverting nuclear materials from civilian to military programs—­but, if they do, to detect it in a timely fashion. ­Because of the confidence placed in the safeguards’ deterrent effect, the architects of the nuclear nonproliferation regime initially did not expect major diversions. Revelations about the clandestine nuclear weapon programs developed by South Africa, Iraq, and North ­Korea in the early 1990s exposed the limits of the safeguards’ deterrent effect. Throughout the IAEA’s history, the agency and its member states have had dif­ fer­ent attitudes about the proliferation risks inherent in the agency’s dual mandate. Some believed that international nuclear collaboration would offer at least partial insight into national nuclear developments that might other­w ise remain ­under the international community’s radar. This was a secondary argument, as such thinking had not been the primary motivation ­behind creating the IAEA. The threat posed by North ­Korea—­which has nuclear weapon and ballistic missiles programs but is neither a member of the IAEA nor the NPT—­seems to support

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the argument that it is better to have some sort of cooperation, even if it involves sharing nuclear technology, than to have no engagement—­and thus no insight at all. In addition, ever since the IAEA’s inception, helping states to access and use civilian nuclear technologies was seen as a means to legitimize nonproliferation policies, and the NPT validated this logic. Already the del­e­ga­tions involved in the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC)—­the failed attempt to establish a world nuclear control organ­ ization in the second half of the 1940s—­realized that technical issues in the nuclear domain could not be resolved in­de­pen­dently of po­liti­cal context. The IAEA’s dual architecture combining bureaucracy and diplomacy underscores the agency’s po­liti­cal character even more so in that member state representatives in its policy-­making organs set the par­ameters of the agency’s activities. Moreover, a look back at the early years reveals accusations of politicization to have been po­liti­cal acts in and of themselves, not neutral reminders of the agency’s core technical function. While over the course of the Cold War South Africa lost influence in vari­ous international organ­izations due to its racist, apartheid policies, as an IAEA member, it tried to keep the world focused on the technical character of the agency in an attempt to maintain its influence within the organ­ ization. Similarly, a­ fter the establishment of the IAEA, the United States emphasized its non-­political function to silence Soviet calls for nuclear d ­ isarmament. The Americans, leaders in the possession of nuclear weaponry, declared that addressing the issue of nuclear weapons was not part of the IAEA’s technical agenda. The expulsion of the South African del­e­ga­tion (1979) from the IAEA General Conference and the rejection of the Israeli del­e­ga­tion’s credentials (1982) are prime examples of the po­liti­cal strug­gles between groups of member states. The entanglement of po­liti­cal and technical issues made it vital for the IAEA’s bureaucratic arm to cultivate its image as a technical servant to the agency’s member states. Its legitimacy rested on its self-­portrayal as an international bureaucracy in charge of executing the mandate it had received from member states, rather than an institution with its own po­liti­cal agenda. Nonetheless, even as IAEA officials argue that the agency has no po­liti­cal mission, they know that it has a po­liti­cal function ­because of the mandate it executes. When in 2007 the United States accused IAEA director general Mohamed ElBaradei of acting too po­liti­cally in regard to Iran’s noncompliance with the NPT, the agency’s leadership realized that states would likely accuse the IAEA of politicization if the agency’s technical findings did not support a state’s opinion. ElBaradei stood up for the values on which the IAEA was founded, but his critics accused him of ­doing the opposite.

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The IAEA’s leadership has always been aware that the agency’s role is po­liti­ cal, but at the same time recognized that it should not be. The purely technical character of the IAEA became a myth that every­body knew was a myth, but one that needed to be sustained to enable the IAEA to carry out its mandate. Po­liti­ cal opponents could discuss contentious issues at the IAEA and then avoid inflicting a diplomatic loss of face by reaching a “technical” compromise. The myth of politicization relates to the myth of the “spirit of Vienna,” which envisioned the IAEA as a place of successful consensus building during much of the Cold War. T ­ here is some truth to both of t­ hese myths. When the IAEA was still a small organ­ization, and the board mostly consisted of scientists who had known each other for years, many decisions w ­ ere naturally easier to make. With the NPT, the IAEA’s work became more involved in global politics, such as crises over nuclear proliferation. The NPT is a discriminatory regime that privileges the nuclear weapon states, leading to much frustration among the nuclear have-­ nots. Their frustration was exacerbated by the nuclear weapon states failure to keep their promise to pursue nuclear disarmament—­a pledge inherent in signing the NPT, but one which the IAEA does not verify. P ­ eople with long-­term involvement in the IAEA felt the increase in major clashes in the policy-­making organs to be a noticeable shift in agency affairs, and it was. Yet, the conflicts w ­ ere not entirely new. If looked at objectively, all IAEA parties, even the administrative offices of the secretariat, have politicized an issue at some point. When, in June 2016, the IAEA’s ­house magazine, the IAEA Bulletin, opened with the statement “The Inter­ national Atomic Energy Agency’s mission is to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons,” it put the IAEA on the same plane as the NPT, which is a po­liti­cal treaty that the IAEA verifies.4 The wording suggested that the IAEA was now an institution with its own “mission,” rather than an executor with an assigned “mandate.” In addition, the bulletin’s headline—­“IAEA Safeguards: Preventing the Spread of Nuclear Weapons”—­could be read as proclaiming success in this regard for the agency. In the 1970s and 1980s, member states not party to the NPT had carefully watched the IAEA for signs of it conflating NPT and IAEA affairs and calling it out when it did. While as of 2021 most IAEA member states have signed and ratified the treaty, four have not: Israel, India, Pakistan, and the young state of South Sudan, which entered the agency in 2016. It is still impor­ tant for the IAEA to re­spect the differences between its statute and the NPT, but the bulletin indicated a deviation from that princi­ple. When, following the death of Director General Yukiya Amano, the Board of Governors nominated Rafael Grossi, an Argentine c­ areer diplomat, to replace him in late 2019, it was immediately

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understood that Grossi would have to step down from his role as president-­ designate of the upcoming 2020 NPT Review Conference.5

A Changing Inspectorate If the IAEA’s history ­were a detective novel, it would be more like a “howcatchem” than a “whodunit.” As an intergovernmental organ­ization, the IAEA can only expose a state’s violations by using the means of detection agreed to in international treaties. The IAEA has no enforcement powers of its own, and if it catches a state cheating on its safeguards obligations, it can only refer the case to the UN Security Council. The agency can set in motion special inspections for states that arouse suspicion of noncompliance, but when the Board of Governors reaffirmed the agency’s right to do so in 1992, it at the same time cautioned that special inspections should be carried out “in rare occasions only.”6 In 1997, the IAEA ­adopted the Additional Protocol, which strengthened safeguards by permitted broader access and information gathering to verify not just the correctness of member states’ declarations, but also their completeness. While one could make the case that the completeness of a state’s declaration is a necessary condition of its correctness, the adoption was in line with the IAEA’s tradition of not imposing new mea­sures on member states without their explicit consent. President Dwight Eisenhower’s “Atoms for Peace” speech in 1953, in which he proposed the creation of the IAEA, did not explic­itly advocate international safeguards on national nuclear programs. Nuclear safeguards had already been discussed in the UNAEC negotiations in the 1940s but, at that time, they ­were largely regarded as too weak to prevent the emergence of new nuclear weapon states, which the United States saw as the primary purview of any international nuclear organ­ization. Safeguards came back into the picture during the negotiations on the IAEA statute in the second half of the 1950s to ensure that civilian nuclear technologies would not increase the global distribution of nuclear weapons. They ­were unpop­u­lar from the beginning. Many states in Africa, Asia, and South Amer­i­ca saw nuclear safeguards as a new form of ­great power imperialism. ­Because the safeguards applied to cooperative proj­ects, they had no effect on the more privileged states that did not rely on technical nuclear assistance. The Soviets initially supported the developing countries in this criticism, but changed their opinion in the early 1960s amid their growing fear of a nuclear-­armed China and especially a nuclear-­armed West Germany. Gradually, the Americans and the Soviets strengthened IAEA safeguards, a development that eventually led to the conclusion of the NPT, one of the most impor­tant instances of superpower cooperation during the Cold War.

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Conclusion  239

The IAEA’s inspectorate was not established to serve as a police force, but nuclear safeguards should provide assurances about the nonproliferation regime and help build confidence between states. While the non-­nuclear weapon states party to the treaty opened their nuclear programs to IAEA inspections, the inspectors verified that member states’ declarations to the agency w ­ ere correct, but they ­were still not actively looking for secret nuclear weapon programs. Before the 1990s, it was not a lack of awareness that ­limited safeguards activities to the verification of declared nuclear materials, but the lack of po­liti­cal w ­ ill to make safeguards stronger. The IAEA’s inspections in Iraq in the early 1990s, during which agency inspectors cooperated with the newly established United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), came as a cultural shock to the agency. IAEA inspectors ­were irritated by what they perceived as the “cowboy methods” of the American members of the commission as well as t­ hose of some of their IAEA colleagues. The IAEA’s traditional approach had been one of “friendly and supporting cooperation” with its member states, not one of aggressively interviewing scientists in inspected countries or trying to enter facilities to which they had been denied access.7 The Iraq experience nonetheless changed IAEA safeguards markedly. Afterwards, the IAEA hired more analysts for the safeguards department and equipped itself to use new types of intelligence information, such as satellite imagery, to fulfil its verification mandate. Although the history of the IAEA, like that of other large international organ­izations, is more than a series of crises and responses, major events often drove institutional change.

From Dual to Diverse Mandate The IAEA’s mandate of promoting access to civilian uses of nuclear science and technology without furthering its military uses is enshrined in its statute.8 This dual mandate was never l­imited to technical assistance and safeguards activities. The IAEA developed vari­ous programs to conduct research, study nuclear applications, and manage knowledge. It further diversified its activities over the years. For example, Director General Amano emphasized the agency’s role in cancer research and treatment and also stressed the IAEA’s core dual mandate by changing the agency’s “Atoms for Peace” motto to “Atoms for Peace and Development.”9 The trend t­ oward diversification is not specific to the IAEA; a similar “capacity for reinvention” has characterized the United Nations more generally.10 ­After the UN General Assembly ­adopted the 17 Sustainable Development Goals in 2015, the agency tried to demonstrate how its work could assist in achieving ­these goals.11 Since the Fukushima nuclear disaster, and as a belated response to growing opposition to new nuclear power plants, the IAEA has further toned down the

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240   Inspectors for Peace

agency’s language on nuclear energy promotion that characterized Eklund’s and Blix’s public speeches ­after the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl nuclear accidents, respectively. The agency now pre­sents itself as an institution that helps interested states develop and use nuclear power as a source of energy in the safest pos­si­ble way and also advocates nuclear power as a serious response to climate warming. In times of crises, the IAEA’s public relations office passionately sells its diverse mandate, as apparent from the agency’s social media accounts. When in late 2019 Iran denied an IAEA inspector access to a nuclear fa­cil­i­t y, the agency informed the public about the episode on Twitter, but buried the news by releasing numerous other tweets about the organ­ization’s many beneficial and successful activities. This included mass appeal topics, such as weight loss and pets. During the days of tense relations with Iran, the agency’s account asked, “Did you know scientists can check how much body fat you have by mea­sur­ing certain atoms?” and “What happens if your dog or cat gets cancer? . . . ​Learn how we keep vets and your furry friends safe during treatment.”12 With tweets like ­t hese, the IAEA tried to take the po­liti­cal edge off its mandate as well as to engage a generation of ­people for whom peaceful nuclear uses are seemingly irrelevant. The IAEA addresses the risks involved in the global distribution of nuclear power by emphasizing its regulatory functions in nuclear safety and nuclear security, which for large parts of the agency’s history ­were regarded as the domain of individual states. The agency had begun looking into the potential threat of nuclear terrorism as early as the 1970s, but ­after al-­Qaeda attacked the United States on 11 September 2001, it began to pay more attention to the risk. Cyber security threats and illicit nuclear transfers also now receive greater attention. “The mandate of the IAEA is as expansive, or as l­ imited, as you want it to be,” asserted ElBaradei while looking back on his tenure at the IAEA.13 Indeed, the IAEA statute provides a foundation for ample activities. Some of them seemed impor­t ant at the time of the agency’s inception but then moved into the background for de­cades. The agency’s opening of a fuel bank of low enriched uranium in Kazakhstan in late 2019 harks back to Eisenhower’s original idea for a pool of fissionable materials. It was established to assure supplies of nuclear fuel and in the pro­cess discourage states from developing their own enrichment programs. The IAEA’s largest technical assistance proj­ect, however, had nothing to do with the activities that the agency is typically known for: in 2020, the agency supported member states with nuclear and nuclear-­derived techniques for virus detection and diagnosis to help contain the COVID-19 pandemic and shipped related equipment and supplies around the world.14

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Conclusion  241

The agency’s mandate does of course have limits, which are often acknowledged when an area of activity is regarded as too po­liti­cal. This is why in 1996 the Preparatory Commission of the Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty Organ­ization (CTBTO) opened its headquarters next to the IAEA in Vienna rather than merging administratively with it. Major states, including the United States, China, Pakistan, and India, have not signed or not ratified the treaty. Clearly, the IAEA has to h ­ andle a dilemma that its found­ers codified. It is tempting to look at counterfactuals and ask ­whether ­there would be fewer nuclear weapon programs in the world ­today if ­t here had been no Atoms for Peace. The early IAEA fueled global expectations in the civilian uses of nuclear technologies and contributed to their worldwide distribution. It thus actively spread a technology prone to military use. When using counterfactuals to assess the history of the IAEA, however, t­ here are additional “what ifs” to pursue: Would policies of nuclear denial have worked in the long run? Would states have agreed to inspections of their nuclear programs if they received nothing in return? The IAEA and its safeguards system survived the Cold War not despite of but ­because of its limits. Compared to younger institutions in the global nuclear order—­for instance, the CTBTO, still awaiting ratification by key states—­t he IAEA functions well. In light of impor­t ant international arms control treaties having been abandoned (for example, the Intermediate-­R ange Nuclear Forces Treaty) or simply not joined by the nuclear weapon states (as with the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons), the IAEA remains, as the journalist Gero von Randow put it, “the last man standing.”15 Rather than merely regulating or denying the use of a certain technology, the agency helps states access nuclear technologies, thus offering them potentially tangible benefits in return for participation in the lofty goal of nuclear nonproliferation. In the history of arms control and disarmament, verification has always been one of the most contested issues between states, and the failure to agree on verification mea­sures has often hindered pro­gress t­ oward disarmament. Despite this, and for all the IAEA’s flaws and limitations, however, the agency has established, maintained, and even strengthened its verification role in nuclear nonproliferation over the course of its existence. Its inspectors continue to fulfill their mandate of aspiring to keep the peace.

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a b b r e v ia t i o n s

ACDA AEC CERN

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Atomic Energy Commission Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire (Eu­ro­pean Council for Nuclear Research) CIA Central Intelligence Agency CIRUS Canada India Reactor, United States COM Committee CREST CIA Rec­ords Research Tool CS Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency CTBT Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-­Ban Treaty CTBTO Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty Organ­ization DDG Deputy Director General DG Director General DIRCO Department of International Relations and Cooperation (South Africa) DNSA Digital National Security Archive DPRK Demo­cratic ­People’s Republic of K ­ orea DSCA Department of Security Council Affairs (UN) ECOSOC United Nations Economic and Social Council ENDC Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament FAO Food and Agriculture Organ­ization GC General Conference GOV Board of Governors G-77 Group of 77 HEU high enriched uranium IADA International Atomic Development Authority

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244  Abbreviations

IAEA International Atomic Energy Agency ILO International ­Labour Organ­ization INF Intermediate-­Range Nuclear Forces Treaty INFCE International Nuclear Fuel Cycle Evaluation INFCIRC Information Circular INIS International Nuclear Information System INVO Iraq Nuclear Verification Office KGB Committee for State Security (Soviet Union) LOC Library of Congress LTBT ­Limited Test Ban Treaty MLF Multilateral Force NAM Non-­A ligned Movement NARA National Archives and Rec­ords Administration (United States) NARS National Archives South Africa NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organ­ization NEA Nuclear Energy Agency NPT Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons NSG Nuclear Suppliers Group OAPEC Organ­ization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries OECD Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development OPEC Organ­ization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries OR Official Rec­ords PNE peaceful nuclear explosion; nuclear explosives for peaceful purposes PR press release PRC ­People’s Republic of China PrepCom Preparatory Commission RBMK Reaktor Bolschoi Moschtschnosti Kanalny (high-­power channel-­t ype reactor) SAC Scientific Advisory Committee SAGSI Standing Advisory Group on Safeguards Implementation TNA The National Archives (United Kingdom) UN United Nations UNAEC United Nations Atomic Energy Commission UNESCO United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organ­ization

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Abbreviations  245

UNMOVIC UNSAC UNSCOM US USSR VIC WHO

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United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission United Nations Scientific Advisory Committee United Nations Special Commission United States Union of Soviet Socialist Republics Vienna International Centre World Health Organ­ization

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glossary

The following terms relate to the organ­ization and mandate of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the production of nuclear energy, and the key treaties, arrangements, and actors involved in the nonproliferation of nuclear weapons. Additional Protocol (AP). The Additional Protocol complements existing safeguards agreements between the IAEA and individual states or groups of states. It is based on the provisions of the 1997 Model Additional Protocol (INFCIRC/540), which serves as a standard text for states with comprehensive safeguards agreements, while states with item-­specific or voluntary offer agreements “may accept and implement t­ hose mea­sures . . . ​t hat they are prepared to accept.” The main aim is to increase safeguards effectiveness and efficiency in verifying the correctness and completeness of member states’ declarations. An AP gives the IAEA expanded access to information and sites (in addition to that stemming from existing safeguards agreements) and authorizes IAEA inspectors to use the most advanced verification technologies. As of June 2021, 137 states as well as Euratom had APs in force. Agreed Framework. The Agreed Framework was a bilateral agreement between the United States and North K ­ orea (Demo­cratic ­People’s Republic of ­Korea), signed in Geneva on 21 October 1994. Its objective, from the US perspective, was to freeze North ­Korea’s indigenous nuclear program, replace its graphite-­moderated reactors with more proliferation-­resistant, light w ­ ater reactors, and gradually normalize the relations between the United States and North K ­ orea. The Agreed Framework tasked the IAEA with monitoring the freeze and conducting safeguards inspections in North ­Korea. Ele­ments of the agreement ­were being implemented, with the IAEA’s participation, ­until late 2002, when relations between the United States and North ­Korea deteriorated. A. Q. Khan network. Abdul Qadeer Khan (1936–2021), a Pakistani nuclear physicist, established the uranium enrichment program that became the foundation for Pakistan’s nuclear weapon program. The self-­proclaimed “­father” of the Pakistani nuclear bomb also ran a smuggling network, proliferating sensitive materials and equipment. In February 2004, ­after the United States provided the Pakistani government with incriminating evidence, Khan formally acknowledged t­ hese activities. Comprehensive safeguards agreements. The vast majority of IAEA safeguards agreements are full-­scope, comprehensive safeguards agreements concluded with non-­nuclear-­weapon states party to the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear

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248  Glossary Weapons (NPT). They are “comprehensive” ­because they confirm the IAEA’s right and obligation to ensure that safeguards apply for “all source or special fissionable material in all peaceful nuclear activities within the territory of the State, ­under its jurisdiction, or carried out ­under its control anywhere” (INFCIRC/153). Diversion. Since the first negotiations on international nuclear safeguards in the 1950s, such talks have centered on safeguards being designed to detect the potential diversion of nuclear materials and technology from civilian to military uses. While the goal of the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) is “preventing” the diversion of nuclear energy from peaceful uses to nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices, IAEA (comprehensive) safeguards ­under the treaty only permit “verifying” that no diversion has taken place. Thus, by detecting diversion, comprehensive safeguards aim to deter states from clandestinely attempting it. Dosimetry. Dosimetry, also called radiation dosimetry, is the pro­cess and method of mea­sur­ing ionizing radiation absorbed by objects and particularly h ­ umans. Dual use. Dual use refers to the capability of certain nuclear materials and related technologies to be used for both civil and military purposes. Uranium enrichment and plutonium repro­cessing are typical dual-­use technologies, as they can be used to produce fuel for civilian nuclear reactors or nuclear explosives. Dual use also applies to non-­nuclear components and items that can aid in the manufacture of nuclear weapons or other nuclear explosive devices. Enrichment. Enrichment is the pro­cess of producing uranium with an increased concentration of the isotope U-235. This is necessary to induce nuclear fission, ­whether for civilian purposes, such as nuclear power reactors, or for explosive weapons. Natu­ral uranium contains less than 1% U-235, whereas nuclear fuel for normal nuclear power requires uranium enriched to 3% to 5%, and nuclear weapons typically require enrichment to about 90%. ­T here are several enrichment techniques, including gaseous diffusion, gas centrifuges, and l­aser separation. The Manhattan Proj­ect used electromagnetic isotope separation technology. In the early 1990s, international inspectors discovered the same pro­cess being used in Iraq although it was considered outdated. Environmental sampling. Environmental sampling is the collection of samples from inside nuclear facilities (using sterile cotton swipes) and from soil, waterways, and the atmosphere to detect minute traces of nuclear materials. The technique entered the IAEA’s safeguards tool box following inspections in Iraq in the 1990s. It can reveal information about past and current nuclear activities and thus, according to the IAEA, help to “verify the absence of undeclared nuclear material and activities.” The agency built a specialized laboratory to analyze such samples using particle analy­sis and has or­ga­nized a network of competent laboratories to assist in this work. Eu­ro­pean Atomic Energy Community (Euratom). Euratom was established in 1957 by the Treaty of Rome to coordinate the nuclear research programs of Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands, and to apply Euratom’s safeguards to assure the peaceful use of nuclear energy. Euratom was the first regional approach to nuclear verification. Following the entry into force of the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons in 1970, IAEA and Euratom safeguards w ­ ere integrated in a manner that enabled both organ­izations to meet their respective goals and obligations. Euratom’s membership ­today is the same as the

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Glossary  249 Eu­ro­pean Union. The body is governed by the Eu­ro­pean Commission and Eu­ro­pean Council and operates u ­ nder the jurisdiction of the Eu­ro­pean Court of Justice. Fissile material. Fission reactions happen primarily in three materials: the uranium isotope U-235, the plutonium isotope Pu-239, and uranium-233 (U-233). In relation to nuclear arms control and disarmament, t­ hese are called “fissile materials.” The term fissile material is sometimes used interchangeably with fissionable material, but the latter is a broader term that also includes uranium-238. Food and Agriculture Organ­ization (FAO). Established on 16 October 1945, the Food and Agriculture Organ­ization is a specialized agency of the United Nations. Headquartered in Rome, it leads international efforts to tackle issues involving the world food supply. In 1964, the FAO and the IAEA created the Joint FAO/IAEA Division of Nuclear Techniques in Food and Agriculture to “support and promote the safe and appropriate use of nuclear and related technologies . . . ​in food and agriculture.” Group of 77 (G-77). The Group of 77 is a co­ali­tion of developing states that formed to enhance their collective negotiating capacity at the United Nations. The name stems from the original number of states that signed a joint declaration at the inaugural meeting of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development in Geneva in 1964. The Vienna Chapter of the G-77 represents the group in the IAEA’s policy-­ making organs. Hexapartite Safeguards Proj­ect (HSP). Australia, Japan, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Germany, in conjunction with Euratom and the IAEA, founded the Hexapartite Safeguards Proj­ect in November 1980 to formulate a consensus on how the IAEA should safeguard uranium enrichment plants equipped with commercial gas centrifuge enrichment technology without compromising proliferation-­sensitive information. Safeguards at such facilities ­today remain ­under the Hexapartite structure. Safeguards at enrichment plants equipped with Rus­sian centrifuge technology follow a dif­fer­ent system, in accordance with an IAEA-­Russia-­China tripartite proj­ect. High enriched uranium (HEU). Uranium is found in nature, primarily in the form of the isotope U-238 and to a much lesser extent the fissile isotope U-235 (less than 1%). High enriched uranium by definition contains 20% or more U-235. HEU is considered to be proliferation sensitive. Modern nuclear weapons use uranium enriched up to 90% U-235, designated as weapons-­grade uranium; simpler forms of nuclear weapons require uranium enriched to at least 20% of U-235. IAEA Board of Governors. One of the two policy-­making bodies of the IAEA, the Board of Governors makes recommendations on agency activities, bud­gets, and leadership to the General Conference, the other policy-­making body. It also approves safeguards agreements and de facto appoints the agency’s director general, who is then approved by the General Conference. Although the General Conference is the IAEA’s highest policy-­making body, the board is more power­ful in practice. T ­ oday, the Board of Governors has 35 member states and typically convenes five times a year. IAEA General Conference. The General Conference is the highest policy-­making body of the IAEA and consists of representatives of all member states. It usually meets annually, in the fall, to consider and approve the agency’s program and bud­get and to decide on other m ­ atters brought before it by the Board of Governors, director general, and member states.

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250  Glossary IAEA secretariat. The IAEA secretariat consists of the IAEA’s staff, headed by the director general. T ­ oday, it comprises more than 2,500 professional and general staff from scientific, technical, managerial, and professional disciplines and more than 100 countries. Initial Report on Nuclear Material. Upon concluding a comprehensive safeguards agreement with the IAEA, or upon modifying a Small Quantities Protocol, member states provide the agency with an Initial Report on Nuclear Material itemizing its nuclear inventory. Isotope. Isotopes are dif­fer­ent atomic configurations of the same ele­ment, the difference being the number of neutrons in their nucleus. Isotopes that are radioactive are called radioisotopes. Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, also known as the “Iran deal,” is an agreement concluded in July 2015 between Iran and China, France, Germany, Rus­sia, the United Kingdom, and the United States. ­Under this multiyear deal endorsed by the Security Council, Iran agreed to allow curbs on its nuclear program and regular inspections of its nuclear facilities in return for the lifting of sanctions. ­Limited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT). The “Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Space, and ­Under W ­ ater” of 1963, known as the ­L imited Test Ban Treaty, or Partial Test Ban Treaty, prohibits nuclear weapons testing, or “any other nuclear explosion,” in the atmosphere, in outer space, and underwater. Nuclear tests under­ground are permitted as long as the radioactive fallout cannot reach other states. Low enriched uranium (LEU). Low enriched uranium contains less than 20% of the fissile isotope U-235. It has a higher concentration of U-235 than found in natu­ral uranium but less than the amount constituting high enriched uranium (HEU). LEU is a fissionable material, but not proliferation sensitive ­unless enriched to HEU levels. Moderator. A moderator is the substance used in a nuclear reactor to reduce the speed of neutrons, increasing the likelihood of fission and sustaining chain reactions. The most common moderators are ordinary w ­ ater, heavy w ­ ater, and graphite. Non-­A ligned Movement (NAM). The Non-­A ligned Movement was formed by a group of states that sought an alternative to formal alignment with one of the two superpowers during the Cold War. It was conceived at two conferences of representatives from African and Asian states held in Bandung in 1955 and in Belgrade in 1961. T ­ oday NAM continues to support the strug­gle against imperialism and neo­co­lo­nial­ism, and the use of moderation in relations with all big powers. It opened a Vienna Chapter in 2003. Noncompliance. A state found to be in violation of its safeguards agreement with the IAEA is said to be in noncompliance. The IAEA’s director general and the Board of Governors can report cases of noncompliance to the IAEA member states, the UN Security Council, and the UN General Assembly. The IAEA has reported to the Security Council concerning five states’ noncompliance, all involving comprehensive safeguards agreements: Iraq, Iran, and North K ­ orea (Demo­c ratic ­People’s Republic of ­Korea) and Libya and Romania; the reporting on the latter two was for informational purposes. The nature of noncompliance by a state can vary. ­T here is no formal definition of the term.

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Glossary  251 Nuclear fission. Nuclear fission occurs when a neutron splits the nucleus of an atom into smaller parts. In this pro­cess, which can happen spontaneously or be induced, two or three neutrons are released and cause the splitting of other nuclei, creating a nuclear chain reaction, a snowball effect of splitting nuclei. Enabling a nuclear chain reaction requires a certain amount of material, the so-­called critical mass. A controlled nuclear chain reaction can be used to produce nuclear power, generating huge amounts of energy while using far less resources than conventional methods of energy production. An uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction abruptly releases im­mense amounts of energy, which can be used to build nuclear bombs. Nuclear fuel. Nuclear fuel is the material that can be used, via the pro­cess of nuclear fission or fusion, to produce nuclear energy. Uranium is the primary fuel for nuclear reactors. Nuclear fuel cycle. The nuclear fuel cycle consists of the preparation of nuclear fuel (starting with uranium mining), the use of fuel during reactor operations (the “front end” of the fuel cycle), and the repro­cessing or disposing of spent nuclear fuel (the “back end” of the fuel cycle). If spent fuel is repro­cessed, it is called a closed fuel cycle, and if not, it is called an open fuel cycle. The amount of discharged spent fuel continues to grow, but as of 2021, ­t here was not a site anywhere in the world for the permanent storage and disposal of high-­level nuclear waste and spent fuel. Nuclear fusion. Nuclear fusion is a nuclear reaction in which atomic nuclei come close enough to react and form one or more dif­fer­ent atomic nuclei. This pro­cess creates huge amounts of energy and forms the basis of thermonuclear weapons. The potential harnessing of nuclear fusion in the production of power continues to be researched. Nuclear material accounting. Nuclear material accounting are activities carried out to establish the amount of nuclear material pre­sent within a defined area and to calculate changes in quantities within defined periods. Evaluating and verifying states’ nuclear material accounting is a key component of IAEA safeguards. Nuclear reactor. A nuclear reactor, the heart of a nuclear power plant, is where nuclear fission is initiated and controlled in a self-­sustaining chain reaction to generate heat. Like in coal-­fired power stations, the heat is used to produce steam that spins turbines to generate electrical energy. T ­ here are many types of nuclear reactors, but they all incorporate certain essential features, among them the use of fissionable material as fuel, a moderator (such as normal or heavy ­water) to increase the likelihood of fission, a reflector to conserve escaping neutrons, coolant provisions for heat removal, instruments for monitoring and controlling reactor operation, and protective devices (such as control rods and shielding). Nuclear safeguards. Despite the importance of safeguards in nonproliferation, ­t here is no standard definition for the term nuclear safeguards. Nuclear safeguards comprise a system of material accountancy, surveillance and containment mea­sures, and inspections aimed at verifying the peaceful use of nuclear materials and related equipment. ­Today, the objectives of implementing safeguards include the detection of diversion of declared nuclear material, detection of misuse of peaceful nuclear facilities, and detection of undeclared nuclear material, facilities, and activities. Nuclear safety. Nuclear safety is the aim of protecting p ­ eople and the environment from the harmful effects of nuclear radiation by, for instance, regulating the safe use of

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252  Glossary nuclear power plants, ensuring proper operating conditions, preventing accidents, and mitigating the consequences of accidents. Nuclear security. Nuclear security describes efforts to prevent, detect, or respond to malicious acts—­such as theft, sabotage, unauthorized access, and illegal transfer—­ that involve nuclear material, radioactive substances, and associated facilities. Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG). The Nuclear Suppliers Group is an organ­ization of countries that seeks to prevent the proliferation of nuclear weapons through controls on nuclear and nuclear-­related export. It resulted from confidential meetings held in Moscow in late 1974 between the Soviet Union and the United States on how they could strengthen nuclear export controls to prevent the misuse of nuclear materials for military purposes. The initial members w ­ ere France, Japan, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, the United States, and West Germany. T ­ oday, the NSG has 48 member states. The regulations for nuclear exports are stipulated in NSG guidelines. Nuclear-­weapon-­free zone (NWFZ). A nuclear-­weapon-­free zone is an area in which, through a treaty between states, the use and deployment of nuclear weapons is prohibited. NWFZs are an impor­tant instrument of nuclear disarmament. T ­ oday, ­t here are five NWFZs: Latin Amer­i­ca and the Ca­r ib­bean, the South Pacific, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Central Asia. Peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs). Peaceful nuclear explosions are nuclear detonations conducted for non-­military purposes, such as for mining and the development of infrastructure. Technically speaking, however, ­t here is l­ ittle difference between nuclear explosives intended for peaceful purposes and military uses. A number of PNEs ­were carried out during the Cold War, but the 1996 Comprehensive Test-­Ban Treaty, which has not yet entered into force, outlaws their use. Plutonium (Pu). Plutonium is a highly fissile material. Unlike uranium, plutonium is extremely rare in nature and where found is only in trace amounts. It can be extracted, or repro­cessed, from the spent fuel rods of civilian nuclear power reactors that generate plutonium during normal operation. Both weapons-­grade and reactor-­grade plutonium can be used for the production of nuclear weapons. Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organ­ization (CTBTO PrepCom). The Preparatory Commission for the Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty Organ­ization is the precursor to the organ­ization that ­w ill be tasked with administrating the unique and comprehensive verification and monitoring regime of the Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty (CTBT) a­ fter the treaty enters into force. Negotiated in Geneva between 1994 and 1996, the CTBT bans nuclear explosions on the ground, under­ground, underwater, and in the atmosphere. Forty-­four countries in possession of nuclear technology must sign and ratify the CTBT for it to enter into force. Of them, eight have yet to ratify or sign and ratify the treaty: China, Egypt, India, Iran, Israel, North ­Korea, Pakistan, and the United States. The CTBTO PrepCom is based in Vienna. Program 93 + 2. Program 93 + 2 was a plan of action initiated by the IAEA in 1993 to close loopholes in safeguards for undeclared nuclear facilities. The program—­which included adopting new monitoring techniques, such as satellite imagery and environmental sampling—­came about a­ fter the IAEA learned that Iraq and North ­Korea had secretly developed nuclear weapon programs. The “93 + 2” refers to the

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Glossary  253 original aim of completing the plan of action within two years, in time for the 1995 Review Conference for the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons. Radioactivity. Radioactivity is the spontaneous emission of radiation from the nucleus of an unstable isotope. Repro­cessing. Repro­cessing is the method of separating usable plutonium and uranium from spent nuclear fuel to produce new nuclear fuel for nuclear power plants or nuclear weapons. Safeguards agreement. A safeguards agreement is a treaty for the application of safeguards concluded between the IAEA and a state, a group of states, or a regional inspectorate, such as Euratom. T ­ here are three types of IAEA safeguards agreements: comprehensive safeguards agreements with non-­nuclear weapon states party to the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT); voluntary offer agreements with nuclear weapon states party to the NPT; and item-­specific safeguards agreements with states outside the NPT framework. Significant quantity. A significant quantity represents the approximate amount of nuclear material for which the possibility of the manufacture of a nuclear explosive device cannot be excluded. Significant quantities are used in establishing the quantitative ele­ment in safeguards inspections. Small Quantities Protocol. States with ­little or no nuclear material can conclude a Small Quantities Protocol, which simplifies the implementation of safeguards. Standing Advisory Group on Safeguards Implementation (SAGSI). The Standing Advisory Group on Safeguards Implementation is an advisory group, established in 1975, to advise the IAEA director general on the technical aspects of safeguards. SAGSI consists of up to 20 members, each appointed by the director general. Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency. The statute of the IAEA is the agency’s ­legal foundation and lays out its objectives, functions, and structure. ­A fter three years of negotiations, the Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency approved it in October 1956 at UN headquarters in New York. It entered into force in July 1957. Apart from paragraphs about the composition of the Board of Governors, the statute has not been altered since the 1950s. Technical assistance. IAEA technical assistance takes the form of supporting member states, especially developing countries, by sharing expertise, establishing joint proj­ects, training ­people, and enabling access to civilian uses of nuclear technology and knowledge. It includes areas such as energy production, w ­ ater management, health ser­v ices, food preservation, and agricultural techniques. ­Today, the IAEA usually refers to ­t hese activities as “technical cooperation” rather than technical assistance. Thermonuclear weapons / Hydrogen bombs. Thermonuclear bombs yield explosions in the megaton range. They require a primary fission explosion to trigger a power­ful secondary fusion reaction. The first US thermonuclear test, codenamed Ivy Mike, was carried out in 1952 on the Eniwetok atoll, in the Marshall Islands. The Soviet Union responded in 1955 with Joe 19, a bomb air-­dropped over the Semipalatinsk test site. The Soviets announced a test of a nuclear fission device as their first thermonuclear test in 1953. Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT). Signed in 1968 and entering into force in 1970, the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons is the most

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254  Glossary widely adhered to international security agreement. The three pillars of the NPT are preventing nuclear weapons proliferation, facilitating access to peaceful uses of nuclear energy, and furthering pro­gress t­ oward nuclear disarmament. The NPT stipulates that non-­nuclear weapon states ­will forgo acquiring nuclear weapons and accept IAEA safeguards on their nuclear activities. The NPT was extended in­def­initely in 1995. United Nations Security Council. The United Nations Security Council is one of the six main bodies of the United Nations and has “the primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security.” It consists of fifteen members in total, five of which are permanent members—­China, France, Rus­sia, the United Kingdom, and the United States, the “veto powers.” In the event that a state violates its nuclear safeguards agreement, the IAEA Board of Governors may refer the state as a case of noncompliance to the council. Urenco Group. The Urenco Group is a commercial nuclear fuel com­pany operating uranium enrichment plants in Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It supplies nuclear fuel to nuclear power stations in about fifteen countries. Its establishment stems from the Treaty of Almelo (1970), in which the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and West Germany agreed to cooperate in the development of gas centrifuge enrichment technology. Verification. Using safeguards, the IAEA verifies that states are honoring their international ­legal obligations to use nuclear material and technology only for peaceful purposes. Verification mea­sures include on-­site inspections, visits, and ongoing monitoring and evaluation. Voluntary offer agreement (VOA). A voluntary offer agreement is a safeguards agreement concluded between the IAEA and a nuclear weapon state. While, ­under the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), nuclear weapon states are not required to apply safeguards, they can voluntarily do so. The IAEA has concluded VOAs with all five nuclear weapon states as defined by the NPT. World Health Organ­ization (WHO). The World Health Organ­ization is a specialized agency of the United Nations concerned with international public health. It was established in 1948 and is headquartered in Geneva. In 1959, the WHO and the IAEA signed an agreement (INFCIRC/20, III) to cooperate and provide consultation on the use of nuclear technologies for h ­ uman health purposes. Yellowcake. Yellowcake is powdery uranium oxide. In the nuclear fuel cycle, the production of yellowcake from natu­ral uranium is one of first steps t­ oward making nuclear fuel.

