Inspectors for Peace - A History of the International Atomic Energy Agency

The first comprehensive, empirically grounded, and independent study of the history of the IAEA.

The International Atomic Energy Agency, which sends inspectors around the world to prevent states from secretly developing nuclear bombs, has one of the most important jobs in international security. At the same time, the IAEA is a global hub for the exchange of nuclear science and technology for peaceful purposes. Yet spreading nuclear materials and know-how around the world bears the unwanted risk of helping what the agency aims to halt: the emergence of new nuclear weapon states. In Inspectors for Peace, Elisabeth Roehrlich unravels the IAEA''s paradoxical mission of sharing nuclear knowledge and technology while seeking to deter nuclear weapon programs.

Founded in 1957 in an act of unprecedented cooperation between the Cold War superpowers, the agency developed from a small technical bureaucracy in war-torn Vienna to a key organization in the global nuclear