The Politics of Weapons Inspections: Assessing WMD Monitoring and Verification Regimes

The need for effective monitoring and verification of regimes is increasingly urgent in our landscape of "nuclear context" governments, yet the path ahead remains unclear for international non-governmental organizations and monitoring authorities. How should these regimes look? What pitfalls might they encounter? What technologies would prove most reliable for them? How should recent policy developments, such as the 2015 Iran nuclear deal or Syria's renunciation of its chemical weapons, influence their architecture?

The Politics of Weapons Inspections presents an evidence-based approach to these questions, systematically studying today's monitoring and verification efforts and offering guidance on how to strengthen them. In addition to examining these regimes' technological, political, and legal contexts, Nathan E. Busch and Joseph F. Pilat reevaluate three recent cases in South Africa, Libya, and Iraq—each representative of a "core type" of verification situation—and apply the lessons learned from them to ongoing debates about North Korea, Iran, and Syria. Finally, based on the evidence presented thus far, they provide a forward-looking set of policy recommendations for the future.