With New Nuclear Pact and the Post Cold-War Arms Agenda; Strategic Insights, v. 1, issue 5 (July 2002)

This article appeared in Strategic Insights, v.1, issue 5 (July 2002)Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Security Assurances: Concept Clarification and Initial Hypotheses

Paper prepared for International Studies Association annual convention, New Orleans, LA, Feb. 17-20, 2010NOTE: This paper was originally drafted to serve as the introductory paper for a workshop on Security Assurances and Nonproliferation organized by the author. The workshop took place in Colorado Springs, CO, in August 2009, and was funded by the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA).Military power and the threat to use it can be employed by states not only for expansionist purposes but also as a means to protect national security. Historically, countries that seek security have often depended on threats or the ability to threaten other states to defend their interests and deter challenges. But a threat-based strategy will not always be effective. In some situations, promises to respect or ensure the security of others may be appropriate as a complement or even alternative to the ability to threaten others. Such security assurances, however, have received much less attention from policymakers and scholars than have measures for defense or deterrence

Protest Cycles and Political Process: American Peace Movements in the Nuclear Age

Since the dawn of the nuclear age small groups of activists have consistently protested both the content of United States national security policy, and the process by which it is made. Only occasionally, however, has concern about nuclear weapons spread beyond these relatively marginal groups, generated substantial public support, and reached mainstream political institutions. In this paper, I use histories of peace protest and analyses of the inside of these social movements and theoretical work on protest cycles to explain cycles of movement engagement and quiescence in terms of their relation to external political context, or the "structure of political opportunity." I begin with a brief review of the relevant literature on the origins of movements, noting parallels in the study of interest groups. Building on recent literature on political opportunity structure, I suggest a theoretical framework for understanding the lifecycle of a social movement that emphasizes the interaction between activist choices and political context, proposing a six-stage process through which challenging movements develop. Using this theoretical framework I examine the four cases of relatively broad antinuclear weapons mobilization in postwar America. I conclude with a discussion of movement cycles and their relation to political alignment, public policy, and institutional politics.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68552/2/10.1177_106591299304600302.pd

Book Review by Jeffrey W. Knopf of Pivotal Deterrence: Third-Party Statecraft and the Pursuit of Peace written by Timothy W. Craford

Book Review of: Timothy W. Crawford, Pivotal Deterrence: Third-Party Statecraft and the Pursuit of Peace. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2003. 275 pp

Did Reagan Win the Cold War?; Strategic Insights, v. 3, issue 8 August 2004)

This article appeared in Strategic Insights, v.3, issue 8 August 2004)Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Security Assurances and Nonproliferation

Naval Postgraduate SchoolCenter for Contemporary Conflict (CCC

Multilateral Cooperation on Nonproliferation

"Global efforts to prevent the spread of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) have given rise to international regimes that cover nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons, respectively. These regimes each have at their core a global treaty: the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), the Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention (BWC), and the Chemical Weapons Convention (CWC). Over time, a number of other initiatives have sprung up alongside these treaties. Yet, while a tremendous amount of cooperative activity takes place beyond the core nonproliferation treaties, there is very little research dedicated to a comparative analysis of these efforts. This project addresses this gap in our knowledge by providing the first systematic comparative analysis of cooperative nonproliferation activities beyond the core treaties. It has two goals: to identify sources of cooperative nonproliferation activities and to assess the effectiveness of such endeavors."2012 017Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Wrestling with Deterrence: Bush Administration Strategy After 9/11

The article of record as published may be located at http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13523260802284076After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, many observers concluded that the central American strategies of the Cold War – containment and deterrence – no longer applied. Deterring suicide terrorists is a daunting challenge, as people who plan to kill themselves to carry out an attack have no reason to care about a threat to punish them after the fact. Deterring the organizations that send suicide terrorists is also difficult, because such non-state actors may ‘lack a return address’ against which to retaliate. As then Under Secretary of State John Bolton expressed it soon after 9/11, people willing to fly airplanes into buildings are ‘not going to be deterred by anything’