Activating the Saudi SEP field

If you study international relations, you quickly become very aware of the power of an SEP field: An SEP field can be erected on, or projected around a bizarre and unbelievable scene so that the unconscious minds of the observers instantly abdicate responsibility for its existence, assert that it’s “somebody else’s problem”, and therefore don’t ...

By , a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast.

If you study international relations, you quickly become very aware of the power of an SEP field:

If you study international relations, you quickly become very aware of the power of an SEP field:

An SEP field can be erected on, or projected around a bizarre and unbelievable scene so that the unconscious minds of the observers instantly abdicate responsibility for its existence, assert that it’s “somebody else’s problem”, and therefore don’t perceive it at all.

This Associated Press report by George Jahn makes me wonder just how many governments will be deploying an SEP field:

Saudi Arabia is defying the United States, the European Union and Australia by resisting U.N. efforts to verify that it has no nuclear assets worth inspecting, according to a confidential EU document obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday…. While the Saudi government insists it has no interest in having nuclear arms, in the past two decades it has been linked to prewar Iraq’s nuclear program and to the Pakistani nuclear black marketeer A.Q. Khan. It also has expressed interest in Pakistani missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads, and Saudi officials reportedly discussed pursuing the nuclear option as a deterrent in the volatile Middle East. Over the past few weeks, the United States, the European Union and Australia urged the Saudis in separate diplomatic notes to either back away from the small quantities protocol or agree to inspections. But the EU briefing memo – made available to AP by a diplomat accredited to the agency who insisted on anonymity because he was not authorized to release it – reported Saudi unwillingness to bow to the Western pressure. It quoted the Saudi deputy foreign affairs minister, Prince Turki bin Mohammed bin Saud al-Kabira, as telling EU officials in Riyadh that his country would be “willing to provide additional information” to the IAEA “only if all other parties” to the protocol did the same.

Daniel W. Drezner is a professor of international politics at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University and co-host of the Space the Nation podcast. Twitter: @dandrezner

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