The hollow threat of nukes

Friday, March 10, 2017 - 17:11 in Physics & Chemistry

As President Trump signals that he wants to expand the nation’s nuclear arsenal, two experts at a Harvard forum argued Thursday that some of the touted advantages of being a nuclear power have been overstated. Speaking at the Harvard Kennedy School, Matthew Fuhrmann and Todd Sechser said nuclear weapons deter aggression, but they questioned the common view that they are also useful as a coercive tool against adversaries. “We found very little evidence actually that nuclear weapons have been successfully used in a coercive role in the past, even though countries have tried many times to do it,” said Sechser, an associate professor of politics at the University of Virginia. Sechser and Fuhrmann, an associate professor of political science and Ray A. Rothrock ’77 Fellow at Texas A&M University, spoke as part of the Project on Managing the Atom seminar series offered by the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. The co-author with...

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