Last month I published a journal article on this subject, part of a long-term policy research project to explore the concept of irreversibility in nuclear disarmament as called for under, inter alia, the 2000 NPT Review Conference Final Document. This project is underway at a consortium steered by King’s College London; it includes the Verification Research, Training, and Information Centre (Vertic), and has been supported by the U.K. and Norwegian governments.
The above-linked piece reflects my cumulative thinking about this topic since the second half of 2022. At that time, under the premise that future nuclear weapons disarmament will have to be verified to be credible, Vertic asked me to lead a workshop it planned to run out of London in February 2023 on “Irreversibility of Nuclear Disarmament and IAEA Safeguards,” and to assist Vertic in moving forward with its efforts which had begun back in 2011 with an initial seminal paper it produced on the subject of irreversibility in nuclear disarmament.
My October 2024 paper incorporated the expert discussion at the Vertic London workshop as well as my subsequent presentations to, and discussion at, two follow-on meetings: 1.) an event convened at Wilton Park, U.K. in March 2024 on “Irreversibility in Nuclear Disarmament,” and 2.) an event at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP) on “Nuclear Safeguards and Irreversibility in the Reduction and Elimination of Military Nuclear Stockpiles,” convened with the German government-supported academic research consortium Vespotec in April 2024. These meetings were attended by about two dozen international experts in disarmament and arms control research, nuclear nonproliferation diplomacy, and nuclear verification. In December the Journal of Peace and Nuclear Disarmament will include my paper together with several papers by other workshop participants, in a publication offering a compendium of current ongoing research and thinking about this subject. Release of these papers will augment two special issues previously published by the journal on the topic of irreversibility.
What follows in this blog post is based on informal comments I made and notes I took at the three meetings in 2023 and 2024, including in response to questions and remarks from other participants about my presentations.
Who cares?
So to begin with: Why should anyone care about this? After all, there is no nuclear disarmament underway presently and the elimination of atomic arsenals is not a current priority of nuclear-armed states. Europe, where this policy research was principally carried out and is getting official support, appears instead beset with threats on a number of fronts: Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, climate change, unimpeded migration, economic stagnation, seething political populism and extremism, also abetted by escalating conflict in the Middle East. As long as a nuclear-armed revisionist state is hell-bent on occupying a neighboring country’s territory and waging war on civilian targets with impunity, what in the country I live in is sometimes sanctimoniously called the Europäische Friedensordnung is, frankly, resting on sand.
So what is the answer to this question about who cares and why? There are two. The simple answer is that decisions by governments to support this research were made well over a decade ago when Europe was in a different place. The second answer is that beginning back then and since, forward-looking smart people grasped that the post-Cold War momentum for nuclear arms reductions would not automatically sustain itself, but also that the commitment to nuclear restraint by 186 non-nuclear-weapon states parties to a nearly-universal treaty is founded in part upon an understanding that in the long term there will be nuclear disarmament, it’s part of the deal. That prospect may have been foolishly taken for granted by many in the heady days after Helsinki, but even today I could invent scenarios in which–as in the 1980s–nuclear-armed states might agree in the near future, including in the case of a burgeoning nuclear arms race or intensifying geo-strategic conflict, to step back from the brink. Preparing the ground work for such a moment is in humanity’s interest.
Who Verifies Disarmament?
Could IAEA safeguards serve as the basis or a basis for verification in a future nuclear disarmament mechanism? In principle, yes. The IAEA’s member states could authorize the IAEA Secretariat to participate in or contribute to this, but only after having considered hard facts concerning both the political will of member states and the IAEA’s resources (including personnel, funding, technology, and physical assets). That might mean that the IAEA would not take any formal responsibility or commit significant resources in this area.
A major consideration in IAEA decision making on this matter would be the proposed scope of IAEA verification. The establishment of a global nuclear disarmament regime would likely happen over a timeline, beginning with an initiation stage including state declarations, an intermediate stage of dismantlement and disposition activities, and an end or “equilibrium” state where locations and material inventories are subject to verification. The later in the disarmament process the IAEA would be called upon to do verification, the fewer technical and political challenges may arise, because the activities in the end state will likely resemble current and routine IAEA safeguards activities. Separately from disarmament verification, of course, the IAEA could contribute toward a world without nuclear weapons by implementing safeguards to verify absence of production of weapon-grade materials under a Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty. The earlier in the process of nuclear disarmament the IAEA would get involved, the more challenges for the IAEA would likely arise, especially should the IAEA’s role begin following declaration by states of their nuclear weapons material inventories with materials still in forms that may reveal nuclear weapon-sensitive information, and/or should the IAEA be called upon to do verification at locations where nuclear weapons information would be at large.
