Abstract: Under what conditions could the United States control escalation in a conventional conflict with a nuclear-armed adversary? The possibility that a dispute between the U.S. and a nuclear-armed opponent remains a contingency policy-makers and military planners should consider. There is growing work on the pathways to nuclear escalation during a conventional conflict, but less on how these armed disputes could end. This paper will explore some of the conditions that favor successful escalation management and the conditions that could make escalation control extremely difficult. The paper also assesses possible U.S. responses to nuclear use by an adversary.

About the Speaker: Jasen J. Castillo is an Associate Professor at Texas A&M University’s George H.W. Bush School of Government and Public Service. He came to the Bush School after serving on the staff of the Policy Planning Office in the U.S. Department of Defense from 2005 to 2007. Before then, he worked at the RAND Corporation and the Institute for Defense Analysis. He holds a Ph.D. in political science from the University of Chicago. His publications include: Endurance and War: The National Sources of Military Cohesion (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2014); Nuclear Strategies to Deter Conventional Attacks,” in, New Perspectives on Coercion, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, forthcoming); Flexible Response Revisited: Assessing Pakistan’s Potential Nuclear Strategies, PM-2383 (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 2007); Striking First: Preemptive and Preventive Attack in U.S. National Security Policy (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 2004); “Nuclear Terrorism: Why Deterrence Still Matters,” Current History, Vol. 2, No. 668 (2003), Economic Growth and Military Expenditures, MR-112-A, (Santa Monica, CA: The Rand Corporation, 2002). His research focuses on U.S. national security policy, especially military effectiveness and nuclear deterrence.

Abstract: Throughout the Cold War, Japanese leaders and policymakers have generally been careful to reflect the public’s firm opposition to anti-nuclear sentiment. However, the turn of the 21st century has witnessed a remarkable shift in the political debate, with élites alluding to a nuclear option for Japan. This sudden proliferation of nuclear statements among Japanese élites in 2002 has been directly linked by Japan watchers to the breakout of the second North Korean nuclear crisis and the rapid buildup of China’s military capabilities. Is the Japanese perception of this double military threat in Northeast Asia really the main factor that triggered this shift in the nuclear debate? This paper argues that Japanese élites’ behavior rather indicates that the new threats in the regional strategic context is merely used as a pretext to solve a more deep-rooted and long-standing anxiety that stems from Japan’s own unsuccessful quest for a less reactive, and more proactive post-Cold War identity. 

About the speaker: Sayuri Romei is a Nuclear Security Predoctoral Fellow at CISAC for 2016-2017 and a doctoral candidate in international relations at Roma Tre University in Rome, Italy. Her dissertation focuses on the evolution of Japanese élites’ nuclear mentality in the postwar era, looking at its ambivalent nuclear history and exploring how the country’s nuclear latency was seen by the United States throughout the Cold War. She holds a BA in English Language and Literature from the University of Sorbonne Nouvelle Paris III, a BA in international relations from the University of Roma La Sapienza, and an MA in international relations from Roma Tre University. Her fellowship at CISAC is sponsored by the MacArthur Foundation.

Abstract: Since their conception in the 1950s, thorium reactors have been promoted as a promising technology for nuclear energy generation, though they have not yet been successfully commercialized. Proponents of thorium reactors argue that they are safer, produce less waste, and are proliferation-resistant, compared with uranium-fueled light water reactors used around the world today. The central question guiding this research concerns the final claim. Is the thorium fuel cycle inherently more resistant to nuclear weapons proliferation than the traditional uranium fuel cycle?

Advocates argue that the thorium fuel cycle is less vulnerable to proliferation of nuclear weapons technology because little or no plutonium is produced. Additionally, fissile U-233 is claimed to be “self-protected” by U-232, which is produced with U-233 and decays through Tl-208, emitting highly energetic gamma radiation. But the amount of U-232 generated depends on reactor operation. Furthermore, the U-232 content can be further decreased by conducting chemical separations at the back-end of the fuel cycle.

This presentation will discuss the proliferation risks of the thorium fuel cycle. The potential for generating large stockpiles of isotopically pure U-233 by conducting protactinium separations at the back end of the fuel cycle is examined as a new proliferation pathway that current IAEA safeguards may not be prepared to address.

About the Speaker: Eva C. Uribe is a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC for the 2016-2017 academic year. Her research involves identifying proliferation pathways in the thorium fuel cycle and assessing the potential impact and implications of U-233 stockpile generation on the international nonproliferation regime. Eva received a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley in 2016. Her dissertation research focused on structural analysis of organically-modified porous silica surfaces for the extraction of uranium from aqueous solutions using nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. In 2011 Eva received a B.S. from Yale University with a double major in Chemistry and Political Science. She served as a Next Generation Safeguards Initiative intern with the Nonproliferation Division at Los Alamos National Laboratory in 2008 and 2009.

