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SUMMARY:The Instability of a Post-Nuclear World - Dr David Blagden
DTSTART:20140311T131000Z
DTEND:20140311T140000Z
UID:TALK50205@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:Dr Katherine Bowers
DESCRIPTION:The first election of US President Barack Obama in 2009 saw a 
 renewed commitment – at least rhetorically – to the goal of multilater
 al nuclear disarmament on the part of the world’s greatest military powe
 r\, a commitment that has been echoed by the UK governments of Gordon Brow
 n and David Cameron. Yet just how achievable is a world free of nuclear we
 apons? And if a multilaterally disarmed world were ever achieved\, just ho
 w militarily stable would that world be? This presentation and associated 
 paper begins from the premise that the knowledge and associated ability re
 quired to reconstruct nuclear weapons can never be expunged from the world
 \, meaning that rearmament – even in a world where all nuclear powers ha
 d agreed to dismantle their extant weapons – would always be a theoretic
 al possibility. That being the case\, there would always be the possibilit
 y of an escalatory race towards nuclear reconstitution during serious inte
 rnational crises between latently capable major powers – and crucially\,
  unlike contemporary deterrence\, which is made stable by the survivabilit
 y of the major powers’ seaborne nuclear arsenals\, the facilities of rea
 rmament would not be survivable. As such\, the argument that conventional 
 military aggression would be more likely in a world free of nuclear weapon
 s may indeed be commonplace\, and a risk that disarmament advocates are wi
 lling to bear. But this paper’s analysis suggests that nuclear aggressio
 n may also be more likely in a world that had dismantled its extant nuclea
 r warheads\, casting serious doubt on the desirability of the multilateral
  disarmament goal. 
LOCATION:The Richard King Room\, Darwin College
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