2021 Speakers

2021

12/16/2021
Thirty years ago, the Cold War ended. Today, great power competition is back – or so it seems – with many describing our present era as a "New Cold War" between the United States and China (and Russia). But is this label an illuminating or distorting analogy?
12/06/2021
In October 2021, the Office of the Secretary of Defense released two new climate change reports to ensure that DoD is prepared to both meet increased demand for missions and carry out those missions under a changing climate: the DoD Climate Risk Analysis (DCRA) and the Climate Adaptation Plan (CAP).
12/02/2021
Since Peter the Great, Russian leaders have been lured by opportunity to the East. Under the tsars, Russians colonized Alaska, California, and Hawaii.
11/19/2021
In January 2017 and again during his presidential campaign, then-Vice President Biden said that "I believe that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack."
11/18/2021
Robert Carlin will explore how details of precedent and history are supremely important, whether in face-to-face contact with North Koreans or working from afar, yet how inattention to such detail has led off cliffs, into swamps.
11/10/2021
As the rivalry between the US and China has intensified, the choices of countries in the Indo-Pacific such as India have come under the spotlight.
11/08/2021
The 2020 U.S. Nuclear Employment Strategy is now publicly available for the first time and its publication is certain to raise questions about the similarities and differences to the 2013 U.S. Nuclear Employment Strategy.
11/01/2021
Recent open-source research reveals that China may be massively building up its nuclear forces at an unprecedented speed and scale in its history
10/19/2021
The greatest unacknowledged diplomatic achievement of the Cold War was the absence of mushroom clouds.
10/14/2021
Relations between the United States and South Korea have become increasingly strained.
10/04/2021
Elbridge Colby was the lead architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, the most significant revision of U.S. defense strategy in a generation.
09/28/2021
Author David Cooper argues in his new book from Georgetown University Press that the United States is facing a new era of nuclear arms racing for which it is conceptually unprepared.
09/21/2021
The Sino-Russian partnership has gone from strength to strength, and relations today are better than at any time in history.
09/14/2021
Escalation or de-escalation is an important tool in the management of crisis and conflict.
08/25/2021
This presentation focuses on a subset of nations in NATO—the 11 U.S. allies that are both equipped and eligible to assume operational roles under the Alliance's nuclear-sharing arrangements, as constituted at present by the Dual Capable Aircraft (DCA) posture.
08/17/2021
Our project seeks to understand whether, when, and how great power alliance commitments to weaker states can lead to peacetime military policies that pose heightened risks of wartime escalation—particularly nuclear escalation.
08/03/2021
This presentation will discuss how and why China is shifting its nuclear posture.
07/27/2021
This comprehensive yet compact book provides a concise introduction to North Korea.
06/24/2021
Sig Hecker will present the main arguments and conclusions from his upcoming book with Elliot Serbin on North Korea's nuclear program.
06/17/2021
Our project seeks to understand whether, when, and how great power alliance commitments to weaker states can lead to peacetime military policies that pose heightened risks of wartime escalation—particularly nuclear escalation.
06/10/2021
As the Biden administration prepares to conduct a nuclear posture review, two key principles—reducing the risk of accidental war and maintaining deterrence for less cost—should drive major changes in policy.
06/03/2021
States have concluded that there seems to be no reason that international law, specifically the U.N. Charter and rules of customary international law (CIL) derived from the Charter's principles, should not apply to cyberspace.
06/01/2021
Our project seeks to understand whether, when, and how great power alliance commitments to weaker states can lead to peacetime military policies that pose heightened risks of wartime escalation—particularly nuclear escalation.
05/27/2021
Popular and political discussions of the changing climate invariably invoke "The Science" as settled.
05/19/2021
The upcoming NPT Review Conference (RevCon) -- delayed from 2020 due to the pandemic and now tentatively scheduled for August 2021 -- is likely to be contentious, like all previous RevCons.
05/17/2021
Emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs) pose a number of uncertainties for the future of conflict, but nowhere are these uncertainties more acute than in the realm of nuclear stability and deterrence.
05/11/2021
Since the Islamic Revolution of 1979, Iran has emerged as one of the world's foremost gray zone actors, and for more than four decades, the United States has struggled to understand the rather unique requirements of gray zone deterrence.
05/03/2021
Iran's nuclear program has been a source of disagreement between the United States and Iran for decades, but efforts to resolve the conflict have been hard fought and often short lived.
04/20/2021
We are now in an era of rapid disruptive technological change, especially in artificial intelligence (AI). AI technology is already being infused into military machines, and global armed forces are well advanced in their planning, research and development, and in some cases, deployment of AI-enabled capabilities.
04/15/2021
The U.S. faces challenges of peer competition across all scales of intensity, and the U.S. military is increasingly finding itself lacking options.
04/14/2021
Many of us take as a given that the Triad of U.S. nuclear forces helps prevent major wars and promote strategic stability among the major powers.
04/07/2021
Ms. Cox will discuss the Alliance's important role in nuclear deterrence.
03/16/2021
The Biden administration, like its predecessors, will review U.S. nuclear policy.
03/11/2021
Mitchell was tasked by NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg with co-chairing an expert commission with former German Defense Minister Thomas de Maiziere to provide recommendations for strengthening the political dimension of the NATO Alliance.
03/03/2021
It is well-established that climate change is happening and is caused by humans. Further, it is clear that humanity is largely not doing the things we know we need to do to control the problem.
03/01/2021
Since it was negotiated in 2015, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran (JCPOA) has rarely been out of the headlines.
02/24/2021
When the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference convenes this August, after more than a year-long delay due to the COVID-19 pandemic, it will undoubtedly feature a well-worn yet imbalanced debate over disarmament.
02/11/2021
We are in a period of open technological innovation that gives ordinary individuals and small groups unprecedented power.
02/02/2021
This talk looks at the numerous ways in which public misinformation, malinformation and disinformation can complicate and magnify strategic risks such as biosecurity events.
02/02/2021
Iran's nuclear program is accelerating, and the Iran nuclear deal--which the United States withdrew from in 2018--is hanging on by a thread.
01/25/2021
A new missile age has begun, one with profound implications for U.S. national security.
01/21/2021
Xi Jinping has made his ambitions for the People's Liberation Army (PLA) perfectly clear, there is no mystery what he wants, first, that China should become a "great maritime power" and secondly, that the PLA "become a world-class armed force by 2050."
01/19/2021
Contemporary debates on Russian nuclear strategy focus on making sense of Russia's nuclear capabilities, signaling and nuclear declarations.