For 65 years, nuclear deterrence has been a pillar of U.S. foreign policy and the global balance of power. Figuring out how to safely evolve to a world without nuclear weapons is a monumental challenge. According to Adam Stulberg, answers are not as clear-cut as one might think.
.jpg)
Academic scholars have been largely absent from debate over prospects for eliminating nuclear weapons. During the Cold War era, the subjects of nuclear strategy and deterrence were ignored or overlooked as mainstay subjects for teaching and research in political science and international relations programs. Stulberg believes that policy makers in the U.S. and other nuclear weapons possessors states (NWPS) now enjoy an unprecedented opportunity as high-level political support aligns with mounting concerns about nuclear proliferation, catastrophic terrorism, and energy security. He has launched research projects that are reinvigorating academia's contribution to achieving global nuclear disarmament, illuminating basic concepts needed to realize the vision. The urgency for solutions was brought forward by President Obama in his speech in Prague in 2009 when he stated that, despite the demise of the Cold War, “in a strange turn of history, the threat of global nuclear war has gone down, but the risk of a nuclear attack has gone up.”
Stulberg's research involves understanding the inherent relationship between nuclear energy and international security. There are two aspects to his work:. One is to examine the motivations and strategic consequences that arise when countries seek to acquire sensitive nuclear material. The second aspect deals with how the reduction or elimination of nuclear weapons stockpiles may affect international relationships and stability. His analysis is intended to help policy makers shape strategic positions and courses of action regarding these tremendously complex issues.
Stulberg and his colleagues and students are uncovering potential unintended consequences of implementing “Road to Zero” policies and how the we might avoid creating a new set of problems should the lack of a nuclear deterrent introduce its own strategic problems and risks.
Historically, American policy makers have equated stability with nuclear deterrence," said Stulberg. "Our ability to discourage actors from taking belligerent actions is contingent upon our threat of ultimately delivering unacceptable damage via our nuclear arsenal. But when you reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in the international arena, is that going to increase the incentives for actors to be more aggressive? If so, how are we going to either dissuade, defend, or in some cases, pre-empt or counter those types of challenges in a non-nuclear fashion and without catastrophic consequences?"
Thus the broad issue of stability begs another question: In the absence of a robust nuclear deterrent, do conventional weapons become more "usable"?
Stulberg says, "The very fact that they are more usable and more credible may make other countries more nervous and therefore likely to be belligerent in cases where they wouldn't be with nuclear weapons."
Furthermore, of what value are U.S. security assurances to other countries absent the reliance on the ultimate weapon? "We're trying to understand if we can make Japan and other countries secure in their interaction with other states-- even those that may be perceived as posing a threat-- when they can't rely on our nuclear guarantee," said Stulberg.
One of Stulberg's core projects is the Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE): Rethinking Stability Criteria Along the "Road to Zero" With POSSE's co-Principal investigator William C. Potter, Director of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies, Stulberg is forging a global network of intergenerational and interdisciplinary scholars including those from the Russian Federation and the People's Republic of China, and bringing them together with national security policy makers from other nuclear weapons possessing states (NWPS). POSSE seeks to spur pursuit of new analytic frameworks and methodologies for examining future strategic needs attendant to deep cuts in nuclear weapons and risk reduction:
“We're fleshing out requirements for 'minimum deterrence' among the existing NWPS and exploring criteria for strategic stability. That means looking at how far we can reduce nuclear weapons and maintain stability; incentives to discourage use of residual nuclear weapons; and the challenges for managing virtual or latent nuclear weapons capabilities.”
Stulberg and Potter intend to fill knowledge gaps for managing conflict among multiple nuclear powers, all of which possess very different force postures/strategies. The program kicked off in 2010 with an academic workshop as part of the Nunn Forum and continues in 2011 with successive policy workshops in Washington, D.C and on the Georgia Tech campus.
Not surprisingly, the sheer complexity of the issues on which Stulberg focuses calls for an array of perspectives as well as interdisciplinary expertise. For example, Stulberg is exploring the interaction of states and non-state actors in the illicit spread of sensitive nuclear technologies.
"We engage our colleagues from across campus, in this case primarily the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering (NRE) Program, to understand what those technologies are," he said. "Within The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, we work with scholars who understand network behavior and command-and-control issues. We have regional experts who know a lot about a number of these states and non state actors in the Middle East, Southeast Asia, Europe, Russia/Eurasia, Latin America -- where these materials diffuse."
"It also involves engaging some of our colleagues who are developing new technologies, so our work feeds directly into some of the technical research that's being done here on campus within NRE and the Georgia Tech Research Institute."
Stulberg's work is one reason that Georgia Tech is at the forefront of interdisciplinary research in this arena, "This approach is highly regarded, encouraged and even rewarded," said Stulberg.
Stulberg tries to analyze policy issues much like scientists analyze technical issues. "We generate hypotheses, and then apply different quantitative or qualitative methodology to probe critical cases studies or other data that may tell us a lot about these issues. We step back and assess different prospective explanations, and test them against certain data points much like our colleagues in the hard sciences generate and test hypotheses."
"From that testing process we generate likely inflection points, systematic projections and/or recommendations on how the U.S. would want to proceed based on projected conditions under alternative futures."
Stulberg emphasizes that he and his colleagues in the Nunn School are not in the business of making ironclad predictions. "We're trying to do better than relying on gut instinct or emotion or letting our assumptions drive problems," he explained. "Rather, we disentangle difficult and complex policy issues to see what the relative weights are of alternative factors, be they strategic pressures, rivalry between states, domestic politics, the role of bureaucratic politics, regional politics or interest groups, or even the role of ideas and different cultures and how they may or may not affect behavior relative to international politics or strategic postures."
Stulberg's research is published in academic journals and books, to advance contemporary scholarly thinking on these real-world issues among his peers and students. He brings the research to a practical level with articles, working papers and presentations for business leaders, members of Congress and government officials, as well as policy experts and policy analysts in the U.S. and around the world.
Students have opportunities to learn about policy discussions through on-campus initiatives sponsored by the Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy, of which Stulberg is co-director.
"We bring together scholars, policy insiders, diplomats from different countries, private-sector individuals and people from the national labs for an off-the-record gathering where we can sort of roll up our sleeves and tackle some of these practical issues from multiple perspectives."
"One of the reasons why I'm happy to be a part of The Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts is because it creates so many opportunities for interdisciplinary approaches to these obviously very challenging contemporary security issues."
Adam Stulberg
Associate Professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
Co-Director for Center of International Strategy, Technology, and Policy
Adam Stulberg teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on international security, Eurasian politics and security affairs, nuclear (non)proliferation, and energy and international security, as well as inter-disciplinary courses on science, technology, and international security policy. His current research focuses on energy security dilemmas and statecraft in Eurasia, new approaches to strategic stability and denuclearization of military arsenals, internationalization of the nuclear fuel cycle, counter-network warfare, and the implications of nanotechnology for international security.