Sources CTBTO PrepCom, website, https://­w ww​.­c tbto​.­org. IAEA, website, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org. Nuclear Regulatory Commission Glossary, https://­w ww​.­nrc​.­gov​/­reading​-­r m​/­basic​-­ref​ /­glossary​.­html. Nuclear Threat Initiative Glossary, https://­w ww​.­nti​.­org​/­learn​/­glossary. P5 Glossary of Key Nuclear Terms, https://­2009​-­2017​.­state​.­gov​/­documents​/­organization​ /­243293​.­pdf. Vienna Center for Disarmament and Nonproliferation (VCDNP) glossary, https://­ course​.­vcdnp​.­org​/­glossary.

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notes

Introduction

•

Nuclear Inspectors

1. ​Dimitri Perricos, interview by the author, Vienna, 27 June 2015. The IAEA does not open its inspection rec­ords to outside researchers, so I relied h ­ ere on the recollections of the late Dimitri Perricos. In 1974, Perricos and his colleague John Bardsley held P-3 level positions at the IAEA (entry-­and mid-­level jobs that require five years of relevant work experience). See “The Staff of the Agency,” INFCIRC/22/Rev. 14 (9 August 1974), https://­ www​.­i aea​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­publications​/­documents​/­i nfcircs​/­1960​/­i nfcirc22r14​ .­pdf. 2. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015. 3. ​For an overview of the responses to the test in Indian media, see George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation, updated edition with a new after­ word (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 179. 4. ​For the history of India’s nuclear weapon program, see Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb; Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Postcolonial State (London: Zed Books, 1998); Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest to Be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: HarperCollins, 2000). For the Indian nuclear program more generally, see Robert  S. Anderson, Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010); Jayita Sarkar, “India’s Nuclear Limbo and the Fatalism of the Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Regime, 1974–1983,” Strategic Analy­sis 37, no. 3 (2013): 323, https://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1080​/­09700161​.­2013​.­782662. 5. ​For a detailed analy­sis of the international reactions to the 1974 Indian nuclear under­ground test, see chapter 6. 6. ​T he Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons opened for signature on 1  July  1968 and entered into force on 5 March  1970. For the text of the treaty, see IAEA, ­INFCIRC/140 (22 April 1970), https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­files​/­publications​/­docu​ ments​/­infcircs​/­1970​/­infcirc140​.­pdf. 7. ​The expression “dual mandate” has become part of IAEA’s official language. See, for instance, the statement by Hans Blix in 1996, and by Yukiya Amano in 2010, respectively, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­newscenter​/­statements​/­peaceful​-­and​-­safe​-­uses​-­nuclear​-­energy and https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­newscenter​/­statements​/­german​-­council​-­foreign​-­relations.

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256   Notes to Pages 3–6 8. ​Article II, Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​ /­about​/­statute. 9. ​Matthew Fuhrmann, Atomic Assistance: How “Atoms for Peace” Programs Cause Nuclear Insecurity (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2012); Matthew Kroenig, Exporting the Bomb: Technology Transfer and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2010). More recently, see Eliza Gheorghe, “Proliferation and the Logic of the Nuclear Market,” International Security 43, no. 4 (2019): 88–127, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1162​ /­isec​_ ­a ​_ ­00344. 10. ​Robert L. Brown and Jeffrey M. Kaplow, “Talking Peace, Making Weapons: IAEA Technical Cooperation and Nuclear Proliferation,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 58, no. 3 (2014): 421, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 177%2F0022002713509052. 11. ​Leonard Weiss, “Safeguards and the NPT: Where Our Current Prob­lems Began,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 7, no. 5 (2017): 328, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­00963402​.­2017​ .­1362906. 12. ​Lawrence Scheinman, The Nonproliferation Role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Washington, DC: Resources for the F ­ uture, 1985), 3. 13. ​Wolfgang Liebert and Martin Kalinowksi, “Scientific-­Technological Aspects of Nuclear Non-­Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament,” in World at the Crossroads: New Conflicts, New Solutions: Proceedings of the Forty-­T hird Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, 9–15 June 1993, ed. Josef Rotblat (Singapore: World Scientific, 1994), 276. 14. ​US president Dwight Eisenhower expressed this belief in his “Atoms for Peace” speech, delivered 8 December 1953, leading to the creation of the IAEA. See Ira Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002). 15. ​See, for instance, the dif­fer­ent editions of the IAEA Safeguards Glossary. For the 2001 edition, see https://­w ww​-­pub​.­iaea​.­org​/­MTCD​/­Publications​/­PDF​/­nvs​-­3​-­cd​/­pdf​/­NVS3​ _­prn​.­pdf. 16. ​Itty Abraham, “The Ambivalence of Nuclear Histories,” Osiris 21, no. 1 (2006): 62, https://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­10​.­1086​/­507135. 17. ​Po­liti­cal scientists would frame this debate about the role of intergovernmental organ­izations in international relations (IR) around realist and liberal institutional positions in international relations theory. For two prominent positions, see John Mearsheimer, “The False Promise of International Institutions,” International Security 19, no. 3 (1994–95): 5–49, https://­www​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­2539078, and Robert E. Keohane, ­After Hegemony: Cooperation and Discord in the World Po­liti­cal Economy (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1984). I would like to thank Eliza Gheorghe for enlightening me about the IR discourse on ­t hese topics. 18. ​John Krige and Jayita Sarkar, “US Technological Collaboration for Nonproliferation: Key Evidence from the Cold War,” Nonproliferation Review 25, no.  3 (2018): 250, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­10736700​.­2018​.­1510465. 19. ​For the motivations of the United States in sharing peaceful nuclear technology, see Jacob Darwin Hamblin, The Wretched Atom: Amer­i ­c a’s Global ­Gamble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021). 20. ​Shane Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Nuclear Supremacy from World War II to the Pre­sent (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 1. 21. ​Hugh Gusterson, “Nuclear Weapons and the Other in Western Imagination,” Cultural Anthropology 14, no. 1 (1999): 111, https://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­656531.

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Notes to Pages 7–9   257 22. ​On the history of the NPT negotiations, see Roland Popp, Liviu Horo­witz, and Andreas Wenger, eds., Negotiating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: Origins of the Nuclear Order (London: Routledge, 2017); Gusterson, “Nuclear Weapons,” 113. 23. ​ World Development Indicators 2016 (Washington, DC: International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, 2016), iii, http://­documents​.­worldbank​.­org​/­c urated​/­en​ /­805371467990952829​/ ­World​- ­development​-­indicators​-­2016. 24. ​Kären Wigen and Martin W. Lewis, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997), 4–6. 25. ​On this, also see Gabrielle Hecht, “Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the Making of the IAEA,” Osiris 21 (2006): 25–48, https://­ doi​.­org​/­10​.­1086​/­507134; Anna Weichselbraun, “From Accountants to Detectives: How Nuclear Safeguards Inspectors Make Knowledge at the International Atomic Energy Agency,” PoLAR: Po­liti­cal and L ­ egal Anthropology Review 63 (2020): 120–35, https://­doi​.­org​ /­10​.­1 111​/­plar​.­12346. On the relationship of diplomacy and nuclear science, see also Kenji Ito and Maria Rentetzi, “The Co-production of Nuclear Science and Technology,” History and Technology 37 (2021): 4–20. 26. ​Conference on the Statute, CS/OR.1 (20 September 1956), IAEA Archives, 47. 27. ​Trevor Findlay, “The IAEA’s Orga­nizational Culture: Realities and Myths” (paper for the Policy Roundtable 1-3 on the International Atomic Energy Agency Statute at Sixty, H-­Diplo  |  ISSF Policy Roundtable 1-3, 19 November 2016), https://­issforum​.­org​/­roundtables​ /­policy​/­1​-­3​-­IAEA. 28. ​The IAEA was not the only organ­ization during the Cold War that needed to manage the normative distinction between politics and technology. See Madeleine Herren-­Oesch, Internationale Organisationen seit 1865: Eine Globalgeschichte der internationalen Ordnung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), 6. 29. ​Mazower, Governing the World, 268. 30. ​Mazower, Governing the World. 31. ​UN General Assembly, Resolution 1(I), Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Prob­lems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy, A/RES/1(I) (24 January 1946). 32. ​Sunil Amrith and Glenda Sluga, “New Histories of the United Nations,” Journal of World History 19, no. 3 (2008): 253, https://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­i 40023407. 33.  Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organizations in the Making of the Contemporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 6. 34. ​Thomas G. Weiss and Ramesh Thakur, Global Governance and the UN: An Unfinished Journey (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2010), 39–49. 35. ​William Walker, A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons and International Order (London: Routledge, 2012), xii. 36. ​Walker, Perpetual Menace, 2. 37. ​Egon F. Ranshofen-­Wertheimer, The International Secretariat: A ­Great Experience in International Administration (Washington, DC: Car­ne­gie Endowment for International Peace, 1945), 78. Two recent books look into the historical evolution of international bureaucracies: Karen Gram-­Skjoldager, Haakon A. Ikonomou, and Torsten Kahlert, eds., Organ­ izing the 20th-­Century World: International Organ­ization and the Emergence of International Public Administration, 1920–60s (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2020), and Bob Reinalda, International Secretariats: Two Centuries of International Civil Servants and the Secretariats (London: Routledge, 2020).

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258   Notes to Pages 10–15 38. ​Thomas G. Weiss, International Bureaucracy: An Analy­sis of the Operation of Functional and Global International Secretariats (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1975), 35. 39. ​Inis L. Claude, Swords into Plowshares: The Prob­lems and Pro­g ress of International Organ­ization (New York: Random House, 1956). 40. ​Thomas G. Weiss, Tatiana Carayannis, and Richard Jolly, “The ‘Third’ United Nations,” Global Governance 15, no. 1 (2009): 123–42, https://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­27800742. 41. ​Roger E. Kanet and Edward A. Kolodziej, eds., The Cold War as Cooperation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). 42. ​The agency’s library is located on the first floor. 43. ​For information about the archives, visit the IAEA’s website, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​ /­resources​/­archives. 44. ​Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington, DC: Resources for the F ­ uture, 1987). 45. ​Benjamin N. Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer: The Dilemma of Dissemination and Control (Totowa, NJ: Rowham and Allanheld, 1983). 46. ​David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997). For a more recent history of the IAEA, written from a po­liti­cal science perspective, see Robert L. Brown, Nuclear Authority: The IAEA and the Absolute Weapon (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015). For new insights from the history of science, see Maria Rentetzi’s research on the IAEA and the history of dosimetry: Maria Renetzi and Kenjo Ito, “The Material Culture and Politics of Artifacts in Nuclear Diplomacy,” Special issue, Centaurus 63 (2021). 47. ​Herren- ­Oesch, Internationale Organisationen, 9. 48. ​B. S. Chimni, “International Organ­izations, 1945–­Pre­sent,” in Cogan, Hurd, and Johnstone, The Oxford Handbook of International Organ­izations, 114. 49. ​A large number of historical works have contributed to our knowledge and understanding of the role of international organ­izations in the 20th ­century, including the following: Amy L. Sayward, The United Nations in International History (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2017); Jacob Katz Cogan, Ian Hurd, and Ian Johnstone, eds., The Oxford Handbook of International Organ­izations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016); Iriye, Global Community; Bob Reinalda, Routledge History of International Organ­izations: From 1815 to the Pre­sent Day (London: Routledge, 2013). For recent examples of histories of individual international organ­izations, see Daniel Maul, The International ­Labour Organ­ ization: 100 Years of Global Social Policy (Munich: DeGruyter Oldenbourg, 2019); Marcos Cueto, The World Health Organ­ization: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019). 50. ​Carlos L. Büchler, “Safeguards: The Beginnings,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 49. 51. ​Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “The Nuclearization of Iran in the Seventies,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 5 (2014): 1114–35, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1093​/­d h​/­d ht124. 52.  Union of International Organizations, https://uia.org/. 53. ​IAEA list of member states, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­about​/­governance​/­list​-­of​ -­member​-­states. 54. ​I AEA Annual Report 2019, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­publications​ /­reports​/­2019​/­gc64​-­3​.­pdf.

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Notes to Pages 16–20   259

Chapter 1

•

One World or None

1. ​H. G. Wells, The World Set ­Free: A Story of Mankind (London: Macmillan and Co., 1914), 211–12; Spencer R. Weart, The Rise of Nuclear Fear (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012), 12. 2. ​Martin J. Sherwin, “Scientists, Arms Control, and National Security,” in National Security: Its Theory and Practice, 1945–1960, ed. Norman A. Graebner (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 105–22; Joseph I. Lieberman, The Scorpion and the Tarantula: The Strug­gle to Control Atomic Weapons, 1945–1945 (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1970). 3. ​One World or None: A Report to the Public on the Full Meaning of the Atomic Bomb, ed. Dexter Masters and Katharine Way (1946; repr., New York: New Press, 2007); Lawrence Wittner, The Strug­gle against the Bomb, vol. 1, One World or None: A History of the World Nuclear Disarmament Movement through 1953 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993). 4. ​Paul Boyer, By the Bomb’s Early Light: American Thought and Culture at the Dawn of the Atomic Age (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1985). 5. ​Campbell Craig and Sergey Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb and the Origins of the Cold War (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008), 112. 6. ​On the evolution of the international nuclear order, see William Walker, A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons and International Order (London: Routledge, 2011). 7. ​UN General Assembly, Resolution 1(I), Establishment of a Commission to Deal with the Prob­lems Raised by the Discovery of Atomic Energy,” A/RES/1(I) (24 January 1946). 8. ​Claudio Tuniz, Radioactivity: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 3. 9. ​Tuniz, Radioactivity, 21–23. 10. ​The nuclear policy expert Matthew Bunn used this comparison in his lecture “Nuclear 101: How Nuclear Bombs Work,” Belfer Center, Harvard University, 10 September 2013, https://­youtu​.­be​/­zVhQOhxb1Mc. 11. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex: A Worldwide Po­liti­cal History of Nuclear Energy (La Grange Park, IL: American Nuclear Society, 1982), 9. On the history of nuclear physics in the interwar period, see Roger H. Stuewer, The Age of Innocence: Nuclear Physics between the First and Second World Wars (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018). 12. ​On the history of the Manhattan Proj­ect, see Richard Rhodes, The Making of the Atom Bomb (New York: Touchstone, 1986); Lillian Hoddeson et al., Critical Assembly: A Technical History of Los Alamos during the Oppenheimer Years, 1943–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993). 13. ​Jeff Hughes, The Manhattan Proj­ect: Big Science and the Atom Bomb (London: Icon Books, 2002), 9. On Oppenheimer, see Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Vintage, 2006). 14. ​ Hiroshima and Nagasaki: The Physical, Medical, and Social Effects of Atomic Bombings, By the Committee for the Compilation of Materials and Damage Caused by the Atomic Bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, trans. Eisei Ishikawa and David  L. Swain (New York: Basic Books, 1981); J. Samuel Walker, Prompt and Utter Destruction: Truman and the Use of Atomic Bombs against Japan (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997). 15. ​For a historical overview of the evolution of disarmament and arms control, see Richard Dean Burns, The Evolution of Arms Control: From Antiquity to the Nuclear Age (Lanham,

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260   Notes to Pages 20–23 MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2013); Jeffrey A. Larson and James M. Smith, Historical Dictionary of Arms Control and Disarmament (Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press), 2005; ­Jasper M. Trautsch, “Disarmament,” in The SAGE Encyclopedia of War: Social Science ­Perspectives, ed. Paul Joseph (Los Angeles: SAGE, 2017), 409–503. 16. ​Rainer Emig, “Bringing War Home: The Crimean War, the Telegraph, and Florence Nightingale,” in Wahrheitsmaschinen: Der Einfluss technischer Innovationen auf die Darstellung und das Bild des Krieges in den Medien und Künsten, ed. Claudia Glunz and Thomas F. Schneider (Göttingen: V&R unipress, 2010), 287–300. 17. ​Declaration (IV,2) concerning Asphyxiating Gases, The Hague, 29 July 1899. 18. ​Maartje Abbenhuis, Christopher Ernest Barber, and Annalise R. Higgings, eds., War, Peace, and International Order? The Legacies of the Hague Conferences of 1899 and 1907 (London: Routledge, 2017); Jost Dülffer, Regeln gegen den Krieg? Die Haager Friedenskonferenzen 1899 und 1907 in der internationalen Politik (Frankfurt am Main: Ullstein, 1981). 19. ​Andrew Webster, “The League of Nations, Disarmament and Internationalism,” in Internationalisms: A Twentieth C ­ entury History, ed. Glenda Sluga and Patricia Clavin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 139–69, h ­ ere 140. 20. ​Robert Gordon Kaufman, Arms Control during the Pre-­nuclear Era: The United States and Naval Limitation between the Two World Wars (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990). 21. ​Oona A. Hathaway and Scott Shapiro, The Internationalists: How a Radical Plan to Outlaw War Remade the World (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2017). 22. ​The first Nobel Peace Prize was awarded in 1901 to Henry Dunant, founder of the Red Cross, and Frédéric Passy, founder of the French Peace Society. On Nobel and Bertha von Suttner, see Bo Strath, “Perpetual Peace as Irony, as Utopia, and as Politics,” in Paradoxes of Peace in Nineteenth ­Century Eu­rope, ed. Thomas Hippler and Milos Vec (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 280–81. 23. ​“Joint Declaration by the Heads of Government of the United States, the United Kingdom, and Canada,” 15 November 1945, Documents on Disarmament, 1945–1959, vol. 1, 1945–1956, Department of State Publication 7008 (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1960), 1–3. 24. ​Charles Howard Ellis, The Origin, Structure and Working of the League of Nations (Clark, NJ: C. H. Ellis, 2004), 88; Elisabeth Roehrlich, “Negotiating Verification: International Diplomacy and the Evolution of Nuclear Safeguards, 1945–1972,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 29, no. 1 (2018): 29–50, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­09592296​.­2017​.­1 420520. 25. ​“Moscow Communiqué by the Foreign Ministers of the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union [Extracts],” 27 December 1945, Documents on Disarmament, 3–5. 26. ​On the history of the UNAEC, see David W. Kearn Jr., “The Baruch Plan and the Quest for Atomic Disarmament,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 21, no. 1 (2010): 41–67, https://­ doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­09592290903577742; Larry G. Geber, “The Baruch Plan and the Origins of the Cold War,” Diplomatic History 6, no. 4 (1982): 69–95; Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Vienna: IAEA, 1970), 11–19. For the early history of the United Nations, see Ilya V. Gaiduk, Divided Together: The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945–1965 (Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012). 27. ​Gaiduk, Divided Together, 25.

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Notes to Pages 23–28   261 28. ​A Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, Department of State Publication 2498, Washington, DC, 16 March 1946. 29. ​Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex. 30. ​ Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, 25–30; Susanne Schrafstetter and Stephen Twigge, Eu­rope, the United States, and the Strug­gle for Nuclear Nonproliferation, 1945–1970 (Westport: Praeger, 2004), 23–24; Leonard Weiss, “Safeguards and the NPT: Where Our Current Prob­lems Began,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 7, no. 5 (2017): 329, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­00963402​.­2017​.­1362906. 31. ​Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, 7. 32. ​Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, 18. 33. ​Thant Myint-­U and Amy Scott, The UN Secretariat: A Brief History (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2007). The United Nations was still looking for a permanent location at the time. Construction of the current building complex, on the East River in New York City, began in 1949. 34. ​Craig and Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb, 122. 35. ​Strafstetter and Twigge, Strug­gle for Nonproliferation, 25. 36. ​“The Baruch Plan: Statement by the United States Representative (Baruch) to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, 14 June 1946,” Documents on Disarmament, 7–16. 37. ​“Baruch Plan,” 8. 38. ​“Address by the Soviet Representative (Gromyko) to the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, 19 June 1946,” Documents on Disarmament, 17–24. 39. ​On the Soviet approaches to international nuclear order, see David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Cold War History 16, no. 2 (2016): 177–93, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4682745​.­2015​.­1 124265. 40. ​Schrafstetter and Twigge, Strug­gle for Nonproliferation, 21. 41. ​Richard Dean Burns and Joseph M. Siracusa, A Global History of the Nuclear Arms Race: Weapons, Strategy, and Politics, vol. 1 (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2013), 82. 42. ​“First Report of the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission to the Security Council [Extract], 31 December 1946,” Documents on Disarmament, 50–59. 43. ​“Soviet Proposals Introduced in the United Nations Atomic Energy Commission, 11 June 1947,” Documents on Disarmament, 85–88. 44. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, “A Forerunner of the NPT? The Soviet Proposals of 1947: A Retrospective Look at Attempts to Control the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” IAEA Bulletin 28, no. 1 (Spring 1986): 58–64. 45. ​Goldschmidt, “A Forerunner of the NPT?,” 64. 46. ​Schrafstetter and Twigge, Strug­gle for Nonproliferation, 36–37. 47. ​Bird and Sherwin, American Prometheus, 343–344 and note 650. 48. ​“Dr. Oppenheimer’s Views on a World Scientific Conference,” 8 June 1950, file 3, Departmental Correspondence, July 1949–­December 1950, Atomic Energy Section, Department of Security Council Affairs, 1946–1951, series 0936, box 1, UN Archives. 49. ​On the history of the Soviet nuclear bomb proj­ect, see David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994). 50. ​Astrid Forland, “Negotiating Supranational Rules: The Genesis of the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards System” (PhD diss., University of Bergen 1997), 36.

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262   Notes to Pages 28–32 51. ​David Holloway, “Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of the Cold War, 1945–1962,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 1, Origins, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2010), 376. 52. ​Walter Lipp­mann, The Cold War: A Study in U.S. Foreign Policy (New York: Harper and B ­ rothers, 1947); Geber, “The Baruch Plan and the Origins of the Cold War”; Joseph Preston Baratta, “Was the Baruch Plan a Proposal of World Government,” The International History Review 7, no. 4 (1985): 592–621. 53. ​Paul Romita, “(Dis)Unity at the Security Council: Voting Patterns in the UN’s Peace and Security Organ” (PhD diss., City University of New York, 2018), 54. 54. ​Goldschmidt, Atomic Complex, 77. 55. ​David F. Cavers, “Arms Control in the United Nations: A De­cade of Disagreement,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 12, no. 4 (1956): 105. 56. ​On this point, see Stephen Twigge, “The Atomic Marshall Plan: Atoms for Peace, British Diplomacy, and Civil Nuclear Power, Cold War History 16, no. 2 (2016): 213–30, h ­ ere 217–18, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4682745​.­2015​.­1 117450. 57. ​Craig and Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb, 113. 58. ​Craig and Radchenko, The Atomic Bomb, 130. 59. ​David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the Baruch Plan,” Sources and Methods, 11 June 2020, https://­w ww​.­w ilsoncenter​.­org​/­blog​-­post​/­soviet​-­union​-­and​-­baruch​-­plan. 60. ​A. Campbell to O. Frey, “Interoffice Memorandum: Study of International Organ­ izations,” 27 January 1948, file 2, Departmental Correspondence, January 1948–­June 1949, Atomic Energy Section, Department of Security Council Affairs, 1946–1951, series 0936, box 1, UN Archives. 61. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, “The Origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 5.

Chapter 2

•

Atoms for Peace

1. ​The UN Audiovisual Library has a film of Eisenhower’s speech. It is available online at the website of the IAEA History Research Proj­ect: https://­iaea​-­history​.­univie​.­ac​.­at​ /­the​-­iaea​-­at​-­sixty​/­atoms​-­for​-­peace​/­. For a con­temporary perspective on the speech, see “Report by Heinrich Haymerle from New York,” 9 December 1953, GZ 316.301, Pol 53, box 252, 1953 UN, UNO 2-3, BMfAA II-­Pol (rec­ords of the Austrian Foreign Office), Archiv der Republik, Austrian State Archive. 2. ​For the full text of the speech as well as its genesis, see Ira Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace (College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2002), xi–­x ix. 3. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xii. 4. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xiii. 5. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xiv. 6. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xvii. 7. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xvii. 8. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xviii. 9. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xviii. 10. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xix. 11. ​“Report by Heinrich Haymerle,” 9 December 1953.

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Notes to Pages 33–36   263 12. ​For historical scholarship on the “Atoms for Peace” speech, its aims, and consequences, see Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, as well as John Krige, “Atoms for Peace, Scientific Internationalism, and Scientific Intelligence,” in “Global Knowledge Power: Science and Technology in International Affairs,” ed. John Krige and Kai-­Henrik Barth, Osiris 21 (2006): 161–181, https://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­10​.­1086​/­507140; Richard G. Hewlett and Jack M. Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1953–1961: Eisenhower and the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989); Kenneth Osgood, Total Cold War: Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda ­Battle at Home and Abroad (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2006); Mara Drogan, “Atoms for Peace, US Foreign Policy, and the Globalization of Nuclear Technology, 1953–1960” (PhD diss., State University of New York, Albany, 2011); Mara Drogan, “The Nuclear Imperative: Atoms for Peace and US Policy on Exporting Nuclear Power in the 1950s,” Diplomatic History 40, no. 5 (2016): 948– 74, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1093​/­d h​/­d hv049. Also see the two edited volumes published on the occasions of the 30th and 50th anniversaries of “Atoms for Peace,” respectively, Joseph F. Pilat, Robert E. Pendley, and Charles K. Ebinger, eds., Atoms for Peace: An Analy­sis ­after 30 Years (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985); Joseph F. Pilat, ed., Atoms for Peace: A F ­ uture ­after Fifty Years? (Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press; Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2005). 13. ​Krige, “Atoms for Peace,” 162. Also see Ira Chernus, “The New Look and Atoms for Peace,” in Apocalypse Management: Eisenhower and the Discourse of National Insecurity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008). 14. ​Kenneth Osgood, “Eisenhower’s Dilemma: Talking Peace and Waging Cold War,” in Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American ­Century, ed. Kenneth Osgood and Andrew K. Frank (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2010), 140–68. 15. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, 96. 16. ​­T hese meetings are described in Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1–16. 17. ​Lori Clune, Executing the Rosenbergs: Death and Diplomacy in a Cold War World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016). 18. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, Atomic Complex: A Worldwide Po­liti­cal History of Nuclear Energy (La Grange Park, IL: American Nuclear Society, 1982). 19. ​Brien McMahon was a Demo­cratic senator from Connecticut. On the formative history of the AEC, see Richard G. Hewlett and Francis Duncan, Atomic Shield, 1947–1952: The History of the Atomic Energy Commission (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972). 20. ​Lewis Strauss, “Speech to the National Association of Science Writers, September 16th, 1954,” New York Times, 17 September 1954. 21. ​See Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 1–16. 22. ​On Oppenheimer, see Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin, American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer (New York: Vintage Books, 2005). 23. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, 25. 24. ​C. D. Jackson to Lewis Strauss, folder Atoms for Peace, box 5, Ann Whitman Administration files, Eisenhower Presidential Library, as cited by Spencer Weart, Nuclear Fear: A History of Images (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 157. 25. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, 80, and the corresponding endnote 147. 26. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, 80–81.

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264   Notes to Pages 36–39 27. ​Lewis Strauss, Memorandum for the President, 17 September 1957, DDE’s Papers as President, Administration series, box 5, Atoms for Peace, NAID no. 12022697, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 28. ​Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 65. 29. ​Martin Theaker, “Being Nuclear on a Bud­get: Churchill, Britain and ‘Atoms for Peace,’ 1953–1955,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 27, no. 4 (2016): 640, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​ /­09592296​.­2016​.­1238697. 30. ​“Memorandum of Conversation, Bermuda Meeting,” 4 December 1953, DDE’s Papers as President, International Meeting series, box 1, Bermuda–­State Department Report, NAID no. 12022753, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 31. ​See chapter 1 in this volume. 32. ​William Sterling Cole to Lewis Strauss, 23 January 1961, box 1, Sterling Cole Papers, Colgate University Library. 33. ​“Charles Bohlen Meeting with Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov concerning President Eisenhower’s United Nations Speech on December 8, 1953,” 7 December 1953, Eisenhower Presidential Library, C. D. Jackson Papers, 1934–67, box 25, Atoms for Peace Evolution (II), Digital National Security Archive (DNSA). Also see David Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the Creation of the IAEA,” Cold War History 16, no. 2 (2016): 177, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​ /­14682745​.­2015​.­1124265. 34. ​“Draft of the Presidential Speech before the General Assembly of the United Nations (Plane Editing on Route New York),” 7 December 1953, Atoms for Peace-­Evolution (2), box 29, C. D. Jackson Papers, 1931–1967, Eisenhower Presidential Library. 35. ​Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 77. 36. ​Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ­Legal Series 7 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1970), 22–23. 37. The following sections are derived in part from a published article: Elisabeth Roehrlich, “The Cold War, the Developing World, and the Creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), 1953–1957, Cold War History 16, no.  2 (2016): 195–212, copyright Taylor & Francis, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4682745​.­2015​.­1 129607. 38. ​The US-­Soviet exchange on “Atoms for Peace” was published first in the United States and l­ater in the Soviet Union. For the En­glish version, see “Correspondence with Soviet Union on Atomic Pool Proposal,” Department of State Bulletin 31, no. 797 (1954): 478–97; and “Correspondence with USSR on Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy,” Department of State Bulletin 35, no. 904 (1956): 620–31. On the history of the IAEA’s creation, also see David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 29–56; Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington, DC: Resources for the F ­ uture, 1987), 49–80; Bernhard G. Bechhoefer, “Negotiating the Statute of the Inter­national Atomic Energy Agency,” International Organ­ization 13, no. 1 (1959): 38–59. On the Soviet role, see Holloway, “The Soviet Union and the Creation of the IAEA,” and David Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939–1956 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1994), 346–63. 39. ​Fred E. Greenstein, The Hidden-­Hand Presidency: Eisenhower as Leader (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994). 40. ​Robert R. Bowie and Richard H. Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower ­Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).

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Notes to Pages 40–43   265 41. ​“Aide Memoire Handed to Secretary Dulles by Mr. Molotov, Geneva, April 27, 1954,” State Department Bulletin 31, no. 797 (1954): 483. 42. ​Gerard C. Smith, Disarming Diplomat: The Memoirs of Gerard C. Smith, Arms Control Negotiator (Lanham, MD: Madison Books, 1996), 37–38. 43. ​“Soviet Note–­Meeting with Secretary, Murphy, Bowie, Merchant, and Bohlen,” 2 December 1954, RG 59, General Rec­ords Relating to Atomic Energy M ­ atters, 1948–1962, file IAEA Exchange of Notes between the US and USSR, 1953–1954, part 2, box 141, NARA. 44. ​Smith, Disarming Diplomat, 28–29. 45. ​Drogan, “The Nuclear Imperative.” 46. ​Howard A. Robinson to Gerard C. Smith, 25 July 1955, RG 59, General Rec­ords Relating to Atomic Energy ­Matters, 1948–1962, file IAEA Exchange of Notes between the US and USSR, 1953–1954, part 2, box 141, NARA. 47. ​Howard A. Robinson to Gerard C. Smith, 25 July 1955, RG 59, General Rec­ords Relating to Atomic Energy ­Matters, 1948–1962, file IAEA Exchange of Notes between the US and USSR, 1953–1954, part 2, box 141, NARA. 48. ​Leonard Weiss, “Atoms for Peace,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59, no. 9 (2003): 39, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­00963402​.­2003​.­1 1460728. 49. ​“Informal Paper Left with Mr. Molotov by Secretary Dulles,” 1 May 1954, RG 59, file IAEA Exchange of Notes between the US and USSR, 1953–1954, part 2, box 141, NARA. 50. ​“Memorandum handed to Ambassador Zaroubin by Assistant Secretary Merchant, Washington, July 9, 1954,” State Department Bulletin 31, no. 797 (1954): 485. 51. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xvii. 52. ​See above, note 38. 53. ​“President Eisenhower’s Proposals for the Peaceful Development of Atomic Energy,” 10 June 1954, FO 371/110694, TNA. On the British reaction to “Atoms for Peace,” see Stephen Twigge, “The Atomic Marshall Plan: Atoms for Peace, British Diplomacy and Civil Nuclear Power,” Cold War History 16, no. 2 (2016): 213–30, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​ /­1 4682745​.­2015​.­1 117450. 54. ​“President Eisenhower’s Proposals for an International Atomic Energy Agency,” 1954, FO 371/110694. 55. ​“President Eisenhower’s Proposals for an International Atomic Energy Agency,” 1954, FO 371/110694. 56. ​UN General Assembly, First Committee, Resolution 715(III), Regulation, Limitation and Balanced Reduction of all Armed Forces and All Armaments, A/RES/715(III) (28 November 1953). Also see Spyros Blavoukos and Dimitris Bourantonis, “Calling the Bluff of the Western Powers in the United Nations Disarmament Negotiations, 1954–55,” Cold War History 14, no. 3 (2014): 365, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4682745​.­2013​.­871261. 57. ​“President Eisenhower’s Proposals for the Peaceful Development of Atomic Energy,” 1954, FO 371/110692, TNA. 58. ​On the North-­South dimensions of nuclear relations during the Cold War, also see Shane J. Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Pre­sent (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), and Matthew Jones, A ­ fter Hiroshima: The United States, Race and Nuclear Weapons in Asia, 1945–1965 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010). 59. ​James Goodby, interview by the author, Washington, DC, 17 November 2015.

