‘Part poacher, part gamekeeper’

The FT raises an eyebrow at recent travel by the United States’ man at the International Atomic Energy Agency: Part poacher, part gamekeeper, Glyn Davies, the U.S. permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, flew to Hanoi this week to promote U.S. nuclear technology while verifying that energy-hungry Vietnam has the appropriate safeguards in ...

By , a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies.

The FT raises an eyebrow at recent travel by the United States' man at the International Atomic Energy Agency:

The FT raises an eyebrow at recent travel by the United States’ man at the International Atomic Energy Agency:

Part poacher, part gamekeeper, Glyn Davies, the U.S. permanent representative to the International Atomic Energy Agency, flew to Hanoi this week to promote U.S. nuclear technology while verifying that energy-hungry Vietnam has the appropriate safeguards in place to handle it. The U.S. is trying to catch up with Russia and Japan, which have stolen a march in the race to sell their nuclear technology to Vietnam by sealing deals with the Vietnamese government in October to help build two civil nuclear reactors each.

There’s no fundamental contradiction here, given that the international nuclear regime has always allowed for and even encouraged peaceful nuclear technology, but the optics are odd. Isn’t this a job for the Commerce Department?

David Bosco is a professor at Indiana University’s Hamilton Lugar School of Global and International Studies. He is the author of The Poseidon Project: The Struggle to Govern the World’s Oceans. Twitter: @multilateralist

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