The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (E.T.)
Some nuclear-armed states, including the United States, have built and maintain arsenals that include nuclear weapons with yields of 10 kilotons or less (in comparison to the 15-20 kiloton bombs the United States used to destroy Hiroshima and Nagasaki) as well as much higher yield weapons (100s of kilotons). The lower yield weapons are seen by some as allowing for an early or first-use of nuclear weapons in a crisis or conventional conflict, or an attempt to limit the scale of a nuclear war through a tit-for-tat retaliation after an adversary's nuclear weapon use. This presentation provides scenario-based public opinion survey data gathered in 2023 from the United States, Britain, Pakistan, and India, to assess whether and how the availability of lower yield nuclear weapons shapes public views on nuclear weapons use. The scenarios include war between India and Pakistan, and war between NATO and Russia that begins in the Baltics. The results highlight the complexity of public attitudes and perceptions of the threshold separating conventional war from nuclear war.
About the speaker: Lisa Langdon Koch is Associate Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College. Her book, Nuclear Decisions: Changing the Course of Nuclear Weapons Programs (2023), received the Robert Jervis Best International Security Book Award from the International Security section of the American Political Science Association. She teaches courses on international politics, US foreign policy, US national security policy, and the international politics of nuclear weapons, and has published on nuclear proliferation, nuclear restraint, and foreign policy. She has a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Michigan.