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266   Notes to Pages 43–47 60. ​“Proposed U.S. Position on International Atomic Energy Agency,” RG 59, Rec­ords of the Department of State, Special Assistant to the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, Rec­ords Relating to Disarmament, 1949–1962, file 10.24A Policy Position, Proposals, part 2 of 2, box 142, NARA. 61. ​“Memorandum of Conversation,” 27 July 1955, RG 59, file IAEA Exchange of Notes between the US and USSR, 1953–1954, part 1, box 141, NARA. 62. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xvi. 63. ​Szasz, Law and Practices, 42, 42n10. 64. ​James J. Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy: Atoms for Peace,” in Power and Order: 6 Cases in World Politics, ed. John G. Stoessinger and Alan F. Westin (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1964), 34–35. 65. ​Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2009), 25; also see Mark Philipp Bradley, “Decolonization, the Global South, and the Cold War, 1919–1962,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 1, Origins, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012), 484. 66. ​ UN General Assembly, 9th  Session, Official Rec­ ords, First Committee, 710th Meeting, A/C.1/SR.710 (9 November 1954), 309–13. 67. ​A/C.1/SR.710. 68. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xviii. 69. ​Itty Abraham, “The Ambivalence of Nuclear Histories,” Osiris 21, no. 1 (2006): 62, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1086​/­507135. 70. ​Michael R. Adamson, “The Most Impor­tant Single Aspect of our Foreign Policy? The Eisenhower Administration, Foreign Aid, and the Developing World,” in The Eisenhower Administration, the Third World, and the Globalization of the Cold War, ed. Kathryn C. Statler and Andrew J. Johns (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006). 71. ​C. D. Jackson to Lewis Strauss, Comments on Apparent Lack of Activity by the Atomic Energy Commission on Atoms for Peace Program, 26 May 1956, United States, Office of the White House, Office of the Special Assistant to the President, DNSA. 72. ​Gladys D. Walser, “The International Atomic Energy Agency, Washington, February 28–­April 18, 1956,” file 5, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­Conference on Statute, 6/7/1955–1959, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 73. ​Sonja D. Schmid, “Nuclear Colonization? Soviet Technopolitics in the Second World,” in Entangled Geographies: Empire and Technopolitics in the Global Cold War, ed. Gabrielle Hecht (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2011), 135. 74. ​“Oak Ridge National Laboratory: The First Fifty Years,” special edition, Oak Ridge National Laboratory Review, 25, no. 1 (1992): 107; UN General Assembly, Resolution 810, International Co-­operation in the Developing the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, A/ RES/810 (IX), B (4 December 1954). Also see Krige, “Atoms for Peace,” 174–80; Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 138. 75. ​Isidor Rabi, leader of the US del­e­ga­t ion, at the first meeting, Geneva, 22 August 1955. For the verbatim rec­ords of the meetings, see RG 326, Rec­ords of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Rec­ords Relating to the Formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1953–1957, file International Affairs, IAEA, PV documents 1955, box 5, NARA. This section has been derived in part from the following article: Elisabeth Roehrlich, “Negotiating Verification: International Diplomacy and the Evolution of Nu-

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Notes to Pages 47–52   267 clear Safeguards,” 1945–1972, Diplomacy and Statecraft 29, no. 1 (2018): 35–38, https://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1080​/­09592296​.­2017​.­1 420520. 76. ​Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammarskjöld, n.d., file 11, IAEA–­Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy–­Relationship Study–­Miscellaneous notes, Secretary General–­Bunche, ca. 1955, series 370 (Bunche files), box 22, UN Archives. 77. ​US Embassy in Paris to USIA, 23 August 1955, RG 59, General Rec­ords Relating to Atomic Energy M ­ atters, 1948–1962, file Proposed IAEA 1955, box 137, NARA. 78. ​Isidor Rabi, first meeting, 22 August 1955. 79. ​A brief overview of the history of the meetings can be found in Hewlett and Holl, Atoms for Peace and War, 313–15. 80. ​Smith, Disarming Diplomat, 45. 81. ​“Observations on the Prob­lem of Controlling against Diversion of Fissionable Materials from Nuclear Reactors,” 17 September 1955, RG 59, General Rec­ords Relating to Atomic Energy M ­ atters, 1948–1962, file IAEA Control and Inspection, 1955–1957, box 137, NARA. 82. ​“Memorandum for the File. Subject: Discussion with Dr. Rabi–­Technical Planning for IAEA,” 14 September 1955, RG 59, General Rec­ords Relating to Atomic Energy M ­ atters, 1948–1962, file IAEA Control and Inspection, 1955–1957, box 137, NARA. 83. ​“Observations on the Prob­lem of Controlling against Diversion.” 84. ​“Observations on the Prob­lem of Controlling against Diversion.” 85. ​“Observations on the Prob­lem of Controlling against Diversion.” 86. ​ UN General Assembly, 10th  Session, Official Rec­ ords, First Committee, 769th Meeting, A/C1/769 (26 October 1955). 87. ​J. E. Holloway to D. Spies, 25 January 1956, BVV, vol. 81, ref. 13/1, pt. 3, NARS. 88. ​The IAEA Archives in Vienna has copies of the official rec­ords of the Washington talks: “Rec­ords of the Working Level Meeting (12-­Nation Conference) on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Washington, DC, February 27–­June 28, 1956,” box 5561, IAEA Archives. 89. ​“Inward Saving Tele­gram from Washington to Foreign Office,” 16 November 1955, FO 371/125166, TNA. 90. ​I am grateful to Ambassador James Goodby and Robert Burns, who participated in the Washington talks as assistant technical secretaries, for sharing their memories about the atmosphere and the setting of the negotiations. 91. ​Goodby, interview, 17 November 2015. 92. ​Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency. 93. ​ UN General Assembly, 10th  Session, Verbatim Rec­ ords, First Committee, 770th Meeting, 26 October 1955, A/C.1/PV.770. 94. ​“Chronology: December 1953 to October 1956,” RG 326, Rec­ords of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Rec­ords Relating to the Formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1953–1957, file International Affairs, IAEA, 2, box 5, NARA. 95. ​“Reports on the First Meeting of the Negotiating Group on the Draft Statute on 27 February 1956,” FO 371/123078, TNA. 96. ​Unsigned letter from a member of the South African del­e­ga­t ion to B. G. Fourie, 20 February 1956, BVV, vol. 81, ref. 13/1, pt. 3, NARS. 97. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xvii–­x viii. 98. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xviii.

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268   Notes to Pages 52–58 99. ​David F. Cavers, “Atomic Power versus World Security,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, October 1947, 283–88, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­00963402​.­1947​.­1 1459114. 100. ​“International Atomic Energy Agency, from Washington to Foreign Office,” 4 March 1956, FO 371/123078, TNA. 101. ​William R. Frye, “Atoms-­for-­Peace Plan Torn by Rival Blocs,” Christian Science Monitor, 23 March 1956. 102. ​Goodby, interview, 17 November 2015. Donald Sole of the South African del­e­ga­ tion ­later gave a more idyllic account of the 12-­nation meetings: Donald B. Sole, “­Great Expectations: A Diplomat’s Recollections of the Birth and Early Years of the IAEA,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections. A Fortieth Anniversary Publication (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 15–26. 103. ​ Saul Dubow, “Smuts, the United Nations and the Rhe­ toric of Race and Rights,” Journal of Con­temporary History 43, no.  1 (2008): 45–74, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​ .­1177%2F0022009407084557. 104. ​J. E. Holloway to Mr. Forsyth, 4 February 1955, BVV, vol. 81, ref. 13/1, pt. 2, NARS. 105. ​W. C. du Plessis to the Secretary of External Affairs, 7 January 1955, BVV, vol. 81, ref. 13/1, pt. 2, NARS. 106. ​Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington, DC: Resources for the F ­ uture, 1987), 84–87. 107. ​The official rec­ords of the Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency are kept at the IAEA Archives (CS/OR series). 108. ​For the text of the invitations to governments and specialized agencies, see “Text of Invitation to Governments and Text of Invitation to the Specialized Agencies of the United Nations,” 2 July 1956, Working Level Meetings collection, doc. 30, box 5561, IAEA Archives. 109. ​Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy,” 48. 110. ​Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, as of 26 October 1957, Article IV.B. 111. ​Walser, “International Atomic Energy Organ­ization.” 112. ​CS/OR.7 (27 September 1956), IAEA Archives. 113. ​CS/OR.37 (19 October 1956), IAEA Archives. 114. ​James P. Nichol, Diplomacy in the Former Soviet Republics (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 1995), 13. 115. ​CS/OR.11 (1 October 1956), IAEA Archives. 116. ​Sir Alec Randall, United Kingdom representative, at the Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Committee of the Whole, first meeting, verbatim rec­ord, CS/OR.14 (3 October 1956), IAEA Archives. 117. ​CS/OR.11. 118. ​For the role the Suez crisis played in the development of Eu­ro­pean nuclear cooperation, see Grégoire Mallard, Fallout: Nuclear Diplomacy in an Age of Global Fracture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 117–59. 119. ​“Speech of Senator Joe McCarthy” (copy), Wisconsin GOP Club, 9 February 1957, RG 326, Rec­ords of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), Rec­ords Relating to the Formation of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1953–1957, file International Affairs, IAEA, 2, IAEA, Senator McCarthy 1957, box 17, NARA. 120. ​“Atomic Agency Treaty,” CQ Almanac 1957, 13th ed. (Washington, DC: Congressional Quarterly, 1958).

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Notes to Pages 58–62   269 121. ​“The Broker Function of the IAEA,” IAEA Bulletin 15, no. 6 (1973): 16–22. 122. ​Memorandum, 22 May  1957, LBJ Papers, US Senate, 1949–61, office files of George Reedy, box 417, LJB Presidential Library. 123. ​IAEA statute, Article IX.I.1. 124. ​Szasz, Law and Practices, 21. 125. ​Bechhoefer, “Negotiating the Statute.” 126. ​Wadsworth, “Modern Diplomacy.” Significantly, the editors of Power and Order placed Wadsworth’s chapter directly a­ fter the chapter on the Congress of Vienna. 127. ​Edmund Jan Ozmańczyk, “Group of 77,” in Encyclopedia of the United Nations and International Agreements, 3rd ed. (New York: Routledge, 2003), 2: 839. 128. ​“Welcoming Remarks by the Secretary General of the United Nations,” CS/OR.1 (20 September 1956), IAEA Archives. 129. ​John Krige, Sharing Knowledge, Shaping Eu­rope: US Technological Collaboration and Nonproliferation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2016). 130. ​Erez Manela, “A Pox on Your Narrative: Writing Disease Control into Cold War History,” Diplomatic History 34, no. 2 (April 2010): 299–323, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 111​/­j​.­1 467​ -­7 709​.­2009​.­00850​.­x. 131. ​Allan McKnight, Atomic Safeguards: A Study in International Verification (New York: United Nations Institute for Training and Research, 1971), 25. 132. ​For a policy discussion on the history, pre­sent, and f­ uture of the IAEA statute, see Elisabeth Roehrlich et al., H-­Diplo | ISSF Policy Roundtable 1-3 on the International Atomic Energy Agency Statute at Sixty, 2016, http://­issforum​.­org​/­roundtables​/­policy​/­1​-­3​ -­I AEA.

Chapter 3

•

​Cold War Vienna

1. ​Austria would be ­under four-­power military occupation for ten years, longer than even Germany. For the postwar history of Austria, see Oliver Rathkolb, The Paradoxical Republic: Austria, 1945–2005 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2010). 2. ​ T he Third Man (1949), directed by Carol Reed. 3. ​Tennent H. Bagley, Spy Wars: Moles, Mysteries, and Deadly Games (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007), 34. 4. ​On gas centrifuge enrichment technology, see chapter 6. On Zippe’s role, see John Krige, “Hybrid Knowledge: The Transnational Co-­production of the Gas Centrifuge for Uranium Enrichment in the 1960s,” British Journal for the History of Science 45, no. 3 (2012): 337–57, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1017​/­S0007087412000350. 5. ​For Grümm’s memoirs, see Hans Grümm, Drei Leben: Krieg, Partei, Atom (Vienna: Löcker, 1992). 6. ​Paul Broda, Scientist Spies: A Memoir of My Three Parents and the Atom Bomb (Leicester: Matador, 2011). 7. ​Elisabeth Röhrlich, Kreiskys Außenpolitik: Zwischen österreichischer Identität und internationalem Programm (Göttingen: V&R Vienna University Press, 2009), 143–51. 8. ​Stefan Karner, Halt! Tragödien am Eisernen Vorhang: Die Verschlussakten (Salzburg: Ecowin Verlag, 2013). 9. ​Moscow Conference, October 1943, Joint Four Nation Declaration, in Die Moskauer Deklaration 1943: “Österreich wieder herstellen,” ed. Stefan Karner (Vienna: Böhlau, 2015).

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270   Notes to Pages 62–65 10. ​On nuclear science in Austria during the first half of the twentieth c­ entury, see Silke Fengler, Kerne, Kooperation und Konkurrenz: Österreichische Kernforschung im internationalen Kontext, 1900–1950 (Vienna: Böhlau, 2014). 11. ​ Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xv–­x vi. 12. ​State Department, memorandum from David McKillop “Origin of Discussion of IAEA Headquarters,” 17 May 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955–1959, I, box 139, NARA. 13. ​David McKillop to Gerard Smith, “Chronology of Consultations with the AEC on Site of the Headquarters of the IAEA,” 8 June 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955–1959, II, box 139, NARA. 14. ​“Amtssitz der IAEO in Wien: Überblick über die Bemühungen des BKA, AA,” 24 January 1958, 536378-­VR/58, Völkerrechtsabteilung, Außenministerium Österreich (Austrian Foreign Ministry). 15. ​State Department, memorandum from David McKillop, 17 May 1956. 16. ​Lewis Strauss to James Wadsworth, 6 April 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955–1959, I, box 139, NARA. 17. ​Gerard C. Smith to Strauss, 15 May 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location 1955– 1959, I, box 139, NARA. 18. ​“Site of the Headquarters of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” 30 May 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955–1959, II, box 139, NARA. 19. ​Günter Bischof and Stefan Maurer, “ ‘One Hour East of Vienna . . .’: At the Crossroads of Eu­rope: Vienna—­Bridgehead and Bridge in the Cold War,” in Cold War Cities: History, Culture and Memory, ed. Katia Pizzi and Marjatta Hietala (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016), 45–73, ­here 62. 20. ​“International Atomic Energy Agency,” 18 July 1957, FO 371/129215, TNA. 21. ​For Gruber’s efforts to have the IAEA established in Vienna, see the correspondences and memoranda in RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location 1955–1959, I, box 139, NARA. 22. ​Karl Gruber, Zwischen Befreiung und Freiheit: Der Sonderfall Österreich (Berlin: Ullstein, 1953). On Gruber’s po­liti­cal ­career, see Michael Gehler, “Karl Gruber,” in Die Politiker: Karrieren und Wirken bedeutender Repräsentanten der Zweiten Republik, ed. Herbert Dachs, Peter Gerlich, and Wolfgang C. Müller (Vienna: Manz, 1995), 192–99. 23. ​“Memorandum of Conversation: Austrian M ­ atters,” 19 April 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955–1959, I, box 139, NARA.

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Notes to Pages 65–67   271 24. ​Memorandum from Mr. Beam to Mr. Murphy, 2 May 1956, “Austrian Interest in Se­lection of Vienna as Permanent Site for IAEA,” RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955– 1959, I, box 139, NARA. 25. ​Report from US Embassy in Austria (no date, no author), RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955–1959, I, box 139, NARA. 26. ​“International Atomic Energy Agency: Headquarters,” 1 June 1956, BLO vol. 348, ref. PS17/109/03, NARS. 27. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, “The Origins of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 10. 28. ​Brigitte Kromp, “Die Zentralbibliothek für Physik in Wien als Depotbibliothek und regionales Informationszentrum” (unpublished paper, Vienna, 1995), 19. 29. ​Victor Weisskopf to Isidor Rabi, 8 November 1960, Isidor Rabi Papers, box 8, LOC. 30. ​“Conference on the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency: Verbatim Rec­ord of the Fifteenth Plenary Meeting Held on Tuesday, 23 October 1956,” IAEA/CS/ OR.39, 62. Also see Jimmy Berg’s interview with the Austrian delegate Hans Thalberg, ORF Radio Wien (Austrian National Broadcasting), New York, 28 October 1956, http://­ www​.­mediathek​.­at​/­atom​/­08E93C41​-­306​-­0012C​-­00000758​-­08E83665. 31. ​IAEA/CS/OR.39 (23 October 1956), 63–64. 32. ​“Memorandum of Conversation: IAEA–­Headquarters Location,” 17 January 1957. 33. ​Tele­g ram from Vienna to secretary of state, no. 132, 15 July 1957, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.15, IAEA Headquarters Location, 1955–1959, II, box 139, NARA. 34. ​Dag Hammarskjöld to Ralph Bunche, handwritten notes, n.d., file 11, IAEA–­ Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy–­Relationship Study–­Miscellaneous notes Secretary General–­Bunche, ca. 1955, series 370 (Bunche files), box 22, UN Archives. 35. ​The first Vienna meeting of PrepCom was held on 9 September 1957 in the Musikakademie. See IAEA/PC/OR.53. 36. ​GOV/OR.3 (8 December 1957), 6. 37. ​GC.1 (S)/RES/14. 38. ​Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammarskjöld, 2 October 1957, file 12, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­conferences–1st session general 24/6/1957–29/10/1957, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 39. ​ “Der Sitz der Weltatombehörde: Eine Intrige gegen Wien? Eigener telegraphischer Bericht,” M.B., 10 July 1957, box 09100, folder Preparatory Commission, IAEA Archives. 40. ​For the negotiating history and the content of the relationship agreement, see Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ­Legal Series 7 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1970), 257–326. 41. ​IAEA/PC/OR.2 (29 October 1956), 10.

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272   Notes to Pages 67–70 42. ​Martin Hill to Ralph Bunche, 27 May 1957, file 3, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Agreement with UN, draft 24/4/1957–11/7/1957, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 43. ​See “The Texts of the Agency’s Agreements with the United Nations,” INFCIRC/11 (30 October 1959). 44. ​IAEA statute, as of 26 October 1957, Article III.B.4. 45. ​Julius Raab to Sigvard Eklund, 6 September 1963, box 03806, IAEA Archives. 46. ​Oliver Rathkolb, Washington ruft Wien: US-­Großmachtpolitik und Österreich, 1953– 1963 (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997). 47. ​“Status Report on Names Suggested for Position of Director General of the IAEA,” 15 August 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.9 IAEA Director General, 1956–1962, box 137, NARA. 48. ​“Memorandum of Conversation with Admiral Strauss,” 22 October 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.9, IAEA Director General, 1956–1962, box 137, NARA. 49. ​M. I. Michaels to Atomic Energy Office, 12 July 1957, FO 371/129215, TNA. 50. ​“Department of State, Memorandum for the Secretary: Meeting with Representative Cole on IAEA,” 6 August 1957, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.9, IAEA Director General, 1956–1962, box 137, NARA. 51. ​Lewis Strauss to John Foster Dulles, 24 October 1956, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file 10.9, IAEA Director General, 1956–1962, AEC rec­ords, National Archives, College Park, box 137, NARA. 52. ​“Status Report on Names Suggested for Position of Director General of the IAEA,” 15 August 1956, 2. 53. ​Brian Urquhart to Ralph Bunche, 17 September 1957, file 12, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­conferences–1st session general 24/6/1957–29/10/1957, series 370 (Bunche file), box 20, UN Archives. 54. ​Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammarskjöld, 3 October 1957, file 12, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­conferences–1st session general 24/6/1957–29/10/1957, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. Also see Brian Urquhart, Ralph Bunche: An American Life (New York: Norton, 1998), 261–62. 55. ​GOV/OR.1 (4 October 1957), 7. 56. ​Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammarskjöld, 4 October 1957, file 12, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­conferences–1st session general 24/6/1957–29/10/1957, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 57. ​GOV.OR.1, 9. 58. ​GOV/OR.2 (7 October 1957), 10. 59. ​GOV/OR.3 (8 October 1957), 3. 60. ​Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammerskjöld, 9 October 1957, file 12, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­conferences–1st session general 24/6/1957–29/10/1957, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives.

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Notes to Pages 71–74   273 61. ​­Today the General Conference convenes ­every fall for a week, but it did so for longer periods early on. 62. ​James E. Goodby, At the Borderline of Armageddon: How American Presidents Managed the Atom Bomb (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006), 33. 63. ​“Erste Kraftprobe zwischen Ost und West steht bevor: Rotchinesen halten sich in Wien bereit,” Kurier, 2 October 1957. 64. ​Petra Goedde, The Politics of Peace: A Global Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2019), 37. 65. ​Eugene Rabinowitch, “The Third Pugwash Conference,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, November 1958, 338. 66. ​For this and the following, also see Elisabeth Roehrlich, “An Attitude of Caution: The IAEA, the UN, and the 1959 Pugwash Conference in Austria,” Journal of Cold War Studies 20, no. 1 (2018): 31–57, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­jcws​_ ­a ​_ ­00800. 67. ​Joseph Rotblat, “Fifty Pugwash Conferences: A Tribute to Eugene Rabinowitch,” Pugwash Newsletter 37, no. 2 (2000): 54. 68. ​Paul Jolles to William Sterling Cole, 8 September 1958, folder Reading File Jolles, box 6363, IAEA Archives. 69. ​W. Tapley Benett Jr. to the Department of State, Washington, DC, 5 May 1958, RG 84, Foreign Ser­v ice Posts Austria, Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1957–1961, file Pugwash Conferences–­Pugwash, box 2, NARA. 70. ​Silke Fengler, “ ‘Salonbolschewiken:’ Pugwash in Austria, 1955–1965,” in Science, (Anti)Communism, and Diplomacy: The Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs in the Early Cold War, ed. Alison Kraft and Carola Sachse (Leiden: Brill, 2020), 221–58, ­here 222. 71. ​Halver O. Ekern to John H. Manley, 18 August 1958, RG 84, Foreign Ser­v ice Posts, Austria, Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1957–1961, file Pugwash Conferences–­Pugwash, box 2, NARA. 72. ​“Intervention of Mr. Emelyanov during the General Debate of Friday 26 September 1958 (translated into En­glish by the Secretariat),” Correspondence (T), United Nations–­ General, UN Consultative Committee on Public Information, box 108, IAEA Archives. 73. ​Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammarskjöld, 24 September 1959, file 14, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­ conferences–­ t hird session, General Conference, 24/6/1959–12/10/1959, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 74. ​GC (III)/OR.25 (4 December 1959). 75. ​John G. Stoessinger, “The International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Phase,” International Organ­ization 1, no. 3 (1959): 396. 76. ​S. Dutt to Ministry of External Affairs, 6 April 1958, Papers of Subimal Dutt, subfolder 32, 231, Nehru Memorial Museum and Library, New Delhi. I am grateful to Ryan Musto for sharing this document with me. 77. ​GOV/OR.5, 15 (October 1957). 78. ​“Strontium Effects Research,” GOV/133 (14 April 1958). 79. ​“Report of the United Kingdom Del­e­ga­t ion on the Fifth Series of Meetings of the Board of Governors,” n.d., CAB 134/1336, TNA. 80. ​GOV.OR/60 (28 April 1958), 12. 81. ​A blog post showed that the early history of the IAEA’s flag remained unknown to most ­people at the IAEA even in 2013. See Alex Wellerstein, “The Story ­behind the IAEA’s

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274   Notes to Pages 76–78 Atomic Logo,” http://­blog​.­nuclearsecrecy​.­com​/­2013​/­01​/­1 1​/­t he ​-­story​-­behind​-­t he ​-­iaeas​ -­atomic​-­logo​/­. 82. ​Ralph Bunche to Dag Hammarskjöld, 24 September 1959, file 14, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­ conferences–­ t hird session, General Conference, 24/6/1959–12/10/1959, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 83. ​GOV/481; GOV/OR.187, GOV/OR.196. Michael G. Schechter, “Cole, William Sterling” in IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-­General of International Organ­ izations, ed. Bob Reinalda, Kent J. Kille, and Jaci Eisenberg, www​.­r u​.­nl​/­fm​/­iobio. 84. ​“The Agency’s Emblem and Seal,” GOV/537 (1 April 1960). 85. ​Grümm, Drei Leben, 224. On the nuclear history of Austria during the Cold War, see Christian Forstner, “Kernspaltung, Kalter Krieg und Österreichs Neutralität,” in Österreich im Kalten Krieg: Neue Forschungen im internationalen Kontext, ed. Maximilian Graf and Agnes Meisinger (Göttingen: V&R Vienna University Press, 2016), 73–92; Florian Bayer and Ulrike Felt, “Embracing the “Atomic ­Future” in Post–­World War II Austria,” Technology and Culture 60, no. 1 (2017): 165–91, http://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1353​/­tech​.­2019​.­0005. 86. ​IAEA PR/72 (23 August 1960). 87. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex: A Worldwide Po­liti­cal History of Nuclear Energy (La Grange Park, IL: American Nuclear Society, 1982), 389. 88. ​GOV/OR.245 (3 February 1961). 89. ​An interview with Panoyotis Papadimitropoulos: “An Outsider Looking In—­A n Insider Looking Out,” IAEA Bulletin 48, no. 2 (2007): 56. 90. ​I would like to thank Manfrid Welan for sharing his recollections about this time with me. 91. ​“Luncheon Meeting with Ambassador and Mrs. Molotov,” 12 January 1916, RG 59, Rec­ords of the Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs, Office of the Country Director of Israel and Arab-­Israeli Affairs, Rec­ords Relating to Israel, 1964–1966, file Israeli Atomic Energy Program 1961, box 8, NARA. 92. ​For the history of the 1961 Vienna Summit, see Günter Bischof, Stefan Karner, and Barbara Stelzl-­Marx, eds., The Vienna Summit and Its Importance in International History (Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2014). 93. ​Munir Ahmad Khan, “From My Memory Book,” Echo (summer 2007): 5–8, h ­ ere 5.

Chapter 4

•

Science, Safeguards, and Bureaucracy

1. ​“Seligman Interview: Personal Contact—­No Paperwork,” Echo 162 (1987): 8–14, h ­ ere 9. I would like to thank Eva-­Maria Gröning for pointing me to ­t hese early editions of the IAEA staff magazine. 2. ​“Seligman Interview,” 11. 3. ​Dieter Goethel, “International Organ­izations during the Cold War: How the Superpowers Exploited Staffing Policies to Gain Control over the IAEA Secretariat” (paper for the workshop “History of the IAEA during the Global Cold War,” Berlin Center for Cold War Studies, 2 September 2016), 4. 4. ​First Annual Report of the Board of Governors to the General Conference, GC(II)/39, 17 (July 1958). ­Today, the IAEA has the following six departments: Nuclear Sciences and Applications, Nuclear Energy, Safety and Security, Safeguards, Technical Cooperation, and Management. For the early departmental structure, see GOV/36 (October 1957) and GOV/46 (October 1957).

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Notes to Pages 78–82   275 5. ​The first orga­nizational charts for se­nior staff had been introduced by the United States, see GOV/36, and Egypt, see GOV/46. 6. ​Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ­Legal Series 7 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1970), 211 and 215. 7. ​“Adjustments Planned by the Director General,” GOV/937 (5 September 1963). 8. ​Brian Urquhart to Ralph Bunche, 17 September 1957, file 12, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­conferences–1st session general 24/6/1957–29/10/1957, series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 9. ​Goethel, “International Organ­izations during the Cold War,” 5. The Soviet Union had, however, favored establishing several secretary-­general positions at the United Nations: Ilya V. Gaiduk, Divided Together: The United States and the Soviet Union in the United Nations, 1945–1965 (Washington, DC: Wilson Center Press; Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012), 48. 10. ​“Seligman Interview,” 8–9. 11. ​IAEA PR 57/5. 12. ​IAEA PR 58/25; David Fischer, “Viewpoint: Looking Back,” IAEA Bulletin 3 (1987): 67–70, h ­ ere 67. 13. ​GOV/INF/19 (1958). 14. ​“Memorandum of Conversation (Participants: Dr. B. Rajan, Mr. Robert McKinney),” 14 July  1958, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file IAEA General, June–­September 1958, part 1 of 2, box 158, NARA. 15. ​IAEA GOV/OR.17 (25 October 1957), 4–5. 16. ​Carlos Buechler, “Safeguards: The Origins,” Echo 2 (1987): 15. 17. ​PR 61/13 (15 March 1961); John A. Hall, “The International Atomic Energy Agency: Origins and Early Years,” IAEA Bulletin 29, no. 2 (1987): 52. 18. ​Goethel, “International Organ­izations,” 6. 19. ​“ ­Women in All T ­ hings Nuclear: Then and Now,” video, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​ /­newscenter​/­multimedia​/­v ideos​/­women​-­in​-­all​-­t hings​-­nuclear​-­t hen​-­and​-­now. 20. ​Szazs, Law and Practices, 217; David Waller, interview by the author, Washington, DC, 21 November 2015. 21. ​IAEA statute, Article VII.C. 22. ​David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 497. 23. ​Munir Ahmad Khan, “From My Memory Book,” Echo (summer 2007): 5–8, h ­ ere 5. 24. ​I would like to thank Hans Lemmel for sharing his memories and for directing me to his article, “50 Years: Nuclear Data Section: The Early Years,” 2 June 2014, http://­ geneal​.­lemmel​.­at​/­NDS​-­50​.­html. 25. ​Dieter Goethel, interview by the author, Vienna, 18 August 2016. 26. ​IAEA/PC/OR.31 (19 June 1957). 27. ​“Proposed Establishment of a Standing Scientific Advisory Council: Note by the Atomic Energy Office,” 26 February 1958, CAB 134/1336, TNA. 28. ​“Proposed Establishment.” 29. ​IAEA/PC/OR.32 (19 June 1957). 30. ​GOV/OR.38 (17 January 1958). 31. ​GOV.OR/38, 11.

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276   Notes to Pages 82–86 32. ​GOV.OR/38, 19. 33. ​J. C. Walker to Mr. Peirson, 28 January 1958, AB 16/4249, TNA. 34. ​“Report of the United Kingdom Del­e­ga­t ion on the Fifth Series of Meetings of the Board of Governors,” n.d., CAB 134/1336, TNA. 35. ​Robert M. McKinney, “Memorandum of Conversation,” 16 July 1958, RG 59, General Rec­ords of the Department of State, Office of the Secretary, Office of the Special Assistant for the Secretary of State for Atomic Energy and Outer Space, file IAEA General, June–­ September 1958, part 1 of 2, box 158, NARA. 36. ​GOV/105 (27 February 1958). 37. ​GOV/214 (18 September 1958); GOV/229 (19 October 1958); PR 58/31. 38. ​John G. Stoessinger, “The International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Phase,” International Organ­ization 13, no. 3 (1959): 399. 39. ​PR 58/31. 40. ​GOV/SAC.OR.10 (8–9 February 1963) and GOV/SAC.OR.12 (22–23 April 1964), Rec­ords of the Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), IAEA Archives. 41. ​See Madeleine Herren-­Oesch, Internationale Organisationen seit 1865: Eine Globalgeschichte der internationalen Ordnung (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2009), 6. 42. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 445. 43. ​A. Dollinger to Ralph Bunche, 29 January 1960, file 8, IAEA–­Dollinger Reports and Instructions, 1957–1964, series 262, box 8, UN Archives. 44. ​Khan, “Memory Book,” 8. 45. ​Akira Iriye, Global Community: The Role of International Organ­izations in the Making of the Con­temporary World (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002), 80–82; Olave Stokke, The UN and Development: From Aid to Cooperation (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2009), 83–114. For a more general perspective, Stephen J. Macekura and Erez Manela, eds., The Development C ­ entury: A Global History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018). 46. ​Mark Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (London: Penguin Books, 2012), 273. 47. ​“Programme, Bud­get and Working Capital Fund for 1959,” GC(II)/RES/27 (8 October 1958). 48. ​Gisela Mateos and Edna Suarez-­Diaz, “Development Interventions: Science, Technology and Technical Assistance,” History and Technology 36 (2020): 293–309, ­here 419, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­07341512​.­2020​.­1859774. 49. ​Sigvard Eklund to Ralph Bunche, 5 October 1959, file 14, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)–­ conferences–­ t hird session, General Conference, 24/6/1959– 12/10/1959 series 370 (Bunche files), box 20, UN Archives. 50. ​Eklund to Bunche, 5 October 1959. 51. ​The IAEA reported about ­t hese missions in PR58/15 and PR59/2. 52. ​“Notes on the Spring Session of the Board of Governors,” file 7, IAEA–­Dollinger Reports and Instructions, 1957–1964 2/4, series 262, box 8, UN Archives. 53. ​ K han, “Memory Book,” 5–8; “Interview with Director General Emeritus, Dr. Sigvard Eklund,” Echo 162 (1987): 4. 54. ​GOV/937, 1 (15 September 1963).

