Evolution of Safeguards - What can formal Acquisition Path Analysis contribute?

Since therst ideas for supervising nuclear material, the verication system has evolved constantly. After having hadrst experiences with item-specic safeguards according the commitments in INFCIRC/66, the system of international safeguards was established by the signature and ratication of the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 1970. The treaty imple- mentation has mainly been governed by comprehensive safeguards agreements (CSA) and later the additional protocol (AP) with Integrated Safeguards. Until today this evolution of verifying treaty compliance has continued under a holistic approach called the State-level concept (SLC). The SLC's main idea is to go away from material centric approaches to a system analysis view of nuclear proliferation which clearly identies the actors, their pos- sibilities and their risks. Due to its general and comprehensive nature, the SLC has great potential to replace voluntary oer agreements (VOA) in nuclear weapon States (NWS) and to be used in otherelds of treaty verication.