| Popis: |
The nuclear safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy Agency—the world’s most widely accepted scheme of multilateral verification—entails an inescapable paradox. While it is based on strictly scientific terms and methods of data collection and evaluation, equality of treatment and meticulous observance of non-discrimination among members of the Agency, its frame of reference is avowedly political, shaped by historical contingencies, steeped in the gradients of power and influence, prejudiced on mutual distrust and jealousy as is typical of international politics. The evolution of the safeguards system over time has brought this paradox more sharply to the fore. As demands on the technical accuracy and reliability of IAEA verification were being continuously increased, so was the ambition of Member States to bring their influence to bear on the definition and operation of safeguards. Efforts to resolve the paradox have resulted in an increasingly intimate meshing of politics and verification. By way of shifting the focus of safeguards from nuclear material accountancy and facility monitoring to “the State as a whole”, and more recently the adoption of the “State-level concept”, it is now the correlation of international power itself which has become dominant in the direction of the Agency’s safeguards effort. Balancing these competing interests will remain a big challenge for the IAEA. 2018 afterthoughts on current developments at the end of the chapter reconfirm the inherent dilemma of international verification. |