Abstract: While impressive strides have been made in detecting physical evidence of nuclear weapons production, there is no consensus on how international relationships combine to motivate or deter policymakers from seeking nuclear weapons. Rather than address a single variable, this study investigates how networks of interstate conflict, alliances, trade, and nuclear cooperation merge to increase or decrease the proliferation likelihood of individual states. Using multiplex networks to study the structure of international relations factors theorized to deter or incentivize nuclear proliferation and open-source data on military alliances, macroeconomic ties, armed conflicts, and nuclear cooperation agreements, we construct a multilayer network model in which states are nodes linked by proliferation-relevant variables. This work shows the first quantitative heterogenous analysis of external proliferation determinants using a network science formalism and opens a new avenue of study of the external proliferation motivators for each state within an international network. Preliminary findings suggest that specific external relations—particularly the existence of armed conflict and the signing of Nuclear Cooperation Agreements—largely explain the decision of states to proliferate or not.

About the Speaker: Bethany L. Goldblum is a member of the research faculty in the Department of Nuclear Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the Scientific Director of the Nuclear Science and Security Consortium, a multi-institution initiative established by DOE’s NNSA to support the nation’s nonproliferation mission through cutting-edge research in nuclear security science in collaboration with the national laboratories. Goldblum founded and directs the Nuclear Policy Working Group, an interdisciplinary team of undergraduate and graduate students focused on developing policy solutions to strengthen global nuclear security. She has been involved with the Public Policy and Nuclear Threats Boot Camp nearly since its inception, and acted as director of the program since 2013. Goldblum received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2007.

Abstract: This talk examines ideologies of knowledge and expertise in the global governance of nuclear technology through an ethnographic study of the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Department of Safeguards. It considers how changes in the way that the IAEA carries out international nuclear safeguards have become the subject of increasing controversy in the last 15 years. This controversy provides fertile ground for understanding the role of knowledge and the functioning of bureaucracy in international governance. I will show that the critiques addressed against the new safeguards system reveal not only political alignments and struggles for power, but also uncover global and regional assumptions about how a technical bureaucracy is supposed to produce knowledge. In closing, I will propose how nuclear safeguards might be adapted to a changing security environment without threatening the IAEA's expert authority or politically discriminating against states.

About the Speaker: Anna M. Weichselbraun is a Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at CISAC. She received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in August 2016. Anna's dissertation, based on 24 months of ethnographic fieldwork and multi-archival research, investigates how nuclear safeguards inspectors, bureaucrats, and diplomats at the IAEA negotiate the international and institutional boundaries of politics and technology in their working lives. She asks how organizational products such as bureaucratic procedures, technical inspection reports, policy papers, and official diplomatic statements contribute to the logical ordering of technocratic expertise within the IAEA. She is especially interested in how individuals at international organizations communicate across different epistemic paradigms, and how particular types of knowledge become recognized as authoritative and legitimate. In addition to revising her dissertation into a book manuscript, she is also conducting preliminary research on networks of nonproliferation experts and their spheres of influence.

Abstract: In international politics, the division between allies and adversaries appears quite clear. For example, it is conventional wisdom that North Korea is China’s ally and South Korea is the United States’ ally. In proliferation literature, the main catalyst for nuclear proliferation is threats from adversaries, while an ally’s nuclear umbrella mitigates the threat and willingness to proliferate. However, in reality the division between a credible ally and threatening foe is less clear-cut. Contrary to conventional wisdom, security threats alone do not trigger the decision of an ally to develop its indigenous nuclear weapons program. In other words, security could be a necessary condition for wanting the nuclear bomb, but it is not a sufficient condition for starting an indigenous program. Rather, the sense of abandonment or clashes of national interests between two friendly states triggers a state to pursue an indigenous weapons program. Using newly available declassified documents to conduct process tracing, and comparing the decision-making in the cases of China and South Korea, I show that Chinese and South Korean nuclear weapons programs were triggered not by their foes, the U.S and North Korea, respectively, but by their friends, the Soviet Union and the U.S. 

About the Speaker: Jooeun Kim is a MacArthur Nuclear Security Predoctoral fellow at CISAC for 2016-17. She is completing her PhD in international relations at Georgetown University’s Department of Government. She studies credibility, alliance management, and nuclear proliferation within military alliances.

Her dissertation examines the credibility of a patron ally as the source of a protégé ally’s nuclear decisions, through analyzing allies’ behaviors during international crises.

She completed an MA in Government at Georgetown University, an MA in International Affairs at George Washington University, and a BA in Political Science at Waseda University, Japan. She speaks Korean, Japanese, and Chinese.

Outside of her dissertation writing, she is a certified yoga instructor and enjoys sculling on the Potomac River.