Authors

Katja Castryck-Naumann¹;  ¹ GWZO Leipzig, Germany

Discussion

The connection between intelligence gathering on the one hand, and expert knowledge and knowledge politics in international institutions on the other hand, is an exciting theme, especially when it comes to politically highly sensitive issues such as nuclear weapons and environmental risks. Experts employed in international administration have been crucial in compiling data, in initiating fresh research and in developing policies. At the same time, experts in the role of international officials were due to their mandate and through their working contract with an international organization obliged to political neutrality. That impacted their role in the production of knowledge in highly sensitive policy areas – not the least because these policy fields were often heavily controlled by national politics. In view of this tension – spaces of maneuver of experts employed in international administrations and state governed international issues – my presentation takes a closer look at the negotiations of Nuclear Weapon Free Zones. Lawyers from Warsaw developed this concept for Central Europe as an alternative to universal nuclear disarmament and Adam Rapacki, the Polish Foreign Minister, brought it before the UN in 1957. There the proposal was rejected, but the concept made a remarkable international career, including the establishment of such zones in Africa, Latin-America and Asia. The global circulation of the concept is instructive for the history of East-West-South-relations during the Cold War. It is also telling in terms of which policy issues are more open for a direct involvement of experts and negotiations in international bodies – and, in turn, which are more difficult to pursue through these actors and their channels. Successful nuclear disarmament initiatives, it seems, were largely negotiated by diplomats and experts outside the UN than through its general assembly or disarmament bodies which focussed on universal disarmament. These roots offer insights into intelligence gathering for nuclear politics and the actors who served it.