ABSTRACT
Safeguards were originally proposed as ways to ensure discovery of unauthorized diversion of fissionable materials though, according to one analyst, they were "something more akin to the art of mind-reading than to rigorously objective science." Exporting countries had applied their own safeguards as a condition for their nuclear cooperation. Though the number of nuclear weapons and nuclear weapons states had continued to grow, no entrant in the nuclear weapons club became a member as a result of diverting fissionable material from an otherwise "peaceful" nuclear program. The Non-Proliferation Treaty and International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards, though designed to deter countries from diversion, may have had an opposite effect. Designers of early safeguards looked out on what they saw as a "Pax Americana." For the United States, the design of a safeguards system typified, in Imai's mind, "a fundamental American desire." Even as the system of safeguards grew while a control consciousness waxed, the dissemination of the technology increased.
