The virtual seminar will be held from 12:30-2:00 p.m. ET.
The role of nuclear weapons in framing the war between Russia and NATO-backed Ukraine has returned attention to questions about the relevance and utility of nuclear weapons as military and political tools and to the status of the international nuclear order. This renewed debate takes place in the context of a deterioration in the nuclear order that preceded the war, the return of hegemonic rivalry and intoxication, rampant technological change, and fraught domestic and international conditions. This two-part seminar will discuss first the evidence from the war in Ukraine that suggests the utility of nuclear weapons is more limited than many imagined and then will pose the larger questions: what if international nuclear relations are becoming beyond ordering, except in some particulars, and where does this leave the disarmament project?
About the speaker: Pavel Podvig is a researcher with the Program on Science and Global Security and with the United Nations Institute for Disarmament Research, and he also runs the Russian Nuclear Forces Project. William Walker is Emeritus Professor of International Relations at the University of St Andrews in Scotland. He has written on various aspects of nuclear affairs and is currently attempting to prepare a new edition of A Perpetual Menace: Nuclear Weapons and International Order.