Abstract Summary
This paper focuses on the technical assistance programs of the International Atomic Energy Agency as both the beginning and the embodiment of modern science diplomacy. According to its statute, the Agency, a political and diplomatic international organization within the United Nations system, was authorized to provide technical assistance to those Member States that required it. This paper brings front and center the case of Greece and unravels the complex negotiations between the Greek Atomic Energy Commission and the International Atomic Energy Agency. To do so, we follow the first Mobile Laboratory on its maiden trip from Austria to Greece and scrutinize the negotiations that took place among central actors in our case. The mobile lab was one of the two laboratories that the US government donated to the IAEA for the technical training of new physicists on the use of radioisotopes in medicine, agriculture and industry. From 1959 to 1965, the two units visited sixteen countries in Europe, Asia, Africa and South America and approximately 1500 technicians and students attended training courses. We argue that the laboratory’s trip to Greece was much more than a scientific effort to develop the country’s nuclear program. It had the additional diplomatic mission to enlist Greece as an ally of the western bloc. Without doubt, the case of Greece demonstrates that the IAEA's technical assistance, as it was carried out through the Mobile Labs Program, was not just a moment of international scientific cooperation but it was essentially an aspect of scientific diplomacy.
