Transforming Nuclear Safeguards Culture

Abstract: In Transforming Nuclear Safeguards Culture, Trevor Findlay investigates the role that organizational culture may play in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons, examining particularly how it affects the nuclear safeguards system of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the paramount global organization in the non-proliferation field. Findlay seeks to identify how organizational culture may have contributed to the IAEA's failure to detect Iraq's attempts to acquire illicit nuclear capabilities in the decade prior to the 1990 Gulf War and how the agency has sought to change safeguards culture since then. In doing so, he addresses an important piece of the nuclear nonproliferation puzzle: how to ensure that a robust international safeguards system, in perpetuity, might keep non-nuclear states from acquiring such weapons. Findlay, as one of the leading scholars on the IAEA, brings a valuable holistic perspective to his analysis of the agency's culture. Transforming Nuclear Safeguards Culture will inspire debate about the role of organizational culture in a key international organization—a culture that its member states, leadership, and staff have often sought to ignore or downplay.

Bio: Dr. Trevor Findlay is a Principal Fellow at the School of Social and Political Sciences, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. After an early career in the Australian Foreign Service, he held academic positions at the Australian National University; the Stockholm International Peace Research Centre (SIPRI); the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa, Canada; the Centre for International Governance Innovation (CIGI) in Waterloo, Ontario; and the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University. He has served on the United Nations Secretary-General's Advisory Board on Disarmament Matters and the Board of Trustees of the UN Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR) and chaired both bodies. He was executive director of the London-based non-governmental organization, the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC), for seven years. Professor Findlay's career focus has been disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation, encompassing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons. His work on chemical disarmament includes one of the earliest accounts of the Chemical Weapons Convention, Peace Through Chemistry: The New Chemical Weapons Convention (Australian National University, Canberra, 1993). His current research focuses on global governance, especially nuclear safety, security, and non-proliferation, as well as Asia-Pacific regional governance. His most recent book, Transforming Safeguards Culture: Iraq, the IAEA and the Future of Nonproliferation, was published by MIT Press for Harvard in 2022.