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.
Do nuclear weapons allow states to avoid costly conventional arms-races? Building on evidence from Pakistan and other nuclear-armed states, Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow Ahsan Butt will argue that states will practice such "substitution" only under limited conditions: when they are satisfied with the territorial status-quo, and their primary security challenges can be deterred by nuclear weapons.