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.
At 10:00 AM on May 20th, Sven-Eric Fikenscher will present an MTA Seminar, titled "Regaining Lost Pride: The Impact of Status Claims on Nuclear Policy." This presentation will enquire into the meaning and implications of status-seeking in the nuclear realm. The status-seeking notion is a particularly contentious one, since there is not even a consensus in the literature on whether status-seekers are prone to proliferate (as most first-generation analyses point out) or likely to exercise restraint (as the majority of more recent studies claim). Fikenscher will argue that a country’s nuclear policy is shaped by a government’s claimed level of importance and its perception of the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The more the nuclear non-proliferation regime is perceived to undermine a government’s claims to greatness, the more likely that government is to pursue a nuclear weapons program. The theoretical model’s explanatory power is being tested in the context of India’s nuclear tests and overall test ban policy. Coffee and tea provided - open to the public!