Managing the Atom

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) seminar with Rebecca Hersman, Director of the Project on Nuclear Issues and senior advisor for the International Security Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Speaker: Stephen Herzog, Stanton Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Arms control has languished as a field of academic inquiry, despite a renaissance in nuclear security studies and significant advances in understanding proliferation. Few studies have attempted to emulate past academic shaping of arms control agreements and outcomes, with particularly limited emphasis on multilateral efforts. This is a problematic situation as the world looks beyond bilateral U.S.–Russian arms control toward the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty (CTBT), Fissile Material Cut-Off Treaty (FMCT), Middle East Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (MENWFZ), and even the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW). The speaker attempts to fill this gap by offering a theory of state entry into multilateral nuclear arms control agreements.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJEtc-mrqz8jH9coGNTF7bloNM75UeKB3bJW

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) seminar with Denia Djokić, Postdoctoral Research Fellow with MTA and Visiting Research Fellow at the HKS Program for Science, Technology and Society.

Speakers: Giles David Arceneaux, Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Kyungwon Suh, Ph.D. candidate, Department of Political Science, Syracuse University

The deterrent capacity of a state's nuclear forces is dependent upon the platforms and delivery systems that constitute the arsenal. The mere possession of nuclear weapons does not provide a robust deterrent and nuclear states cannot credibly deter potential adversaries with nuclear threats in the absence of adequate delivery capabilities. The project presents a new dataset that measures the possession of seven nuclear delivery platforms across all nuclear powers from 1945–2019, including: submarine-launched missiles, strategic land-mobile missiles, strategic solid-fuel missiles, nuclear cruise missiles, multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles, long-range ballistic missiles, and tactical nuclear weapons.

Everyone is welcome to join us online via Zoom! Please register in advance for this seminar: https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJcsf-6uqTwoHdZZJ3qqoP1Ohy78rsXBc5en

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) seminar with Mariana Budjeryn, Research Fellow with MTA and the International Security Program.

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) seminar with Caitlin Talmadge, Associate Professor of Security Studies in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, and Brendan Green, Assistant Professor of Political Science at the University of Cincinnati.

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) book talk with Daniel Ellsberg on his book The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner.

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

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) book talk with Fred Kaplan, author of The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War.

A Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) seminar with Joseph Cirincione, president of Ploughshares Fund.

This seminar will be held online via Zoom. RSVP below to receive the livestream link.