Lectures of Opportunity: "A Realist's Case for Eliminating Nuclear Weapons"

About this lecture series

Lectures of Opportunity (LOOs) 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.

Synopsis

Ward Wilson will be presenting arguments from his forthcoming book, Hope in the Nuclear Age: The Realist Case for Eliminating Nuclear Weapons. Ward’s work reassesses the historical record and challenges some of the nuclear era’s foundational claims – e.g., that American use of atomic bombs caused Japan’s surrender in World War II, that the development of the hydrogen bomb solidified the nuclear weapons’ coercive power, and that these weapons explain why the Cold War stayed cold. Wilson’s work calls into question the value of current nuclear arsenal and offers a new rational for their elimination. Wilson provides a new perspective on nuclear issues that any practitioner or analyst of national security affairs must engage, particularly now, with the United States at a critical decision point regarding a large-scale and expensive nuclear modernization program.