How to turn a mobile laboratory into a diplomatic bag: international relations, the IAEA and nuclear diplomacy

Abstract

In 1959, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) sent a mobile radioisotope laboratory to Athens, Greece, in the context of its Technical Assistance (TA) Missions to member states. To analyze the diplomatic aspects of the TA program, we conceptualize the mobile laboratory as a ‘diplomatic bag’ in transit that allowed the IAEA to negotiate its diplomatic power over nuclear issues on a global level and establish its regulatory presence. By focusing on the nexus of nuclear science and diplomacy, we explore how a mobile scientific laboratory was transformed to a sacrosanct diplomatic object–a diplomatic bag–with inviolability privileges and diplomatic status allowing it to travel unrestrained across the globe. This paper brings forward the fine-grained diplomatic negotiations and exchanges among novel diplomatic actors–beyond ambassadors and state diplomats–who made possible the transformation of a mobile laboratory from a mere technoscientific object to an artifact that was familiar to diplomatic circles.