Given this background, the architects of a global nuclear disarmament regime might elect to set up a separate arrangement apart from the IAEA to assure that, during the initial stage of establishment of the disarmament mechanism, all items subject to disarmament and verification would be accounted for, and their nuclear weapon signatures erased or masked, prior to submitting them to the IAEA for any monitoring or verification activities. Where the IAEA might enter the disarmament verification picture might be informed by the experience of the IAEA in the Trilateral Initiative with the United States and the former Soviet Union.
In any event there would be significant differences between IAEA-NPT safeguards and nuclear disarmament verification, expressed in respective definitions of the scope of verification. IAEA verification of NPT safeguards compliance is about assuring that nuclear materials declared by a state are accounted for and in peaceful use, and also about attaining confidence that there are no undeclared nuclear materials in a state. For a nuclear disarmament mechanism, the scope of verification may be very different, centered upon detecting/deterring reconstitution of nuclear weapons production. The total verification exercise will in some respects be more challenging than in the case of IAEA safeguards in part because to be effective, verifiers must have access to highly-sensitive national security and defense information in a disarming state. The “choke points” for verification in a disarmament mechanism would likely also include (in the IAEA safeguards context) non-nuclear activities including activities related to weaponization.
What does ‘Irreversible’ Mean?
While NPT parties collectively view irreversibility as an important attribute of nuclear disarmament, IAEA verification under the NPT is not strictly intended to be irreversible, a point underlined by actions of North Korea and, more recently, statements from Iran. If a state quits the NPT, the IAEA’s legal authority to carry out NPT verification ends. NPT states have taken steps to require safeguards in perpetuity, but only for specific conditions beyond the context of the treaty; they haven’t amended NPT Article X. For nuclear disarmament verification, in general “irreversibility” is an aspiration, and disarmament would be more, or less, irreversible in part depending on how rigorous and comprehensive would be verification of the absence of nuclear arms-making (in the nuclear material context, activities that could be construed to be for production or processing of weapon-grade nuclear material). Irreversibility would be favored by a disarmament verification regime that establishes an objective similar or analogous to the NPT safeguards ‘timely detection’ goal.
Familiar Challenges
Beyond the verification of contained nuclear material inventories, safeguards for a disarmament mechanism would in fact be necessary for ongoing nuclear activities in disarmed states including of course if, as presently, the production of plutonium and highly-enriched uranium by a state could be justified by civilian applications of these materials. Safeguards would also be necessary should states conclude an FMCT. Some of the challenges for disarmament verification will therefore be virtually identical to challenges for all IAEA safeguards: assuring political and process transparency; absence of bias and interference; technical robustness; comprehensiveness. Something like the IAEA’s “state-level” methodology–relying on a broad array of information sources and a “forensic” approach to verification of states’ declarations–would appear to be relevant for disarmament verification. However the IAEA’s effort to set up, in its so-called “broader conclusion” for safeguards, what many NPT states regard as a reward mechanism (less future routine IAEA interference in exchange for states’ cooperation with the IAEA) may not inspire confidence in a nuclear weapons disarmament regime. In any case, the verification requirements of disarming states would have to be uniform: Something like a “state-level approach” for verification in each individual disarming state may well be the best way forward, but individual states in the mechanism cannot be permitted to choose a level of verification intensity as, currently, NPT states may do in deciding whether to conclude an Additional Protocol with the IAEA that permits the IAEA “extra” access to their nuclear materials and activities.
What will Disarmament Cost the IAEA?
In IAEA safeguards parlance, the ultimate aim of verification in each NPT non-nuclear-weapon state is to attain confidence that its nuclear materials declaration is “complete and correct.” Will there, can there be such a holy grail for nuclear weapons disarmament? Considering the scale and scope of the disarmament project, and the range of activities it may aim to encompass, the answer may be a highly-qualified yes. But if the IAEA is responsible for disarmament verification, and if the requirements and yardsticks for compliance in that arrangement are less rigorous than for NPT safeguards, non-nuclear-weapon states subject to IAEA safeguards may cry foul.
The cost of effectively verified global nuclear weapons disarmament will be considerable. Alone the Soviet Union, a Russian vice-minister for atomic energy told me in 1992, possessed nuclear materials and other nuclear weapons-related items scattered over “hundreds of different places across 10 time zones.”
But even if the IAEA is not tasked to do any disarmament verification for such a future arrangement, in the wake of the creation of a global disarmament regime, the IAEA’s routine safeguards financial burden may nonetheless greatly increase. The clear majority of states parties to the NPT and members of the IAEA are nuclear “have nots” that have crossed wires with advanced technology states for half a century over the appropriation of the IAEA’s financial resources. These developing countries may insist on equity grounds that disarming nuclear-weapon states’ continuing and future nuclear activities henceforth must be subject to full-scope IAEA safeguards. If so, that could require the IAEA to implement routine safeguards at an additional three hundred nuclear power reactors, more than double the total number currently subject to IAEA verification.
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