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Notes to Pages 86–90   277 55. ​Munir Khan to Mr. H. de Laboulaye, 4 November 1959, file PAMIV, box 00105, IAEA Archives. 56. ​Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012),150. 57. ​GOV/OR.99 (3 October 1958). The relevant article of the statute is Article XI. 58. ​GOV/OR.120 (12 March 1959). 59. ​“Annual Report of the Board of Governors to the General Conference, 1 July 1965– 30 June 1966,” GC (X)/330. 60. ​PR 64/32. 61. ​Benjamin N. Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer: The Dilemma of Dissemination and Control (Totowa, NJ: Rowham and Allanheld, 1983), 181–82. 62. ​Jacob Hamblin, “Quickening Nature’s Pulse: Atomic Agriculture at the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Dynamis 35, no. 2 (2015): 389–408. 63. ​PR 60/12. 64. ​“The Atom in International Co-­operation,” IAEA Bulletin 7, no. 1 (1965): 13. 65. ​David Webster, “Development Advisors in a Time of Cold War and Decolonization: The United Nations Technical Assistance Administration, 1950–1959,” Journal of Global History 6 (2011): 249–72, ­here 271, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1017​/­S1740022811000258. 66. ​On the IAEA’s first inspection, see PR 62/8. On the early history of the IAEA’s safeguards system, see Astrid Forland, “Negotiating Supranational Rules: The Genesis of the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards System” (PhD diss., University of Bergen, 1997). On the evolution of IAEA safeguards more generally, also see David Fischer, “Nuclear Safeguards: Evolution and F ­ uture,” Verification Yearbook (London: VERTIC, 2000), 43–56; Laura Rockwood, “The IAEA and International Safeguards,” in Routledge Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation and Policy, ed. Joseph F. Pilat and Nathan E. Busch (New York: Routledge, 2015), 142–57; Szasz, Law and Practices, 531–658; Buechler, “Safeguards: The Origins,” 15. 67. ​Allan McKnight, Atomic Safeguards: A Study in International Verification (New York: United Nations Publications, 1970), 48. 68. ​Carlos L. Büchler, “Safeguards: The Beginnings,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 49; Buechler, “Safeguards: The Origins,” 15. 69. ​GOV/OR.109 (12 January 1959), 4. 70. ​IAEA statute, Article XII. 71. ​Rockwood, “The IAEA and International Safeguards,” 143. 72. ​See Buechler, “Safeguards: The Origins,” 16. 73. ​Büchler, “Safeguards: The Beginnings,” 49. 74. ​John Carlson, interview by the author, Washington, DC, 13 November 2015. 75. ​Buechler, “Safeguards: The Origins,” 15. 76. ​“Princi­ples and Regulations for the IAEA Safeguards System,” SAC/8 (8 May 1959), SAC rec­ords, IAEA Archives. 77. ​McKnight, Atomic Safeguards, 48. 78. ​“The Agency’s Safeguards,” INFCIRC/26 (30 March 1961), https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​ /­sites​/­default​/­files​/­publications​/­documents​/­infcircs​/­1961​/­infcirc26​.­pdf. On the evolution of the IAEA’s safeguards system, see Olli Heinonen, “Five Challenging De­cades of IAEA

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278   Notes to Pages 90–94 Safeguards,” Harvard University, July  2014: http://­belfercenter​.­ksg​.­harvard​.­edu​ /­publication​/­24426​/­five​_­challenging​_­decades​_­of​_­iaea​_­safeguards​.­html. 79. ​GOV/OR.238 (31 January 1961); Forland, “Negotiating Supranational Rules,” 104. 80. ​Fischer, “Nuclear Safeguards,” 47. 81. ​Forland, “Negotiating Supranational Rules,” 140. 82. ​Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency, Conference on the Statute, Held at Headquarters of the United Nations, 20 September to 26 October 1956, IAEA/ CS/13. For the current version of the statute, see the IAEA’s website, https://­w ww​.­iaea​ .­org​/­about​/­statute. Article XII of the statute lists the responsibilities and rights of IAEA safeguards, including examination of a fa­cil­i­t y’s design to ensure “that it complies with applicable health and safety standards” (para. 1). According to the statute, the “observance of any health and safety mea­sures prescribed by the Agency” also falls u ­ nder the responsibility of safeguards (paragraph 2). 83. ​“The Agency’s Safeguards,” GOV/334 (11 May 1959). 84. ​Toshihiru Higuchi and Jacques E. C. Hymans, “Materialized Internationalism: How the IAEA Made the Vinca Dosimetry Experiment, and How the Experiment Made the IAEA,” Centaurus 2021, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 111​/­1600​- ­0498​.­12358. 85. ​Szasz, Law and Practices. 86. ​McKnight, Atomic Safeguards, 49; Szasz, Law and Practices, 532. 87. ​GOV/OR.151 (26 June 1959). 88. ​William Sterling Cole to Lewis Strauss, 12 May 1958, William Sterling Cole Papers, box 1, Colgate University Libraries; John Krige, “Euratom and the IAEA: The Prob­lem of Self-­Inspection,” Cold War History 15, no. 3 (2015): 341–52, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4682745​ .­2014 ​.­999046. 89. ​On Israel’s nuclear program, see Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998). 90. ​William Sterling Cole to Lewis Strauss, 23 January 1961, William Sterling Cole Papers, box 1, Colgate University Libraries. Also see a related dossier published by the National Security Archive, “Concerned about Nuclear Weapons Potential, John F. Kennedy Pushed for Inspection of Israel Nuclear Facilities,” https://­nsarchive​.­g wu​.­edu​/­briefing​ -­b ook​/­nuclear​-­v ault​/­2 016 ​- ­04​-­2 1​/­concerned​-­about​-­nuclear​-­weapons​-­p otential​-­john​-­f​ -­kennedy. 91. ​Cole to Strauss, 23 January 1961. 92. ​Cole to Strauss, 23 January 1961. 93. ​Collection of IAEA press releases, IAEA Reading Room, IAEA Archives. 94. ​Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer, 169. 95. ​Trevor Findlay, “What Price Nuclear Governance? Funding the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Harvard Kennedy School, Proj­ect on Managing the Atom, report no. 2016–01. 96. ​Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer, 171. 97. ​GOV/OR.307 (20 February 1963), 16. 98. ​GOV/OR.322 (18 June 1963), 17. 99. ​Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer, 172. 100. ​“The Financing of the Agency’s Activities,” GC(VII)/RES/143 (9 October 1963). 101. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 497. 102. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 189. Also see Szasz, Law and Practices, 453–88.

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Notes to Pages 94–98   279 103. ​“IAEA Programme and Bud­get for 1964,” GC(VII)/230. 104. ​A list of IAEA member states by year can be found on the IAEA’s website, https://­ www​.­iaea​.­org​/­about​/­memberstates. 105. ​A list of UN member states by year can be found on the UN website, https://­w ww​ .­u n​.­org​/­en​/­sections​/­member​-­states​/­g rowth​-­u nited​-­nations​-­membership​-­1945​-­present​ /­index​.­html. 106. ​“IAEA: Proposal to Establish a Regional Centre in Cairo,” 21 April 1959, BLO 349, PS17/109/03, NARS; “The Establishment ­under the Auspices of the International Atomic Energy Agency of a Regional Isotope Centre for the Arab Countries,”(GOV/318 (6 April 1959). 107. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 346–47. 108. ​Gabrielle Hecht, “Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War,” Osiris 21 (2006): 25–48. 109. ​“Designations to the IAEA Board of Governors,” 25 April 1960, BLO, vol. 349, ref. PS17/109/03, NARS. 110. ​“South African Membership of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” ref. 29/15, 6 June 1960, BLO, vol. 349, ref. PS17/109/03, NARS. 111. ​A. J. R. Rhijn to Hon. the Earl of Home, 10 May 1960, BLO, vol. 349, ref. PS17/109/03, NARS. 112. ​“Aide Memoire” (untitled), 1 September 1961, BLO, vol 349, ref. PS17/109/03, NARS. 113. ​GOV/OR.240 (1 February 1961), 4. 114. ​GOV/OR.240, 17. 115. ​GOV/OR.304 (27 September 1962), 7–8. 116. ​PR 63/15. 117. ​Laura Rockwood, “The IAEA Statute: A Living Document,” H-­Diplo |  ISSF POLICY Roundtable 1–3 (2016) on the International Atomic Energy Agency Statute at Sixty, 19 November 2016, https://­issforum​.­org​/­roundtables​/­policy​/­1​-­3​-­IAEA. 118. ​GC (VII)/OR.73 (24 September 1973), 2. 119. ​GC (VII)/OR.73, 2–3. 120. ​GC (VII)/OR.73, 3. 121. ​IAEA statute, Article VII. 122. ​Khan, “Memory Book,” 6. 123. ​John A. Hall to Isidor Rabi, 12 March 1962, Isidor Rabi Papers, box 4, LOC. 124. ​UN translation of an article in the Austrian newspaper Neues Österreich, 11 June 1961, file 9, IAEA–­Dollinger Reports and Instructions, 1957–1964 4/4, series 262, box 8, UN Archives. 125. ​Zahir Ahmed to Ralph Bunche, 28 April 1961 (5593), file 8, IAEA–­Dollinger Reports and Instructions, 1957–1964 3/4, series 262, box 8, UN Archives. 126. ​Ahmed to Bunche, 28 April 1961. 127. ​Ahmed to Bunche, 28 April 1961. 128. ​Richard N. Gardner, “The Soviet Union and the United States,” The Soviet Impact on International Law, ed. Hans W. Baade (New York: Oceana, 1965). 129. ​GOV/OR.261 (22 June 1961), 6. 130. ​GOV/OR.261, 6. 131. ​GOV/OR.262 (22 June 1961), 8.

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280   Notes to Pages 98–101 132. ​On Eklund’s 1955 visit to the Soviet Union: Hiroshi Ichikawa, “Obninsk 1955: The World’s First Nuclear Power Plant and ‘The Atomic Diplomacy’ by Soviet Scientists,” Historia Scientiarum 26, no. 1 (2016): 37. 133. ​“Sigvard Eklund sworn in as new director-­general of IAEA,” UN press release, IAEA/327, 6 October 1961. 134. ​See Forland, “Negotiating Supranational Rules,” 181. 135. ​John A. Hall to Isidor Rabi, 17 November 1961, Isidor Rabi Papers, box 4, LOC. 136. ​Thomas Jonter, The Key to Nuclear Restraint: The Swedish Plans to Acquire Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2016), 62. 137. ​Andreas Persbo, “The Blue and Yellow Bomb,” Arms Control Wonk, 16 November  2009, http://­w ww​.­armscontrolwonk​.­com​/­archive​/­602535​/­t he​-­blue​-­and​-­yellow​-­bomb​ -­part​-­1; Arne Kaijser, “Sweden Short Country Report,” History of Nuclear Energy and Society (HoNEST), proj­ect report (July 2018), http://­w ww​.­honest2020​.­eu​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​ /­deliverables ​_ ­2 4​/­SW​.­pdf. Also see Kathleen C. Bailey, Doomsday Weapons in the Hands of Many: The Arms Control Challenge of the ’90s (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991), 32. For the history of the Swedish nuclear weapon program, see Thomas Jonter, “The Swedish Plans to Acquire Nuclear Weapons, 1945–1968: An Analy­sis of the Technical Preparations,” Science and Global Security 18 (2010): 61–86, and Jonter, The Key to Nuclear Restraint. 138. ​Abena Dove Osseo-­Asare, Atomic Junction: Nuclear Power in Africa ­after In­de­pen­ dence (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019), 69. 139. ​Tele­gram from the US embassy, Vienna, to the State Department, 6 March 1962, RG 84, Rec­ords of the Foreign Ser­v ice Posts of the Department of State, Department of State, U.S. Mission to the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1957–1983, file Board of Governors, box 1, NARA. 140. ​Diether Goethel, “Internationale Organisationen während des Kalten Krieges: Kontrolle der Binnenstruktur durch die beiden Supermächte am Beispiel der IAEO” (unpublished paper, 2002). I thank Dieter Goethel for sharing this paper with me. 141. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 85. 142. ​I would like to thank Eklund’s d ­ aughter Kerstin Altmann for sharing her recollections with me. 143. ​On Kreisky, see Elisabeth Röhrlich, Kreiskys Außenpolitik: Zwischen österreichischer Identität und internationalem Programm (Göttingen: V&R Vienna University Press, 2009). 144. ​GOV/OR.308 (21 February 1963), 5. 145. ​GOV/OR.308, 5. 146. ​Roland Timerbaev, interview by Rich Hooper and Jenni Rissanen, 14 June 2007 (Foundations of International Safeguards, PNNL-­SA-56315). Unfortunately, t­ hese interviews are no longer accessible online. 147. ​McKnight, Atomic Safeguards, 62; PR 64/9. 148. ​SAC/63, Annex, SAC rec­ords, IAEA Archives. 149. ​“ The Agency’s Approach to Safeguards–­Review of the System,” SAC/63 (11 March 1964), SAC rec­ords, IAEA Archives. 150. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, “A Historical Survey of Nonproliferation Policies,” International Security 2, no. 1 (1977): 75. 151. ​SAC/63, 1. 152. ​SAC/63, 2.

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Notes to Pages 101–109   281 153. ​SAC/63, 3. 154. ​“The Agency’s Safeguards System,” INFCIRC/66 (3 December 1965), https://­ www​.­iaea​.­org​/­publications​/­documents​/­infcircs​/­agencys​-­safeguards​-­system​-­1965. 155. ​McKnight, Atomic Safeguards, 56. 156. ​Lawrence Scheinman, The International Atomic Energy Agency and World Nuclear Order (Washington, DC: Resources for the F ­ uture, 1987), 112. 157. ​GOV/OR.345 (11 June 1964), 4. 158. ​“Memorandum for Mr. Spurgeon Keeny, Subject: Yankee Agreement,” 13 June 1964, Atomic Energy Commission–­General, vol. 1 (2 of 2), LBJ Papers, President, 1963–1969, National Security file, Agency file, box 7, LBJ Presidential Library; GOV/OR.345, 5. 159. ​“Seligman Interview,” 12. On the IAEA’s mobile laboratories, see also Maria Rentetzi, “With Strings Attached: Gift-Giving to the International Atomic Energy Agency and US Foreign Policy,” Endeavour 45 (2021): 100754. 160. ​Victor Weisskopf to Isidor Rabi, 8 November 1960, Isidor Rabi Papers, box 8, LOC. 161. ​Lemmel, “50 Years.” 162. ​Claudio Todeschini, “IAEA: The International Nuclear Information System: The First Forty Years, 1970–2010,” report, International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, 2010, 23; SAC/80 (22 November 1966). 163. ​Lemmel, “50 Years.” 164. ​Lemmel, “50 Years.”

Chapter 5

•

The Nuclear Non-­P roliferation Treaty

1. ​On Hammarskjöld’s death, see Susan Williams, Who Killed Hammarskjold? The UN, the Cold War and White Supremacy in Africa (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014). 2. ​“Notes on Discussions at the Secretary-­General’s Dinner on Monday 30 September 1963,” 1 October 1963, file 2, Items in Disarmament–­Big Four, series 0880, box 2, UN Archives. 3. ​Zhihua Shen and Yafeng Xia, “Between Aid and Restriction: The Soviet Union’s Changing Policies on China’s Nuclear Weapons Program, 1954–1960,” Asian Perspective 36, no. 1 (2012): 95–122. 4. ​John F. Kennedy during the third Kennedy-­Nixon debate, 13 October 1960, http://­ www​.­jf klibrary​.­org​/­Research​/­Research​-­A ids​/­JFK​-­Speeches​/­3rd​-­Nixon​-­Kennedy​-­Debate​ _ ­19601013​.­aspx. 5. ​ “Notes on Discussions at the Secretary-­ General’s Dinner on Monday 30 September 1963.” 6. ​Kennedy would be assassinated six weeks l­ater. For the US memorandum on the Gromyko-­Kennedy conversation, see Foreign Relations of the United States, 1961–1963, 7: 894–95. 7. ​UN General Assembly, Resolution 1380, Prevention of the Wider Dissemination of Nuclear Weapons, A/RES/1380 (XIV), 20 November 1959. 8. ​UN General Assembly, Resolution 1665, Prevention of the Wider Dissemination of Nuclear Weapons,” A/RES/1665 (XVI), 4 December 1961. 9. ​ “ Treaty on the Non-­ Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” INFCIRC/140 (22 April  1970), https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­publications​/­documents​/­infcircs​ /­1970​/­infcirc140​.­pdf.

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282   Notes to Pages 109–111 10. ​On the LTBT, see Vojtech Mastny, “The 1963 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty: A Missed Opportunity for Détente?” Journal of Cold War Studies 10, no. 1 (2008): 3–25, https://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­jcws​.­2008​.­10​.­1​.­3. 11. ​On the MLF controversy and the NPT, see Hal Brands, “Non-­Proliferation and the Dynamics of the ­Middle Cold War: The Superpowers, the MLF, and the NPT,” Cold War History 7, no. 3 (2007): 389–432, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4682740701474857. 12. ​Marc Trachtenberg, A Constructed Peace: The Making of Eu­ro­pean Settlement, 1945– 1963 (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1999), 314. 13. ​Shane  J. Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid: The Quest for American Atomic Supremacy from World War II to the Pre­sent (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010), 116. 14. ​Some of the more recent contributions to the debate include Andreas Lutsch, “The Per­sis­tence Legacy: Germany’s Place in the Nuclear Order,” The Nuclear Proliferation International History Proj­ect Working Paper Series 5, Wilson Center, Washington DC, May 2015, https://­w ww​.­wilsoncenter​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­files​/­media​/­documents​/­publication​ /­npihp​_­w p5​-­t he​_­persistent ​_ ­legacy​_ ­final ​_­​-­​_­ver​_ ­2​.­pdf; Gene Gerzhoy, “Alliance Coersion and Nuclear Constraint: How the United States Thwarted West Germany’s Nuclear Ambitions,” International Security 39, no. 4 (2015): 91–129, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­ISEC ​_ ­a​ _­00198; Alex Bollfrass, “Strategic Gossip: Getting the Story Straight on Germany’s Nuclear Ambitions,” Sources and Methods, 10 April 2017, https://­w ww​.­w ilsoncenter​.­org​/­blog​ -­post​/­strategic​-­gossip. 15. ​Melvyn Leffler, For the Soul of Mankind: The United States, the Soviet Union, and the Cold War (New York: Hill and Wang, 2008); Roland Timerbaev, interview by Rich Hooper and Jenni Rissanen, 14 June  2007 (Foundations of International Safeguards, PNNL­SA-56315). I would like to thank Tom Shea for providing me with the proj­ect’s interviews. 16. ​Timerbaev, interview, 14 June 2007. 17. ​ “Notes on Discussions at the Secretary-­ General’s Dinner on Monday 30 September 1963.” 18. ​On the foundations of NAM, see Lorenz Lüthi, “The Non-­A ligned Movement and the Cold War 1961–1973,” Journal of Cold War Studies 18, no. 4 (2016): 98–147, https://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­JCWS​_ ­a ​_ ­00682. 19. ​“Question of Disarmament,” A/RES/1722(XVI), 20 December 1961. On the composition of the ENDC, also see Mohamed Shaker, The Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty: Origin and Implementation, 1959–1979, 3 vols. (London: Oceana Publications, 1980), 1:69–71. 20. ​Astrid Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules: The Genesis of the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards System (PhD diss., University of Bergen, 1997), 236. 21. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, “The Negotiation of the Non-­Proliferation Treaty,” IAEA Bulletin, 22 (1980): 74. 22. ​Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 259–60; Goldschmidt, “The Negotiation of the Non-­Proliferation Treaty,” 74. 23. ​Benjamin N. Schiff, “Dominance without Hegemony: U.S. Relations with the International Atomic Energy Agency,” in The United States and Multilateral Institutions: Patterns of Changing Instrumentality and Influence, ed. Margaret P. Karns and Karen A. Mingst (Boston: Routledge, 1990), 59 and corresponding note 12. 24. ​Henry D. Smyth, Atomic Energy for Military Purposes: A General Account of the Scientific Research and Technical Development That Went into the Making of Atomic Bombs (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1948).

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Notes to Pages 111–114   283 25. ​“The Test Ban Treaty,” IAEA Bulletin 15, no. 4 (1973): 16. 26. ​Lyndon  B. Johnson, “Message to the 18-­Nation Disarmament Conference in ­Geneva,” 21 January  1964, The American Presidency Proj­e ct, ed. Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, https://­w ww​.­presidency​.­ucsb​.­edu​/­documents​/­message​-­t he​-­18​-­nation​ -­d isarmament​- ­conference​-­geneva. Two other nuclear safeguards regimes existed at the time. The US Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) applied safeguards on its bilateral nuclear assistance agreements, and Euratom operated a regional inspection system in Western Eu­rope. The Soviet Union did not rely on safeguards to prevent allies and friendly nations from misusing peaceful nuclear assistance for military purposes. 27. ​George Bunn, Arms Control by Committee: Managing Negotiations with the Rus­sians (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992), 87. 28. ​Directorate of Intelligence, “The IAEA Enters a New Era,” intelligence memorandum, 31 March  1971, CREST, https://­w ww​.­cia​.­gov​/­readingroom​/­docs​/­CIA​-­RDP85T00875​ R001100100033​-­9​.­pdf. 29. ​Fisher’s most well-­known work on negotiation theory is Roger Fisher and William Ury, Getting to Yes: Negotiating an Agreement without Giving in: The Secret to Successful Negotiation (London: Penguin, 1981). 30. ​“National Security Action Memorandum” (no number), National Security file, Committee file, Committee on Nuclear Nonproliferation, box 5, Chron. file, vol. 2, LBJ Presidential Library. 31. ​Professor Roger Fisher’s comments on selected portions of course III, National Security file, Committee file, Committee on Nuclear Nonproliferation, box 5, Chron. file, vol. 2, LBJ Presidential Library. 32. ​Franz Joseph Strauss to Kurt Georg Kiesinger, 15 February 1967, cited in Marc Trachtenberg, The Cold War and ­After: History, Theory, and the Logic of International Politics (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2012), 215. 33. ​Shaker, The Nuclear Non-­Proliferation Treaty, 2: 655. Egypt was a dominant voice in the non-­a ligned group. On NAM and international relations during the Cold War, see Lüthi, “The Non-­A ligned Movement and the Cold War,” 99. 34. ​Grégoire Mallard, Fallout: Nuclear Diplomacy in an Age of Global Fracture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 224. 35. ​For the negotiation history of the NPT, see Roland Popp, Liviu Horo­w itz, and Andreas Wenger, eds. Negotiating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty: Origins of the Nuclear Order (London: Routledge, 2016). 36. ​For the most detailed history of the diplomatic negotiations that led to the NPT, see the classic study, Shaker, The Nuclear Non-­P roliferation Treaty. 37. ​UN General Assembly, Resolution 2028, Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, A/RES/2028(XX) (19 November 1965). 38. ​Jonathan Hunt, “The Birth of an International Community: Negotiating the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” in Foreign Policy Breakthroughs: Cases in Successful Diplomacy, ed. Robert Hutchings and Jeremy Suri (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 39. ​Roland Timerbaev, interview, 14 June 2007; George Bunn, interview by Tom Shea and Danielle Peterson, Palo Alto, 17 February 2006 (PNNL-­SA-49240). 40. ​Mohamed Shaker, remarks at the workshop “The IAEA during the Global Cold War” (Berlin Center for Cold War Studies, 2 September 2016).

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284   Notes to Pages 115–119 41. ​“Conference of the Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament, Situation Report no. 24,” 22 March 1967, 1, file 7, series 0880, box 2, UN Archives. 42. ​“Conference of the Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament, Situation Report no. 25,” 30 June 1967, 1, file 7, series 0880, box 2, UN Archives. 43. ​“Conference of the Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament, Situation Report no. 26,” 28 August 1967, 1, file 7, series 0880, box 2, UN Archives. 44. ​UN General Assembly, “Treaty for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin Amer­i­ca,” A/6663, 23 February 1967. It entered into force in 1969. 45. ​See chapter 4 in this volume. 46. ​David Fischer, “IAEA/Euratom Agreement: An Explanation,” International Atomic Energy Agency, Vienna, n.d. 47. ​Wolfgang D. Müller, “Die Atomkontrolleure (II): Ein Schwede in Wien: Sigvard Eklund,” Handelsblatt, 28 März 1967. 48. ​GC(XII)/OR.119 (24 September 1968). 49. ​“Memorandum of Conversation: IAEA Safeguards,” 3 November 1966, RG 59, Office of Atomic Energy Affairs, Bureau of International Scientific and Technological Affairs, subject files, 1962–1974, file Safeguards General 1951, letters, memos, box 19, NARA. I would like to thank William Burr for sharing a copy of this document with me. 50. ​See chapter 4 in this volume. 51. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 252. 52. ​Glenn T. Seaborg to Johnson, 5 October 1967, LBJ Papers, President, 1963–1969, National Security file, Agency file, box 7, LBJ Presidential Library. 53. ​Seaborg to Johnson, 5 October 1967. 54. ​“ The Agency’s Safeguards System,” INFCIRC/66/Rev.2 (16 September 1968), https://­w ww​ .­i aea​ .­o rg​ /­s ites​ /­d efault​ /­f iles​ /­p ublications​ /­d ocuments​ /­i nfcircs​ /­1 965​ /­infcirc66r2​.­pdf. 55. ​Opelz, interview by the author, Vienna, 28 July 2015. 56. ​Opelz, interview, 28 July 2015. 57. ​“International Agency Is Prepared to Police Nonproliferation Pact,” Washington Post, 25 March 1967. 58. ​“Police Nonproliferation Pact.” 59. ​“Report of the Panel on Safeguards Techniques,” IAEA PL-256, Vienna, 21–25 August 1967, Isidor Rabi Papers, box 29, folder 6, LOC. 60. ​“Report of the Panel on Safeguards Techniques.” 61. ​Shirley Johnson, interview by the author, Vienna, 20 August 2015. 62. ​“Trip Report of Glenn T. Seaborg, 16–29 September 1966,” LBJ Papers, President, 1963–1969, National Security file, Agency file, box 7, LBJ Presidential Library. 63. ​“Interoffice Memorandum. Subject: NPT Task Force,” 17 May 1968, SAF/112, Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, box 09846, IAEA Archives. 64. ​John A. Hall to Isidor Rabi, 11 July 1968, Isidor Rabi Papers, box 4, LOC. 65. ​Norman Wulf, interview by the author, Washington, DC, 19 November 2015. 66. ​“NPT: Now a Real­ity,” IAEA Bulletin 12, no. 2 (1970): 2–4. 67. ​“NPT: Now a Real­ity,” 3; the following sections have been derived in part from a published article: Elisabeth Roehrlich, “Negotiating Verification: International Diplomacy and the Evolution of Nuclear Safeguards, 1945–1972,” Diplomacy and Statecraft 29, no. 1 (2018): 35–38, https://doi.org/10.1080/09592296.2017.1420520.

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Notes to Pages 119–123   285 68. ​“The Structure and Content of Agreements between the Agency and States Required in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” INFCIRC/153 (June 1972), https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­files​/­publications​/­documents​ /­infcircs​/­1972​/­infcirc153​.­pdf. 69. ​Laura Rockwood, “The IAEA and International Safeguards,” in Routledge Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation and Policy, ed. Joseph F. Pilat and Nathan E. Busch (London: Routledge, 2015), 145. 70. ​INFCIRC/140, Article III.4. 71. ​GOV/OR.419, 14 (26 May 1970). 72. ​See chapter 4 in this volume. 73. ​George H. Quester, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and the International Atomic Energy Agency,” International Security 24, no. 2 (1970): 173. 74. ​ “Annual Report of the Board of Governors to the General Conference,” GC(XIV)/430 (July 1970), 46. 75. ​See chapter 6 in this volume. 76. ​GOV​.­COM​.­22​/­OR​.­1 (12 June 1970), 5. 77. ​On the dif­fer­ent states’ interests and influence in IAEA safeguards at the time, also see Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “A Glaring Defect in the System: Nuclear Safeguards and the Invisibility of Technology,” in Popp, Horo­w itz, and Wenger, Negotiating the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, 203–20. 78. ​The definition of a strategic point according to INFCIRC/153 is as follows: “a location selected during examination of design information where, ­under normal conditions and when combined with the information from all ‘strategic points’ taken together, the information necessary and sufficient for the implementation of safeguards mea­sures is obtained and verified; a ‘strategic point’ may include any location where key mea­sure­ ments related to material balance accountancy are made and where containment and surveillance mea­sures are executed.” 79. ​See GOV/COM.22/65 (2 October 1970), for the list of participating states. 80. ​GOV/COM.22/65, 2. 81. ​GOV/COM.22/6 (15 June 1970). 82. ​See part 1.8 of INFCIRC/153. 83. ​GOV/Com.22/8 (22 June 1970). 84. ​“Implications of the NPT on the Agency’s Safeguards Activities” (paper submitted by the US del­e­ga­tion in response of the invitation of the Board of Governors, April 1970), SAF/112, Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, box 09846, IAEA Archives. 85. ​“Preliminary Comments by the Governor for South Africa in Response to the Invitation of the Board of Governors,” 2 April 1970, SAF/112, Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, box 09846, IAEA Archives. 86. ​GOV/Com.22/OR.6 (19 June 1970). 87. ​INFCIR/153/Rev.2, 26–29. 88. ​GOV​.­COM​.­22​/­81​/­Rev​.­1 (25 November 1970). 89. ​GOV​.­COM​.­22​/­OR​.­37 (16 October 1970), 19–20. 90. ​GOV​.­COM​.­22​/­OR​.­75 (1 February 1971). 91. ​GOV/COM.22/OR/57 (3 December 1970). 92. ​INFCIRC/140.

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286   Notes to Pages 124–129 93. ​GOV​.­COM​.­22​/­OR​.­1 (2 June 1970), 14. 94. ​GOV​.­COM​.­22​/­OR​.­3 (16 June 1970), 10. 95. ​Ryukichi Imai, “Safeguards: Five Views,” IAEA Bulletin 13, no. 3 (1971): 6. 96. ​INFCIRC/153. 97. ​IAEA statute, Article XII, 7. 98. ​Schiff, “Dominance without Hegemony,” 41. 99. ​IAEA statute, Article X. 100. ​GOV/COM.22/OR.2, 5; GOV/COM.22/OR.3, 10; GOV/COM.22/OR.4, 18. 101. ​Imai, “Safeguards: Five Views,” 6. 102. ​GOV/COM.22/OR.6 (19 June 1970), 10. 103. ​“IAEA Safeguards,” 1967–1968, Working Group I, SAF/410-2(1) to SAF/410-2(2), box 09851, IAEA Archives. 104. ​Quester, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” 166. 105. ​William Lichliter, interview by the author, Vienna, 13 March 2015. 106. ​Quester, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” 166. 107. ​David Fischer, Stopping the Spread of Nuclear Weapons: The Past and the Prospects (London: Routledge, 1992), 88; Imai, “Safeguards: Five Views,” 10. 108. ​Article IX stipulates, “For the purposes of this Treaty, a nuclear-­weapon State is one which has manufactured and exploded a nuclear weapon or other nuclear explosive device prior to 1 January, 1967.” 109. ​Maddock, Nuclear Apartheid, 1. 110. ​Quester, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” 179. 111. ​“How NPT progressed,” IAEA Bulletin 12, no. 3 (1970): 5. 112. ​“The Board of Governors, 1953–1973,” IAEA Bulletin 15, no. 4 (1973): 29–32; Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, ­Legal Series 7 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1970), 142–44. 113. ​Quester, “The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty,” 164–165. 114. ​GOV/COM.22.OR.4 (17 June 1970), 8; GOV/COM.22/OR.17 (30 June 1970), 11. 115. ​GOV/COM.22/OR.17, 11. 116. ​GOV/COM.22/OR.18 (1 July 1970), 6. 117. ​GOV/COM.22/OR.19 (1 July 1970), 4. 118. ​GOV/COM.22/OR.82 (10 March 1971), 13. 119. ​GOV/COM.22/OR.82, 12. 120. ​GOV/OR.421 (26 February 1970), 6. 121. ​U­pen­d ra Goswami, “The IAEA: Its Promotional Role,” IAEA Bulletin 14, no. 1 (1972): 2. 122. ​Goswami, “Promotional Role,” 3. 123. ​V. C. Trivedi to Sigvard Eklund, 30 April 1970, SAF/410-2(5), box 09851, IAEA Archives. 124. ​“Technical Assistance Given around the World,” IAEA Bulletin 15, no. 6 (1973): 9. 125. ​Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “Let ­T here Be Light . . . ​and Bread: The United Nations, the Developing World, and Atomic Energy’s Green Revolution,” History and Technology 25, no. 1 (2009): 25–48. 126. ​Hamblin, “Let ­T here Be Light,” 36–37. 127. ​Goswami, “Promotional Role,” 3. 128. ​“An Atomic Heart,” Newsweek, 11 May 1970.

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Notes to Pages 129–133   287 129. ​GOV/COM.22/OR 1, 21. 130. ​Schiff, “Dominance without Hegemony,” 41.

Chapter 6

•

Gaps in the System

1. ​“Information für den Herrn Bundeskanzler/OPEC-­Verlegung nach Wien,” 23 November 1981, Internationale Organisationen, OPEC, 1976–1981, box VII, Kreisky Archives, Vienna. 2. ​For the history of the global oil market and the history of OPEC, see Daniel Yergin, The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money and Power (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), and Giolianu Garavini, The Rise and Fall of OPEC in the Twentieth ­Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019). On the Western Eu­ro­pean responses to the increased oil prices, see Rüdiger Graf, “Making Use of the ‘Oil Weapon’: Western Industrial Countries and Arab Petropolitics in 1973–1974,” in Diplomatic History 36, no. 1 (2012), 185–208; and Elisabetta Bini, Guiliano Garavini, and Federico Romero, eds., Oil Shock: The 1973 Crisis and Its Economic Legacy (London: Bloomsbury, 2016). 3. ​Frank Bösch and Rüdiger Graf, “Reacting to Anticipations: Energy Crisis and Energy Policy in the 1970s. An Introduction,” Historical Social Research 39, no. 4 (2014): 7–21. 4. ​On the history of nuclear proliferation during the 1970s, see “Aspects of the Global Nuclear Order in the 1970s,” special issue, International History Review 40, no. 5 (2018). 5. ​“Nuclear Power, Report to the Government of Iran, WP/5/926,” February 1974, and “Nuclear Power, Report to the Government of Iran, WP/5/990,” January 1975, Technical Assistance Reports, IAEA Archives. 6. ​Jacob Darwin Hamblin, The Wretched Atom: Amer­i­ca’s Global G ­ amble with Peaceful Nuclear Technology (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), 220. 7. ​Malfrid Braut-­Hegghammer, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016); Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “The Nuclearization of Iran in the Seventies,” Diplomatic History 38, no. 5 (2014), 1114–35, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1093​/­d h​/­d ht124. 8. ​Malcolm M. Craig, Amer­i ­c a, Britain and Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Programme, 1974–1980: A Dream of Nightmare Proportions (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 185. 9. ​Dimitri Perricos, interview by the author, Vienna, 27 June 2015. 10. ​GOV/OR.444 (9 December 1971). 11. ​U N General Assembly, Resolution 2758, Restoration of the Lawful Rights of the ­People’s Republic of China in the United Nations, A/RES/2758 (XXVI) (25 October 1971). Also see David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 93. For a comprehensive analy­ sis of China in the international nuclear order, see Nicola Horsburgh, China and Global Nuclear Order: From Estrangement to Active Engagement (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 12. ​For this episode, also see the introduction to this volume. 13. ​John Krige, “The Proliferation Risks of Gas Centrifuge Enrichment at the Dawn of the NPT: Shedding Light on the Negotiation History,” Nonproliferation Review 19, no. 2 (2012): 219–27, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­10736700​.­2012​.­690961. 14. ​NPT, Article III. 15. ​Astrid Forland, “Negotiating Supranational Rules: The Genesis of the International Atomic Energy Agency Safeguards System” (PhD diss., University of Bergen, 1997), 343.

