Conclusion: The NSS as a Learning Forum

Abstract

The NSS was a made-to-measure multilateral forum that embodied the international community’s search for security against the threat of non-state actors causing harm by using nuclear or radioactive material and facilities. The four Summits held over 2010–2016 changed the course of the practice of nuclear security. The General Conference nuclear security resolution, in which the rationale of nuclear security was first articulated in 1977, could have continued as a platform for nuclear security learning, building up understanding slowly among experts on the basis of the least common denominator. However, the NSS injected urgency into international learning on nuclear security and the iterative pressure of Summits forced participants to come up with new ideas and proposals every two years. Moreover, the Summits engaged the whole of government and brought leaders into play. The upper levels of policy learning were forced to engage with the technicality and nuance of nuclear security. Experts across disciplines came together in Sherpa teams and enriched the discussion nationally and internationally. The expansion of international learning impacted, in turn, the technical communities in Vienna, New York and Lyon giving them agency and prominence that they had previously lacked. Given the reinvention of dramatic terrorism by ISIS in the three years leading up to 2016, this was most timely.