Kenji Ito and Maria Rentetzi make a clear and ambitious claim in the introduction to their special issue of History and Technology: “Knowledge production in science and technology is fundamentally diplomatic” (4). Their call to explore how nuclear science, technology, and engineering have been enacted through negotiations among states is of a piece with longstanding…
Tag: nuclear nonproliferation
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-35 on Gibbons, The Hegemon’s Tool Kit
The nuclear nonproliferation regime (NPR) is widely seen as the most powerful international organization in the world. Composed of many international agencies, think tanks, government departments, and academic institutes, and funded by major donor groups and the governments of many of the world’s most powerful countries (above all, the US), its influence and sheer institutional…
H-Diplo | RJISSF Roundtable 15-25 on Kaplow, Signing Away the Bomb
On 17 October 1958, Irish Foreign Minister Frank Aiken proposed a resolution at the United Nations (UN) that called on that body to explore ways to prevent the “further dissemination of nuclear weapons.”[1] After Aiken’s initial effort did not succeed, Ireland reintroduced variations of the resolution every year until the UN General Assembly, on 4…
Roundtable 11-9 on Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of US Nonproliferation Policy
The adjective ‘timely’ is perhaps overused, but in the case of Nicholas Miller’s Stopping the Bomb—the subject of this roundtable review by four excellent scholars of nuclear politics—it is well-earned. Miller’s book was published in the spring of 2018, just as President Donald Trump pulled the United States out of the Iran nuclear deal, and…
Article Review Forum 68 on Nonproliferation
Julia Macdonald begins her review for this forum by pointing out that nuclear security studies has in the past decade undergone a “renaissance” in both political science studies and international history. Macdonald proceeds to note some of the most influential earlier studies by leading scholars such as Robert Jervis and Kenneth Waltz before discussing the…
Policy Roundtable 1-3 on the International Atomic Energy Agency Statute at Sixty
Sixty years ago, on 23 October 1956, an international conference at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York adopted the Statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). The document is almost as long as the UN Charter and remains the legal foundation of ‘the Agency,’ as the world nuclear organization is widely called.[1]…
Policy Roundtable 1-2 on Brexit
When British voters chose to leave the European Union in a 23 June 2016 referendum, they unleashed an intense and ongoing national debate over the consequences. Not surprisingly, the debate has largely surrounded the economic, political, and social consequences of “Brexit.” Those in favour of leaving emphasized the benefits of independence from what they saw…
Article Review 53 on “Accepting Regional Zero: Nuclear Weapon Free Zones, U.S. Nonproliferation Policy and Global Security, 1957-1968.” Journal of Cold War Studies 17:2
James Stocker offers a deep historical analysis of U.S. foreign policy towards regional nuclear weapons free zones (NWFZs) during the tenure of three American presidents — Dwight D. Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson— and maps its evolution over eleven years of pre-détente Cold War. He examines how the Eisenhower administration rejected the…
Forum 8 on “Special Issue: The Origins of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime.”
Last year, Scott Sagan declared – on H-Diplo – that we are in the midst of a renaissance in nuclear studies, driven by first-rate work by younger scholars.[1] Two qualities in particular mark this scholarship. First, many of these young scholars combine both methodological innovation and rigor while engaging new archival sources. Second, these scholars…