National Security and Proliferation Syllabus

National Security and Proliferation
SYLLABUS

Two books are required for this course:
•	Sagan and Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed
•	Cirincione, Wolfsthal, Rajkumar, Deadly Arsenals
All other course readings can be found on Blackboard as links in an electronic syllabus. These readings can be accessed through the “Readings” button in the main menu.


January 12	Introduction
Objectives:
•	Understand course content including subjects covered, assignments, and grading standards; and
•	Introduce ourselves.


January 19	Proliferation: Good or Bad?
Objectives:
•	Understand competing ideas about the dangers of nuclear proliferation and nuclear weapons.

Readings:
•	Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate
Renewed (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002).
o Read the entire book with the exception of Chapter 3: Indian and Pakistani
Nuclear Weapons: For Better or Worse?
•	Arundhati Roy, “The end of imagination,” Frontline, July 27, 1998.


January 26	Nuclear Expertise, Jargon and Political Power
Objectives:
•	Understand key nuclear weapons and proliferation jargon;
•	Investigate the political importance of jargon and fear in nuclear weapons politics.

Readings:
•	Carol Cohn, “Sex and Death in the Rational World of Defense Intellectuals,”

Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, 1987, Vol. 12, No. 4, pp. 687-
718.
•	Henry T. Nash, “The bureaucratization of homicide,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, April 1980, pp. 22-27
•	Lee Butler, “The False God of Nuclear Deterrence,” Global Dialogue, Vol. 1, No.
2, (Autumn 1999) pp. 74-81.

February 2	Resources, Research and Writing
Objectives:
•	Understand how to construct a thesis argument and to use evidence and analysis in support of that argument;
•	Be able to identify and avoid plagiarism;
•	Become familiar with the relevant library resources.

Readings:
•	Chapter 3, “From Topics to Questions,” and Chapter 7, “Making Good Arguments,” in Wayne C. Booth, Gregory G. Colomb, and Joseph M. Williams, The Craft of Research (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2003).



February 16	Nuclear Basics
Objectives:
•	Understand the basics of what it takes to make a nuclear weapon and which parts of this process constitute significant barriers for potential proliferants;
•	Become more aware of the difficulties of detecting nuclear weapons programs versus legitimate uses of nuclear technology.

Readings:
Nuclear Weapons Effects
•	Lynn Eden, “City on Fire,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 60, No. 1 (January /February 2004), pp. 32-37, 40-43.
Nuclear weapons basics
Chapter 3, “Nuclear Weapons and Materials,” in Deadly Arsenals.
•	Chapter 4, “Technical Aspects of Nuclear Proliferation,” in Office of Technology
Assessment, Technologies Underlying Weapons of Mass Destruction,
(Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, December 1993), OTA-BPISC-
115, pp. 119-171.
Different approaches to getting the bomb
•	Chapter 7, “The World’s Nuclear Development,” in Robert F. Mozley, The Politics and Technology of Nuclear Proliferation (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1998), pp. 157-213.
•	Robert Williams and Hal Feiveson, “How to Expand Nuclear Power without
Proliferation,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, April 1990, pp. 40-45.



February 23	Why do states want nukes?
Objectives:
•	Understand the 3 main reasons why states may want nuclear weapons and how these motivations may have changed over time;
•	Discuss the use of arguments and counter arguments.

Readings:
Why do states seek nuclear weapons?
•	Scott D. Sagan, “Why do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996-1997), pp. 54-86.
•	Chaim Braun and Christopher Chyba, “Proliferation Rings: New Challenges to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Regime,” International Security, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Fall 2004), pp. 5-49.
Case study: Iran
•	Chapter 15, “Iran,” in Deadly Arsenals.
•	Ray Takeyh and Nikolas K. Gvosdev, “Pragmatism in the Midst of the Iranian Turmoil,”
The Washington Quarterly, Autumn 2004, pp. 33-56.
•	Ray Takeyh, “Iran Builds the Bomb,” Survival, Winter 2004-2005, pp. 51-63.


