November 26, 2025
SGS visiting researcher Professor Sharon Weiner delivered the 2025 Kenneth N. Waltz Annual Lecture at Aberystwyth University, Wales on 26 November 2025. The lecture is sponsored by Aberystwyth University’s Department of International Politics, the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies, and the journal International Relations. Aberystwyth University’s International Politics Department is over 100 years old and was the first Department of International Politics in the world. It was founded in 1919 in response to World War 1 to advance understanding of world politics in order to address the threat of organized violence. The 2025 Kenneth Waltz Lecture was introduced by Jan Ruzicka, the Director of the David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies.
Professor Weiner is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the School of International Service, American University, Washington DC, and a former SGS postdoctoral researcher. An award-winning scholar, she has published widely on issues of nuclear policy as well as U.S. civil-military relations. Her first book Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise (MIT Press, 2011) was the winner of the 2012 Louis Brownlow award from the National Academy of Public Administration. Her other awards include an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship (2018-2020), a Council on Foreign Relations International Affairs Fellowship in Nuclear Security (2014-2015), a visiting scholar at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2005-2006), a Robert Jay Lifton Fellowship for teaching nuclear weapons issues ( 2004-2005), and a Carnegie Scholar of Vision award (2001-2003).
In her lecture, “Deterrence, Nuclear Strategy, and the Realities of Human Choice” Professor Weiner discussed how U.S. nuclear strategy places decision makers in a quagmire. In a crisis, a US nuclear decision maker, typically the President, has mere minutes to weigh the pros and cons of different nuclear retaliatory options after warning of an imminent nuclear attack, the likely adversary response, and the impact on national security and humans.
Professor Weiner explained how deterrence theory assumes such choices are based on a rational and analytical assessment of the pros and cons of different options. But empirical evidence from her work, which includes a survey experiment and a virtual reality simulation of decision-making in a nuclear crisis (the Nuclear Biscuit) overwhelmingly suggests that emotion and intuition play preponderant roles and that the preferences of the decision maker may be created on the spot.
The lecture honors Kenneth Waltz (1924-2013), a leading American theorist of International Relations and author of Man, the State and War, and the Theory of International Politics. The David Davies Memorial Institute of International Studies was established in 1951 and the journal International Relations has been published since January 1957. The Aberystwyth University International Politics Department is over 100 years old and was the first Department of International Politics in the world. It was founded in 1919 in response to World War 1 to advance understanding of world politics in order to address the threat of organised violence.