Managing the Atom

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

Individuals and entities from the private sector have long contributed to the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), acting as middlemen and suppliers. Over the past decades, trade in WMD-related goods has become increasingly regulated, and illicit trade increasingly criminalized. Despite the clear role that these actors have played in recent proliferation cases, supplying North Korea and Iran among others, the conceptual literature on proliferation behavior has largely continued to focus on the state level. This seminar will draw on concepts from criminology, and particularly the study of white collar crime, to provide insights into the behavior of these non-state suppliers and middlemen, and to generate more effective means of countering their activities.
 

Speaker: Hassan Abbas, Ph.D; Professor of International Security Studies Chair of the Department of Regional and Analytical Studies

Speaker: Reid Pauly, Research Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Is there a normative prohibition on the use of nuclear weapons? Recent scholarship has cast doubt on the existence of a norm of nuclear non-use among the American people. But the public does not make decisions about using nuclear weapons. In this presentation, Pauly investigates the willingness of American policymakers to use nuclear weapons through the history of political-military wargaming. He tests competing theories about the use and non-use of nuclear weapons by examining both whether strategic elites were willing to use nuclear weapons in different scenarios and how they explained those decisions.

A seminar with Ali Ahmad, Scholar In-Residence and Director, Energy Policy and Security in the Middle East Program, Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs, American University of Beirut.

Co-sponsored by the Project on Managing the Atom and the Geopolitics of Energy Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.

Speaker: Frank O'Donnell, Stanton Nuclear Security Junior Faculty Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom

Speaker: Robert Swartz, National Nuclear Security Administration

This talk will be a discussion of the S. Asia facing engagement programs sponsored by NNSA with the goal of building nuclear stability and reducing the nuclear danger in South Asia.

Speaker: Ambassador Linton Brooks

Russian violation of the INF Treaty means that it will be politically impossible to replace New START when it expires and even an extension may be difficult.  As a result, by 2026 at the latest and perhaps as soon as 2021, there will be—for the first time in half a century—no formal agreement regulating nuclear relations between Russia and the United States.  This presentation will discuss the resulting consequences for strategic stability and how they might be mitigated.  It will conclude that serious examination, both internally and bilaterally, should begin soon.  

NSC Sr. Director Andrea Hall will discuss current trends and challenges across the WMD community and their ability to impact our national security policy.  She will also highlight what the new Administration is doing to combat these issues and how others from academia and NGOs can help these efforts. 

Speaker: Matt Buehler, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Middle East Initiative

Speaker: Chris Lawrence, Visiting Research Fellow with the Program on Science, Technology and Society, Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government