March 2	I’ve got nukes. Now what do I do with them?
Objectives:
•	Understand the fundamentals of nuclear weapons strategy and force structure;
•	Discuss U.S. nuclear weapons strategies and their evolution during the Cold War.

Readings:
Fundamentals of nuclear strategy:
•	Henry A. Kissinger, “Force and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 34, No. 3 (April 1956), pp. 249-366.
•	Bernard Brodie, “The Anatomy of Deterrence,” World Politics Vol. 11, No. 2 (January 1959), pp. 173-191.
•	John Mueller, “The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons,” International
Security,” Vol. 13, No. 2 (Fall 1988), pp. 55-79. Growth in nuclear arsenals
•	“Introduction,” pp. 1-31; Box 1-1 “The Growth and Evolution of the U.S. Nuclear Stockpile,” pp. 44-45; and “Figure 1-4: Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 1945-97,” p. 46, all in Stephen I. Schwartz, ed., Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940 (Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution Press, 1998)
•	Chapter 10, “The United States,” in Deadly Arsenals. Current U.S. nuclear strategy

•	Subcommittee on National Security and Foreign Affairs, House Policy Committee, U.S.
House of Representatives, Differentiation and Defense: An Agenda for the Nuclear
Weapons Program, February 2003.

March 16	Old and New Nuclear Powers
Objectives:
•	Understand the evolution of the arsenals of the nuclear powers and current debates;
•	Consider the relationship between the nuclear weapons force structure of old and that of new nuclear powers. Should new nuclear powers be expected to behave like old ones?

Readings:
Old nuclear powers
•	Deadly Arsenals Chapter 6 (Russia), Chapter 7 (China), Chapter 8 (France), Chapter 9 (UK), and Chapter 13 (Israel).
New versus old nuclear powers
•	Chapter 3: Indian and Pakistani Nuclear Weapons: For Better or Worse? In Scott D.
Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate Renewed (W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2002)
o Read this with an eye towards determining whether the authors assume Pakistan and India will have a nuclear relationship just like that of the US and USSR? Are there important differences?

March 23	Stopping Proliferation – International Regimes & Voluntary Groups
Objectives:
•	Understand the pros and cons of international institutions and mechanisms for dealing with proliferation.

Readings:
Traditional approaches
•	Chapter 2, “The International Nonproliferation Regime,” Deadly Arsenals.
•	Weapons of Terror: Freeing the World of Nuclear, Biological and Chemical
Arms (Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission, 2006), pp. 43-109.
•	Harald Muller, “Compliance Politics: A Critical Analysis of Multilateral Arms
Control Treaty Enforcement,” The Nonproliferation Review, Summer 2000, p. 77-
90.
U.S. enforcement of nonproliferation
•	Zia Mian, “The American Problem: The United States and Noncompliance in the World of Arms Control and Nonproliferation," in International Law and Organization: Closing the Compliance Gap, Edward C. Luck and Michael W. Doyle, editors, (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 247-302.

March 30	Stopping Proliferation – U.S. Responses and Public Opinion
Objectives:
•	Debate the pros and cons of the new US strategy of counter proliferation;
•	Understand the influence of public opinion and protest on nuclear weapons politics; and
•	Understand how to write a policy memo.

Readings:
The new US counterproliferation strategy
•	Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, National Military Strategy to Combat
Weapons of Mass Destruction (Washington, DC, February 13, 2006).
•	The White House, The National Security Strategy of the United States of
American, March 2006. Military options for dealing with Iran
•	Sammy Salama and Karen Ruster, “A Preemptive Attack on Iran’s Nuclear Facilities: Possible Consequences,” CNS Research Story (Center for Nonproliferation Studies, August 12, 2004).
Public opinion and the bomb:
•	Program on International Policy Attitudes, “Americans on WMD Proliferation,” PIPA/Knowledge Networks Poll, April 15, 2004.
People and the bomb:
•	The Einstein-Russell Manifesto, July 9, 1955.
•	Lawrence S. Wittner, “The Power of Protest,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, July/August 2004, pp. 20-26.
•	George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of
Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007.
•	George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger and Sam Nunn, “Toward A Nuclear-Free World,” Wall Street Journal, January 15, 2007.

