Managing the Atom

Arm to Disarm: building Europe’s advanced conventional weapons to deter and engage Russia

MTA Seminar with Paul van Hooft, convening at 10am on November 15. We will meet on Zoom here. For Harvard affiliates, we will be in Nye C.

Rabia Akhtar presented at the weekly MTA Seminar. 

Her talk was titled: "Strategic Stability, Crisis Communication, and Shared Nuclear Responsibilities in South Asia"

The Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) invites you to attend a discussion of MTA Senior Research Associate Mariana Budjeryn’s book: Inheriting the Bomb: The Collapse of the USSR and the Nuclear Disarmament of Ukraine (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023). Matthew Bunn will provide introductory remarks and Steve Miller will serve as a discussant during the session. For those attending in-person, light breakfast and refreshments will be served at 10:30am. The talk and webinar will begin at 11:00am EDT.

While this event is on the record, the event organizers prohibit any attendees, including journalists, from audio/visual recording or distributing parts or all of the event program without prior written authorization. 

Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) hosts a timely discussion focused on the nuclear implications of the evolving conflict in Ukraine. Our panelists will discuss the Budapest Memorandum, security of Ukrainian nuclear facilities, and the risks of nuclear escalation.

For members of the public (HUID and non-HUID holders), please register for the Zoom webinar event here. You will be able to watch the event live through Zoom.

For those who wish to attend in-person (HUID holders only), please register for a seat in the conference room here. Seating is limited.

While this virtual event is on the record, the event organizers prohibit any attendees, including journalists, from audio/visual recording or distributing parts or all of the event program without prior written authorization. 

Speaker: Ariel Petrovics, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Economic sanctions are one of the most common coercive tools of foreign policy, used regularly in an effort to change target state behavior. Yet despite their versatility and prevalence in international relations, sanctions are at best an unreliable tool of foreign policy. Indeed, many of the most important and publicized sanction attempts have failed to produce any desired change in the target. Existing literature on the effectiveness of sanctions has largely focused on whether or not sanctions eventually succeed, but this overlooks the arguable more policy relevant questions of when and under what conditions sanctions are effective tools of statecraft. The speaker's research  finds that sanctions with the greatest implications for international security — such as those that combat nuclear proliferation or foreign military aggression — fail even more catastrophically than their less salient counterparts.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Click here. Meeting ID number: 810311271