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288   Notes to Pages 133–136 16. ​On nuclear weapons proliferation and the nuclear marketplace, see Eliza Gheorghe, “Proliferation and the Logic of the Nuclear Market,” International Security 43, no. 4 (2019): 88–127, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­isec​_ ­a ​_ ­00344. 17. ​Isabelle Anstey, “Negotiating Nuclear Control: The Zangger Committee and the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group in the 1970s,” International History Review 40, no. 5 (2018): 980, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­07075332​.­2018​.­1 449764; Lawrence Scheinman, The Nonproliferation Role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Washington, DC: Resources for the ­Future, 1985), 9. 18. ​Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 344. 19. ​William Burr, “The Car­ter Administration’s ‘Damnable Dilemma’: How to Respond to Pakistan’s Secret Nuclear Weapons Program, 1978–1979,” Journal of Cold War Studies 23, no. 1 (2021): 4–54. 20. ​Roland Timerbaev, The Nuclear Suppliers Group: Why and How It Was Created (1974–1978) (Moscow: Pir Center, 2000), 11. 21. ​For a detailed account of the establishment of the Zangger Committee, see Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 343–60. 22. ​GOV/Com.22/OR.2 (15 June 1970). 23. ​Fritz W. Schmidt, “The Zangger Committee: Its History and ­Future Role,” Nonproliferation Review 2, no. 1 (Fall 1994), 38–44. 24. ​Schmidt, “The Zangger Committee.” 25. ​Jayita Sarkar, “U.S. Policy to Curb West Eu­ro­pean Nuclear Exports, 1974–1978,” Journal of Cold War Studies 21, no. 2 (2019): 111, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­jcws​_ ­a ​_ ­00877. 26. ​Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 345. 27. ​“Communications Received from Members Regarding the Export of Nuclear Material and of Certain Categories of Equipment and other Material,” INFCIRC/209 (3 September 1974), https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­infcirc209​.­pdf. 28. ​Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 360. 29. ​Anstey, “Negotiating Nuclear Control,” 983. 30. ​On the U.S. history of PNEs, see Scott Kaufman, Proj­ect Plowshare: The Peaceful Use of Nuclear Explosives in Cold War Amer­i­ca (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2013). 31. ​Robert S. Anderson, “What Can Be Learned about Peaceful Nuclear Explosions from IAEA Sources?” (paper prepared for the conference “The Early History of the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Vienna, September 2012). 32. ​Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, Outer Space, and ­Under ­Water, signed in Moscow, 5 August 1963. 33. ​I. S. Zheludev to Dr. BB. Spinrad, Prof. J. Minozewski and Mr. J. Woolston, Interoffice Memorandum, 6 December 1968, box 09099, file Interdepartmental Committees, IAEA Archives. 34. ​For a more detailed overview of IAEA committees that dealt with PNEs, see Reinhard H. Rainer and Paul C. Szasz, The Law and Practices of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1970–1980 (Vienna: IAEA ­Legal Series, 1993), 199–214. 35. ​Richard Dean Burns and Joeph Siracusa, A Global History of the Nuclear Arms Race: Weapons, Strategy, and Politics, pt. 2 (Santa Barbara, CA: Prager, 2013), 360–61. 36. ​For the history of India’s nuclear weapon program, see George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002); Itty Abraham, The Making of the Indian Atomic Bomb: Science, Secrecy and the Post-

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Notes to Pages 136–139   289 colonial State (London: Zed Books, 1998); Raj Chengappa, Weapons of Peace: The Secret Story of India’s Quest To Be a Nuclear Power (New Delhi: Harper Collins Publishers, 2000); Robert S. Anderson, Nucleus and Nation: Scientists, International Networks, and Power in India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010). 37. ​Jayita Sarkar, “India’s Nuclear Limbo and the Fatalism of the Nuclear Non-­ Proliferation Regime, 1974–1983,”  Strategic Analy­sis 37 (2013): 322–37. For an early assessment, see Roberta Wohlstetter, “The Bud­dha Smiles: Absent-­Minded Peaceful Aid and the Indian Bomb. A Summary (1978),” in Nuclear Heuristics: Selected Writings of Albert and Roberta Wohlstetter, ed. Robert Zarate and Henry Sokolski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), 339–56. 38. ​GOV/1662/Rev.1 (13 June 1974). 39. ​GOV/OR.469 (13 June 1974). 40. ​See chapter 3 in this volume. 41. ​GOV/OR.469, 4. 42. ​GOV/OR.469, 5. 43. ​GOV/OR.469, 5. 44. ​GOV/OR.469, 6. 45. ​GOV/OR.469, 9–10. 46. ​Yogesh Joshi, “Between Princi­ples and Pragmatism: India and the Nuclear Non-­ Proliferation Regime in the Post-­PNE Era, 1974–1980,” International History Review 40, no. 5 (2018): 1073–93, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­07075332​.­2017​.­1 417322. 47. ​On the history of Pakistan’s nuclear program, see Feroz Hassan Khan, Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); Rabia Akhtar, “Making of the Seventh NWS: Historiography of the Beginning of the Nuclear Disorder in South Asia,” International History Review 40, no. 5 (2018): 1115–33, https://­doi​ .­org​/­10​.­1080​/­07075332​.­2017​.­1 404482. 48. ​GOV/OR.469, 9. 49. ​“Indian Nuclear Test–­Reaction by IAEA DG Eklund,” from US embassy, Vienna, to State Department, 23 May 1974, Central Foreign Policy files, doc. 1974IAEAV04657, archival databases, NARA. 50. ​1974IAEAV04657, May 1974. 51. ​Scheinman, The Nonproliferation Role of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 12. 52. ​IAEA Annual Report, 1 July 1973–30 June 1974, GC(XVIII)/525. 53. ​Also known as Committee 23 of the Board of Governors. 54. ​“The Qattara Depression Hydroelectric Proj­ect as a Pos­si­ble Application of Nuclear Energy for Peaceful Uses,” GC(XX)/INF/165/Add.1 (28 September 1976). 55. ​Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 349. 56. ​Timerbaev, The Nuclear Suppliers Group, 24. On the history of the NSG, see William Burr, “A Scheme of ‘Control’: The United States and the Origins of the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group, 1974–1976,” International History Review 36, no. 2 (2014): 252–76, https://­doi​.­org​ /­10​.­1080​/­07075332​.­2013​.­864690; Isabelle Anstey, “Negotiating Nuclear Control,” 975– 95; J. Samuel Walker, “Nuclear Power and Nonproliferation: The Controversy over Nuclear Exports, 1974–1980,” Diplomatic History 25 (2001): 215–49. 57. ​Frank Barnaby, “A Gentlemen’s Nuclear Agreement,” New Scientist 24 (February 1977): 469–71. 58. ​Forland, Negotiating Supranational Rules, 349.

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290   Notes to Pages 139–142 59. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex: A Worldwide Po­liti­c al History of Atomic Energy (La Grange Park, IL: American Nuclear Society, 1982), 405. 60. ​Isabelle Anstey, “A Gentlemen’s Agreement,” in Nuclear Scholars Initiative: A Collection of Papers from the 2013 Nuclear Scholars Initiative, ed. Sarah Weiner (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2014), 1. 61. ​“Memorandum for Mr. Brent Scowcroft, The White House, Subject: Nuclear Suppliers Guidelines,” November 1975, https://­nsarchive2​.­g wu​.­edu​/­nukevault​/­ebb467​/­docs​ /­doc%2016A%2012​-­31​-­75%20guidelines​.­pdf. 62. ​“Communications Received from Certain Member States Regarding Guidelines for the Export of Nuclear Material, Equipment, and Technology,” INFCIRC/254 (February 1978). 63. ​INFCIRC/254 (letter XII). 64. ​William C. Potter, “The Origins of US-­Soviet Non-­Proliferation Cooperation,” in Once and F ­ uture Partners: The United States, Rus­sia and Non-­P roliferation, ed. William C. Potter and Sarah Bidgood (New York: Routledge, 2018). 65. ​Timerbaev, The Nuclear Suppliers Group, 10, 49. 66. ​PR 77/18. 67. ​Barnaby, “A Gentlemen’s Nuclear Agreement.” 68. ​Henry D. Sokolowski, Best of Intensions: Amer­i­c a’s Campaign against Strategic Weapons Proliferation, (Westport, CT: Prager Publishers, 2001), 63–64. 69. ​Sokolowski, Best of Intensions, 63. 70. ​Benjamin Schiff, “Dual Mandate: Safeguards and Technology Transfer in the International Atomic Energy Agency” (PhD diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1982), 252. 71. ​Scheinman, The Nonproliferation Role, 50. 72. ​GOV/OR.527 (20 February 1979), 10. 73. ​GOV/OR.507 (24 September 1977), 2–3. 74. ​GOV/1931, Article A.1.(i) (12 February 1979). 75. ​GOV/OR.527, 9. 76. ​Munir Ahmad Khan, “Major Milestones in the Development of the IAEA,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 308; GOV/OR.507, 2. 77. ​GOV/OR.529 (21 February 1979). 78. ​Khan, “Major Milestones,” 334. 79. ​“The Revised Guiding princi­ples and General Operating Rules to Govern the Provision of Technical Assistance by the Agency, INFCIRC/267 (March 1979). 80. ​GOV/OR.529, 4; Scheinman, The Nonproliferation Role, 50. 81. ​Philip J. Farley to Gerard Smith, “Re: U.S. Interest in the IAEA,” 29 December 1977, RG 59: Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, box 1, NARA. 82. ​Farley to Smith, “Re: U.S. Interest in the IAEA.” 83. ​Shirley Johnson, interview by the author, Vienna, 20 August 2015, and John Carlson, interview by the author, Washington, DC, 13 November 2015. 84. ​Unlike neighboring India, which had minimal uranium reserves, Pakistan explored the uranium enrichment option in its pursuit of nuclear weapons. Malfrid Braut-­ Hegghammer, “Pakistan, Uranium, and the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1970–1980, International History Review 40, no. 5 (2018): 1034–48, https://­doi​

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Notes to Pages 143–147   291 .­org​/­10​.­1080​/­0 7075332 ​.­2018​.­1 430048; Burns and Siracusa, Global History of the Nuclear Arms Race, 363. 85. ​“Proliferation Issue: IAEA Director Meeting with Ambassador Smith,” from State Department to US embassy, Vienna, 26 July 1979, doc. 1979STATE194421, Central Foreign Policy files, archival databases, NARA. 86. ​“Pakistan Nuclear Issue: Briefing of IAEA Director General Eklund,” 9 July 1979, US Department of State, unclassified cable, Digital National Security Archive. 87. ​“Pakistan Nuclear Issue: Briefing of IAEA Director General Eklund.” 88. ​Burr, “The Car­ter Administration’s ‘Damnable Dilemma.’ ” 89. ​The following is based on interviews by the author with Shirley Johnson, Vienna, 20 August 2015; Stein Deron and Erwin Kuhn, Vienna, 24 October 2016; William Lichliter, Vienna, 23 March 2015; and Dimitri Perricos, Vienna, 27 June 2015. 90. ​Hans J. Grümm, Drei Leben: Krieg, Partei, Atom (Vienna: Löcker, 1992), 309. 91. ​See Grümm, Drei Leben, for more on his life. 92. ​Johnson, interview, 20 August 2015. 93. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015; B. Pontes, G. Bates, and G. Dixon, “International Safeguards: Training the Inspectors,” IAEA Bulletin 23, no. 4 (1981): 26–29. 94. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015. 95. ​Johnson, 20 August 2015; Deron and Kuhn, 24 October 2016, interviews. 96. ​F. dell’Acqua et al., “The Development and Function of the IAEA’s Safeguards Information System,” IAEA Bulletin 23, no. 4 (1981): 21–25; Grümm, Drei Leben. 97. ​INFCIRC/193. 98. ​INFCIRC/22/Rev. 10 (18 August 1970); INFCIRC/22/Rev. 18 (amended, May 1979). 99. ​ “IAEA BOARD MEETINGS–­ SAFEGUARDS,” from US Mission, Vienna, to State Department, 1977IAEAV01520, Central Foreign Policy files, archival databases, NARA. 100. ​“Memorandum of Conversation: Pre-­Board of Governors Meeting Consultations: Safeguards; INFCE,” 22 September 1977, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, box 12, NARA. 101. ​Tele­gram 083.502, from the Romanian embassy in Vienna to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, folder 1978_3497, Regarding: The Soviet Initiative to Or­ga­nize Periodical Meetings with International Civil Servants from Socialist Countries Working in the Safeguards Department of the IAEA, Archives of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. I would like to thank Eliza Gheorghe for providing me with copies and translations of ­t hese documents. 102. ​John Carlson, “SAGSI: Its Role and Contribution to Safeguards Development,” Australian Safeguards and Non-­Proliferation Office, https://­d fat​.­gov​.­au​/­international​ -­relations​/­security​/­asno​/­Documents​/­SAGSI​_ ­role​_ ­contribution​_ ­safeguards​_ ­dev​.­pdf. 103. ​Grümm, Drei Leben, 327. 104. ​“IAEA Annual Report, 1 July 1973–30 June 1974,” GC (XVIII)/525 (July 1974), 49. 105. ​“The Safeguards Analytical Laboratory: Its Functions and Analytical Facilities,” IAEA Bulletin 19, no. 5 (1977): 38–47; B. E. Clark and G. B. Cook, “The Safeguards Analytical Laboratory,” IAEA Bulletin 17, no. 6 (1975): 24–27; Deron and Kuhn, interview, 24 October 2016. 106. ​“The Safeguards Analytical Laboratory,” 1975.

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292   Notes to Pages 147–150 107. ​Houston Wood, Alexander Glaser, and Scott Kemp, “The Gas Centrifuge and Nuclear Weapons Proliferation,” Science ­Today 61, no. 9 (2008). 108. ​J. Christian Kessler, “Technical Negotiations in a Po­liti­cal Environment: Why the Hexapartite Safeguards Proj­ect Succeeded,” Nonproliferation Review 20, no. 3 (2013): 493–508. 109. ​John Carlson, “Expanding Safeguards in Nuclear Weapon States” (Nuclear Threat Initiative, 2012), https://­media​.­nti​.­org​/­pdfs​/­N WS​_ ­safeguards​_ ­carlson​.­pdf. 110.  Thomas Shea, interview by the author, Vienna, 31 July 2016. 111. ​“Safeguards for Repro­cessing and Enrichment Plants,” IAEA Bulletin 19, no. 5 (1977): 30–33. 112. ​K. Naito, “Hexapartite Safeguards Proj­ect: A Retrospective,” in Addressing Verification Challenges: Proceedings of the International Safeguards Symposium 2006 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2007), 609–15. 113. ​Naito, “Hexapartite Safeguards.” 114. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015; Lichliter, interview, 23 March 2015. 115. ​GOV/OR.631 (19 February 1985), GOV/OR.603 (24 February 1983). 116. ​Lichliter, interview, 23 March 2015. 117. ​For a con­temporary assessment, see the special issue on the Non-­Proliferation Act, International Security 3, no. 2 (1978). 118. ​Jan-­Henrik Meyer, “Where Do We Go from Whyl? Transnational Anti-­Nuclear Protest and Targeting Eu­ro­pean and International Organ­izations in the 1970s,” Historical Social Research 39, no. 1 (2014): 212–35. 119. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 403. 120. ​SAC/OR.27 (23 April 1979). 121. ​“Environmental aspects study 1969,” (SAC/GOV.18, 1). 122. ​Wolfram Kaiser and Jan-­Henrik Meyer, eds., International Organ­izations and Environmental Protection: Conservation and Globalization in the Twentieth ­Century (New York: Berghahn Books, 2017). For more general background, see Glenda Sluga, “Global Challenges and International Society: The Transformation of International Institutions,” in The Shock of the Global: The 1970s in Perspective, ed. Niall Ferguson et al. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2010). 123. ​“Salzburg Conference for a Non-­nuclear ­Future,” invitation and program, International Nuclear Information System, INIS-­AT-408. 124. ​Amory B. Lovins and John H. Prize, Non-­nuclear ­Futures: The Case for an Ethical Energy Strategy (Cambridge, MA: Ballinger, 1975). 125. ​IAEA director general’s report to the Salzburg conference: Sigvard Eklund, “We Must Move Forward with All Deliberate Speed,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 33, no. 8 (October 1977): 47. 126. ​GOV/OR.527 (20 February 1979). 127. ​Philipp Gummet, “From NPT to INFCE: Developments in Thinking about Nuclear Non-­Proliferation,” International Affairs 57, no.  4 (1981): 549–67, h ­ ere 554; Goldschmidt, Atomic Complex, 415. 128. ​Goldschmidt, Atomic Complex, 415. 129. ​Tariq Rauf and Fiona Simpson, “Atoms for Peace and the Nuclear Fuel-­Cycle: Is It Time for a Multilateral Approach?” in Atoms for Peace: A ­Future ­after Fifty Years, ed. by Joseph F. Pilat (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2007), 195–97.

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Notes to Pages 150–155   293 130. ​John  P. Trevithick, “US Nuclear Policy and the International Atomic Energy Agency: An Informal Review,” [November 1978], RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, box 13, NARA. 131. ​J. Samuel Walker, Three Mile Island: A Nuclear Crisis in Historical Perspective (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005). 132. ​Nigel Hawkes, “A-­bombs May Slip through the Net,” Observer, 25 June 1978; David Fischer to the Observer, the editor, Vienna, 29 June 1978, box 5987, press cuttings, IAEA Archives. 133. ​Hans-­Friedrich Meyer, “For the File,” 21 June 1978, box 5978, IAEA Archives; Jeffrey Lewis, “Pierre Noir, Again,” Arms Control Wonk, 27 March  2013, https://­w ww​ .­armscontrolwonk​.­com​/­archive​/­206492​/­pierre​-­noir​-­again.

Chapter 7

•

North-­South Tensions

1. ​For six case studies on historical summits at dif­fer­ent sites, see David Reynolds, Summits: Six Meetings That ­Shaped the Twentieth C ­ entury (New York: Basic Books, 2007). 2. ​Marc Mazower, Governing the World: The History of an Idea (New York: Penguin, 2012), 271. 3. ​“Interview with Director General Emeritus, Dr. Sigvard Eklund,” Echo 162 (1987). 4. ​Benjamin Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer: Dilemmas of Dissemination and Control (Toronto: Rowman & Allanheld, 1983), 189. 5. ​On South Africa’s nuclear development in the 1970s, see the work of Anna-­Mart van Wyk, most recently, “South African Nuclear Development in the 1970s: A Non-­proliferation Conundrum?” International History Review 40, no. 5 (2018): 1152–73, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​ .­1080​/­07075332​.­2018​.­1 428212. For an insider’s account of the South African nuclear program, see Nic von Wielligh and Lydia von Wielligh-­Steyn, The Bomb: South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Program (Somerset-­West, South Africa: Litera Publications, 2016). 6. ​ On the Israeli attack on Osirak and its consequences, see Malfrid Braut-­ Hegghammer, “Revisiting Osirak: Preventive Attacks and Nuclear Proliferation Risks,” International Security 36, no. 1 (2011): 101–32, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­ISEC​_ ­a ​_ ­00046. 7. ​Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer, 200. 8. ​Anthony Fainberg, “Osirak and International Security,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37, no. 8 (October 1981): 36. 9. ​Hugh Gusterson, “Nuclear Weapons and the Other in the Western Imagination,” Cultural Anthropology 14 (1999): 113. 10. ​Karl P. Sauvant, The Group of 77: Evolution, Structure, Organ­ization (New York: Oceana, 1981). 11. ​Reinhard Loosch, “The Emergence of the Group of 77 on the Board as a Major Player in the Board of Governors,” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency), 68–78. 12. ​“Review of US Strategy in the North-­South Dialogue—­I AEA,” November 1978, from US embassy to secretary of state, Washington, DC, doc. 1978VIENNA10032, Central Foreign Policy files, archival databases, NARA. 13. ​The debate resurfaced in the Board of Governors and the General Conference in 1984. See David Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 328. For the dif­fer­ent positions, see GOV/INF/467 (September 1984).

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294   Notes to Pages 155–159 14. ​GOV/OR.497 (14 June 1977), 5. Siazon l­ ater became director general of the United Nations Industrial Development Organ­ization. 15. ​GOV/OR.543 (5 March 1980), 14 (comment by the chair). The debate continued into the 1980s. See for instance GOV/OR.631 (19 February 1985). 16. ​Chernus, Eisenhower’s Atoms for Peace, xviii. 17. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, The Atomic Complex: A Worldwide Po­liti­cal History of Atomic Energy (La Grange Park, IL: American Nuclear Society, 1982), 460; “Power Reactors of Interest to Developing Countries,” report on IAEA panel meeting, November 1974, published in IAEA Bulletin 17, no. 3 (1975): 37. 18. ​G. Voite, “The Potential Role of Nuclear Power in Developing Countries,” IAEA Bulletin 17, no. 3 (1975): 21–32. 19. ​Press Release: Highlights of the Speech of the Director General, 22 September 1980. 20. ​For a detailed study on the IAEA bud­get, see Trevor Findlay, What Price Nuclear Governance? Funding the International Atomic Energy Agency, Report for Proj­ect on Managing the Atom, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School, Cambridge, MA, 24 March 2016. 21. ​William Lichliter, interview by the author, Vienna, 13 March 2015; Hans Blix, interview by the author, Stockholm, 13 April 2015; and Diether Goethel, interview by the author, Vienna, 18 August 2016. 22. ​Press Release: Highlights of the Speech of the Director General of the IAEA to the Twenty Fourth Regular Session of the General Conference, Vienna, 22 September 1980. 23. ​Mazower, Governing the World, 296. 24. ​GOV/OR.634 (21 February 1985), 17. 25. ​GOV/OR.634, 16. 26. ​See “The Potential Role of Nuclear Power in Developing Countries,” special issue, IAEA Bulletin 17, no. 3 (June 1975). 27. ​PR 85/15 (16 December 1985); “The Agency’s Bud­get for 1984,” GC(XXVII) (August  1983). For an overview of technical assistance figures from previous years, see “Technical Assistance Given around the World,” IAEA Bulletin, 15, no. 6 (1973): 2–10. 28. ​Yearbook of the United Nations 1987 (New York: United Nations Department of Public Information, 1992), 582. 29. ​Merle Opelz, interview by the author, Vienna, 28 July 2015; Lawrence Scheinman, The Nonproliferation Role of the International Atomic Energy Agency (Washington, DC: Resources for the F ­ uture, 1985), 66. 30. ​Slater, British embassy, Vienna, to Herzig, head AE Division, DoE [Department of Energy], London, 1 June 1977, FCO 45/2129, TNA. 31. ​GOV/OR.634 (21 February 1985), 18. 32. ​Van Wyk, “South African Nuclear Development in the 1970s,” 1167. Also see Or Rabinowitz and Nicholas Miller, “Keeping the Bombs in the Basement: U.S. Nonproliferation Policy ­toward Israel, South Africa, and Pakistan,” International Security 40, no. 1 (2015), 47–86, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 162​/­ISEC​_ ­a ​_ ­00207. 33. ​S. Bidgood, “The 1977 South Africa Nuclear Crisis,” in Once and F ­ uture Partners: The United States, Rus­sia and Nuclear Non-­P roliferation, ed. W. C. Potter and S. Bidgood (Abingdon: Routledge, 2018), 55–78. 34. ​For newly declassified documents on the Vela incident, see William Burr and Avner Cohen, “The Vela Incident: South Atlantic Mystery Flash in September 1979 Raised

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Notes to Pages 159–163   295 Questions about Nuclear Text,” National Security Archive, 8 December 2016, https://­ nsarchive​.­g wu​.­edu​/­briefing​-­book​/­nuclear​-­vault​/­2016​-­1 2​- ­06​/­vela​-­incident​-­south​-­atlantic​ -­mystery​-­fl ash​-­september​-­1979 ​-­raised​-­questions​-­about​-­nuclear​-­test. For a scientific approach, see Lars-­Erik De Geer and Christopher M. Wright, “The 22 September 1979 Vela Incident: Radionuclide and Hydroacoustic Evidence for a Nuclear Explosion,” Science and Global Security (2018), 1–35. 35. ​“Statement by Abdul S. Minty,” in Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa: Report of the United Nations Seminar, London, 24–25 February 1979 (London: World Campaign Against Military and Nuclear Collaboration with South Africa, 1979), 7. Also see Paul N. Edwards and Gabrielle Hecht, “History and the Technopolitics of Identity: The Case of Apartheid South Africa,” Journal of Southern African Studies 36, no. 3 (2010): 637. 36. ​Frank V. Pabian, “South Africa’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Lessons for U.S. Nonproliferation Policy,” Nonproliferation Review 3, no. 1 (fall 1995): 1–19. 37. ​For an introduction to the history of apartheid, see Nancy N. Clark and William H. Worger, South Africa: The Rise and Fall of Apartheid, 2nd ed. (New York: Longman, 2011). 38. ​UN Security Council, Resolution 418, S/RES/418 (4 November 1977). 39. ​“IAEA: Nuclear Cooperation with South Africa,” 12 October 1979, vol. 43, ref. 137/10, DIRCO Archives, Pretoria; Abdul Minty, interview, Berlin, 1 September 2016. 40. ​For the role of science diplomacy during the Cold War, see Audra Wolfe, Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Strug­gle for the Soul of Science (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). 41. ​IAEA statute, Article VI. 42. ​“Examination of Delegates’ Credentials,” resolution ­adopted during the 191st Plenary Meeting, 28 September 1976, IAEA/GC (XX)/RES/336. 43. ​Merle S. Opelz to Georges Delcoigne, 13 June 1977, file South Africa, Eklund files, box 5979, IAEA Archives. 44. ​Gabrielle Hecht, “Negotiating Global Nuclearities: Apartheid, Decolonization, and the Cold War in the Making of the IAEA,” OSIRIS 21 (2006): 31. 45. ​Untitled memorandum, 11 June 1977, Eklund files, file South Africa, box 5979, IAEA Archives. See also Jo-­A nsie van Wyk, “Atoms, Apartheid, and the Agency: South Africa’s Relations with the IAEA, 1957–1995,” Cold War History 15, no. 3 (2015): 395–416, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4682745​.­2014​.­897697. 46. ​Copy of telex message forwarded by K. R. S. von Schirnding to the secretary of foreign affairs, 29 August 1978, vol. 31, ref. 137/18, DIRCO Archives. 47. ​Robert Brown, Nuclear Authority: The IAEA and the Absolute Weapon (Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2015). 48. ​“IAEA: Nuclear Cooperation with South Africa,” 12 October 1979. 49. ​Copy of telex message forwarded by K. R. S. von Schirding to the secretary of foreign affairs, 29 August 1978. On Car­ter’s policy t­ oward South Africa, see Robin Möser, “How the Car­ter Administration Pursued Non-­Proliferation Policies: A View from Apartheid South Africa,” Sources and Methods: A Blog of the History and Public Policy Program, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, https://­w ww​.­w ilsoncenter​.­org​/­blog​-­post​/­how​-­t he​-­carter​ -­administration​-­pursued​-­non​-­proliferation​-­policies​-­v iew​-­apartheid​-­south. 50. ​Slater to Herzig, 1 June 1977, FCO 45/2129, TNA. I would like to thank David Holloway for drawing my attention to this document.

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296   Notes to Pages 163–168 51. ​Slater to Herzig, 1 June 1977. 52. ​Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 91–92. 53. ​GOV/OR.501 (16 June 1977), 5. 54. ​GOV/OR.501, 5. 55. ​GOV/OR.501, 10–11. 56. ​For this interpretation, see for example, Leo Gross, “On the Degradation of the Constitutional Environment of the United Nations,” American Journal of International Law 77, no. 3 (1983): 573. 57. ​Also see the description of t­ hese events in Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 92. 58. ​Hassan Elbahtimy, “Early Approaches to IAEA Safeguards: Egypt’s Journey from Reluctance to Toleration, 1957–1967” (paper for the conference “The Global History of the IAEA,” Vienna, 18–20 September 2014). 59. ​GOV/OR.501 (16 June 1977), 3–4. Also see von Schirnding’s statement at the following General Conference: 1977, 26–30 September, 21st Regular Session, GC(XXI)/ OR.198. 60. ​GOV/OR.501, 10. 61. ​GOV/OR.501, 10. 62. ​See 23rd International Atomic Energy Agency General Conference, New Delhi, Rec­ord of the 211th Plenary Meeting, 5 December 1979, IAEA Archives, 1979 General Conference Rec­ords, GC(XXIII)/OR.211. 63. ​For a detailed history of Iraq’s nuclear program, cooperation with the French, and the consequences of the Israeli attack, see Malfrid Braut-­Hegghammer, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016). 64. ​Robert Litwak, “Counterproliferation and the Use of Force,” in Routledge Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation and Policy, ed. Joseph F. Pilat and Nathan E. Busch (Oxford: Routledge, 2015), 229. 65. ​Avner Cohen, The Worst-­Kept Secret: Israel’s Bargain with the Bomb (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012). 66. ​Goldschmidt, Atomic Complex, 209. 67. ​Hans Gruemm, “Safeguards and Tamuz: Setting the Rec­ord Straight,” IAEA Bulletin 23, no. 4 (1981): 10. 68. ​GOV/OR.563 (9 June 1981), 5. 69. ​GOV/OR.563, 6. 70. ​“Kreisky: Begin handelte nach Gesetz des Dschungels,” Arbeiter-­Zeitung, 10 June 1981. 71. ​Goldschmidt, Atomic Complex. 72. ​GOV/OR.563, 8. 73. ​GOV/OR.563, 10. 74. ​GOV/OR.563, 6. 75. ​GOV/OR.565 (10 June 1981); GOV/2039. 76. ​GOV/OR.564 (10 June 1981), 19–20. 77. ​Egypt and Sudan statements, GOV/OR.564, 10–11. 78. ​GOV/OR.564, 12. Also see Sasha Polakow-­Suransky, The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa (New York: Vintage, 2011).

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Notes to Pages 168–172   297 79. ​GOV/2039. 80. ​GOV/OR.567 (12 June 1981), 9; GOV/2040 (12 June 1981). 81. ​GOV/2040. 82. ​GOV/OR.567, 15–16. 83. ​GOV/OR.565 (10 June 1981), 9. 84. ​PR 81/10. 85. ​Grümm, “Safeguards and Tamuz,” 10. 86. ​GOV/OR.567, 13. 87. ​GOV/OR.567, 13. 88. ​Charles N. Van Doren, “Iraq, Israel and the ­Middle East Proliferation Prob­lem: A Report Prepared for the Arms Control Association,” 25 June 1981, 6–11, accessed via CREST, https://­w ww​.­cia​.­gov​/­readingroom​/­docs​/­CIA​-­RDP87R00029R000200310018​-­5​.­pdf 89. ​Sigvard Eklund’s statement to the Board of Governors, 6 July 1981 (GOV/OR.571). 90. ​A. O. Sulzberger, “Ex-­Inspector Asserts Iraq Planned to Use Reactor to Build A-­ Bombs,” New York Times, 20 June 1981. 91. ​GOV/OR.571 (6 July 1981), 18. 92. ​INFCIRC/22/Rev.20 (May 1981). 93. ​Roger Richter, “Testimony from a Former IAEA Inspector,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37, no. 8 (October 1981): 29–31. 94. ​Richter, “Testimony from a Former IAEA Inspector.” 95. ​Paul Lewis, “The U.N. Nuclear Cops Cover a Tough Bear,” New York Times, 28 June 1981. 96. ​Richter, “Testimony from a Former IAEA Inspector.” 97. ​Richter, “Testimony from a Former IAEA Inspector.” 98. ​The board meeting was closed, but Eklund’s statement was made public: “The IAEA on Safeguards: Statement Presented to the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency on July 6, 1981 by Sigvard Eklund, the IAEA Director General,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37, no. 8 (October 1981): 32–33. For the original board rec­ords, see GOV/OR.571 (6 July 1981). 99. ​GOV/OR.571. 100. ​“The Text of the Agreement between Iraq and the Agency for the Application of Safeguards in Connection with the Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons,” INFCIRC/172, 22 January  1973: https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­sites​/­default​/­fi les​/­publications​ /­documents​/­infcircs​/­1973​/­infcirc172​.­pdf. 101. ​Statement by Nikita Khrushchev, according to Walter Lipp­mann, New York Herald Tribune, 17 April 1961, quoted in Edward Newman, “Secretary-­General,” in The Oxford Handbook of the United Nations, ed. Thomas G. Weiss and Sam Daws (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), 181. 102. ​“Österreich: Letzter Schliff,” Der Spiegel, 7 July 1975, 90. 103. ​I am grateful to Peter Adler for sharing his recollections with the participants of the workshop “The Global History of the IAEA” at the Berlin Center for Cold War Studies, September 2016. For a German version of his story, see Ekkehard Griep, ed., Wir sind UNO: Deutsche bei den Vereinten Nationen (Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 2016), 86–91. 104. ​See Department of Po­liti­cal and Security Council Affairs, Repertoire of the Practice of the Security Council: Supplement 1981–1984 (New York: United Nations, 1992), 202–3. 105. ​Simon Henderson, “Thin Line against Proliferation,” Financial Times, 10 June 1981.

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298   Notes to Pages 172–177 106. ​UN Security Council Resolution 487, S/RES/487 (19 June 1981). 107. ​Braut-­Hegghammer, Unclear Physics, 46. 108. ​Van Doren, Iraq, Israel and the M ­ iddle East Proliferation Prob­lem. 109. ​Richard L. Williamson (Arms Control and Disarmament Agency) to Mr. Salmon et al., Subject: Nuclear Development in Iraq, 24 August 1979, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file Iraq, box 17, NARA. 110. ​Cable 300830, Secretary of State to American embassy, Vienna, November 1980, RG 59: Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file Iraq, box 17, NARA. 111. ​Cable 300830, Secretary of State to American embassy, Vienna, November 1980. 112. ​Cable 13768, from American embassy, Vienna, to State Department, October 1980, RG 59: Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file: Iraq, box 17, NARA. 113. ​The IAEA statute, Article VII, does not place a term limit on the director general. 114. ​John P. Trevithick to Gerard Smith, Washington, 14 May 1980, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file: Iraq, box 17, NARA. 115. ​Gerard Smith to Roger Kirk, 26 July 1979, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file IAEA—­Eklund Successor, box 13, NARA. 116. ​“Memorandum for the Rec­ord, Subject: Eklund’s Successor,” 22 February 1979, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file IAEA—­Eklund Successor, box 13, NARA. 117. ​See chapter 3 in this volume. 118. ​“Memorandum: Successor for IAEA Director General,” 11 April 1979, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file IAEA—­Eklund Successor, box 13, NARA. 119. ​“Subject IAEA: Search for Director General Eklund’s Successor,” 19 June 1979, doc. 1979STATE157457, Central Foreign Policy files, archival databases, NARA. 120. ​“Memorandum. Subject: Ambassador Smith’s Conversation on Eklund Succession during June 1979 Board of Governors Meeting,” 3 July 1979, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file IAEA—­Eklund Successor, box 13, NARA. 121. ​Brandt had authored North-­South: A Program for Survival. Report of the In­de­pen­dent Commission on International Development Issues (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1980), a plea for the interests of the developing world that pop­u­lar­ized the concept of the Global South. 122. ​Roger Kirk to Gerard Smith, 1 August 1979, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file IAEA—­Eklund Successor, box 13, NARA. 123. ​“Memorandum: Successor for IAEA Director General,” 11 April 1979, RG 59, Ambassador Gerard Smith, subject files, file IAEA—­Eklund Successor, box 13, NARA. 124. ​“Memorandum: Successor for IAEA Director General,” 11 April 1979. 125. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 126. ​Bertrand Goldschmidt, Atomic Complex, 461. 127. ​GOV/OR.583 (18 September 1981). 128. ​GOV/OR.584 (20 September 1981), 4. 129. ​GOV/OR.585 (26 September 1981). 130. ​GOV/2056. 131. ​GC(XXV)/655 (24 September  1981); Scheinman, International Atomic Energy Agency. 132. ​GC(XXV)/RES/391 (26 September 1981). 133. ​PR 81/24; Fischer, History of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 104–5. 134. ​Schiff, International Nuclear Technology Transfer, 75.

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Notes to Pages 178–182   299 135. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 136. ​On Shaker, see chapter 5 in this volume. 137. ​GC(XXVI)/675/Add.2 (24 September 1982). 138. ​Leo Gross, “On the Degradation of the Constitutional Environment of the United Nations,” American Journal of International Law 77, no. 3 (1983): 569; Or Rabinowitz, “Israel and the IAEA: A ‘Poor Relation’” (paper for “The Global History of the IAEA” conference, University of Vienna, 18–20 September 2014). 139. ​GC(XXVI)/RES/404 (18 October 1982). 140. ​GC(XXVI)/OR.245 (24 September 1982), 8. 141. ​GC(XXVI)/OR.246 (24 September 1982), 5. 142. ​GC(XXVI)/OR.246, 7. 143. ​GC(XXVI)/OR.246, 7. 144. ​GC(XXVI)/OR.246, 9. 145. ​GC(XXVI)/OR.246, 11. 146. ​Mark F. Imber, The USA, ILO, UNESCO and IAEA: Politicization and Withdrawal in the Specialized Agencies (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 1989). 147. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 148. ​GOV/OR.600 (22 February 1983), 3. 149. ​“The IAEA’s Role in US Nonproliferation Policy,” CIA memorandum, 12 October 1982, accessed via CREST, CIA-­RDP85M00364R000801330030-7.pdf. 150. ​Lichliter, interview, 13 March 2015. 151. ​PR 81/32. 152. ​Braut-­Hegghammer, “Revisiting Osirak,” 101–32; Jeremy Tamsett, “The Israeli Bombing of Osiraq Revisited: Successful Counterproliferation?” Nonproliferation Review 11, no. 3 (2004): 70–85. 153. ​GOV/OR.631 (19 February 1985), 4–5. 154. ​PR 82/2 (24 February 1982). 155. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 156. ​GOV/OR.588 (24 February 1982), 18. 157. ​PR 83/11. 158. ​Sidney Moglewer, “IAEA Safeguards and Nonproliferation,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 37, no. 8 (1981): 28. 159. ​Imber, Politicization and Withdrawal, 70.

