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.
In this seminar, Gene Gerzhoy will explore why some states with nuclear weapons programs acquiesce to foreign nonproliferation demands, while others refuse to abandon their bomb aims. Although proliferation scholars have increasingly sought to explain nuclear reversals, no theory exists for explaining why states abandon bomb pursuits in response to foreign pressure. To resolve this puzzle, Gerzhoy will argue that nuclear decision-making varies with the target's security stake in nuclear armament and the sender's coercive leverage, which depends on the deployment of inducements aimed at the target's resource dependencies. Gene's hypotheses will then be tested against the historical record of countries that initiated nuclear weapons projects using the method of causal process observation.
Coffee and tea provided. Please join us - Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.