I just got back from the States on Friday, and now I’m off to Brussels for a trip to NATO HQ with some students.
Elaine Grossman at Global Security Newswire reported on my talk at the New America Foundation — You can view it here let me warn Hass and FSB that they aren’t going to like it very much.
A[n excruciatingly] British expert is calling on the international community to more effectively discourage the proliferation of nuclear weapons by punishing any and all breaches of agreed safeguards, without first trying to determine intent.
Instead of focusing on those infractions by non-nuclear weapons states that are indisputable — such as engaging in a covert uranium enrichment program and denying access to inspectors — global leaders tend to get mired in futile debates over a violator’s motives, says James Acton of King’s College in London.
An interesting issue that came up along these lines: if you don’t take intent into account, how do you assess the severity of violations? I believe, for example, that running a clandestine centrifuge facility is more serious than diverting a couple of spent fuel pellets for bench-scale reprocessing experiments. It is hard, however, to build up a framework to take these issues into account consistently.
Food for thought…