How has the advent of nuclear weapons affected the politics of decision-making and control in military alliances? This presentation seeks to develop a new basis for analyzing contemporary military alliances and predicting their cohesion, durability, and structure.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

Under what conditions do nuclear-aspiring states comply with demands to terminate their weapons ambitions? Existing theories of proliferation assume that nuclear choices are voluntary and that coercion is incidental to preventing the spread of nuclear weapons. In this Project on Managing the Atom Seminar, Gene Gerzhoy will challenge these claims by presenting a theory of coercive nonproliferation and testing its predictions against evidence from notable cases of nuclear reversal.

Note new location!

What is the effect of alliances on nuclear proliferation? On the one hand, theories of assurance contend that states with a powerful ally can forego indigenous nuclear capabilities. On the other hand, critics argue that external reliance violates the "self-help" principle in world politics and cite evidence of nuclear ambitions among numerous U.S. allies. To resolve this debate, the speaker proposes a theory of alliance coercion and tests its predictions against evidence from the West German case.

Please join us! Coffee and tea provided. Everyone is welcome, but admittance will be on a first come–first served basis.

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. In this seminar, Mr. 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.