Ever since Hiroshima, the role of nuclear weapons in international politics has
been a central part of the security studies field. Think of the seminal works of Bernard
Brodie, Albert Wohlstetter, and Thomas Schelling, as well as the somewhat less enduring but still important
work of people like Pierre Gallois, William Kaufmann, Herman Kahn, Hedley Bull,
and others. (If you want a real hoot, try to re-read Henry Kissinger’s Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy (1957), the book that made his early reputation but has — to
put it politely — not aged well). Discussions of nuclear strategy were a cottage industry in
the 1970s and 1980s (think Robert Jervis, Colin Gray, Desmond Ball, Bruce
Blair, Paul Bracken, John Steinbruner, Ken Waltz, etc.), and former statesman and policy wonks
routinely weighed in on the issues of nuclear proliferation and arms control.
Indeed, when I got my first job at Princeton in 1984, I was hired in part to
teach a course on nuclear weapons and arms control, and it routinely attracted
50-100 students. The
Cold War was still going strong and the Reagan administration was raising the nuclear temperature in various ways, so
concerns about nuclear weapons were front and center. Interest
in the topic hasn’t vanished entirely since then, but there’s no
course of that kind at Harvard these days (or at Princeton, for that
matter), and I haven’t detected much student demand for one. (That
may also reflect that
fact that there is only one regular faculty member in Harvard’s
Government Department whose main research interest is the study of war
and peace, but that’s another story).
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In recent years, however, scholarly interest in the topic
has declined dramatically. One
reason is that there hasn’t been that much new
to say about the subject; the essential features of deterrence
theory are well-established by now, and the infeasibility of any sort
of "nuclear
war" seems to be pretty well-understood (at least let’s hope so). There have been a few important works on nuclear-related topics in
recent years (such as Nina Tannenwald’s work on the nuclear taboo, the
policy literature on "loose nukes" and nuclear terrorism, and the many discussions of the
Indian, Pakistani, North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs), but the end of
the Cold War and the gradual reduction in the Russian and American nuclear
arsenals has diminished interest in this question. With some notable exceptions, younger scholars and graduate
students have tended to pursue other questions (e.g, ethnic conflict, terrorism,
religion, insurgency, globalization, etc.), and interest in nuclear issues has
declined.
That situation may now be changing, and a new initiative by the
Stanton Foundation could accelerate the trend. Back in the 1970s, the Ford Foundation created university-based
research centers in the field of international security and arms control at
Harvard, Stanford, Cornell and UCLA, with the explicit goal of "restocking" the
intellectual capital of the field, primarily by supporting younger
scholars. The
initiative was a
resounding success, and a list of alumni from the various Ford centers
(which includes
the Belfer Center where I work now) reads like a "Who’s Who" of the
field (in both academia and the policy world) in the United States and
overseas.
Earlier this month, the Stanton Foundation announced a new
nuclear security fellowship program, which will offer ten-month stipends of 20,000
USD to predoctoral research fellows, and stipends for postdoctoral scholars
and junior faculty on a case-by-case basis and commensurate with
experience. The Belfer Center’s
International Security Program is one of the hosting centers, so if you’re
interested (or if you know someone who should be), you can find out how to
apply here. (If Harvard is not to your liking for some reason, other participants in Stanton program include Stanford’s Center
for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), the Council on Foreign
Relations, the RAND Corporation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London.)
And while I’m on the topic, let me call your attention to some recent
publications that suggest a renewed interest in nuclear topics. I’ve already touted John Mueller’s important
book Atomic Obsession, but you should
also read University of Texas historian Francis Gavin’s new article "Same as It Ever Was: Nuclear Alarmism,
Proliferation, and the Cold War," in the latest issue of International Security. Gavin shows (convincingly, in my view), that the current spate of
nuclear alarmism rests in part on a misreading of nuclear affairs during the
Cold War (including the repackaging of "old threats in new clothing"), and that
a proper understanding of the past might lead to better policy choices
today. (Gavin also gets bonus points for using a Talking Heads lyric in his title.) The next article, ("Posturing for Peace") by Vipin
Narang of Harvard (and starting next year, a faculty member at MIT), suggests
that some degree of alarm is still warranted. Narang analyzes Pakistan’s nuclear posture (i.e., its
combination of weaponry, command and control, and employment doctrine) and
suggests that Islamabad’s efforts to gain political leverage from its arsenal have created
a nuclear posture that is much less stable than it should be. If reading Gavin makes you feel a bit more secure, reading
Narang will bring your blood pressure back up.
Lastly, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences has just released
volume 2 of a special issue of Daedalus (edited by my colleague Steven
Miller and Scott Sagan of Stanford), on The
Global Nuclear Future. The Academy
has a long history of producing seminal works in this area, and these two
volumes are excellent guides to the evolving nuclear environment. Who knows? Maybe someone will decide that undergraduates ought to be able
to take a course on the subject at a place like Harvard.