To compete and thrive in the 21st century, democracies, and the United States in particular, must develop new national security and economic strategies that address the geopolitics of information. In the 20th century, market capitalist democracies geared infrastructure, energy, trade, and even social policy to protect and advance that era’s key source of power—manufacturing. In this century, democracies must better account for information geopolitics across all dimensions of domestic policy and national strategy.
The presentation will employ organizational culture theory to dissect the nuclear safeguards culture of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The origins and evolution of the culture since the IAEA's founding in 1957 will be examined, including the extent to which it reflects the organizational culture of the Agency as a whole and that of the United Nations. Differences between safeguards culture and safety and security cultures will be explored. A key question is the extent to which the Agency's safeguards culture has changed since the strengthening of nuclear safeguards following the discovery of Iraq's illicit nuclear weapons program in the early 1990s. The presentation will conclude with findings about the current state of the culture, the discontinuities it faces and what the IAEA might do about it.