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.
Dialogue on nuclear weapon risk reduction has evolved considerably in recent years as widely perceived nuclear risk, and awareness of the causes of risk, has increased. This seminar will discuss the evolution of the topic, including its presence on the agenda of several multilateral venues and State-led initiatives. It shares an analytical framework developed by UNIDIR for considering the different pathways to nuclear weapon use, and also discusses challenges in the development of common understandings and the identification of joint priorities among States—prerequisites in the adoption of practical and feasible measures towards closing use pathways.
Wilfred Wan is a Researcher in the WMD Programme at the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research (UNIDIR). He is the author of Regional Pathways to Nuclear Nonproliferation (University of Georgia Press, 2018). Wilfred was previously a JSPS-UNU Postdoctoral Fellow with the UNU Centre for Policy Research, and a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Irvine.