This course explores the reasons for America’s past wars and interventions. It covers the consequences of American policies, and evaluates these consequences for the U.S. and the world. History covered includes World Wars I and II, the Korean and Indochina wars, the Cuban Missile Crisis and current conflicts, including those in in Iraq and Afghanistan, and against Al Qaeda.

This course examines the causes of war, with a focus on practical measures to prevent and control war. Topics include causes and consequences of misperception by nations; military strategy and policy as cause of war; religion and war; U.S. foreign policy as a cause of war and peace; and the likelihood and possible nature of great wars in the future.
The historical cases covered include World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Seven Years’ War, the Arab-Israel conflict, other recent Mideast wars, and the Peloponnesian War.

This course explores the leading theoretical and methodological approaches to studying China’s interaction with the international system since 1949. Readings include books and articles that integrate the study of China’s foreign policy with the field of international relations.

This seminar examines the history and legacy of the Cold War on American science. It explores scientist’s new political roles after World War II, ranging from elite policy makers in the nuclear age to victims of domestic anti Communism. It also examines the changing institutions in which the physical sciences and social sciences were conducted during the postwar decades, investigating possible epistemic effects on forms of knowledge. The subject closes by considering the place of science in the post-Cold War era.

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes Carnegie policy analyst Karim Sadjadpour for a discussion of Iran, its domestic politics and foreign policy. Questions addressed include: What are the dynamics of internal politics? What is the role of the Revolutionary Guard? What are Iran’s regional goals? What are its goals in Iraq? Can its quest for nuclear weapons be halted? and How should the United States deal with this formidable power in the vital Middle East? (57 minutes)

Conversations host Harry Kreisler welcomes attorney Frederick S. Wyle, a Pentagon official in the Kennedy administration, for a discussion of nuclear weapons policy in Europe during the Cold War. Reflecting on his role as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense in the McNamara Pentagon, Wyle also compares threat perception then with the current response to terrorism. He analyzes the delicate balance that must be found under our constitutional system to adjust to exigent circumstances while preserving the rule of law and civil liberties. (55 minutes)

Students will research how the development of the atomic bomb affected people in World War II, participate in a debate about the bomb's use, and investigate how it has affected people's lives since 1945.

A survey of how America has become the world’s largest consumer of energy. Explores American history from the perspective of energy and its relationship to politics, diplomacy, the economy, science and technology, labor, culture, and the environment. Topics include muscle and water power in early America, coal and the Industrial Revolution, electrification, energy consumption in the home, oil and U.S. foreign policy, automobiles and suburbanization, nuclear power, OPEC and the 70’s energy crisis, global warming, and possible paths for the future.

Earl Ubell is a pioneer among science and health writers in America. After a long, distinguished career at The New York Herald Tribune from 1943 to 1966, he went on to work at both CBS and NBC News. Prominent in the emerging scientific writing community in the 1950s and early 1960s, he was a recipient of the Lasker Medical Journalism Award 1957. Milton Stanley Livingston was a leading physicist in the field of magnetic resonance accelerators. Working first with professor Ernest O. Lawrence at the University of California, Livingston was instrumental in the development of the Berkeley cyclotron. Moving to Cornell in 1938, Livingston was part of the core group who established nuclear physics as a field of study. Choosing to stay with the Cornell cyclotron rather than follow colleagues onto the Manhattan Project, Livingston was involved in the production of radioisotopes for medical purposes. At the time of this interview, Livingston was director of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator, a joint project of Harvard University and MIT.In this program segment Louis Lyons quizzes Earl Ubell about the lack of public knowledge and the perception of the nuclear bomb, while pressing Professor Livingston to explain exactly what nuclear fallout is, and the danger it presents.

