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.
Thomas M. Nichols will present a Managing the Atom Seminar entitled "Nuclear War with Small States" on Tuesday February 1, 2011 beginning at 9:30am in the Belfer Center library.
During the Cold War, U.S. nuclear strategy was focused on inflicting unacceptable, even total, destruction on the Soviet Union during a global war for national survival. But with the Cold War over, and new nuclear states such as North Korea emerging, what are the practical—and moral--implications of a nuclear exchange with a small nation surrounded by innocent third parties? Do nuclear weapons continue to have any use beyond the protection of the U.S. and its allies from existential destruction?