Science, Technology, and Public Policy

Join us for an Energy Policy Seminar featuring Eyck Freymann, joint Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Belfer Center's Arctic Initiative and Columbia University. Freymann will give a talk on "Chinese Perspectives on Climate Geopolitics." Q&A to follow. Buffet-style lunch will be served.

Registration: No RSVP is required. Room capacity is limited and seating will be on a first come, first served basis. The seminar will also be streamed via Zoom. Virtual attendees should register using the button below; upon registering, attendees will receive a confirmation email with a Zoom link. 

Recording: The seminar will be recorded and available to watch on this page (typically one week later). Those who register for this event will automatically receive a link to the recording as soon as it becomes available.

Accessibility: Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access, please contact Liz Hanlon (ehanlon@hks.harvard.edu) in advance of the session.

Sponsors: The Belfer Center's Environment and Natural Resources Program, the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Business and Government, the Harvard University Center for the Environment, the Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability

Speaker: Christopher Lawrence, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

The history of U.S. engagement with North Korea offers important lessons that could help reframe the diplomatic impasse today. In the 1994 Agreed Framework (AF), the regime agreed to dismantle its plutonium-production complex in exchange for western light water reactors (LWR) and the promise of political normalization with the United States. As construction of the LWRs fell behind, however, North Korea embarked on a secret uranium enrichment program. Today, scholars and policymakers look back at the LWRs of the AF as a "carrot" — "we offered the carrot, and they cheated anyway." But when scholars and policymakers consider the unique technical attributes of LWRs and how their construction was planned to be situated within a diplomatic track to normalization, they appear to function more as a way to signal commitment than as a carrot to bribe the regime. In this light, chronic construction delays and the offset of LWR costs to U.S. allies can be interpreted as signals about America's lack of commitment to normalization with North Korea. This conceptual shift — from carrots and sticks to signaling and credibility — offers important insights into past diplomatic failures and could help reconcile the competing visions of engagement with North Korea today.

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

For many years, the United States has maintained a formal extended deterrence commitment to protect Japan that has included the possible use of nuclear weapons.  This MTA seminar will examine the history of the U.S. nuclear umbrella for Japan, the role of the umbrella plays in Japanese and U.S. security planning, and questions regarding the credibility of the commitment.

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

Are there any circumstances under which China can be more transparent regarding nuclear deterrence and ambiguity? MTA fellow Han Hua will present a seminar on the implications of this questions. This seminar will also touch upon U.S. strategic posturing and China's attitude towards transparency.

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

Policy-makers and analysts point to the lack of mutual trust in U.S.-China nuclear relationship as an obstacle for deep cooperation on nuclear arms control and nonproliferation issues. But what does trust mean in their nuclear relationship? Does trust matter for bilateral cooperation on nuclear issues? If so, has any trust been built during their engagement and communication with each other over the past few decades? This presentation offers a preliminary analysis of these issues.

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

Under what conditions do states seriously consider and use preventive military force as a counter proliferation strategy against adversarial nuclear weapons programs? In this seminar, Ms. Whitlark will utilize the comparative case study method and conducts archival research and process tracing into six cases of American and Israeli counter-proliferation decision-making. She will argue that it is the pre-presidential or pre-prime ministerial beliefs of executives, specifically their beliefs about the general consequences of nuclear proliferation and the ability to deter the particular proliferator in question, that determine a leader’s likely counter-proliferation behavior once in office.

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

What can the U.S. do to thwart the nuclear ambitions of its allies?  Looking to the past, the U.S. was able to leverage its alliance commitments to stop some friendly states from going nuclear.  Looking to the future, Iran's possible nuclear acquisition and China’s military ascendancy may tempt key U.S. allies in the Middle East and East Asia to consider reducing their reliance on American security guarantees by acquiring independent nuclear deterrents.  When planning a response to the nuclear pursuit by these friends, the U.S. can draw lessons from the successes and failures of its nonproliferation efforts against its Cold War-era allies.

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

As a region that plans to introduce its first nuclear power plants within the decade, Southeast Asia presents its own unique features in fostering regional cooperation in the nuclear field. While the Fukushima Daichii nuclear disaster last year has slowed nuclear plans in the region, a number of Southeast Asian countries continue to look to nuclear energy as part of their energy mix. This seminar examines the benefits and challenges of a nuclear cooperative approach in the context of closer Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) integration and provides recommendations on the way forward.

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

Co-sponsored by Project on Managing the Atom

Since 1953, the United States has maintained a formal extended deterrence commitment to protect South Korea.  This talk will examine the history of the U.S. nuclear umbrella for South Korea, the role the umbrella plays in South Korean and U.S. security planning, and questions regarding the credibility of the commitment.

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

In his new book, THE IMPOSSIBLE STATE: North Korea, Past and Future (Ecco), former Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council Victor Cha argues that North Korea is in an untenable and combustible situation—one that the next U.S. president will have no choice but to confront.