A Nuclear Education: NATO's Nuclear Planning Group
In his Enduring Alliance: A History of NATO and the Postwar Global Order (Cornell University Press, 2019), Tim Sayle argued that NATO survived the Cold War because it offered solutions to foreign policy challenges posed by the democratic age. In his next project, he looks beyond why allied leaders maintained NATO and considers one of the innovative solutions the United States developed to overcome inter-allied worries about American nuclear capabilities.
“A Nuclear Education,” the project-in-progress he will present, will offer an in-depth study of the origins and successes of NATO’s Nuclear Planning Group (NPG). The NPG was established in the late 1960s and continues to serve as a site for discussion and review of NATO nuclear policy. The need for such a mechanism – essentially a forum where the United States could educate its allies about US nuclear policy and capabilities - was obvious in the late 1940s. But just what form this education would take was anything but clear. Why did it take so long for NATO to establish a site for the exchange of nuclear information and discussion of nuclear policy? Why did it take the form it did – as a group of senior ministers of defense – and why does it endure? Did the NPG help resolve NATO’s nuclear crises in the 1960, 1970s, and beyond? If so how, and how do we know? The study aims to provide a historical analysis of an element of NATO previously inaccessible to researchers, while also offering possible policy implications for international cooperation and planning.
About this Lecture
Lectures of Opportunity offer U.S. Naval War College (NWC) students, faculty, and staff an opportunity to learn more about national and international socio-political subjects that may be of relevance to the NWC community.