The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30 to 2:00 p.m. (E.T.)
With ambiguous words and gestures Vladimir Putin and other prominent Russian figures have sought from the onset of the war against Ukraine to manipulate legitimate, long-standing and deeply entrenched fears of nuclear weapons in adversaries, citizens and friends, and the wider international community. These efforts to influence perceptions and actions have included projecting and at times retracting the danger of nuclear war. This presentation will illustrate how the longstanding rubric of nuclear "threats" and "signals" developed during the Cold War impedes our understanding of these manipulations, as does the poker metaphor of "bluff." It also will describe how U.S. and allied leaders tried to counter Russian manipulations, also with ambiguity, through 2024. The presentation draws on a forthcoming book.
About the speaker: George Perkovich is the Japan Chair for a World Without Nuclear Weapons at the Nuclear Policy Program of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Washington DC.He is author of India's Nuclear Bomb, which won book-of-the-year prizes from the American Historical Association and the Association of Asian Studies. His most recent book is Rethinking a Political Approach to Nuclear Disarmament (2025).