Nuclear weapons and nuclear reactors are designed, built, deployed, and managed—with intention and purpose—by human beings embedded in and shaped by institutional, social, and political contexts. These contexts affect how people interpret and respond to the benefits and dangers of nuclear technologies. But whose interpretations and modes of reasoning count as authoritative, competent, and trustworthy—and whose are discounted or dismissed?

This event is hosted by the Project on Managing the Atom (MTA) as part of its Atomic Voices series, a discussion forum for perspectives on diversity, inclusion, and belonging in the nuclear field.

Speaker: Jayita Sarkar, Ernest May Fellow in History & Policy, International Security Program

How do the exports of U.S. power reactors relate to nonproliferation, global capitalism, and U.S. empire? And what does that tell us about the dominance by design of U.S. government and businesses in the decolonized world, where they promised development but delivered debt? This seminar pursues this inquiry through investigating the role of the light water reactor as an instrument of U.S. nonproliferation policy from the mid-1950s until the end of the 1980s.

Everyone is welcome to join us via Zoom! Register before the seminar here:
https://harvard.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMscOyspz0uHdDEEReU3VaamAmpD7qRPMrO

When and under what conditions is U.S. nonproliferation policy successful towards allies that supply controversial nuclear assistance to third party states? This seminar, through focused comparison of cases of nuclear assistance since the 1970s, investigates the challenges posed by allied suppliers and the nuclear industry to U.S. nonproliferation policy.

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

The role of dual-use assistance to indigenous nuclear programs continues to be understudied while the historiography of post-1947 Indian foreign policymaking remains underdeveloped. In this MTA Seminar, MTA/ISP Research Fellow Jayita Sarkar will address these lacunae through an examination of French assistance to India’s nuclear program in the backdrop of U.S. nonproliferation efforts during the Cold War (1948-1978).

What can scholars and policymakers learn from U.S. nonproliferation policy toward hard cases like India? Can the United States prevent proliferation when the state already has the indigenous capability to produce fissile materials and has high regional threat perception?

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

Contrary to conventional wisdom, this presentation will offer a security-based argument for India’s nuclear weapons program. Based on U.S., Indian, and French historical documents from the 1960s, Jayita Sarkar, Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow, argues that New Delhi opted for the “Plowshare loophole” as a cost-effective way to enter the nuclear club. Its regional insecurities vis-à-vis Pakistan and nuclear China, and its mistrust of the United States contributed to its proliferation drift, despite its active involvement in the negotiations for the NPT.