The virtual seminar will be held from 3:00 to 4:30 p.m. (E.T.)
Most treatments of nuclear ethics or strategy have not considered the implications of long term, large scale, or even regional, catastrophic climatic effects known as “nuclear winter” triggered by some level of nuclear weapons use. This presentation will explore if and how the potential for nuclear winter changes the legality and ethics of the threat to use nuclear weapons. It will focus on asking whether nuclear war ever could be discriminate and proportionate if it risks causing nuclear winter. At a policy level, how should nuclear weapons states regard their arsenals if there is a significant or even a small risk that nuclear weapons use would cause such climatic disruption effects?
About the speaker: Neta C. Crawford is the Montague Burton Chair in International Relations at the University of Oxford and holds a Professorial Fellowship at Balliol College. Her research focuses on war, ethics, normative change, emotions in world politics, and climate change. Crawford is a co-founder of the Costs of War Project, based at Brown University. She has authored several books, including “Argument and Change in World Politics: Ethics, Decolonization and Humanitarian Intervention” (2002) and "Accountability for Killing: Moral Responsibility for Collateral Damage in America’s Post‑9/11 Wars" (2013).