Post-Fukushima and in the backdrop of an interminable debate pertaining to safety issue of nuclear power across the world, Age of Deception -Nuclear Diplomacy in Treacherous Times ( Bloomsbury Publishing, London ), authored by Nobel Laureate and former Director General of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) Mr Mohamed Elbaradei is an honest attempt to clear the miasma that shrouds a subject like atomic energy. The suspicion about this clean but lethal energy stems from its use for energy generation and also extirpation through weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The author is candid enough to concede that “from my front-row seat to the nuclear dramas of the past two decades, I have seen over and again how the lack of a sense of fairness and equity in negotiations is guaranteed to sabotage even the most commonsensical, desirable and just resolutions”. In delineating the nuclear aspirations of countries such as Libya, North Korea, Iran and Iraq, the Egyptian-born author has explained how the United States used the veneer of the United Nations to declare sanctions or in the case of Iraq go to war with allies on the alibi that Saddam Hussein had clandestine WMD even while turning “a blind eye to the glaring reality of Israel's nuclear arsenal”.
‘Grotesque distortion'
Mr Elbaradei did not conceal his acerbic reaction to the heavy civilian casualties wrought in Iraq when he wryly stated that “for a war to be fought over unsubstantiated WMD charges and for the IAEA's nuclear diplomacy role to be pushed to the side, was for me a grotesque distortion of everything we stood for”.
On a pragmatic plane, the author says that nuclear diplomacy is a hands-on-discipline requiring direct engagement, restraint and long-term commitment”, and if a dialogue is a preferred option to resolve nuclear proliferation tensions, it cannot be limited to a tête-à-tête between the inspectors and the accused country. But the world's superpower simply brushed aside any such course of counsel on the by now familiar factor that “those who are not with us are against us”.
Riveting chapters
The book is replete with riveting chapters to savour and reflect about the nuclear negotiations spanning Iraq, 1991-1998, the case of missing plutonium in North Korea 1992-2002, Iraq 2002 and after, North Korea 2003 and after, Iran 2003-2005, Libya, the nuclear bazaar of A.Q. Khan, Iran, 2006 and the happenings in Iran from 2007 till 2009. Each chapter throws up interesting insights into the high volatile drama and the method and manners of the dramatis personae .
Significant posers
Rightly Mr Elradei poses a slew of significant questions : “If the community of nations seeks to live by the rule of law, what steps should be taken when violations of international law result in massive civilian casualties? Who should be held accountable when military action has been taken in contravention of the laws as codified in the UN Charter; or when military action is found to have been based on faulty information, the deliberately selective treatment of information ?”
The author has anchored his convictions on the ground when he claims that “dollar for dollar, the IAEA has proven to be an extraordinarily sound investment. But at its current level of funding and with the dilapidated state of its technology infrastructure, the IAEA sooner or later will be unable to fulfil its nuclear verification mission”.
The crux is whether the global community can afford to let go a watchdog like the IAEA when threat perceptions have mushroomed, while it is unwise to rely on a superpower for saving and safeguarding the planet from lunatic leaders in possession of nuclear weapons.