EFFECTIVE SAFEGUARDS FOR THE PREVENTION OF NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION: THE TRADITIONAL INTERNATIONAL SAFEGUARDS SYSTEM AND A PROPOSAL TO COMPLEMENT THE SYSTEM

Abstract

Since the early 1990s, when clandestine nuclear activities in Iraq and in North Korea came to light, the international community has been trying to overcome nuclear proliferation challenges by building measures based on the existing IAEA safeguards system. The Model Additional Protocol to the IAEA Comprehensive Safeguards Agreement, which expands the IAEA’s authority to access relevant locations and to obtain relevant information in a country under the safeguards agreement, was introduced in 1995 to this end. Prominent scholars and experts continue to discuss and propose measures to strengthen the current IAEA safeguards system. The IAEA General Conference started adopting resolutions towards this end in 1991, and it has also become as an essential subject at the NPT Review Process since 1995. Strengthening of the IAEA safeguards system has been regarded as one of the main tasks of the international community to overcome nuclear proliferation challenges and prevent cases such as Iraq and North Korea. The question remains, however, whether an approach based on strengthening the current regime will be an effective way to meet those challenges. Even with the considerable efforts by the international community to improve international safeguards after the cases of Iraq and North Korea, the IAEA found further non-compliance cases, Iran and Syria. Most recently, the IAEA tried to strengthen its traditional safeguards based on the new “State-level concept (SLC)”, which can be regarded as a transformation from the traditional quantitative safeguards approach to a qualitative approach in designing safeguards procedures. However, the SLC has been criticized by a number of IAEA Member States. The author identifies and examines aspects that have been disregarded in the existing research on the international safeguards, and argues that strengthening the current international safeguards system is not the sole path forward. Rather, it is submitted that the international community should find another approach, starting with identifying the problems of the current system and their causes.In this paper, following the introduction in Chapter I, Chapter II, “International Control of Nuclear Energy and Safeguards As its Means”, reviews existing research and identifies the key elements that contributed to the establishment of the current international nuclear safeguards system. It further examines the nature of the traditional international safeguards system, the IAEA NPT safeguards system, as a universal international safeguards system (1970-present), by reviewing the origins and the development of the international control of nuclear energy and of nuclear safeguards after World War II. Chapter III, “International Safeguards As a Means to Assure Nuclear Non-proliferation”, presents new research. The Chapter discusses the shortcomings of the current IAEA safeguards system in three aspects: institutional, political, and technical, and identifies the reasons why strengthening the current IAEA NPT safeguards system is not an effective way to address the current and future challenges in ensuring nuclear non-proliferation. The IAEA NPT safeguards, being a universal system, need to be as non-discriminatory, as objective (i.e. based on quantitative indicators), and as cost effective as possible. The author argues that effective safeguards need not necessarily be non-discriminatory, need not necessarily be objective, and should not be affected too much by cost-effectiveness. In Chapter IV, “Mutual Safeguards System As a Means to Complement Current International Safeguards System”, existing regional safeguards systems will be examined, in particular whether those systems, which are reciprocal in nature and do not require universality, could complement the current international safeguards system and contribute to nuclear non-proliferation. Taking the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Material (ABACC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) as examples, this Chapter examines whether non-universal but mutual safeguards systems could overcome the shortcomings of the IAEA NPT safeguards system. In conclusion, it is stressed in Chapter V that a mutual safeguards system that does not have a universal nature could overcome the problems of the current IAEA NPT safeguards, and complement the traditional universal international safeguards system. Because of its universality, the traditional international safeguards system, namely the IAEA NPT safeguards system, alone cannot be effective in preventing nuclear proliferation. This research indicates that a greater acknowledgement of the role that mutual systems, such as the regional ones in force under the ABACC and the EURATOM, may play in the international nuclear non-proliferation regime, and a greater understanding of the differing objectives of those regimes that allow them to be more effective than the current approach, which is based on strengthening the IAEA NPT safeguards system, can play an important role in strengthening international nuclear non-proliferation.