Policy Memos:
•	On Blackboard under the “Assignments” section there are a variety of resources that provide information about how to write policy memos.  Please read these, the example of a real policy memo, and skim the on-line sources listed.


April 6	New Nukes
Objectives:
•	Understand the main technical and political issues behind new nuclear weapons development in the United States;
•	Consider the effect of new U.S. nuclear weapons on nonproliferation and on nuclear developments in Russia and China;
•	Consider the relationship between missile defenses and vertical proliferation.

Readings:
New nuclear developments in the United States:
•	Stephen I. Schwartz, “Warheads Aren’t Forever,” Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists, September/October 2005, pp. 58-64.

•	Robert W. Nelson, “Low-Yield Earth-Penetrating Nuclear Weapons,” FAS Public
Interest Report, Vol. 54, No. 1, January/February 2001.
•	United States Senate, Debate on Amendment No. 715 to the National Defense Authorization Bill for Fiscal Year 2004, Congressional Record, Senate, Tuesday, May 20, 2003, 108th Congress, 1st Session, pp. S6663-6696.
•	Greg Mello, “That Old Designing Fever,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January/February 2000, pp. 51-57.
Missile defenses:
•	Ronald Reagan’s “Star Wars Speech,” March 23, 1983.
•	Richard L. Garwin and Hans A. Bethe, “Anti-Ballistic-Missile Systems,”
Scientific American, March 1968, Volume 218, Number 3, pp. 21-31.


April 13	Nuclear Theft and Smuggling
Objectives:
•	Understand the opportunities for nuclear theft and smuggling;
•	Understand the risks and uncertainties associated with monitoring and detecting nuclear smuggling.

Readings:
The problem from the former Soviet Union:
•	George Bunn and Fritz Steinhausler, “Guarding Nuclear Reactors and Material from Terrorists and Thieves, Arms Control Today, October 2001.
•	Ken Luongo and William Hoehn, “Reform and Expansion of Cooperative Threat
Reduction,” Arms Control Today, June 2003.
•	Matthew Bunn, Securing the Bomb 2007, (Harvard: Project on Managing the
Atom, September 2007), browse entire report. The AQ Khan Network:
•	William Langewiesche, “The Wrath of Khan,” Atlantic Monthly, November 2005.
•	David Albright and Corey Hinderstein, “Unraveling the A.Q. Khan and Future
Proliferation Networks,” The Washington Quarterly, Spring 2005, pp. 111-128.
•	Leonard Weiss, “Turning a Blind Eye Again? The Khan Network’s History and
Lessons for U.S. Policy,” Arms Control Today, March 2005. Problems with Detection and Monitoring
•	William C. Potter & Elena Sokova, “Illicit Nuclear Trafficking in the NIS: What’s New? What’s True?” The Nonproliferation Review, Summer 2002, p.
112-120.
•	Richard Willing, “Nuclear Traffic Doubles Since ‘90s,” USA Today, December
26, 2006, p. 1.

April 20	Biological & Chemical Weapons and Course Wrap-Up
Objectives:
•	Understand the main characteristics of biological and chemical weapons;
•	Understand the main hurdles to the development of these weapons;
•	Understand the promise and problems of both theories and policy issues in the area of proliferation, international responses to proliferation and US responses;

•	Understand how to give a policy briefing;
•	Work on improving your policy memo

Readings:
•	Chapter 4, “Biological and Chemical Weapons, Agents and Proliferation,” in Deadly
Arsenals.
•	Chapter 2, “Assessing the Risks,” in Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction, Office of Technology Assessment, 1993.
•	Wolfgang Panofsky, “Dismantling the Concept of Weapons of Mass Destruction,” Arms
Control Today, April 1998.