Chapter 8

•

Chernobyl

1. ​Hans Blix, interview by the author, Stockholm, 13 April 2015. 2. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 3. ​For a detailed account of the events, see Serhii Plokhy, Chernobyl: The History of a Tragedy (London: Allan Lane, 2018); Adam Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl: The Untold Story of the World’s Greatest Nuclear Disaster (London: Bantam Press, 2019); and Sonja Schmid, Producing Power: The Pre-­Chernobyl History of the Soviet Nuclear Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2015), 127–59. For the aftermath of the accident, see Kate Brown, Manual for Survival: A Chernobyl Guide to the F ­ uture (New York: Norton, 2019). For the po­liti­cal, public, and media discourse, see Susanne Bauer, Karena Kalmbach, and Tatiana Kasperski, “From Pripjat to Paris, from Grassroots Memories to Globalized Knowledge Production: The Politics of Chernobyl Fallout,” in Nuclear Portraits: Communities, the

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300   Notes to Pages 183–186 Environment, and Public Policy, ed. Laurel Sefton Macdowell (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 149–89. 4. ​Rolf Lidskog, “­Towards a Post-­nuclear Society? Recent Trends in Swedish Nuclear Policy,” Environmental Policy 8, no. 2 (1999): 142–47; Frank Bösch, “Taming Nuclear Power: The Accident near Harrisburg and the Change in West German and International Nuclear Policy in the 1970s and Early 1980s,” German History 35, no. 1 (2017): 71–95, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1093​/­gerhis​/­ghw143. For the history of the Soviet civilian nuclear program, see Paul R. Josephson, Red Atom: Rus­sia’s Nuclear Power Program from Stalin to ­Today (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005). 5. ​Transcript, Pa­norama, documentary tele­vi­sion program, 4 February 1970 (Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, ORF), box 6135, IAEA Archives. 6. ​Even a recent history of the Chernobyl accident overestimates the agency’s responsibilities in regard to nuclear safety, asserting that the Soviet Union had been “obliged to report [to the IAEA] any nuclear accident that took place within its borders.” See Higginbotham, Midnight in Chernobyl, 44. 7. ​Karena Kalmbach, “Von Strahlen und Grenzen: Tschernobyl als nationaler und transnationaler Erinnerungsort,” in Ökologische Erinnerungsorte, ed. Frank Uekötter (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 2013), 185–216. 8. ​Pier Roberto Danesi, interview by the author, Vienna, 23 April 2015. 9. ​“Accident at Chernobyl,” PR 86/3 (30 April 1986). 10. ​“Visit of Agency Representatives to the Soviet Union in Connection with the Nuclear Accident at Chernobyl,” GOV/INF/496 (16 May 1986); Blix, interview, 13 April 2015; Walt Patterson, “Nuclear Watchdog Finds Its Role,” New Scientist, 23 April 1987, 50. 11. ​GOV.OR/648 (21 May 1986). 12. ​Dieter Goethel, “International Organ­izations during the Cold War: How the Superpowers Exploited Staffing Policies to Gain Control over the IAEA Secretariat” (paper for a workshop on the history of the IAEA, Berlin Center for Cold War Studies, 2–3 September 2016). 13. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 14. ​David Fischer, History of the IAEA: The First Forty Years (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 202. 15. ​“The Agency’s Bud­get for 1986,” GC (XXIX)/750 (August 1985). 16. ​Janine Gaumer, Wackersdorf: Atomkraft und Demokratie in der Bundesrepublik 1980–1989 (Munich: Oekom, 2018); Stephen Milder, Greening Democracy: The Anti-­nuclear Movement and Po­liti­cal Environmentalism in West Germany and Beyond, 1968–1983 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 17. ​“Red Army Faction Bomb Kills Siemens Executive,” Financial Times, 10 July 1986. 18. ​“ ‘Das ist ein trauriger Anblick’: Spiegel-­Interview mit den Atominspektoren Hans Blix und Morris Rosen über Tschernobyl,” Der Spiegel, 19 May 1986, 138. All quotations translated from German to En­glish by the author. 19. ​“Tschernobyl,” 137. 20. ​GOV/2257 (14 May 1986). Also see Lodewijk van Gorkom, “Nuclear Safety: The Public ­Battle Lost?” in International Atomic Energy Agency: Personal Reflections (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1997), 172. 21. ​The first ­woman to chair the Board of Governors was B. M. Meagher, from Canada, during 1964/65.

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Notes to Pages 186–191   301 22. ​GOV/INF/497 (20 May 1986). 23. ​GOV/OR.648 (21 May 1986), 3. 24. ​GOV/OR.648, 42. For the history of the French nuclear program, see Gabrielle Hecht, The Radiance of France: Nuclear Power and National Identity a­ fter World War II (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000); on the Chernobyl debate in France, see Karena Kalmbach, Tschernobyl und Frankreich: Die Debatte um die Auswirkungen des Reaktorunfalls im Kontext der französischen Atompolitik und Elitenkultur (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2011). For an overview of the numerical development of nuclear power worldwide, see Charles E. Brown, World Energy Resources (New York: Springer, 2002), 112. 25. ​Meyer, Jan-­Henrik, “Atomkraft–­Nej Tak: How Denmark Did Not Introduce Commercial Nuclear Power Plants,” in Pathways into and out of Nuclear Power in Western Eu­ rope: Austria, Denmark, Federal Republic of Germany, Italy, and Sweden, ed. Astrid Mignon Kirchhof (Munich: Deutsches Museum, 2019), 74–123, https://­w ww​.­deutsches​-­museum​ .­de​/­fi leadmin​/­Content​/­010​_ ­DM​/­060​_­Verlag​/­Studies​-­4​-­online​-­2​.­pdf. 26. ​GOV/OR.649 (21 May 1986), 31–32. 27. ​Lidskog, “­Towards a Post-­nuclear Society?”; David Larsson Heidenblad, “Mapping a New History of the Ecological Turn: The Circulation of Environmental Knowledge in Sweden 1967,” Environment and History 24, no. 2 (2018): 265–84. 28. ​Hans Blix, “The Post-­C hernobyl Outlook for Nuclear Power: A View on Responses to the Accident from an International Perspective,” IAEA Bulletin 28, no. 3 ­(autumn 1986): 10. 29. ​Blix, “Post-­Chernobyl.” 30. ​GOV/OR.648, 26. 31. ​See for example Jacob Darwin Hamblin, “Quickening Nature’s Pulse: Atomic Agriculture at the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Dynamis 35, no. 2 (2015): 389–408, https://­d x​.­doi​.­org​/­10​.­4321​/­S0211​-­95362015000200006. 32. ​The IAEA followed such news closely, as the agency’s press documentary for the year 1986 reveals. 33. ​“Public Information, Nuclear Controversy, Chernobyl Post-­Review Meeting,” 25– 29 August 1986, box 15700, IAEA Archives. 34. ​David Fishlock, “Chernobyl’s Post Mortem: IAEA Review Begins,” in Energy Daily, 25 August 1986, 1–3. 35. ​“La catastrophe de Tchernobyl pourrait être à l’origine de 24 000 décès par cancers,” Le Monde, 28 August 1986, 20. 36. ​SAC/OR.35, 49. 37. ​Hans Blix, speech at the National Press Club, Washington, DC, 19 November 1986, https://­w ww​.­c​-­span​.­org​/­v ideo​/­​?­150799​-­1​/­atomic​- ­energy​-­speech. 38. ​Concluding Remarks by Director General, Hans Blix at the Post-­Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident, 29 August 1986, 3, box 15700, IAEA Archives. 39. ​In his 2015 Stockholm interview, Blix recalled that a US senator, Thad Cochran, had coined the expression, while o ­ thers attributed it to Blix himself. 40. ​GOV/INF/497 (21 May 1986). 41. ​For a global history of environmental movements, see Joachim Radkau, The Age of Ecol­ogy (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014). 42. ​“ Tschernobyl und die ‘Friedenspolitik’ Moskaus,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 29 May 1986.

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302   Notes to Pages 191–195 43. ​Sonja D. Schmid, “Of Plans and Plants: How Nuclear Power Gained a Foothold in Soviet Energy Policy,” in Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 1 (2018): 134, https://­doi​.­org​ /­10​.­25162​/­jgo​-­2018​-­0006. 44. ​Tetiana Perga, “The Fallout of Chernobyl: The Emergence of an Environmental Movement in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic,” in Nature and the Iron Curtain: Environmental Policy and Social Movements in Communist and Cap­i­tal­ist Countries, 1945–1990, ed. Astrid Mignon Kirchhof and John R. Mc Neill (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019), 55–72; Ivaylo T. Hristov, The Communist Nuclear Era: Bulgarian Atomic Community during the Cold War, 1944–1986 (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014). 45. ​“International Atomic Energy Agency Power Reactor Information System,” IAEA Bulletin 28 (Winter 1986): 61. 46. ​Sergei P. Kapitzka, “Lessons of Chernobyl: The Cultural C ­ auses of the Meltdown,” Foreign Affairs 72, no. 3 (1993): 7. 47. ​See the collection of newly declassified documents at the database Chernobyl Files: Declassified Documents of the Ukrainian KGB: https://­d lib​.­eastview​.­com​/­login. 48. ​“Questionnaire by FEPCO to IAEA Mr. Yoshida and Mr. Rosen,” 25 August 1986, Public Information, Nuclear Controversy, Chernobyl Post-­Accident Review Meeting, box 15700, IAEA Archives. 49. ​Svetlana Savranskava, “Top Secret Chernobyl: The Nuclear Disaster through the Eyes of the Soviet Politburo, KGB, and US Intelligence,” vol. 2, National Security Archive, https://­n sarchive​ .­g wu​ .­e du​ /­b riefing​ -­b ook​ /­r ussia​ -­p rograms​ /­2 020 ​ - ­0 5​ -­1 5​ /­t op ​ -­s ecret​ -­chernobyl​-­nuclear​-­disaster​-­through​-­eyes​-­soviet​-­politburo​-­kgb​-­us​-­intelligence​-­volume​-­2. 50. ​PR 86/23 (27 August 1986). Also see Henry Hamman and Stuart Parrott, Mayday at Chernobyl: One Year, the Facts Revealed (Sevenoaks: New En­glish Library, 1987). I would like to thank Karena Kalmbach for bringing this book to my attention. 51. ​Svetlana Savranskaya and Thomas Blanton, “Gorbachev’s Nuclear Initiative of January 1986 and the Road to Reykjavik,” Briefing Book 563, 12 October 2016, National Security Archive, https://­nsarchive​.­g wu​.­edu​/­briefing​-­book​/­nuclear​-­vault​-­r ussia​-­programs​ /­2016​-­10​-­12​/­gorbachevs​-­nuclear​-­initiative​-­january​-­1986. 52. ​GOV/INF/497. 53. ​GOV/INF/497. 54. ​GOV/OR.649, 5. 55. ​GOV/OR.649, 5. 56. ​GOV/OR.649, 30. 57. ​See chapter 3 in this volume. 58. ​Brown, Manual for Survival, 22. 59. ​On the military origins of the reactor design, see Plokhy, Chernobyl, 11, 48. 60. ​“Tschernobyl,” 138. 61. ​Schmid, “Of Plans and Plants,” 133, and especially the detailed corresponding note 41. 62. ​Fischer, History of the IAEA, 108. 63. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 64. ​Sebastian Pflugbeil, in ZDF-­History: Das Tschernobyl-­Vermächtnis, tele­v i­sion documentary (2016). 65. ​Vera Rich, “Legasov’s Indictment of Chernobyl Management,” Nature, 26 May 1988, 285.

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Notes to Pages 195–198   303 66. ​Telex to Mr. Yoshida, IAEA, doc. 276400, 30 August 1986, box 15700, IAEA Archives. 67. ​Patterson, “Nuclear Watchdog Finds Its Role,” 50. 68. ​Unnamed IAEA official, cited in “Soviets Tell Rapt Audience Chernobyl-4 Rec­ord Lulled Operators,” Nucleonics Week, 28 August 1986. 69. ​Alexander R. Sich, “Truth Was an Early Casualty,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, May/June 1996, 37, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­00963402​.­1996​.­1 145662. 70. ​PR 86/48 (18 November 1986). 71. ​Plokhy, Chernobyl, 241. 72. ​Michael Kuske, “Euratom Nuclear Safety Framework,” in International Cooperation for Enhancing Nuclear Safety, Security, Safeguards and Non-­proliferation—60 Years of IAEA and EURATOM: Proceedings of the XX Edoardo Amaldi Conference, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, Italy, October 9–10, 2017, https://­link​.­springer​.­com​/­c hapter​/­10​ .­1007​/­978​-­3​- ­662​-­57366​-­2 ​_­6. 73. ​Jack Barkenbus, “Nuclear Safety and the Role of International Organ­ization,” International Organ­ization 41, no. 3 (summer 1987): 476, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1017​/­S0020818300027557. 74. ​The IAEA’s main input was the “Guidelines on Reportable Events, Integrated Planning and Information Exchange in a Transboundary Release of Radioactive Materials” (INFCIRC/321) and “Guidelines for Mutual Emergency Assistance Arrangements in Connection with a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency” (INFCIRC/310), both from January 1984. 75. ​Merle Opelz, interview by the author, Vienna, 28 July 2015. For the Austrian context, see Florian Bayer and Ulrike Felt, “Embracing the “Atomic F ­ uture” in Post–­World War II Austria,” Technology and Culture 1 (2017): 165–91. 76. ​Barkenbus, “Nuclear Safety,” 476. 77. ​Barkenbus, “Nuclear Safety,” 481. On nuclear installations near state borders, also see “Siting Nuclear Installations at the Border,” special issue, Journal for the History of Environment and Society 3 (2018). 78. ​ “International Atomic Energy Agency: The Annual Report for 1986,” GC (XXXI)/800) (July 1987), 27 and 43. 79. ​E. Iansiti and L. Konstantinov, “Nuclear Safety Standards (NUSS) Programme: Pro­gress Report,” IAEA Bulletin 20, no. 5 (1978): 46–55. 80. ​Nicholas Platt, “Memorandum for Vadm John M. Pointexter, The White House. Subject: Soviet Reactor Accident—­Pos­si­ble Increased Role for the IAEA,” 3 May 1986, DNSA. 81. ​The concept had been used in the first special meeting of the Board of Governors ­after the accident, on 21 May 1986 (GOV/OR 648); Arne Kaijser and Jan-­Henrik Meyer, “Nuclear Installations at the Border: Transnational Connections and International Implications. An Introduction,” Journal for the History of Environment and Society 3 (2018): 1–32, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1 484​/­J​.­JHES​.­5​.­1 16793. 82. ​Concluding Remarks by Director General Hans Blix at the Post-­Accident Review Meeting on the Chernobyl Accident, 29 August 1986. 83. ​GOV/OR.648, 8. 84. ​Odette Jankowitsch-­Prevor, interview by the author, Vienna, 24 April 2015. 85. ​Van Gorkom, “Nuclear Safety,” 173. 86. ​Van Gorkom, “Nuclear Safety,” 173; “Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident,” INFCIRC/335 (18 November 1986).

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304   Notes to Pages 198–202 87. ​INFCIRC/335. 88. ​Jankowitsch-­Prevor, interview, 24 April 2015. 89. ​GOV/OR.648, 34. 90. ​GOV/OR.649, 3. 91. ​SAC/OR.36, 3. 92. ​For the current state of the treaty, see the list of accessions and ratifications at Convention on Nuclear Safety, https://­www​-­legacy​.­iaea​.­org​/­Publications​/­Documents​/­Conventions​ /­nuclearsafety​_­status​.­pdf. 93. ​Jankowitsch-­Prevor, interview, 24 April 2015; James Brooke, “Waste Dumpers Turning to West Africa,” New York Times, 17 July 1988, 1. 94. ​“Resolution on the Dumping of Nuclear and Industrial Wastes in Africa ­Adopted by the Organ­ization of African Unity,” IAEA INFCIRC/352 (29 June 1988). 95. ​Abdullah Al Faruque, “Nuclear Energy and the Environment,” in Routledge Handbook of International Environmental Law, ed. Erika J. Techera (London: Routledge, 2012), 398. 96. ​“German Minister Bemoans Weak Response,” Nature, 18 April 1996, 575. 97. ​On this debate, see Tom Parfitt, “Opinion Remains Divided over Chernobyl’s True Toll,” Lancet 367 (2006): 1305–6, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1016​/­S0140​- ­6736(06)68559​- ­0. 98. ​Roland Prinz, “American Doctor Says Chernobyl Could Cause 75,000 Cancer Deaths,” Associated Press, 28 August 1986. 99. ​ T he International Chernobyl Proj­ect: Technical Report. Assessment of Radiological Consequences and Evaluation of Protective Mea­sures (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 1991). 100. ​ Chernobyl: Looking Back to Go Forward: Proceedings of An International Conference on Chernobyl Held 6–7 September 2005 (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2008) 101. ​Kate Brown, “Blinkered Science: Why We Know So L ­ ittle about Chernobyl’s Health Effects,” Culture, Theory and Critique 4 (2017): 413–34, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­1 4735784​ .­2017​.­1358099. For the IAEA’s official stance on the Chernobyl disaster and its consequences, see “Frequently Asked Chernobyl Questions,” IAEA News Center, https://­w ww​ .­iaea​.­org​/­newscenter​/­focus​/­chernobyl​/­faqs. 102. ​Brown, Manual for Survival, 3. For a detailed discussion about the UN-­related scientific studies on the health effects of the Chernobyl accident, also see Brown, “Blinkered Science.” 103. ​Wolfgang Liebert and Martin Kalinowksi, “Scientific-­Technological Aspects of Nuclear Non-­Proliferation and Nuclear Disarmament,” in World at the Crossroads: New Conflicts, New Solutions. Proceedings of the Forty-­T hird Pugwash Conference on Science and World Affairs, 9–15 June 1993, ed. Josef Rotblat (Singapore: World Scientific, 1994), 276. 104. ​Opelz, interview, 28 July 2015. 105. ​“Agreement between the World Health Organ­ization and the International Atomic Energy Agency,” WHA 12-40, 28 May 1959. 106. ​WHA 12-40, Article 1, 3. 107. ​Oliver Tickell, “Toxic Link: The WHO and the IAEA,” Guardian, 28 May 2009. 108. ​“Interpretation of WHO’s agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA),” statement WHO/06, 23 February 2001.

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Notes to Pages 202–207   305 109. ​See Ian Fairlie and David Sumner, “The Other Report on Chernobyl (TORCH): An In­de­pen­dent Scientific Evaluation of Health and Environmental Effects 20 Years a­ fter the Nuclear Disaster Providing Critical Analy­sis of a Recent Report by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and the World Health Organ­ization (WHO),” 2006, http://­ www​.­chernobylreport​.­org. 110. ​SAC/OR.35.

Chapter 9

•

The Nuclear Watchdog

1. ​“The Agency’s Accounts for 1992,” GC(XXXVII)/1061 (August 1993), 52. 2. ​David Waller, interview by the author, Washington, DC, 21 November 2015. 3. ​T he agreement included the Brazilian-­A rgentine Agency for Accounting and Control to ensure the peaceful use of their nuclear materials. 4. ​“The Annual Report for 1992,” GC(XXXVII)/1060 (July 1993), 136; William Lichliter, interview by the author, Vienna, 13 March 2015. 5. ​David Holloway, “Nuclear Weapons and the Escalation of the Cold War, 1945–1962,” in The Cambridge History of the Cold War, vol. 1, Origins, ed. Melvyn P. Leffler and Odd Arne Westad (Cambridge: Oxford University Press, 2010), 376. 6. ​Mohamed ElBaradei, The Age of Deception: Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times (New York: Metropolitan Books, 2011). 7. ​GOV/OR.1092 (10 March 2004); GOV/OR.1094 (13 March 2004). 8. ​IAEA statute, Article III.b.1. 9. ​Günter Bischof and Stefan Maurer, “ ‘One Hour East of Vienna . . .’: At the Crossroads of Eu­rope: Vienna—­Bridgehead and Bridge in the Cold War,” in Cold War Cities: History, Culture and Memory, ed. Katia Pizzi and Marjatta Hietala (Bern: Peter Lang, 2016), 45–73; Lichliter, interview, 13 March 2015. 10. ​Arvid Schors, “Trust and Mistrust and the American Strug­gle for Verification of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, 1969–1979,” in Trust, but Verify: The Politics of Uncertainty and the Transformation of the Cold War Order, 1969–­1981, ed. Martin Klimke, Rein­­ hild Kreis, and Christian Ostermann (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press). 11. ​Thomas Shea, interview by the author, Vienna, 31 July 2016, 86–101. 12. ​S/RES/678 (29 November 1990). On the history of the Persian Gulf War, see Lawrence Freedman and Efraim Karsh, The Gulf Conflict 1990–1991: Diplomacy and War in the New World Order (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 1993). 13. ​S/RES/687 (3 April 1991). 14. ​Leslie Thorne, “IAEA Nuclear Inspections in Iraq,” IAEA Bulletin 34, no. 1 (1992): 16–24. 15. ​Jean Krasno and James Suttlerin, The United Nations and Iraq: Defanging the Viper (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2003), 6–7. 16. ​Gudrun Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme: The Inspections of the International Atomic Energy Agency, 1991–1998 (Oxon: Routledge, 2014), 10. 17. ​Krasno and Suttlerin, United Nations and Iraq, 5. 18. ​Trevor Findlay, Proliferation Alert! The IAEA and Non-­compliance Reporting, Proj­ect on Managing the Atom, Report 2015-04, Belfer Center, Harvard Kennedy School, October 2015, 25–36. For a detailed study of the IAEA’s role and inspections in Iraq, see Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme. For a history Iraq’s nuclear program, see Malfrid

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306   Notes to Pages 207–212 Braut-­Hegghammer, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016). 19. ​David Albright, Peddling Peril: How the Secret Nuclear Trade Arms Amer­i­ca’s Enemies (New York: F ­ ree Press, 2010), 87; Gary Milhollin, “­Because the International Atomic Energy Agency Is Ineffectual, Saddam Hussein ­Will Continue to Outwit U.N. Inspectors,” New Yorker, 1 February 1993, 47. 20. ​Hans Blix, interview, Stockholm, 13 April 2015. 21. ​Lichliter, interview, 13 March 2015. 22. ​Dimitri Perricos, interview by the author, Vienna, 27 June 2015. 23. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015. 24. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015; Leslie Thorne, “IAEA Nuclear Inspections in Iraq,” 20. 25. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015; Anna Weichselbraun, “From Accountants to Detectives: How Nuclear Safeguards Inspectors Make Knowledge at the International Atomic Energy Agency,” Po­liti­cal and ­Legal Anthropology Review 43, no. 1 (2020): 120–35. 26. ​Richard Rhodes, The Twilight of the Bombs: Recent Challenges, New Dangers, and the Prospects for a World without Nuclear Weapons (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 57. 27. ​Thorne, “IAEA Nuclear Inspections in Iraq,” 20. 28. ​GOV/2530; GOV/OR.758 (18 July 1991), 15, GOV/OR.759 (18 July 1991). 29. ​GOV/2531 (18 July 1991). 30. ​GOV/OR.758 (18 July 1991), 14. 31. ​For Blix’s account of the Iraq inspections and his relationship with UNSCOM, see Hans Blix, Disarming Iraq: The Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction (New York: Bloomsbury, 2004), 20–43. 32. ​Scott Ritter, interview by James S. Sutterlin, New York, 27 October 1998, Yale-­UN Oral History. I am grateful to Jean Krasno for sharing the interview collection with me. 33. ​David Kay, interview by James S. Sutterlin, 10 April 2000, Yale-­UN Oral History. 34. ​Sutterlin, interview, 10 April 2000, Yale-­UN Oral History. 35. ​Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme, 65–66. 36. ​Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme, 67. 37. ​Rolf Ekéus, interview by Jean Krasno, Washington, DC, 3 February 1998, Yale-­UN Oral History. 38. ​Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme, 6. 39. ​David Albright and Mark Hibbs, “Hostages, Headlines, Hype,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 48, no. 1 (1992): 32. 40. ​“Letter of 5 December 1991 to the Director General from the Resident Representative of Iraq to the Agency,” INFCIRC/396 (7 January 1992). 41. ​Blix, Disarming Iraq, 23; Harrer, Dismantling the Iraqi Nuclear Programme, 33. 42. ​See chapter 1 in this volume. 43. ​For a detailed account of the Iraqi nuclear weapons program, see Braut-­Hegghammer, Unclear Physics. 44. ​GOV/2931 (5 June 1997). 45. ​For an overview of the North Korean case, see Findlay, Proliferation Alert; Sun Young Ahn and Joel S. Wit, “North ­Korea’s Nuclear Weapon Program: Implications for the Nonproliferation Regime,” in The Routledge Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation and Policy,

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Notes to Pages 212–217   307 ed. Joseph F. Pilat and Nathan E. Busch (Oxon: Routledge, 2015); Norman Wulff, interview, Washington, DC, 19 November 2015. 46. ​INFCIRC/140 (22 April 1970). 47. ​INFCIRC/403 (30 January 1992). 48. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 49. ​Findlay, Proliferation Alert, 40. 50. ​Laura Rockwood, interview by the author, Vienna, 3 August 2016; ElBaradei, Age of Deception, 43. 51. ​Waller, interview, 21 November 2015. 52. ​Rockwood, interview, 3 August 2016. 53. ​In the agency’s own words, before the North Korean case, “The Agency has only had occasion to carry out special inspections at locations which have been declared by the State concerned to the Agency.” GOV/2554 (12 November 1992); GOV/INF/613. Also see Findlay, Proliferation Alert, 37. 54. ​GOV/OR.776 (25 February 1992), 16. 55. ​GOV/2554 (12 November 1991). 56. ​GOV/OR.776, 16. 57. ​GOV/OR.775 (25 February 1992). 58. ​ElBaradei, Age of Deception, 45. 59. ​Matthias Dembinski, “North ­Korea, IAEA Special Inspections, and the ­Future of the Nonproliferation Regime,” Nonproliferation Review 2, no. 2 (Winter 1995): 31. 60. ​GOV/2636 (25 February 1993); INFCIRC/419 (8 April 1993). 61. ​Er-­Win Tan, The US versus the North-­Korean Nuclear Threat: Mitigating the Nuclear Security Dilemma (Oxon: Routledge, 2014); Wulff, interview, 19 November 2015. 62. ​T his has since changed, with for instance, IAEA resident inspectors at the Rokkasho commercial repro­cessing plant in Japan, the largest fa­cil­i­t y to date u ­ nder IAEA safeguards. Allan McKnight, Atomic Safeguards: A Study in International Verification (New York: United Nations Publications, 1970), 157. 63. ​GOV/2741 (9 June 1994). 64. ​“United States Department of State Information Memorandum: IAEA Board Adopts Resolution on DPRK,” Robert Galucci to Dr. Davis, 10 June 1994. I am grateful to Balázs Szalontai for sharing his document collection on North K ­ orea with me. “The Agency’s Technical Co-­Operation Activities in 1991: Report by the Director General,” GC (XXXVI)/INF/308 (August 1992). 65. ​GOV/OR.844 (10 June 1994). 66. ​GOV/OR.844. 67. ​Nuclear Energy Agency, Forty Years of Uranium Resources, Production, and Demand: “The Red Book Retrospective,” NEA no.  6096 (Paris: Organisation for Economic Co-­ operation and Development, 2006). 68. ​GOV/OR.624 (8 June 1984), 10; interview with Abdul Minty by the author, Berlin, 1 September 2016. 69. ​South Africa’s Nuclear Capabilities, Resolution of the IAEA General Conference, GC(XXIX)/RES/442 (27 September 1985). 70. ​GOV.2547 (11 September 1991). 71. ​GOV.OR/761 (11 September 1991), 31.

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308   Notes to Pages 217–220 72. ​GOV.2547/Rev.1. 73. ​GOV.OR/761, 35. 74. ​GOV.OR/762, (12 September 1991), 21. 75. ​GOV.OR/762, 21. 76. ​GOV.OR/762, 23. 77. ​GOV.OR/762, 21. 78. ​On the end of South Africa’s nuclear weapons program, see Anna-­Mart van Wyk and Jo-­Ansie van Wyk, “From the Nuclear Laager to the Nonproliferation Club: South Africa and the NPT,” South African Historical Journal 67, no. 1 (2015): 32–46. 79. ​Adolf von Baeckmann, Garry Dillon, and Demetrius Perricos, “Nuclear Verification in South Africa,” IAEA Bulletin 37 no. 1 (1995): 42–48. 80. ​Von Baeckmann, Dillon, and Perricos, “Nuclear Verification in South Africa,” 1995; Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015. 81. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015; Von Baeckmann, Dillon, and Perricos, “Nuclear Verification in South Africa,” 1995. 82. ​Michal Onderco and Anna-­Mart van Wyk, “Birth of a Norm Champion: How South Africa Came to Support the NPT’s Indefinite Extension of the NPT,” Nonproliferation Review 26, no. 1/2 (2019): 23–41, https://­doi​.­org​/­10​.­1080​/­10736700​.­2019​.­1591771. 83. ​Pier Roberto Danesi, interview by the author, Vienna, 23 April 2015; Radiological Conditions at the Former French Nuclear Test Sites in Algeria: Preliminary Assessment and Recommendations (Vienna: International Atomic Energy Agency, 2005). 84. ​Austin Cooper, “An ‘Old-Time Fall-Out Collector’ at the US Embassy and the Cold War Politics of Radiation Detection in 1960s Tunisia,” NPIHP webinar, 12 November 2020. 85. ​Danesi, interview, 23 April 2015. 86. ​Laura Rockwood, interview by the author, 3 August 2016. 87. ​For this view of Eklund, see Mark Hibbs and Andreas Persbo, “The ElBaradei Legacy,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 65, no. 5 (September/October 2009): 12. 88. ​GOV/OR.758 (18 July 1991), 9. 89. ​GOV/OR.768 (5 December 1991), 31. 90. ​GOV/OR.760 (11 September 1991). 91. ​GOV/OR. 760, 31. 92. ​GOV/OR. 760, 28. 93. ​GOV/OR. 760, 38. 94. ​David Donohue, Stein Deron, and Erwin Kuhn, “Environmental Monitoring and Safeguards: Reinforcing Analytical Capabilities,” IAEA Bulletin 36, no. 3 (1994): 20–23. 95. ​Perricos, interview, 27 June 2015; Krasno and Sutterlin, United Nations and Iraq, 78. 96. ​GOV/2658-4 (17 May 1993). 97. ​GOV/2698 (3 November 1993). 98. ​Suzanna van Moyland, Verification M ­ atters: The IAEA’s Programme “93 + 2” (London: VERTIC, 1997). 99. ​For a brief introduction to environmental sampling, see Aabha Dixit, “Swipe Check: Collecting and Analysing Environmental Samples for Nuclear Verification,” 19 January 2016, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­newscenter​/­news​/­swipe​-­check​-­collecting​-­and​-­analy​ sing​- ­environmental​-­samples​-­nuclear​-­verification.

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Notes to Pages 220–224   309 100. ​Erwin Kuhn and Stein Deron, interview by the author, Vienna, 19 December 2016. 101. ​Kuhn and Stein, interview, 19 December 2016; GOV/2807 (12 May 1995). 102. ​Kuhn and Stein, interview, 19 December 2016; Abdul Minty, interview by the author, Berlin, 1 September 2016. 103. ​“Model Additional Protocol to the Agreement(s) between State(s) and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards,” INFCIRC/540 corrected (1 September 1997). 104. ​John Carlson, interview by the author, Washington, DC, 13 November 2015. 105. ​ElBaradei, Age of Deception, 28–29; Blix, interview, 13 April 2015. 106. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015; Mohamed ElBaradei, interview by the author, Vienna, 31 May 2016. 107. ​Blix, interview, 13 April 2015; Lichliter, interview, 13 March 2015. 108. ​Lichliter, interview, 13 March 2015. 109. ​Shirley Johnson, interview by the author, Vienna, 20 August 2015. 110. ​ElBaradei, interview, 31 May 2016; Johnson, interview, 20 August 2015; Robert E. Kelley, “Creating a ‘One House’ Culture at the IAEA through Matrix Management,” SIPRI Policy Brief, Solna, January 2014. 111. ​The agreement has been updated several times since then: “Agreement between the Government of India and the International Atomic Energy Agency for the Application of Safeguards to Civilian Nuclear Facilities,” INFCIRC/754 (29 May 2009). 112. ​Sharon K. Weiner, “Preventing Nuclear Entrepreneurship in Rus­sia’s Nuclear Cities,” International Security 27, no. 2 (2002): 126–58, https://­w ww​.­jstor​.­org​/­stable​/­3092145. 113. ​GOV/OR.1033 (11 September 2001); Waller, interview, 21 November 2015. 114. ​Waller, interview, 21 November 2015. 115. ​S/RES/1441 (8 November 2002). 116. ​George W. Bush, State of the Union Address, Washington, DC, 29 January 2002, https://­georgewbush​-­whitehouse​.­a rchives​.­gov​/­news​/­releases​/­2 002​/­0 1​/­2 0020129 ​-­1 1​ .­html. 117. ​CNN Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, interview with Condoleezza Rice, 8 September 2002, transcript, http://­edition​.­cnn​.­com​/ ­TRANSCRIPTS​/­0209​/­08​/­le​.­00​.­html. 118. ​George W. Bush, Speech on Iraq, Cincinnati, 7 October 2002, https://­georgewbush​ -­whitehouse​.­archives​.­gov​/­news​/­releases​/­2002​/­10​/­20021007​-­8​.­html. 119. ​“IAEA Chief: No Evidence so Far of Revived Iraqi Nuclear Arms Programme,” 27 January 2003, https://­news​.­un​.­org​/­en​/­story​/­2003​/­01​/­57442​-­iaea​- ­chief​-­no​- ­evidence​-­so​-­far​ -­revived​-­iraqi​-­nuclear​-­arms​-­programme. 120. ​Gabrielle Hecht, Being Nuclear: Africans and the Global Uranium Trade (Boston: MIT Press, 2012), 1–3. 121. ​Rockwood, interview, 3 August 2016. 122. ​She l­ ater regretted this choice of words. “In retrospect, maybe we should have been blunter,” she said. Rockwood, interview, 3 August 2016. I also rely h ­ ere on my interview with ElBaradei, 31 May 2016. 123. ​“United Nations Weapons Inspectors Report to Security Council on Pro­gress in Disarmament of Iraq,” 7 March 2002, https://­w ww​.­u n​.­org​/­press​/­en​/­2003​/­sc7682 ​.­doc​ .­htm. 124. ​For ElBaradei’s and Blix’s recollections of t­ hese events, see ElBaradei, The Age of Deception, 48–88; Blix, Disarming Iraq.

