International atomic energy agency (IAEA) safeguards
Technical limits
Verification
On-site inspections
Treaty on non-proliferation of nuclear weapons (NPT)
Treaty
Nuclear weapon
Nuclear weapons
Nuclear Weapon
India
Security
Beschreibung:
Verification regimes to support nuclear non-proliferation are largely based on cooperative schemes. By becoming a member of a treaty (such as the NPT), members accept both substantial non-proliferation obligations and intrusive (cooperative) verification including on-site inspections. But such on-site inspections at short notice have of necessity to be based on additional cooperative action, and in the NPT case acceptance of an additional legal Protocol. As a result, the verification regime of the NPT is open to weakness when genuine cooperation is missing. This chapter will start by looking at the technical limits of verification if a Member State engages in non-cooperative behaviour. This requires an on-site inspection at short notice, since routine inspections may be subject to manipulative tactics to hide nuclear weapons activities. In an optimal treaty design, verification regimes need to combine routine cooperative verification activities with a safety net of unilateral technical verification options such as short-notice on-site inspections. This raises the practical issues of the degree to which unilateral verification measures are technically and politically feasible in circumstances where the State concerned refuses to cooperate, and what information should be sought through on-site inspections at short notice. The chapter will therefore provide an overview of the technical options for both routine and unilateral verification activities. This will be followed by an examination of the impact upon treaty design of a broad range of verification measures, and whether it is possible to include non-cooperative means of technical verification in the design of a treaty-based verification regime. Also, given the limited possibilities to amend the wording of a multilateral treaty like the NPT, could the existing cooperative verification regime be strengthened by ‘bolting-on’ some additional means of external and non-cooperative technical verification? The wording of the NPT does not explicitly exclude this. Indeed one option may be to insert such an amendment into the existing IAEA-NPT safeguarding arrangements.