Nuclear Reaction

ElBaradei confronts the Western nuclear orthodoxy head-on and picks apart American attempts to misuse the IAEA

As he returned to Egypt in early 2010,after spending nearly three decades abroad and most of them in the International Atomic Energy Agency IAEA,Mohamed ElBaradei called for free and fair elections and an end to the autocratic rule of Hosni Mubarak.

Barely a year later,ElBaradei found himself in Tahrir Square,Cairo,supporting a pro-democracy movement. Whether he emerges as a credible contender for the presidency of Egypt later this year or not,ElBaradei has now confronted the Western nuclear orthodoxy head on in this memoir written before the Arab Spring.

Having had a ringside seat at all the nuclear crises of our time in Iraq,Iran,North Korea,Libya and Pakistan ElBaradei knows much. He served for nearly 25 years in the IAEA and the last 12 of them as its director-general.

In this hard-hitting account,

ElBaradei is unafraid of speaking up. He offers us sharp opinions on contentious nuclear issues and scathing views about his Western interlocutors,whom he squarely blames for the nuclear tragedies.

That ElBaradei had differences with the way the United States was dealing with the challenges of non-proliferation was widely known. He has won much praise and the 2005 Nobel Prize,along with the IAEA,for standing up against the pressures from Washington to exaggerate the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. ElBaradeis refusal to vilify Saddam Hussein in 2002-3 was vindicated after president George W. Bush ordered an invasion of Iraq in the name of a nuclear threat,but found no trace of WMD programmes.

ElBaradei confirms that both the Bill Clinton and George Bush administrations were determined to either endlessly punish or oust the regime of Saddam irrespective of what Baghdad did or did not in addressing the formal concerns expressed by the Western powers on Iraqs nuclear weapon programme. The book underlines his professional assessment that Saddams nuclear programme was dismantled under the international pressure that followed the defeat of Iraq in the first Gulf War of 1990-91.

ElBaradei is bitter at the Western manipulation of these controversies and the American attempts to misuse the IAEA which was supposed to provide unbiased and objective judgments on technical issues in pursuit of their national agendas. He recounts his repeated conflicts with the Bush administration on the handling of Irans nuclear disputes with the international community and is critical of Washingtons refusal to engage in an unconditional dialogue with Tehran.

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The former DG of IAEA complains about the reluctance of the Bush administration to share intelligence with the IAEA on the nuclear black-market ring run by Dr A.Q. Khan,the so-called father of Pakistans nuclear programme,that was revealed to the world in early 2004.

ElBaradei lambasts Washington for waiting and watching A.Q. Khans proliferation activity rather than clamping down on his clandestine network. Even after 2004,ElBaradei tells us,Washingtons dependence on Pakistan to achieve its goals in Afghanistan might have prevented a muscular US response to the A.Q. Khan affair.

Fortunately for Delhi,there was one issue on which ElBaradei and the Bush Administration worked together: the Indo-US civil nuclear initiative. ElBaradei was one of the first and consistent supporters of the initiative by underlining its positive implications for the global nuclear order and facilitated its rapid approval by the IAEA Board of Governors in 2008.

If ElBaradei is trenchant in his criticism of the US and the West for their nuclear policies,his answer to the current nuclear challenge is three-fold. One is the importance of pursuing the nuclear disarmament agenda and ending the current inequities of the nuclear order between those who have nuclear weapons and those who dont.

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The second is the search for a collective security system,which ElBaradei insists,is not about moral-politik but a pragmatic one based on the recognition that,in our interdependent world,traditional policies based on balance of power cant work.

The third is an emphasis on diplomacy and negotiations in dealing with nuclear differences. ElBaradei regrets the current Western emphasis on threats,sanctions and coercion.

Many in the West will find ElBaradeis criticisim of their nuclear record unpalatable and his hopes for a collective security system too idealistic. But ElBaradei is spot on in highlighting the limitations of the current Western non-proliferation strategy.

Whether the West accepts his answers or not,it will need to rediscover the art of politics and the craft of strategy that were forgotten in the post-Cold War years in the presumed crusade against the proliferation of WMD.