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310   Notes to Pages 224–229 125. ​When I visited Blix in 2015, he still had this poster in his Stockholm apartment. 126. ​Waller, interview, 21 November 2015. 127. ​ElBaradei, interview, 31 May 2016. 128. ​For the official announcement, see “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2005,” https://­ www​.­nobelprize​.­org​/­prizes​/­peace​/­2005​/­press​-­release​/­. 129. ​For ElBaradei’s ac­cep­tance speech, see “The Nobel Peace Prize for 2005,” https://­ www​.­nobelprize​.­org​/­prizes​/­p eace​/­2 005​/­e lbaradei​/­2 6138 ​-­mohamed​-­e lbaradei​-­nobel​ -­lecture​-­2005​-­2 . 130. ​ElBaradei, interview, 31 May 2016. 131. ​Gregory F. Giles, “Iran,” in Pilat and Busch, Routledge Handbook of Nuclear Proliferation and Policy, 42. 132. ​GOV.OR.776 (25 February 1992), 24. 133. ​For the history of the Iran case and the IAEA, see Mark Hibbs, “Iran and the Evolution of Safeguards,” Car­ne­gie Endowment for International Peace, 16 December 2015, https://­c arnegieendowment​ .­org​ /­2 015​ /­1 2​ /­1 6​/­i ran​ -­a nd​ - ­e volution​ - ­of​ -­s afeguards​ -­p ub​ -­62333. Carlson. 134. ​Findlay, Proliferation Alert, 51. 135. ​GOV/2843 (15 February 1996). For an initiative to increase IAEA transparency, see the dossier “International Atomic Energy Agency Lacks Transparency, Observers and Researchers Say,” National Security Archive, George Washington University, 24 April 2015, https://­nsarchive2​.­g wu​.­edu​/­nukevault​/­ebb512. 136. ​ElBaradei, Age of Deception, 113. 137. ​On NAM and the Iran case, see Michal Onderco, Iran’s Nuclear Program and the Global South: The Foreign Policy of India, Brazil, and South Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); William C. Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova, Nuclear Politics and the Non-­Aligned Movement (Oxon: Routledge, 2012); Tanya Ogilvie-­White, “International Responses to Ira­nian Nuclear Defiance: The Non-­A ligned Movement and the Issue of Non-­ Compliance,” Eu­ro­pean Journal of International Law 18, no. 3 (2007): 453–76. 138. ​John Carlson, “ ‘Peaceful’ Nuclear Programs and the Prob­lem of Nuclear Latency,” Nuclear Threat Initiative, 19 November 2015, https://­w ww​.­nti​.­org​/­analysis​/­articles​/­peaceful​ -­nuclear​-­programs​-­and​-­problem​-­nuclear​-­latency. 139. ​Kourosh Ziabari, “Interview with Belgian Nuclear Scientist Dr. Pierre Goldschmidt,” 3 November  2013, http://­kouroshziabari​.­com​/­2013​/­1 1​/­interview​-­w ith​-­former​ -­iaea​- ­deputy​- ­director​-­general​-­pierre​-­goldschmidt. 140. ​Onderco, Iran’s Nuclear Program and the Global South, 15. 141. ​Minty, interview, 1 September 2016. 142. ​GOV/2003/75 (10 November 2003). 143. ​GOV/OR.1084 (21 November 2003), 9. 144. ​GOV/OR.1084 (21 November 2003), 10. 145. ​GOV/OR.1084 (21 November 2003), 9. 146. ​GOV/OR.1084 (21 November 2003), 9–10. 147. ​For ElBaradei’s view of events, see ElBaradei, Age of Deception, 122–23. 148. ​Dafna Linzer, “IAEA Leader’s Phone Tapped: U.S. Pores over Transcripts to Try to Oust Nuclear Chief,” Washington Post, 12 December 2004. 149. ​Yasuhito Fukui, “Amano, Yukiya, International Atomic Energy Agency, 2009– 2019,” IO BIO, Biographical Dictionary of Secretaries-­General of International Organ­izations,

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Notes to Pages 229–239   311 ed. Bob Reinalda, Kent J. Kille, and Jaci Eisenberg, https://­w ww​.­r u​.­n l​/­publish​/­pages​ /­816038​/­amano​-­y​-­2september2020​.­pdf. 150. ​GOV/2003/75; “Implementation of the NPT Safeguards Agreement in the Islamic Republic of Iran,” GOV/2005/77 (24 September 2005). 151. ​For an overview of IAEA reports on Iran, see “IAEA and Iran,” https://­w ww​.­iaea​ .­org​/­newscenter​/­focus​/­iran​/­iaea​-­and​-­iran​-­iaea​-­reports. 152. ​Weichselbraun, “From Accountants to Detectives.” 153. ​GOV/2015/68 (2 December 2015). 154. ​ “Full Text: North K ­ orea’s Statement of Withdrawal,” New York Times, 10 January 2003. 155. ​“IAEA North K ­ orea Inspectors Recall the Day When . . . ,” International Atomic Energy Agency, 3 January 2003, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­newscenter​/­news​/­iaea​-­north​-­korea​ -­inspectors​-­recall​- ­day​-­when%E2%80%A6. 156. ​Aabha Dixit, “IAEA Ready to Undertake Verification and Monitoring in North ­Korea,” International Atomic Energy Agency, 4 March 2019, https://­www​.­iaea​.­org​/­newscenter​ /­news​/­iaea​-­ready​-­to​-­undertake​-­verification​-­and​-­monitoring​-­in​-­north​-­korea. 157. ​Julian Borger, “UN’s Nuclear Watchdog IAEA u ­ nder Fire over Response to Japa­ nese Disaster,” Guardian, 15 March 2011. 158. ​GOV/OR.1297 (21 March 2011). For Amano’s official report, see “The Fukishima Daiichi Accident: Report by the Director General,” International Atomic Energy Agency, 2015, https://­www​-­pub​.­iaea​.­org​/­MTCD​/­Publications​/­PDF​/­Pub1710​-­ReportByTheDG​-­Web​.­pdf.

Conclusion

•

The Last Man Standing

1. ​GC(XXIII)/OR.209, 4 December 1979, 14. 2. ​GC(XXIII)/OR.209, 9. 3. ​Julia Masterson, “Saudi Arabia, IAEA Discuss Safeguards,” Arms Control ­Today, October  2020, https://­w ww​.­armscontrol​.­org​/­act​/­2020​-­10​/­news​-­briefs​/­saudi​-­arabia​-­iaea​ -­discuss​-­safeguards. 4. ​“IAEA Safeguards: Preventing the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,” IAEA Bulletin 57, no. 2 (June 2016), inside front cover. 5. ​Tariq Rauf, “Opinion: The NPT Review Conference: Still Haggling for a Date,” Atomic Reporters, 2 May 2021, https://­w ww​.­atomicreporters​.­com​/­2021​/­05​/­t he ​-­npt​-­review​-­con​ ference​-­still​-­haggling​-­for​-­a​-­date. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the conference was postponed that year. 6. ​Olli Heinonen, “The Case for an Immediate IAEA Special Inspection in Syria,” Washington Institute: Policy Analyses, 5 November 2010, https://­w ww​.­washingtoninstitute​ .­org​/­policy​-­analysis​/­v iew​/­t he​- ­case​-­for​-­an​-­immediate​-­iaea​-­special​-­inspection​-­in​-­syria. 7. ​Yale-­UN Oral History Proj­ect, interview of Rolf Ekéus by Jean Krasno, Washington, DC, 3 February 1998, 8, https://­digitallibrary​.­un​.­org​/­record​/­503511. 8. ​IAEA statute, Article II. 9. ​The IAEA Scientific Forum of 2019 focused on controlling cancer. 10. ​Mark Mazower, No Enchanted Palace: The End of Empire and the Ideological Origins of the United Nations (Prince­ton, NJ: Prince­ton University Press, 2009), 191. 11. ​Nicole Jawerth and Miklos Gaspar, “How the IAEA ­Will Contribute to the Sustainable Development Goals,” IAEA, 25 September 2015, https://­w ww​.­iaea​.­org​/­newscenter​ /­news​/­how​-­iaea​-­w ill​- ­contribute​-­sustainable​- ­development​-­goals.

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312   Notes to Pages 240–241 12. ​See the IAEA on Twitter @iaea​.­org, 3–8 November 2019. 13. ​Mohamed ElBaradei, interview by the author, Vienna, 31 May 2016. 14. ​R afael Mariano Grossi, “Pre-­empting and Preventing Infectious Disease Outbreaks,” IAEA Bulletin 61, no. 2 (June 2020): 1. 15. ​Gero von Randow, “Atomwaffen: Die letzte Autorität vor der Bombe,” Die Zeit, 17 September 2019.

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Index

ACDA. See United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency Acheson-­Lilienthal Report, 23, 24, 27, 35, 52, 211 Adeniji, Oluyemi, 162–63 Ad Hoc Committee on the Use of Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes (Committee 21), 135, 138 Adler, Peter, 171–72 AEC. See United States Atomic Energy Commission Af­ghan­i­stan, 86, 165 Africa, 91, 93, 115, 155, 156, 162–63; Board of Governors seat, 94–96, 160–65; IAEA membership, 80, 94, 106, 152–53; nuclear weapon ­free zone, 218; safeguards issue, 121; technical assistance to, 85–86, 153, 158. See also individual countries Agarvala, R. P., 87 Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Ca­r ib­bean, 115 agriculture, nuclear technology applications in, 4, 5, 32, 35, 104, 128, 187–88, 204–5, 234 Ahmad, Nazir, 72 Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud, 229 Algeria, 10, 176, 218 Al-­K ital, Rahim, 217 Alonso, Nina, 106 al-­Qaddafi, Muammar, 204 al-­Qaeda, 222–23, 240 Amano, Yukiya, 15, 225–26, 229, 232, 237–38 Anderson, Robert, 135

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Andreev, Iouli, 232 Andrianasolo, Hubert, 178–79 Angola, 159 anti-­apartheid movement, 10, 159, 160 anti-­nuclear energy movement, 149–50, 156, 157, 175–76, 194, 197, 233–35, 239–40; and Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 182–83, 185, 186, 187, 190, 191 Arab-­Israeli conflict, 114–15, 130, 166 Argentina, 120, 155, 165, 203; Board of Governors seat, 163, 217; INFCE participation, 150; inspection agreement, 203; NPT and, 120, 222; nuclear power capability, 155; plutonium repro­cessing technology acquisition, 140; technical assistance guidelines opposition, 141, 142 Asia, 10, 54, 80, 97, 158, 178; Board of Governors underrepre­s en­t a­t ion, 57, 95; Euratom inspections and, 91, 115; Group of 77 membership, 154, 155; IAEA fact-­f inding mission to, 85–86; inf luence in IAEA, 106, 152–53, 156; nuclear power reactors, 235; position on safeguards, 238; technical assistance to, 85–86, 93. See also individual countries Association of Retired Civil Servants in Austria (ARICSA), 105 Atlee, Clement, 26 atomic bomb, 4, 12, 16–17, 18–20, 21, 26, 45 Atomic Development Authority, 23 Atomic Energy Act (McMahon Act), 34–35, 37, 45 Atomic Energy Research Establishment, 78

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314  Index Atoms for Peace, 15, 31–60, 85, 101, 155, 234; “Atoms for Peace” speech, 4, 31–33, 35–38, 43, 44, 45, 52, 59, 62, 63, 85, 88, 238; bilateral nuclear assistance programs, 45–46, 51, 91, 160; genesis, 33–38; IAEA creation and, 38–46; Iraq’s nuclear program and, 226–27; as nuclear disarmament proposal, 32–33, 36, 38, 39–42; nuclear diversion issue, 46–49; nuclear safeguards issue, 41–42; proliferation risks, 47, 234; US–­Soviet Union discussions, 39–42, 264n38 Australia, 7; HSP membership, 148; and Israeli IAEA membership issue, 168; participation in IAEA founding, 42–44; position on safeguards and verification, 90, 123–24; and South African IAEA membership issue, 162–63, 165; as uranium-­producing state, 42–43, 90, 148 Austria, 12; during Cold War, 61–62; IAEA staff from, 80. See also Vienna, as IAEA headquarters Austrian Nuclear Research Center, Seibersdorf, 76, 103, 144, 147, 184, 200, 220 Baffour, R. P., 96 Bagley, Tennent H., 61 Bangladesh, 164–65 Baruch, Bernard, 24, 27, 28 Baruch Plan, 24–26, 29, 36, 37, 60 Baute, Jacques, 224 Baxter, Alex, 123–24 Bechhoefer, Bernhard G., 59 Beckurts, Karl Heinz, 185 Becquerel, Henri, 18 Begin, Menachem, 166, 169–70 Belarus, 56, 182, 184, 195, 200, 201, 205 Belgian Congo, 10, 30, 43 Belgium, 10, 120, 218, 227; NSG membership, 139, 140; participation in IAEA founding, 30, 42–44, 69; as uranium-­producing state, 10, 30 Berlin, 18, 29, 69, 77 Berlin Wall, 62, 77 Bermuda meetings (1953), 37–38 Bernardes, Carlos, 66 Bevin, Ernest, 22, 23–24 Bhabha, Homi J., 46, 65, 72, 73, 91; as Board of Governors member, 83; in IAEA draft statute

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negotiations, 50–52, 53, 56, 70; as member of UNSAC, 81, 83, 84; as member of SAC, 81, 83 Biden, Joseph R., 231 Biko, Steve, 160 bilateral agreements: nuclear arms control, 21, 192–93, 205; nuclear assistance and cooperation, 45–46, 49, 51, 91, 102–3, 214, 283n26; safeguards, 112, 120–21, 179, 197 biological and chemical weapons, 205–6 Blix, Hans, 11, 99, 179, 200, 210, 211, 218; Chernobyl nuclear disaster and, 182, 183, 184–87, 188, 189, 190, 193–94, 195, 196, 197, 198, 199; Iraq safeguards noncompliance case, 207, 209; North Korean safeguards noncompliance case, 212, 213, 214; peace advocacy, 224; safeguards ­matters, 154, 180–81, 218–20, 221; se­lection as IAEA director general, 176–78; Three Mile Island and, 239–40; as UNMOVIC head, 223, 224 Bohlen, Charles E., 38, 39 Bohr, Niels, 17 Brandt, Willy, 175, 298n121 Brázda, Emanuel, 82 Brazil, 83, 165, 168–69, 203; Board of Governors seat, 163; ENDC membership, 110–11; INFCE participation, 150; NPT and, 118, 222; nuclear power capability, 155; participation in IAEA founding, 49, 50, 63, 110–11, 118; position on South African inspections, 217; repro­cessing technology acquisition, 140; SAC membership, 83; safeguards and, 142; South African IAEA expulsion position, 165; technical assistance guidelines opposition, 141; UNSAC membership, 49 Briand, Aristotle, 21 Brill, Kenneth, 228 Broda, Engelbert, 61–62 Brown, Kate, 193, 201 Brown, Robert, 3 Brynielsson, Harry, 69, 97 Büchler, Carlos, 80, 87–88 Bulgaria, 72, 110–11, 191, 223 Bunche, Ralph J., 46, 47, 67, 69–70, 72, 75–76 bureaucracy, 57, 59, 115, 136, 142, 151, 154, 156, 213; diplomacy and, 10, 161, 236; reform of, 221–22 Burma, 111

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Index  315 Burr, William, 143 Bush, George W., 223–24 Byrnes, James, 22, 23–24 Cadogan, Alexander, 24 Canada, 47, 54, 80, 168; Indian nuclear test and, 137; Manhattan Proj­ect and, 20; NPT and, 134, 175; participation in IAEA founding, 43–44, 58, 63; SAC membership, 83; safeguards position, 139; Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee membership, 110–11; Three-­Nation Declaration on Atomic Energy, 22; UNAEC membership, 22; as uranium-­ producing nation, 87; Zangger Committee and, 134 Ca­r ib­bean, nuclear weapon f­ ree zone, 115 Carlos the Jackal, 140 Car­ter, Jimmy, 143, 149, 150, 162, 294n49 Cassili, Massimo, 124 Cavers, David F., 29 Ceausescu, Nicolae, 214 CERN. See Eu­ro­pean Organ­ization for Nuclear Research Cetto, Ana Maria, 80 chemical accidents, 191 Chernobyl Forum, 201 Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 14, 182–202, 232, 235, 239–40, 299n3, 300n6; East-­West tensions a­ fter, 190–94; glasnost ­after, 194–96; IAEA public relations response, 183–90, 193–94, 196; long-­term consequences, 200–202; nuclear safety ­after, 196–99; Post-­Accident Review Meeting, 187, 188, 190, 192, 194–95, 198, 201 Chernus, Ira, 33 Cherwell, Lord, 37 Chile, 163, 165 Churchill, Winston, 17, 37 CIA, 145, 179 civilian applications of nuclear technology, 5, 19, 39–40, 41, 49, 61, 88, 193–94, 234, 241; ­under Baruch Plan, 60; in developing countries, 128–29; dual-­use issue, 19, 39–40, 41, 49, 88, 193–94, 234; IAEA’s promotion of, 2, 3, 38; nuclear proliferation and, 31, 236; private industry’s investments, 35; UNAEC and, 17–18. See also Atoms for Peace; dual mandate; nuclear power plants

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Claude, Inis, 10 climate change, 240 Cockcroft, John, 79, 82, 83, 84 Cold War, 4–6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 45, 204, 237, 241; impact on IAEA, 71–74; nuclear deterrence during, 21; UNAEC negotiations during, 29–30; United Nations and, 28–30; Vienna’s role, 61–62. See also United States–­Soviet Union relations Cole, William Sterling, 37–38, 68–71, 73, 78, 79, 115; criticisms of, 96–97; deputy director general appointments, 79–80; election as director general, 68–71; IAEA logo design, 74–76; SAC and, 82, 83, 84; safeguards development u ­ nder, 90, 91–92; successor, 96–99 colonialism, 10, 54, 56, 168, 218 Commission for Conventional Armaments, 28 Commonwealth of Nations, 43–44 Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­B an Treaty (CTBTO), 8, 196; Preparatory Commission, 241 Conference for a Non-­Nuclear ­Future, 149–50 Conference on the Statute, 50, 51, 55–58, 59, 63, 65–66, 70–71, 125, 142 Congress of Vienna (1814–1815), 59 consensus decision-­making, 55, 57, 89, 141, 158, 163–64 Convention on Assistance in the Case of a Nuclear Accident or Radiological Emergency (INFCIRC/336), 199 Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident (INFCIRC/335), 198–99 Convention on Nuclear Safety, 199–200, 304n92 Cousteau, Jacques, 103 Couve de Murville, Maurice, 50 COVID-19 pandemic, 240 Craig, Campbell, 29 CTBTO. See Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty Cuba, 215, 217 Cuban Missile Crisis, 100, 109 Cumes, James, 175 Curie, Marie Słodowska, 18 Curie, Pierre, 18

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316  Index Czecho­slo­va­k ia, 82, 105, 106, 191; NSG membership, 139; nuclear energy prohibition in, 197; participation in IAEA founding, 47, 49–50, 66, 70; safeguards position, 116; Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee membership, 110–11; as uranium-­producing state, 49–50 Dadzie, Emmanuel Kodjoe, 96 Dahl, Birgitta, 182, 183 Dasgupta, P., 93 Dean, Patrick, 107 decolonization, 10, 12, 94, 95, 165 de Klerk, F. W., 203, 217 de Laboulaye, Hubert, 79 Denmark, 65, 134, 186, 197 Department of Administration (Management), 78, 79, 80 Department of Nuclear Energy and Safety, 184, 222 Department of Research and Isotopes, 78, 79, 147, 207 Department of Safeguards, 2, 14, 61, 78–79, 87–92, 118, 120; agreement with Euratom, 145–46; bud­getary constraints, 203–4; developing countries’ influence in, 156; expansion, 102, 120, 146–47; infrastructure and laboratories, 146–47; interdepartmental relationships, 142, 222; Israeli attack on Osirak reactor and, 166, 169, 180 Department of Technical Assistance (Technical Cooperation), 9, 13, 14, 80, 87, 128, 142, 157, 171–72, 207 Department of Technical Operations (Nuclear Energy), 78, 79, 80, 222; Advisory Board on Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Explosions, 135–36 Department of Training and Information, 78, 79, 80 deputy director generals (DDGs), 79–80 developing countries, 6, 7, 10, 85; categorization, 155, 293n13; contributions to IAEA, 93; IAEA director general from, 176–77, 223; influence in IAEA, 13–14, 59, 80, 106, 158; nuclear reactors for, 155–56; participation in IAEA statute negotiations, 51, 54, 56–57; position on safeguards, 238; technical assistance demand, 154–58; UN membership, 44–45. See also Global South; Group of

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77; Non-­A ligned Movement (NAM) / non-­ aligned states; non-­nuclear weapon states; and names of individual countries diplomacy, 59, 85, 160, 161, 172, 226, 236; bureaucracy and, 10, 161, 236; nuclear, 17–18, 153–54; UNAEC and, 17–18, 30 director generals: first, 68–71; politicization issue and, 8, 236–37. See also Amano, Yukiya; Blix, Hans; Cole, William Sterling; ElBaradei, Mohamed; Eklund, Sigvard; Grossi, Rafael disarmament, history of, 20–21, 259n15. See also nuclear disarmament Division of Safeguards Information Treatment, 145 Division of Safety and Inspection, 100 Division of Scientific and Technical Information, 104 Douglas-­Home, Alec, 107, 109 Drummond, Eric, 9–10 dual mandate, 2–10, 17, 26, 92, 108, 135, 190, 225, 233, 255n7; bud­getary system and, 54; diversification, 15, 239–41; Ira­nian case and, 230–31; Israeli attack on Osirak reactor and, 171; limitations, 241; u ­ nder NPT, 108, 142; po­liti­cal nature of, 234; proliferation risks, 3–4, 129, 181, 183, 235–36. See also safeguards; technical assistance dual-­use issue, 19, 39–40, 41, 49, 88, 193–94, 234 Dulles, John Foster, 39, 40, 41, 47, 58, 64 Dumbarton Oaks Conference (1944), 22–23 du Plessis, W. C., 54 dynamite, 21 Eastern Eu­ro­pean countries, 45, 55, 56, 93, 106, 155, 163, 178, 182, 193; successor states, 203 “ecoglasnost,” 191 economic development, nuclear energy’s role, 128–29, 234. See also Atoms for Peace Egypt, 162; Atomic Energy Commission, 164; Board of Governors seat, 163–64, 165; ENDC membership, 111; Indian nuclear tests and, 138; NPT ratification, 162, 164; participation in IAEA founding, 44–45; PNEs and, 138; radioisotope training center, 94, 95; safeguards negotiations, 113; South African resolution, 216–17; Suez Canal crisis, 58, 60

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Index  317 Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC), 106, 110–15, 116–17 Eilam, Uzi, 178 Einstein, Albert, 71 Eisenhower, Dwight D., 46, 51–52, 68, 69, 240; Atoms for Peace initiative, 12–13; “Atoms for Peace” speech, 4, 31–33, 34, 35–38, 44, 52, 59, 62, 63, 85, 88, 238, 256n14, 262n1, 263n12; Multilateral Force and, 109–10; New Look defense policy, 33, 39; Operation Candor, 35, 36, 40 Ekéus, Rolf, 207, 210, 211, 212 Eklund, Sigvard, 13, 79, 85, 101, 128, 135, 160, 218; defense of nuclear energy, 149–50, 156–57, 233–34, 239–40; election as IAEA director general, 97–100; Indian nuclear test and, 138; NPT and, 115–16, 118; Osirak nuclear reactor attack issue, 167, 172; Pakistan’s secret nuclear program and, 143; retirement, 106; Richter case and, 171; safeguards development u ­ nder, 91, 180; staff appointments, 106; successor, 14, 174–78; Sweden’s nuclear program and, 97, 98–99 ElBaradei, Mohamed, 8, 11, 204, 214; Ira­nian noncompliance crisis and, 226–30; Nobel Peace Prize, 224–26; safeguards strengthening initiative, 220, 221; US invasion of Iraq and, 223–26; US opposition to, 224, 226, 228–29, 236 Emelyanov, Vassily, 70, 72, 76–77, 81, 82, 95, 97, 98, 99; Board of Governors membership, 83; SAC membership, 83, 84–85 ENDC. See Eighteen-­Nation Committee on Disarmament (ENDC) Endo, Tetsuya, 219 environmental sampling, 219–20, 308n99 Errera, Gérard, 186 Erskov, Finn, 186 espionage, 61–62; CIA, 145, 179; by IAEA staff, 10, 147–48, 171–72; industrial, 89, 102, 115, 125, 197; KGB, 61–62, 105, 145, 177–78; Manhattan Proj­ect and, 29, 34, 61–62 Euratom, 91, 154, 170, 283n26; administrative agreement with IAEA, 145–46, 147; HSP membership, 148; NPT and, 134; nuclear safety policies, 196; self-­inspection issue, 91, 113–14, 115 Eu­ro­pean Community, 91, 196

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Eu­ro­pean Nuclear Conference, 187 Eu­ro­pean Organ­ization for Nuclear Research (CERN), 62, 64, 65 EU3, 229, 231 FAO. See Food and Agricultural Organ­ization Farley, Philipp J., 142 Federal Republic of Germany, 55, 123, 125, 168, 185; in ENDC negotiations, 114, 116; HSP membership, 148; NPT and, 120–22; NSG membership, 139, 140; nuclear power plants, 197; nuclear weapon ambitions, 110, 120–21, 282n14; reaction to Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 185–86; Zangger Committee and, 134 Fedorenko, Nikolai, 107 Fermi, Enrico, 18, 19, 46 finances and bud­get, 54; for safeguards, 94, 126–27; ­after Soviet Union’s collapse, 203–4; for technical assistance, 93–94; voluntary contributions, 92–93, 94, 156; zero real-­ growth bud­get, 14, 156, 203 Fischer, David, 11, 51, 112, 150, 161, 283n29 Fisher, Roger, 112 Food and Agricultural Organ­ization (FAO), 187–88, 201; IAEA Joint Division, 87 Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant, Sweden, 182 fossil fuels, nuclear energy as alternative, 149, 186–87, 233 Foster, Paul F., 77 Foster, William C., 112 France, 28, 79, 169, 186, 194, 206; Iraq noncompliance and, 223, 229; NPT and, 111, 118, 120, 127, 134, 222; NSG membership, 139, 140; nuclear cooperation with Iraq, 140, 165–66, 169, 172–74, 296n63; nuclear tests, 10, 204; as nuclear weapon state, 92, 107; Paris Peace Conference, 21; participation in IAEA founding, 42–45, 47, 50, 58; position on safeguards, 89, 90, 116, 120, 133, 139; pro–­nuclear energy policy, 186; SAC membership, 83; Saharan nuclear test sites, 218; Suez Canal crisis, 58; Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee membership, 110–11; UNAEC membership, 22; UN Security Council membership, 22; Zangger Committee and, 134 Friedrichs, Ms., 81

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318  Index Frye, William R., 53–54 Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, 15, 232, 235, 239–40 Furuuchi, Hiroo, 72–73 Gandhi, Indira, 1, 31 gas centrifuge uranium enrichment technology, 61, 132, 133, 147, 148, 209, 269n4 Geneva: IAEA office in, 116–17, 161; as proposed IAEA headquarters, 63–64, 66 Geneva Conference for the Promotion of International Co-­operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, 157–58, 191 Geneva Convention (1925), 26 Geneva Convention on Humanitarian Law in Armed Conflict, 168 Geneva meetings (1955), 46–48, 90, 266n75 German Demo­c ratic Republic, 61, 126, 139, 145, 191 Germany, 26, 29, 223, 229, 231; Nazi, 19, 37, 62, 65–66. See also German Demo­c ratic Republic; Federal Republic of Germany Ghana, 23, 94, 95, 96 glasnost, 194–96 Global Community (Iriye), 9 Global South, 7, 80, 111; IAEA conferences in, 152–53; influence in IAEA, 152–53; nuclear energy use in, 191 Global West, 191 Goedde, Petra, 71 Goldschmidt, Bertrand, 27, 82, 83, 84, 85, 100, 101, 119, 167 Goldschmidt, Pierre, 227 Goodby, James, 53–54, 71 Gorbachev, Mikhail, 186, 191, 192–93, 205 Goswami, U­pen­dra Lal, 87 graphite, 18, 133, 182 Greece, 165 Green Party, 185 Gromyko, Andrei, 25–26, 107, 108, 109, 110 Gross, Bernard, 83 Grossi, Rafael, 80, 237–38 Group of 77, 59, 154–55, 160, 174, 223 Groves, Leslie R., 19–20 Gruber, Karl, 64–65, 66, 68–69, 72, 270n21 Grümm, Hans, 61, 144–45, 166, 169 Gusterson, Hugh, 6, 154

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Hahn, Otto, 18 Hall, John, 96–97, 98, 118 Hamblin, Jacob, 131 Hammarskjöld, Dag, 85; death, 107; IAEA creation and, 45, 47, 48, 55, 66, 67, 69, 70; po­liti­cal advisors, 46, 47, 67, 69, 70; UNSAC and, 46, 48, 67, 74, 81, 82 Harrer, Gudrun, 211 Hasani, Baquir, 99 Haunschild, Hans-­Hilger, 176 Hawas, Essam El-­Din, 167–68 Haymerle, Heinz, 64 health, nuclear technology applications, 3, 81, 204–5, 240 heavy ­water, 2, 18, 136, 141–42 Heinonen, Olli, 227 Herpels, Simone, 120 Herren-­Oesch, Madeleine, 8 Herron, L. W., 179 Hexapartite Safeguards Proj­ect (HSP), 148 Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 4, 12, 17, 20, 21, 22, 31, 72–73, 193, 234 Holloway, David, 204 Holocaust, 65–66 Hong Kong, 197 Hooper, Rich, 220 Hossain, Anwar, 164–65 HSP. See Hexapartite Safeguards Proj­ect Hungarian Uprising, 60, 66, 67 Hussein, Saddam, 166, 172, 212 hydrogen bomb, 28, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 74 IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), 52; archives, 11; autonomy, 67–68; developing countries’ influence in, 13–14, 59, 80, 106, 158; headquarters, 11, 144, 174, 230; institutional history sources, 11; membership expansion, 94, 131; motto and logo, 15, 74–76; nonproliferation role, 14; as NPT verification institution, 12, 108, 111–12; objectives, 38; orga­nizational relationship with UN, 67–68, 271n40; overview, 12–15; politicization vs. technical/scientific role, 7–8, 81, 84–85, 96, 142, 164, 178, 233–38, 257n28; promotion of nuclear power, 14, 132, 149–50, 156–57, 175–76, 184–90, 199, 202, 223–34, 239–40; relation to the global nuclear order, 8–10; scientific activities, 103–4; US manipulation of,

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Index  319 223–24. See also dual mandate; safeguards; technical assistance IAEA Board of Governors, 10, 11, 53–54, 57, 68, 70, 73–74, 78–79, 86; Ad Hoc Committee on the Use of Nuclear Explosions for Peaceful Purposes (Committee 21), 135, 138; Article VI, 95–96; c­ areer diplomats on, 177; Chernobyl nuclear disaster and, 185, 186; consensus decision-­making, 55, 57, 89, 141, 158, 163–64, 176, 214, 216–17; developing countries’ influence in, 158; expansion, 95–96, 126; INFCIRC/66, 116; Ira­nian crisis and, 227–30; membership and composition, 10, 53–54, 57, 66, 73–74, 78–79, 83–84, 95–96, 126, regional dynamics and repre­sen­ta­t ion, 53–54, 57, 94–96; safeguards expansion and, 116; safeguards implementation and, 88–89; South African membership issue, 160, 161–62, 236; Soviet repre­sen­ta­t ion, 76–77; special inspections and, 238 IAEA Bulletin, 128, 169, 237 IAEA founding, 4–5, 6, 7–8, 9, 12–15, 33, 57; Eisenhower’s proposal, 4, 32, 38; Geneva meetings, 46–48, 90; safeguards issue, 46–49; UN’s role, 17, 44–46; US allies participation, 42–44; US–­Soviet Union discussions, 4, 39–42, 44, 52–53, 54–55, 59–60; Working Level Meeting on the Draft Statute of the IAEA (Washington talks), 50–55, 57. See also Conference on the Statute IAEA General Conference, 10, 13–14, 57, 78, 93–94, 152, 168–69, 178; in 1957, 66, 67; in 1958, 71–72; in 1959, 72–73, 75; in 1963, 107; in 1967, 117–18; in 1976, 153, 160; in 1979, 165, 233; in 1980, 156; in 1982, 168; Cold War ideological conflict and, 71–74; Israeli del­e­g a­t ion credentials issue, 14, 178–79, 236; South African membership issue, 96, 236; technical assistance resolution, 85 IAEA statute, 60, 269n132, 278n82; Article II, 256n8; Article IX, 59; Article XII, paragraph C, 68; Conference on the Statute, 50, 51, 55– 58, 59, 63, 65–66, 70–71, 125, 142; custodial role for nuclear waste / fuel materials, 150; draft statute, 43–44, 49–55, 57; eight-­nation negotiation group, 43–44, 49–50; finance article, 93; ratification, 58–60; safeguards is-

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sue, 88–89; twelve-­nation negotiation group, 49–50, 51, 53–54, 55 India, 7, 95, 97–98, 116, 128, 215; CIRUS reactor, 2; civilian nuclear program, 1; IAEA funding position, 93; IAEA membership, 44–45, 49, 50–51, 53–54, 57; INFCE participation, 150; NPT and, 2–3, 118, 137; as nuclear assistance recipient, 51; nuclear tests, 1–3, 12, 13, 15, 119, 131–32, 135–38, 154–55, 204, 207, 222, 255n5; nuclear weapon program, 255n4, 288n36; PNEs, 135–38; position on safeguards, 88, 89, 90, 222, 309n111; position on South African inspections, 217; rivalry with Pakistan, 136–38; technical assistance guidelines opposition, 141; Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee membership, 111 Indochina Conference (1954), 39 INFCE. See International Fuel Cycle Evaluation information circulars: INFCIRC/26, 90, 102; INFCIRC/66, 102–3, 116; INFCIRC/153, 119–26, 127, 285n78; INFCIRC/209, 134; INFCIRC/254, 139; INFCIRC/335, 199; INFCIRC/336, 199; INFIRC/449, 199; INFCIRC/546, 200 INIS. See International Nuclear Information System inspections, 234; annual number, 15; authority for, 13; Baruch Plan proposal, 24, 26, 42; environmental sampling, 219–20, 308n99; Euratom self-­inspection issue, 91, 113–14, 115; first, 88, 277n66; general, 238; “­human ­factors” issue, 23, 24; initiation, 12; of Iraqi nuclear facilities, 15, 169–70, 205–12, 217, 223–24, 239; politicization, 115; satellite imagery use, 208–9, 213; Soviet proposals, 27; special, 123, 213–14, 216–18, 219, 307n53; strategic points, 285n78, 121; style, 209–11, 239; with UNSCOM inspectors, 209–10, 211, 212, 219, 239 inspector general, 60, 79–80, 90, 116, 117, 119, 146 inspectors, 89, 142, 150–51; first, 85, 87–88; as “health inspectors,” 90–91; Noir case, 150–51; permanent/resident, 90, 214, 307n62; po­liti­cal neutrality issue, 169–72; professionalization, 143–46; recruitment, 24; relations with nuclear reactor operators, 125; Richter case, 169–72

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320  Index intelligence information, 14, 121–22, 123, 143, 221, 223–24, 239 Intermediate-­R ange Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, 192, 205, 241 International Atomic Energy Agency. See IAEA International Atomic Development Authority (IADA), 24–25, 27, 38 International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy, 103–4 International Chernobyl Proj­ect, 201 international civil servants: IAEA staff as, 1, 10, 78, 79–81, 146, 161, 169, 229, 291n101; League of Nations and, 9–10 International Fuel Cycle Evaluation (INFCE), 149, 150 International L ­ abour Organ­ization, 161 International Nuclear Information System (INIS), 104 international nuclear order, 6, 8–10, 11, 17, 27, 30, 171, 204, 259n6; inequalities in, 6, 228, 230–31 International Nuclear Safety Advisory Group, 197 international organ­izations, 8–10, 11, 15, 30; in international relations, 5–6, 256n17, 258n49 INVO. See Iraq Nuclear Verification Office Iran, 86, 223, 227; inspections, 227, 231, 240; Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), 231; NPT accession, 231; NPT noncompliance, 8, 15, 236; nuclear energy program, 12, 131, 226; Operations B and, 227; position on South African inspections, 217; sanctions against, 231; secret nuclear weapon program, 204, 226–31 Ira­nian Revolution, 165 Iran-­Iraq War, 165, 166 Iraq, 86; dismantlement of nuclear weapon program, 223–24, 228; IAEA membership, 166; inspections, 14–15, 203, 205–12, 217, 219, 223–24, 239; Israeli nuclear reactor attack, 14, 153, 165–74, 178, 183, 206, 293n6; NPT noncompliance, 203–12, 219; nuclear cooperation with France, 140, 169, 296n63; nuclear power program, 226–27; nuclear suppliers’ deals with, 140, 224, 226–27; position on South African inspections, 217; secret nuclear weapon program, 14, 131, 166, 172–74, 203, 205–12, 206, 218, 235, 296n63,