At age twenty-seven, physicist Philip Morrison joined the Manhattan Project, the code name given to the U.S. government's covert effort at Los Alamos to develop the first nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project was also the most expensive single program ever financed by public funds. In this video segment, Morrison describes the charismatic leadership of his mentor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the urgency of their mission to manufacture a weapon 'which if we didn't make first would lead to the loss of the war." In the interview Morrison conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Dawn,' he describes the remote, inaccessible setting of the laboratory that operated in extreme secrecy. It was this physical isolation, he maintains, that allowed scientists extraordinary freedom to exchange ideas with fellow physicists. Morrison also reflects on his wartime fears. Germany had many of the greatest minds in physics and engineering, which created tremendous anxiety among Allied scientists that it would win the atomic race and the war, and Morrison recalls the elaborate schemes he devised to determine that country's atomic progress. At the time that he was helping assemble the world's first atomic bomb, Morrison believed that nuclear weapons 'could be made part of the construction of the peace.' A month after the war, he toured Hiroshima, and for several years thereafter he testified, became a public spokesman, and lobbied for international nuclear cooperation. After leaving Los Alamos, Morrison returned to academia. For the rest of his life he was a forceful voice against nuclear weapons.

An interactive timeline on the nuclear negotiations between the United States and North Korea across three decades that have failed to halt the advance of the North’s atomic weapons program.

This course will expose students to tools and methods of analysis for use in assessing the challenges and dangers associated with nuclear weapons in international politics. The first two weeks of the course will look at the technology and design of nuclear weapons and their means of production. The next five weeks will look at the role they played in the Cold War, the organizations that managed them, the technologies that were developed to deliver them, and the methods used to analyze nuclear force structures and model nuclear exchanges. The last six weeks of the course will look at theories and cases of nuclear decision making beyond the original five weapon states, and will look particularly at why states pursue or forego nuclear weapons, the role that individuals and institutions play, and the potential for both new sources of proliferation and new consequences.

This course provides an introduction to the politics and theories surrounding the proliferation of nuclear weapons. It introduces the basics of nuclear weapons, nuclear strategy, and deterrence theory. It also examines the historical record during the Cold War as well as the proliferation of nuclear weapons to regional powers and the resulting deterrence consequences.

This course, organized as a series of lectures, aims to provide an interdisciplinary view of the history and current climate of nuclear weapons and non-proliferation policy. The first lecture begins the series by discusses nuclear developments in one of the world’s most likely nuclear flash points, and the second lecture presents a broad discussion of the dangers of current nuclear weapons policies as well as evaluations of current situations and an outlook for future nuclear weapons reductions.

This subject examines the role scientists have played as activists in social movements in the U.S. following World War II. Themes include scientific responsibility and social justice, the roles of gender, race, and power, the motivation of individual scientists, strategies for organizing, and scientists’ impact within social movements. Case studies include atmospheric testing of nuclear weapons and the nuclear freeze campaign, climate science and environmental justice, the civil rights movement, Vietnam War protests, the March 4 movement at MIT, concerns about genetic engineering, gender equality, intersectional feminism, and student activism at MIT.
Read a profile of the class “Scientists as Engaged Citizens” by the MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences.

On behalf of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), take this quiz to test your knowledge of North Korea, including its nuclear buildup, the Kim dynasty, and more.

his kit helps decode the messages of political posters created by Soviet regimes from Lenin and Stalin through Brezhnev and Gorbachev. Teachers lead students through the interactive process of applying their historical knowledge to the analysis of these documents using background and additional information and carefully selected probe questions. Students will learn core information and vocabulary about the history of the USSR, political and historical perspectives as communicated through visual media, visual literacy and media literacy skills, especially the ability to identify bias in art and propaganda.

This lesson consists of four short works by Albert Einstein. The works regard the arms race, nuclear weapons, and the threat that these weapons pose to the survival of humanity.

This is a module framework. It can be viewed online or downloaded as a zip file.

As taught Autumn Semester 2010.

With the possible exception of climate change, weapons of mass destruction are probably the only thing on the planet that could conceivably mean curtains for all of us. Yet Britain has relied on its nuclear arsenal for decades, and other states seem anxious to acquire one. Why do some countries have these things? What, if anything, should we do about them? How should we feel about their spread? These are some of the questions we will examine in this module. The goal is to familiarise you with the policy issues and the theoretical debates underlying them.

Module Code: M13103

Credits: 20

Suitable for study at: Undergraduate level 3

Dr Matthew Rendall, School of Politics and International Relations

Matthew Rendall is Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at the University of Nottingham, and holds a PhD in Political Science from Columbia University. His research focuses on large-scale war and peace, including such topics as nuclear deterrence, whether there is a 'separate peace' among democracies, and collective security. Much of his work tests theories of war and peace through historical case studies, often drawing on original historical research. Recently he has also begun writing about intergenerational justice and other topics in environmental philosophy.