Talk delivered at dinner during CISAC's conference, "The Security Implications of Increased Global Reliance on Nuclear Power," Wednesday, 19 September 2007, Stanford University.

Introduction: "Since you're dealing with the transition ongoing in the world to nuclear energy, I thought it might be comforting to hear a little about the problems of earlier energy transitions--from wood to coal and from coal to oil as well as natural gas and nuclear power. Energy transitions take time, writes Arnulf Grübler. 'Hardly any innovation diffuses into a vacuum,' he says. 'Along its growth trajectory, an innovation interacts with existing techniques...and changes its technological, economic, and social characteristics....Decades are required for the diffusion of significant innovations, and even longer time spans are needed to develop infrastructures....' The diffusion process is a process of learning, and humans learn slowly."

Nations, States, and Violence presents a revisionist view of the sources of nationalism, the relationship of the nation to culture, and the implications of nationalism and cultural heterogeneity for the future of the nation-state. It accepts the now-standard view that national identities are not inherited traits but constructed communities in order to serve political ends. But the resulting national identities do not emerge from some metaphorical plebiscite as had been suggested by some; rather they result from efforts by people to coordinate their identities with people who share at least some cultural traits with them. Coordination leads to powerful social and cultural ties that are hard to unravel, and this explains the persistence of national identities.

Understood as the result of coordination dynamics, the implications of national homogeneity and heterogeneity are explored. The book shows that national heterogeneity is not, as it is sometimes accused of being, a source of hatred and violence. Nonetheless, there are advantages to homogeneity for the production of public goods and economic growth. Whatever the positive implications of homogeneity, the book shows that in the current world, classic nation-states are defunct. Heterogeneity is proliferating not only due to migration but also because small groups in many states once thought to be homogeneous are coordinating to demand national recognition. With the prohibitive costs of eliminating cultural heterogeneity, citizens and leaders need to learn how best to manage, or even take advantage of, national diversity within their countries. Management of diversity demands that we understand the coordination aspects of national heterogeneity, a perspective that this book provides.

In addition to providing a powerful theory of coordination and cultural diversity, the book provides a host of engaging vignettes of Somalia, Spain, Estonia, and Nigeria, where the author has conducted original field research. The result is a book where theory is combined with interpretations of current issues on nationalism, economic growth, and ethnic violence.

Reviews

"In this provocative little book, a Stanford political scientist presents an intriguing account of nationalism and its implications for conflict and cooperation."--Foreign Affairs

Last year, for the first time, the United States voted in the U.N. General Assembly against a traditional resolution calling for negotiation of legally binding negative security assurances (NSAs) by nuclear-weapon states. These are promises not to use nuclear weapons against nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) states-parties that have promised not to acquire them. In the debate, the U.S. delegation explained that the United States "opposes a treaty on negative security assurances or any other binding instrument on security assurances."

U.S. military officials have long opposed explicit promises not to use nuclear weapons against countries that do not have them. Prior to the current administration, however, the U.S. government had rarely been so clear in stating its opposition. This new position is contrary to U.S. national interests.

U.S. superiority in conventional weapons and the advent of precision-guided munitions means that the United States does not need to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons to achieve its military goals effectively, even against those states that possess chemical or biological weapons. Indeed, the United States needs to be prepared to use nuclear weapons only in response to an attack with nuclear weapons. Moreover, the U.S. refusal to endorse NSAs only encourages additional countries, including U.S. enemies, to acquire nuclear weapons.

Somalia is once again on the front page--and the news isn't pretty. Since 2003, the country's seaside capital of Mogadishu has served as an arena for a battle of gladiators, pitting U.S.backed warlords against guntoting Islamic revolutionaries. With no capable or legitimate state to counter it, the Union of Islamic Courts emerged victorious last June, only to be felled in December by an enfeebled transitional government, formed in exile and backed by the Ethiopian military. A recent spate of assassinationstyle killings and suicide bombings herald the arrival of a new resistance movement intent on ejecting these foreign forces and the African Union troops now being dispatched to the country. Caught in the midst of this violent morass is Somalia's longsuffering population of 8.5 million, seeking order from whomever can provide it, simply hoping that the bully who comes out on top will care enough to reverse the country's economic collapse.

Somalia may be garnering headlines today, but the country's strife parallels the bloodshed in far too many of Africa's struggling nations.

Through efforts like the Nunn-Lugar program, the U.S. government and many of the Day After Workshop participants, including us, have long sought to prevent nuclear weapons and fissile materials from falling into new and threatening hands, especially terrorists. But we all know that these efforts have not reduced the probability to zero. It is also a common refrain among policy thinkers concerned with the growing nuclear threat--again, ourselves included--to frame the issue of prevention in terms of a provocative question, "On the day after a nuclear weapon goes off in a U.S. city, what will we wish we had done to prevent it?"

But our Preventive Defense "Day After Workshop" asked a different question: "What will we actually do on the day after prevention fails?" What will we want to do? How can we prepare now to be able to do it? We asked the distinguished participants in the Workshop to catapult themselves vividly and concretely into the aftermath of a nuclear detonation on a U.S. city. The needed actions by government and the public on the Day After will fall into two categories: actions to recover from the first detonation, and actions to prevent a second detonation. The Workshop addressed both types of action in as much detail, including technical detail, as possible. Topics included emergency response, evacuation and sheltering, immediate radiation effects, follow-on threats to the first nuclear weapon, attribution and retaliation, and the long process of cleanup--especially the uniquely difficult problem of fallout and residual radioactivity.