About the Event: In the last few years, a number of analysts have warned that we may be on the brink of a more proliferated world, as the security environment deteriorates, concerns about U.S. reliability as a protector are on the rise, hostility between the great powers grows, and the Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) seems to be under increasing stress. These fears were supercharged by the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which appeared to demonstrate that nuclear weapons can facilitate conquest and that giving them up—as Ukraine did in the early 1990s—exposes states to terrible predation. How worried should we be about the nuclear club expanding in the coming decade? Drawing on lessons from nuclear history, I argue that while proliferation risks are growing, they are significantly more manageable than many analysts suggest. And while the odds of proliferation are increasing in both East Asia and the Middle East, we should be significantly more concerned about the latter.

About the Speaker: Nicholas L. Miller is an Associate Professor in the Department of Government at Dartmouth College. Miller’s research focuses primarily on the causes and consequences of nuclear weapons proliferation. His book, Stopping the Bomb: The Sources and Effectiveness of U.S. Nonproliferation Policy, was published by Cornell University Press in 2018. His work has also been published in a wide variety of scholarly journals, including the American Political Science Review, International Organization, and International Security, as well popular outlets like Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and War on the Rocks. He earned his Ph.D. in Political Science from MIT.

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