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306n43; UN sanctions, 205–6; US-­led war against, 9, 14–15, 203, 205–12, 212–13, 219, 223–24, 229 Iraq Action Team, 207, 209, 223 Iraq Nuclear Verification Office (INVO), 223, 224 Iraq Survey Group, 224 Ireland, 108, 131 Irish Resolution, 108–10, 111 Israel, 58; Atomic Energy Agency, 178; attack on Osirak reactor (Iraq), 14, 153, 165–74, 178, 183, 206, 293n6; IAEA membership, 14, 166; INFCE participation, 150; NPT and, 118, 237; nuclear cooperation with South Africa, 159, 168; occupation of southern Lebanon, 165; proposed expulsion from IAEA, 178–79, 236; SAC seat, 177; secret nuclear weapon program, 92, 118, 141, 166, 168, 228 Italy, 18, 21, 179, 219; in ENDC negotiations, 114; NSG participation, 139, 140; nuclear cooperation with Iraq, 173, 207; position on safeguards, 124, 125, 126; Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee membership, 110–11 Jackson, C. D., 35, 36, 45, 62 Jaipal, Rikhi, 137 Japan, 26, 70, 72, 122, 163, 165, 192; Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, 15, 232, 235, 239–40; HSP membership, 148; NPT and, 134, 148; NSG membership, 139; nuclear material assistance request, 86–87; safeguards and, 120, 125, 139, 219. See also Hiroshima and Nagasaki Johnson, Lyndon B., 109–10, 112, 113, 114, 116 Johnson, Shirley, 145 Joint Committee on Atomic Energy (JCAE), 37 Joint Convention on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (INFCIRC/546), 200 Joint Convention on the Safety of Spent Fuel Management and on the Safety of Radioactive Waste Management (INFCIRC/546), 200 Jolles, Paul R., 69–70, 72, 73, 79 Jungk, Robert, 150–51 Kanet, Roger E., 10 Kaniewski, Roman, 219 Kapitzka, Sergei P., 192 Kaplow, Jeffrey, 3

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Index  321 Kay, David, 207, 209, 210–11, 219, 224 Kazakhstan, 205, 240 Kellogg, Frank B., 21 Kellogg-­Briand Pact, 21, 23 Kelso, John, 187 Kennedy, John F., 77, 108, 109–10 Kennedy, Richard, 193, 195, 217 KGB, 61–62, 105, 145, 171, 177–78 Khan, A. Q., 86, 148, 204, 226–27 Khan, Munir Ahmad, 86, 136–37 Khlestov, Oleg, 183 Khrushchev, Nikita, 77, 109, 171 Kirk, Roger, 175 Kirkpatrick, Jeane, 172 Kissinger, Henry, 131 Kolodziej, Edward A., 10 Konstantinov, Leonard, 184, 189 Korean War, 29 Kratzer, Myron, 120, 121–22 Kreisky, Bruno, 99–100, 111, 167 Krige, John, 6, 60 Kuwait, Iraqi invasion of, 205–6, 211–12 laboratories, of IAEA, 200; Austrian Nuclear Research Center, Seibersdorf, 76, 103, 144, 147, 184, 200, 220; clean laboratory, 220; mobile laboratories, 103; Network of Analytical Laboratories, 147; Safeguards Analytical Laboratory, 131, 147 Laniel, Joseph, 37 Latin Amer­i­ca: General Conference seats, 96; IAEA fact-­fi nding mission to, 85–86; IAEA staff from, 80; nuclear weapon f­ ree zone, 115; technical assistance to, 85–86, 153. See also individual countries League of Nations, 9–10, 21, 22 Lebanon, 165, 215 Legasov, Valery, 195 Lemmel, Hans, 105, 106, 275n24 Lendvai, Otto, 103, 122 Lewis, W. B., 83, 84 Libya, 143, 215; NPT and, 162–63, 204; secret nuclear weapons program, 131; UN membership, 44 Lichliter, William, 207 Lilienthal, David G., 23 ­L imited Test Ban Treaty (LTBT), 109, 111, 135 Lipp­mann, Walter, 28

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logo and flag, of the IAEA, 74–76 London Club, 139–40 Loosch, Reinhard, 167, 186 Lovins, Amory B., 149 Maathai, Wagari, 225 Madagascar, 178–79 Maddock, Shane, 110 Making of the Atom Bomb, The (Rhodes), 29 Manhattan Proj­ect, 19–20, 22, 29, 34, 35, 42, 48, 61–62, 209, 259n12; Smyth Report, 111 Marine Environmental Laboratories, 103 Marshall Plan, 29 material accountancy, 121, 145, 147 Matsch, Franz, 65–66 Mazower, Mark, 8, 44, 85 McCarthy, Joseph, 58, 268n119 McKinney, Robert M., 82 McKnight, Allan, 60, 90, 91, 116, 117, 118, 214 medicine, nuclear technology applications, 4, 5, 32, 35, 88, 104, 187–88, 234, 239, 240 Meitner, Lise, 18, 62, 105 Meller-­Conrad, Adam, 72–73 Merchant, Livingston, 41–42 Merkel, Angela, 200, 232 Mexico, 80, 111, 114, 193, 199 Michaels, Michael, 81–82 ­Middle East: Board of Governors membership, 94–96; IAEA fact-­fi nding mission to, 85–86; IAEA membership, 153; nuclear weapons in, 142; technical assistance to, 153. See also individual countries Migulin, V. V., 79 military applications, of nuclear technology, 25–26; dual-­use issue, 19, 39–40, 41, 49, 88, 193–94, 234. See also nuclear diversion military attacks, on nuclear facilities. See Israel, attack on Osirak reactor (Iraq) military nuclear facilities, nuclear safety, 198–99 Minty, Abdul, 159, 160, 218, 228, 229 Molotov, Vyacheslav, 13, 22, 23–24, 38, 39–40, 47, 76–77 Morocco, 44, 216 Morozov, I. G., 174–75 Moscow Declaration, 62 Multilateral Force (MLF), 109–10, 113, 114

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322  Index Nadjakov, Emil, 72 Nakićenović, Slobodan, 2 NAM. See Non-­A ligned Movement (NAM) / non-­a ligned states Nasser, Gamal Abdel, 164 NATO, 37, 43–44, 65, 94, 165, 176; Multilateral Force and, 110 Nazis, 19, 37, 62, 65–66 negotiation theory, 112, 283n29 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 31 Nervo, Luis Padilla, 26 Netherlands, 139, 147, 148, 248, 249 New International Economic Order, 154 Nicholas II, czar of Rus­sia, 20 Niger, 173, 224 Nigeria, 94, 111, 162, 165, 209, 216 Nobel, Alfred, 21–22 Nobel Prize, 15, 20, 21–22, 48, 79, 201, 224–26, 260n22 Noir, Pierre, 150–51 Non-­A ligned Movement (NAM)  /  non-­a ligned states, 152, 158, 164, 165, 174, 175, 228; categorization, 155; director general position and, 223; ENDC membership, 110–11; Iran’s noncompliance case and, 209, 227–28, 229; nuclear disarmament position, 118; opposition to Israel, 168–69, 177, 178; opposition to South Africa, 161–62, 165, 168; safeguards position, 121; Vienna Chapter, 227 nongovernmental organ­izations (NGOs), 10, 149, 160 non-­nuclear weapon states: Iran’s nuclear program and, 228; NPT and, 6–7, 114, 126, 133, 135, 142, 239; PNEs and, 135; relations with nuclear weapon states, 153; safeguards issue, 2–3, 6–7, 114, 119, 126, 127, 194, 239; UN Conference of, 116, 128; UNSCOM inspections, 206–7; Zangger Committee membership, 134 nonproliferation: Baruch Plan, 24–26, 29, 36, 37, 60; counterproliferation mea­sures, 166–69; IAEA’s role, 14, 92, 101–2; Multilateral Force and, 109–10; oil price crisis and, 130–31; technical assistance and, 129, 153–54; as US foreign policy, 114; US–­Soviet Union collaboration, 10, 13. See also Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) Non-­Proliferation Act (1978), 149

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North K ­ orea, 5, 39, 204, 223; Agreed Framework with US, 214, 215; denuclearization agreement with South K ­ orea, 212; IAEA membership, 131, 214–15; nuclear tests, 232; as nuclear weapon state, 204, 235–36; safeguards agreement, 212; secret nuclear weapon program, 14, 212–13, 235, 306n45; technical assistance to, 214–15; withdrawal from IAEA, 232; withdrawal from NPT, 232 Norway, 76, 88, 97, 100, 134 Novacu, Valeriu, 82 Novikov, N. V., 76 NPT. See Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) nuclear accidents, 14, 15, 91; Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant disaster, 15, 232, 235; at military nuclear facilities, 198–99; notification system, 198–99; Three Mile Island nuclear power plant, 150, 156, 157, 191, 233, 239–40. See also Chernobyl nuclear disaster “nuclear apartheid,” 126 nuclear-­armed submarines, as Multilateral Force, 109–10, 113, 114 nuclear arms control: bilateral agreements, 205; definition, 28; historical perspective, 16–17; as IAEA objective, 38; treaties, 192–93, 241. See also nuclear disarmament; nuclear proliferation nuclear arms race, 28, 31–32, 35–36, 192 Nuclear Data Unit/Section, 104, 105 nuclear deterrence, 21, 39, 124, 204 nuclear disarmament, 17–18, 228, 241; Atoms for Peace and, 32–33, 36, 38, 39–42; Cold War ideological conflict over, 71–73, 191, 193; definition, 28; Eisenhower’s position on, 32, 43, 44; ENDC and, 106, 110–15, 116–17; global movement for, 71–72; historical perspective, 17–18, 20–24; IAEA’s role, 71, 72, 74, 102, 112, 181, 193, 236, 241; NPT and, 114, 118, 228, 237; Oppenheimer on, 27; Soviet proposals and support for, 27, 29, 39, 72, 74, 102, 193, 194, 236; UNAEC negotiations and, 22–28, 30, 33, 74 nuclear diversion, 89, 235; detection and prevention, 26; Geneva discussions of, 47–49; by Iraq, 169; NPT and, 123–24, 140–43; punitive mea­sures for, 68; safeguards and, 101, 102–3

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Index  323 nuclear domino theory, 92, 114 nuclear energy, 16–17, 85; discovery and development, 18–20; as nuclear power source, 32, 35; paradox of, 25–26. See also nuclear power plants and reactors nuclear exports: control, 139, 149, 154–55; to non-­NPT states, 132–34. See also nuclear suppliers; Nuclear Suppliers Group (SG); Zangger Committee nuclear fissile materials, 12, 19; control, 23; nuclear power reactor–­produced, 40, 41, 49, 149, 169; pool/stockpiles, 36, 38, 41, 43, 52, 58–59, 63–65, 87, 99, 101–2, 240. See also plutonium; uranium; thorium nuclear fission, 18–19 nuclear fuel: Committee of Assurances of Supply, 150. See also nuclear fissile materials nuclear fuel cycle, 149, 155, 228 nuclear fuel cycle technical assistance, 3–4, 204 nuclear industry, 100, 132, 183, 185 nuclear materials: accountancy, 121, 145, 147; black market, 226–27; theft, 15; transport, 91. See also nuclear fissile materials; nuclear waste; plutonium; uranium; thorium “nuclear orientalism,” 154 nuclear physicists, 16, 17, 105 nuclear physics, 18 nuclear power: developing countries’ demand, 154–58; global patterns of use, 235; IAEA’s promotion of, 14, 132, 149–50, 156–57, 175–76, 184–90, 199, 202, 223–34, 239–40; oil price crisis and, 130–31; public attitudes ­toward, 8, 35, 91, 149–50, 156, 157, 175–76, 194, 197, 234–35 nuclear power plants and reactors, 19, 191; accidents, 91; AS­T RA (Austrian Research Center), 103; CIRUS (India), 136, 138; for developing countries, 155–56; Dimona (Israel), 92, 118; as dual-­use technology, 19, 39–40, 41, 49, 88, 193–94, 234; NORA, 88; Obninsk (USSR), 98; Osirak/Tammuz-1 (Iraq), Israeli attack on, 14, 153, 165–74, 180, 181, 183, 293n6; plutonium by-­product, 19, 40, 41, 49, 149, 169, 193; RBMK-­t ype, 182, 192, 193–94; SAFARI-1 (South Africa), 160; safeguards inspections, 117; swimming-­pool research-­t ype, 46; Yankee (US), 102

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nuclear proliferation, 57; definition, 28; domino theory, 92, 114; horizontal, 40, 42; vertical, 40, 42 nuclear safety, 15, 90–91; Basic Safety Standards for Radiation Protection (IAEA), 91; ­after Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 196–99; Eklund on, 156–57; international conventions on, 198–200 Nuclear Safety Standards, 197 nuclear security, 15, 52, 139–40, 222–23, 240 nuclear suppliers, 133–34, 139, 171; black market, 204, 226–27 Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), 139–40 nuclear technology: black market, 204, 226– 27; Soviet, 191–92, 235 nuclear terrorism, 15, 52, 139–40, 180, 240 nuclear tests, 10, 28, 204; bans, 109, 192–93; number of, 28; radioactive fallout from, 74, 135, 137; sites, 218; under­ground, 135, 136, 159, 255n5. See also ­under individual countries nuclear warfare, 13 nuclear waste, 91, 149, 150, 198, 200 “nuclear watchdog,” IAEA as, 2, 204 nuclear weapon f­ ree zones, 115, 218 nuclear weapons bans. See nuclear disarmament nuclear weapon states: expansion, 13; horizontal proliferation, 40; NPT and, 6–7, 126; relations with non-­nuclear weapon states, 153. See also u ­ nder individual countries Oak Ridge National Laboratory, 46 Oceanography Institute, Monaco, 103 oil price crisis, 130–31 oil-­producing states. See Organ­ization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) “One World or None” slogan, 17 OAPEC. See Organ­ization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries OPEC. See Organ­ization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Opelz, Merle, 117, 161 Operational Safety Review Team, 197 Operation Candor, 35, 36, 40 Operation Wheaties, 36 Oppenheimer, J. Robert, 19–20, 23, 27–28, 35, 105, 211 Oppenheimer Panel, 35

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324  Index Organisation for Economic Co-­operation and Development, Nuclear Energy Agency, 215–16 orga­nizational and institutional structure, of IAEA, 10, 78–106, 274n4, 275n5; consolidation, 103–6; reform during 1990s, 221–22; staff, 78–81. See also bureaucracy Organ­ization of African Unity, 200 Organ­ization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC), 130 Organ­ization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), 130, 131, 139–40, 191, 287n2 Osgood, Kenneth, 33 Osredkar, Milan, 165 Pakistan, 50, 131; Atomic Energy Commission, 86; as IAEA founding state, 44–45; INFCE participation, 150; nuclear program, 86; nuclear technology acquisition, 140; nuclear tests, 222; as nuclear weapon state, 204; reaction to India’s nuclear tests, 136–38; secret nuclear weapon program, 137, 142–43, 148, 218, 289n47, 290n84; technical assistance to, 142; uranium enrichment program, 142–43, 290n84 Palestine Liberation Organ­ization, 153 Palomo Corretjer, L., 120 Pandit, Vijaya Lakshmi, 31 Paris Peace Conference (1919), 22 peaceful nuclear explosions (PNEs), 1–3, 132, 135–38, 141, 288n34 peace movements, 20, 71–72 ­People’s Republic of China, 215, 223; IAEA membership, 39, 55–56, 71, 118, 131; as Iraq’s nuclear supplier, 226–27; NPT accession, 222; nuclear power plants and reactors, 191, 197, 235; nuclear tests, 106, 114, 204; as nuclear weapon state, 107, 238; UNAEC membership, 22; UN Security Council membership, 22 Perpetual Menace, A (Walker), 9 Perricos, Dimitri, 1, 2, 15, 207–8, 255n1 Persian Gulf War, inspections and, 14–15, 203, 205–12, 219, 223–24 Philippines, 50, 174 Plokhy, Serhii, 196 plutonium, 2, 136, 141–42; environmental sampling, 220; isotope Pu-239, 19; as nuclear

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reactor by-­product, 2, 19, 40, 41, 49, 136, 149, 169, 193, 194 plutonium implosion-­t ype bomb, 20 plutonium repro­cessing, 46, 130–31, 136, 140, 149, 213, 229–30; ban, 149 Poland, 26, 110–11, 116, 139, 191 policymaking organs, of IAEA, 236. See also IAEA Board of Governors; IAEA General Conference Popović, Dragoslav, 80 Portugal, 42–43, 118, 173 Preparatory Commission (PrepCom), 66, 67, 69–70, 78, 81–82, 97, 271n35 Prize, John H., 149 Pugwash Conference of Science and World Affairs, 71–72, 74, 202 Qatar, 153 Quester, George H., 120, 125 Raab, Julius, 73 Rabi, Isidor, 47–49, 81, 83, 84, 118, 266n75 Radchenko, Sergey, 29 radiation/radioactivity, 15, 18, 21; environmental effects, 74; exposure effects, 156–57; technical, medical and agricultural applications, 86. See also radioactive fallout radioactive fallout: global monitoring network, 196; from nuclear accidents, 182, 183–84, 186, 191, 196, 197–98, 201; from nuclear tests, 74, 135, 137 radioisotopes, 88; Department of Research and Isotopes, 78, 79, 207; training centers and programs, 94, 103 Randers, Gunnar, 97, 100 Randow, Gero, 241 Rasbitnoi, Wadim, 171 Reagan, Ronald, 179, 192–93 Red Book, 215–16 Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy. See Acheson-­Lilienthal Report Republic of China, 39, 55, 86 research activities: bud­get, 94; Department of Research and Isotopes, 78, 79, 147, 207; fellowships, 87 Rhodes, Richard, 209 Rice, Condoleeza, 8, 223 Richter, Roger, 169–72

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Index  325 Riosalido, Jesus, 125 Ritter, Scott, 209–10, 306n32 Rockwood, Laura, 220, 224, 307n52, 308n86, 309n121–22 Romania, 70, 82, 110–11, 154, 155, 178, 207, 214 Rometsch, Rudolph, 119, 188, 189, 190 Röntgen, Wilhelm Conrad, 18 Roo­se­velt, Franklin D., 17, 35 Rosen, Morris, 184–85, 188, 189, 193–94, 201 Rosenberg, Ethel, 34 Rosenberg, Julius, 34 Rouhani, Hassan, 231 Rusk, Dean, 107–8, 109 Russell, Bertrand, 71 Rus­sian Federation, 203, 223 SAC. See Scientific Advisory Committee safeguards, 5, 12, 110, 115, 117, 146–49, 188, 234, 238–39; Additional Protocol, 218–22, 238; ­under Baruch Plan, 24–25; bilateral agreements, 120, 179; broader conclusion concept, 231; bud­get and financing, 94, 126–27; comprehensive agreements, 119–20, 121, 126, 127, 131, 133, 142, 146, 171, 198, 209, 212, 213, 235; as confidence-­building mea­sure, 124–25, 239; criticisms, 150–51; definition, 4; developing countries’ position on, 56–57, 89, 238; development, 22, 23, 88–92; as ENDC negotiation issue, 112–14, 115; Euratom, 196; expansion, 100–102, 119–20; failure, 230; first guidelines document (INFCIRC/26), 90, 102; Geneva negotiations on, 46–49; GOV/334 document, 89; as IAEA draft negotiation issue, 41–42; implementation guidelines, 88–89, 90, 102; INFIRC/153, 119–26, 127; inhibitory effect on nuclear proliferation, 5, 6; Model Additional Protocol, 221–22; noncompliance, 68, 124, 169, 172; for non-­signatories of NPT, 139; nuclear deterrent effect, 235, 238; for nuclear exports, 132–34; nuclear material accountancy, surveillance, and containment mandate, 121, 145, 147, 234; Osirak nuclear reactor attack and, 165–74; reframing, 180–81; “The Safeguards System of the IAEA,” 101; satellite imagery use, 221, 239; Small Quantities Protocol, 235; Soviet support, 109; state-­level concept, 231; strengthening, 218–22, 238,

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239; technical assistance issue, 126–29, 132, 153–154; UNAEC negotiations, 26, 27, 238; US evaluation, 179–80; US support, 111–12, 127; verification methods, 4; voluntary offer agreements, 102, 194. See also inspections Safeguards Committee (Committee 22), 119–26, 122, 133–34, 218, 219, 221 safeguards division. See Department of Safeguards and Inspection Salzburg Conference for a Non-­Nuclear ­Future, 149–50 Sarkar, Jayita, 6 satellite imagery, 221, 239 Saudi Arabia, 165, 176, 215, 235 Scheinman, Lawrence, 11, 140 Scheljev, Victor, 145 Schiff, Benjamin, 11, 129, 140, 153 Scientific Advisory Committee (SAC), 79, 81, 90, 177, 185; dissolution, 106 Scientific and Technical Commission report, 28 Seaborg, Glenn T., 116 secretariat (IAEA), 14, 74, 78, 156; Chernobyl nuclear disaster response, 183, 190, 194, 195, 196, 198; Israeli attack on Osirak reactor (Iraq) issue, 169; NPT and, 108; nuclear export controls issue, 132; nuclear safety activities, 197, 198; PNEs issue, 135–36, 138; politicization, 237; safeguards issues, 89, 90–91, 101, 117, 120, 213–14, 219, 220, 221, 231; SAC establishment and, 79, 82–83; South Africa’s IAEA status issue, 160, 162; technical assistance issue, 86, 140–42 secret nuclear weapon programs, 6, 13, 14, 204, 239. See also ­under individual countries Seligman, Henry, 78, 79, 84, 85, 103, 104, 105 September 11, 2001, 222–23, 240 Shaker, Mohamed, 113, 114, 177–78 Sharpe, Bernard, 103 Siazon, Domingo L., 155, 174, 176, 178, 179 Sich, Alexander R., 195 Singh, S. K., 157, 158 Skobeltzyn, Dimitri, 47, 48 Smiling Bud­d ha nuclear test, 1–3, 135–38, 204, 207 Smith, Gerard, 40, 48–49, 138, 142, 143, 162, 163, 174–75 Smith, Roger M., 80

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326  Index Smyth, Henry DeWolf, 97, 111 Smyth Report, 111 Sokolowski, Henry, 140 Solano, Victor Manuel, 193 Sole, Donald, 80, 95, 96, 125, 268n102 South Africa, 67, 80, 90, 93, 122, 123, 159–65, 295n49; apartheid policy, 10, 14, 53–54, 95, 153, 159–65, 168, 180, 203, 215–16, 218, 236; Board of Governors membership, 94–95, 160, 161–65; civilian nuclear program, 164; IAEA General Conference membership, 96, 236; IAEA membership, 14, 42–44, 94–95, 159–60, 216–17; INFCE participation, 150; influence in IAEA, 159–60, 161–62, 164, 215–16, 236; inspections (regular), 220; inspections (special), 216–18; NPT accession, 118, 162–63; nuclear cooperation with Israel, 159, 168; secret nuclear weapon program, 10, 14, 153, 159, 203–4, 216, 217–18, 235, 293n5; UN arms embargo, 160 Southeast Asia Treaty Organ­ization, 50 South K ­ orea, 39, 141, 191; denuclearization agreement with North K ­ orea, 212; IAEA fact-­ finding mission to, 85–86; nuclear power capability, 155; nuclear technology acquisition, 140 South Vietnam, 86 Soviet Union, 80; Atomic Committee, 100; Atoms for Peace discussions with US, 46–47; bilateral nuclear assistance treaties, 45–46; disarmament proposals, 25–26; dissolution, 5–6, 9, 14, 203, 206; in ENDC negotiations, 110–11, 113–15; glasnost, 194–96; IAEA funding position, 93–94; invasion of Af­ghan­i­ stan, 165; as Iraq’s nuclear supplier, 226–27; NSG membership, 139; nuclear cooperation with Iraq, 173; nuclear tests, 35–36, 77; as nuclear weapon state, 28, 31–32, 107, 261n49; participation in IAEA founding, 4, 39–42, 44–45, 49, 58; position on safeguards, 90, 109, 127, 238; position on technical assistance, 141; reaction to Indian nuclear tests, 137, 138; secret nuclear weapon program, 26, 28; UNAEC and, 22, 25–27; UN Security Council membership, 22–23; Zangger Committee and, 134. See also United States–­Soviet Union relations space race, 71

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Spain, 125, 165, 223 “spirit of Vienna,” 73, 237 Staber, Johann, 174 staff, of IAEA: as international civil servants, 1, 10, 78–81, 79–81, 146, 161, 169, 229, 291n101; po­l iti­c al neutrality issue, 171–72; Soviet members, 105–6. See also secretariat Stalin, Josef, 17, 35, 54 Standing Advisory Committee on Safeguards Implementation (SACSI), 146, 219–20 Stevenson, Adlai, 107 Strassman, Fritz, 18 Strauss, Franz Joseph, 112 Strauss, Lewis, 36, 37–38, 45, 63–64, 65, 68, 70, 92, 115 strontium-90, 74 Sudirdjo, Artati, 186 Sudjarwo, Tjondronegoro, 72, 97 Suez Canal crisis, 58, 60, 268n118 Sweden, 168, 197; Atomic Energy Com­pany, 97; in ENDC negotiations, 114; NSG membership, 139; nuclear energy debate (1970s), 186–87; nuclear weapon program, 98–99; Zangger Committee and, 134. See also Blix, Hans; Eklund, Sigvard Swope, Herbert B., 28 Taiwan, 131, 141, 150, 155, 191 Tallawy, Merwat, 216–17 Tanzania, 141, 153, 216 Tchernychev, Ilya S., 46 technical assistance, 2, 4, 12, 60; beginnings, 85–87; bud­get, 93–94; developing countries’ demand for, 153, 154–58; fact-­fi nding missions for, 85–86; as IAEA mandate, 4; ­limited to NPT signatories, 141; nonproliferation and, 5–6, 129, 135–38, 140–43; reassessment, 13; safeguards and, 126–29, 142. See also civilian applications, of nuclear technology Teller, Edward, 37 Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee, 108, 110–11 Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), 23, 35 terrorism, 185, 222–23; nuclear, 15, 139–40, 180, 240 Thalberg, Hans, 66

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Index  327 Tham, Carl, 167, 168 Third World, 6, 73. See also developing countries; Group of 77 thorium, 19, 23, 30 Three Mile Island nuclear accident, 150, 156, 157, 183, 191, 233, 239–40 Three-­Nation Declaration on Atomic Energy, 22, 41–42 Timerbaev, Roland, 100, 110, 209 transboundary effects, 197–98 Treaty of Peace, Friendship and Cooperation (Soviet Union–­India), 138 Treaty of Tlatelolco, 115 Treaty of Versailles, 20 Treaty on the Non-­Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), 2–3, 13, 27, 106, 107–29, 188, 238, 255n6; African states’ participation, 216; Article IV, 227–28; discrimination ­toward non-­nuclear weapon states, 6–7, 120, 126, 135, 137, 154, 227–28, 230–31, 237; ENDC negotiations regarding, 106, 110–15, 116–17; goal, 109; IAEA Safeguards Committee and, 119–25; IAEA’s mandate u ­ nder, 13, 108, 111–12, 116–17, 234–35, 237; indefinite extension, 218, 220; nuclear disarmament component, 114; nuclear exports control issue, 131–34; PNEs and, 135–38; ratification, 118, 119; Review and Extension Conference, 220; Review Conference, 238 Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (2017), 8, 241 trigger list, 134 Trilateral Initiative, 205 Trivedi, V.C., 128 Truman, Harry S., 24, 33, 35 Trump, Donald, 231 tsetse fly eradication, 5, 204–5 Tunisia, 44, 95, 176, 216, 218 Turkey, 45, 86, 94, 165 Tuwaitha Nuclear Center, Iraq: American hostages, 219; inspections, 206, 207–8. See also Israel, attack on Osirak reactor (Iraq) Ukraine, 56–57, 195, 205. See also Chernobyl nuclear disaster UNAEC. See United Nations Atomic Energy Commission

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UNDP. See United Nations Development Programme UNESCO. See United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organ­ization Ungerer, Werner, 123, 125 United Arab Emirates (UAE), 131, 153, 235 United Kingdom, 47, 58, 80, 83, 102, 212, 223; HSP membership, 148; IAEA funding position, 93; Manhattan Proj­ect involvement, 20; NSG membership, 139; nuclear tests, 204; as nuclear weapon state, 28, 31–32, 107; participation in IAEA founding, 42–43, 44–45, 58; safeguards position, 127; Ten-­Nation Disarmament Committee membership, 110–11; Three-­Nation Declaration on Atomic Energy, 22; UNAEC membership, 22; UN Security Council membership, 22 United Nations (UN): Charter, 60; creation, 22–23; headquarters, 63, 174; IAEA representative to, 177–78; orga­nizational relationship with IAEA, 67–68, 271n40 United Nations Atomic Energy Commission (UNAEC), 17–18, 52, 67, 236, 260n26; Baruch Plan and, 24–26; First Committee, 44–45; negotiations for, 22–23, 24–30, 33 United Nations Conference for the Promotion of International Co-­operation in the Peaceful Uses of Nuclear Energy, 157–58, 191 United Nations Conference of Non-­Nuclear Weapon States, 116, 128 United Nations Conference on the Peaceful Uses of Atomic Energy, 51, 85, 104; post-­ conference technical meetings, 46–49 United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, 154 United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), 155 United Nations Disarmament Commission, 28 United Nations Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC), 68 United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organ­ization (UNESCO), 67, 161, 187–88 United Nations Environment Program, 149, 202 United Nations Expanded Program for Technical Assistance, 87

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328  Index United Nations General Assembly, 22, 57–58, 71; Comprehensive Nuclear-­Test-­Ban Treaty, 196; developing countries’ membership, 44–45; First Committee, Disarmament and International Security Committee, 32, 43, 44–45, 50, 265n56; international regulation of nuclear technologies resolution, 9; relationship with IAEA, 68; Resolution 1380, 108–9; Resolution 1665, 109; role in IAEA creation, 17, 44–46; Second UN Fund for Economic Development (Special Fund), 85, 87; 17 Sustainable Development Goals, 239; South Africa’s suspension, 13; Suez crisis response, 58; Third World interests, 73 United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), 62 United Nations Industrial Development Organ­ ization, 174 United Nations Intellectual History Proj­ect, 10 United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC), 223 United Nations Scientific Advisory Committee (UNSAC), 46, 48, 49, 67, 74, 81–85; US-­ Soviet conflict over, 81, 82 United Nations Scientific Committee on the Effects of Atomic Radiation, 74, 201 United Nations Security Council, 14–15, 22, 26, 28, 67, 152; “Iran deal,” 231; NPT noncompliance cases, 238; relationship with IAEA, 68; Resolution 487, 172, 173; Resolution 678, 205–6, 207; Resolution 687, 219; Resolution 1441, 223; safeguards noncompliance cases, 209, 212, 215, 229–30; UNAEC negotiations and, 27, 28; US invasion of Iraq and, 223–24; vetoes of resolutions, 28 United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM), 205–6, 209–10, 219, 239 United States, 6, 80, 165; boycott and re-­ engagement with IAEA, 178–80; in ENDC negotiations, 110–15; HSP membership, 148; IAEA funding position, 93; nonproliferation act, 149; NSG membership, 139; ratification of IAEA statute, 58; reaction to Indian nuclear test, 137, 138; safeguards evaluation, 179–80; safeguards position, 111–12, 127; support for IAEA, 4, 6; technical assistance promotion, 129; Three-­Nation Declaration on Atomic Energy, 22, 41–42; UNAEC negotia-

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tions, 22–23, 24–30, 33; UN Security Council membership, 22; Zangger Committee and, 134. See also Atoms for Peace United States Arms Control and Disarmament Agency (ACDA), 112, 173–74 United States Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), 33, 34–35, 43, 63–64, 90, 116, 283n26; General Advisory Committee, 48 United States Department of Defense, 112 United States Department of State, 174, 234; Atomic Energy Affairs section, 48; position on IAEA headquarters location, 63–64, 65, 66 United States Foreign Relations Committee, 169–70 United States Mission to the International Organ­ization, 154–55 United States Senate, 58, 170 United States–­Soviet Union relations, 146; ­after Chernobyl nuclear disaster, 190–94; cooperation on safeguards, 100–101, 102–3, 106, 132, 133; deliberations on Eklund’s successor, 174–76; ENDC negotiations, 110–11, 113–14, 115; IAEA director posts discussed, 69–70; nonproliferation, 118; NPT resolution, 117–18; nuclear arms control agreements, 205; nuclear nonproliferation cooperation, 13; UNAEC negotiations, 25–27, 29–30 University of Vienna, physics library, 65 UNSAC. See United Nations Scientific Advisory Committee UNSCOM. See United Nations Special Commission uranium, 4, 86–87, 142; availability, 41; high enriched (HEU), 159, 169, 173; isotopes, 19, 61, 86; U-234, 51; U-235, 19, 58, 147; U-238, 147 uranium ammunition, 218 uranium enrichment, 19, 61, 130–31, 141–42, 150; clandestine, 132; electromagnetic isotope separation method, 209, 219; gas centrifuge method, 61, 132, 133, 147, 148, 209; gaseous diffusion method, 147, 209; inspections of facilities, 147–48; Ira­nian program, 227, 229, 230, 231; Pakistani program, 142–43, 290n84; Urenco consortium, 147–48 uranium hex­a ­fluor­ide, 229 uranium mines/mining, 10, 23, 54, 160

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Index  329 uranium oxide, 43, 229 uranium-­producing states, 43–44, 52, 53, 87, 90, 121, 148, 160, 164 uranium repro­cessing, 130–31, 136 Urenco, 147–48 Urquhart, Brian, 69 Usmani, Isharat Hussain, 127–28 U Thant, Sithu, 107, 109, 113, 120 van Wyk, Anna-­Mart, 159 Vela incident, 159, 294n34 Vendryes, Georges, 188 Venezuela, 141, 165 verification, 241; applied to non-­nuclear weapon states, 126; discriminatory practices ­toward developing countries, 56; in­de­pen­ dent, 122; u ­ nder NPT, 13, 108, 122–23, 126; nuclear disarmament and, 241. See also inspections; safeguards Vienna, as IAEA headquarters, 12–13, 61–77, 270n21; Austria’s promotion of, 64–66; se­ lection of, 63–68 Vienna International Centre (VIC), 11, 174, 177, 230 Vienna Summit (1961), 77 Vietnam War, 114–15 V. I. Lenin Nuclear Power Plant, See Chernobyl nuclear disaster Vinca Institute of Nuclear Sciences, Belgrade, 91 voluntary offer agreements, 102, 194 von Schirnding, K. R. S., 162, 164 von Suttner, Bertha, 20, 21–22 Wadsworth, James, 52–53, 59 Waldheim, Kurt, 120

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Walker, Peter, 221 Walser, Gladys, 45, 56 Warsaw Pact, 115, 116 Washington Conference (1921 and 1922), 21 Washington Talks (Working Level Meeting on the Draft Statute of the IAEA), 50–55, 57, 63 weapons of mass destruction, 212, 223 Weichselbraun, Anna, 231 Weiss, Leonard, 3 Weisskopf, Victor, 62, 65 Wells, H. G., The World Set F ­ ree, 16–17, 18, 21 West Germany. See Federal Republic of Germany Winkler, Pavel, 66 Working Level Meeting on the Draft Statute of the IAEA (Washington Talks), 50–55, 57, 63 World Bank World Development Indicators, 7 World Health Organ­ization (WHO), 14, 30, 67, 117, 161, 187–88, 202 World Set F ­ ree, The (Wells), 16–17, 18, 21 World Trade Center, terrorist attack, 222–23, 240 Yeltsin, Boris, 205 Yugo­slavia, 80, 86, 155, 165, 168, 218 Zambia, 216 Zangger, Claude, 133–34, 176 Zangger Committee, 133–34, 139, 140, 148, 288n21 Zanzibar, 204–5 Zarubin, Georgiy, 52–53, 55 Zifferero, Maurizio, 207 Zippe, Gernot, 61

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