Transcending Sovereignty in the Management and Control of Nuclear Material

This paper was presented at the International Atomic Energy Agency Symposium "International Safeguards: Verification and Nuclear Material Safety," which was held in Vienna, Austria, October 29 through November 1, 2001. Effective control of nuclear material is fundamentally important to the credibility and reliability of the nuclear nonproliferation regime. Under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), international safeguards are applied to nonnuclear- weapon state parties for the purpose of verifying compliance with their undertakings not to seek to acquire nuclear weapons or explosive devices by assuring that safeguarded nuclear activities and material are not diverted from their intended peaceful use. Reflecting the sovereign state basis upon which the international system rests, the control and protection of nuclear materials within the state are the responsibility of the national authority. This division of responsibility between international verification of nondiversion on the one hand and national responsibility for material protection on the other has worked quite well over time but it has not created a seamless web of fully effective control over nuclear material. It has been said repeatedly during the course of this symposium that we are living in a new world characterized by a terrorism whose appetite is bounded only by the capabilities available to it. Nuclear capabilities are among those to which terrorists aspire as indicated by Osama Bin Laden's reference to acquiring weapons of mass destruction as a religious duty. To this might be added access to radiological sources and the threat of nuclear sabotage. This access must be prevented. The question is how.