On Tuesday 4th September 2012, the University of Birmingham's Institute for Conflict, Cooperation and Security (ICCS), hosted the third annual symposium of “The Challenges to Trust Building in Nuclear Worlds” entitled “Trust, Cooperation and the Global Nuclear Future” in conjunction with the University of Leicester's Intelligence, Security and Strategic Studies Group (ISSG)
Building on the success of previous years, the symposium brought together early career researchers, established academics and practitioners working in the fields of trust research and nuclear politics. The event was designed to facilitate interaction between all three groups while also enhancing collaboration between researchers across various social scientific disciplines such as international relations, psychology, and sociology.
The event is part of the three-year research project ‘The Challenges to Trust-building in Nuclear Worlds’, led by Professor Nicholas Wheeler at the University of Birmingham and supported by the RCUK’s programme ‘Global Uncertainties: Security for All in a Changing World’. The project’s overall goal is to explore the contribution that multidisciplinary research on trust can make to opening up new policy options for promoting cooperation and security in today’s nuclear world.
Full vodcasts and biographies of each presenter are available below. Opening remarks by Professor Nicholas Wheeler can be found here
Chair: Campbell Craig
Professor Craig joined Aberystwyth in 2009. He was previously professor of international relations at the University of Southampton (2005-09), international security studies fellow and visiting associate professor in international affairs at Yale University (2004-05), and lecturer and senior lecturer in US history at the University of Canterbury in New Zealand (1999-2004). In the spring of 2009 he was a senior research fellow at the Norwegian Nobel Institute in Oslo. He has given invited lectures at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Dartmouth, Chicago, Columbia, Cambridge, Sciences-Po, the Free University of Berlin, the London School of Economics, University of Copenhagen, and other universities
Professor Craig writes about the history of US foreign policy, the Cold War, historical and theoretical aspects of the nuclear revolution, and contemporary international politics. In much of his work he has sought to describe how the fear of nuclear war has shaped both foreign-policy making and discourse about politics, particularly in America, and how this fear has transformed international politics at the systemic level. More recently he has taken an interest in conceptions of world government and, relatedly, the rising IR field of historical sociology.
- Nick Ritchie - 'Nuclear weapons, value and legitimacy'
- Heather Williams - 'The trust spectrum: options and prospects in arms control'
- Jason Douglas - 'Deterrence and trust building amongst nuclear rivals'
- Michael Urban - 'Operationalising Trust; a first cut at identifying the micro-level mechanisms of trust building'
Chair: David Dunn
During David Dunn's career at Birmingham he has been Director of Graduate Studies within POLSIS, Postgraduate Tutor to the School of Social Sciences, and Assistant Dean for Postgraduate Admissions for the Faculty of Commerce and Social Science. Between 1997 and 2000 he was also an elected member of the British International Studies Association and through that the BISA representative on the Political Studies Association Executive. Since 1992 he has been a member of the West Midlands Military Education Committee and since 2000 its chairman. Between 2002-2005 David was an elected member of the Council of Military Education Committees David's research interests are diverse and have evolved and broadened over his career. They fit largely within the areas of US Foreign and Security Policy, Strategic and Security Studies and, Diplomacy and Statecraft
- Daniel Salisbury - 'Trust in the UK-US nuclear relationship: the Trident purchase 1978-1982'
- Hugh Chalmers - 'Trust among friends: nuclear confidence-building in NATO'
- Vincent Keating and Jan Ruzicka - 'An unlikely trusting relationship? The United States and Japan since 1945'
Chair: Jim Hoare
After Britain and North Korea established diplomatic relations in 2000, Hoare was appointed British Chargé d’affaires in Pyongyang; and his work laid the foundation for the establishment of a full embassy in the North Korean capital. Previously, Hoare had been head of the Foreign Office’s North Asia and Pacific Research Group. He joined the Foreign and Commonwealth Office in 1969 and was stationed in Seoul in 1981-1984 and in Beijing in 1988-1991. Dr. Hoare is a graduate of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). He has long been a member of the Anglo-Korean Society, the Korean Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, and the Royal Society for Asian Affairs. In 2006, Dr. Hoare was President of the British Association of Korean Studies (BAKS). He has written extensively about Korea and is currently a senior teaching fellow at SOAS
- Andrew Futter and Ben Zala - 'Trust, cooperation and the Asia-Pacific nuclear balance'
- Nicola Horsburgh and Kate Sullivan - 'Explaining India and China's small nuclear arsenals'
- Francesca Giovannini - 'Indonesia and Singapore: rivalry and ASEAN regional nuclear cooperation'
Chair: Mark Webber
Professor Webber worked for nearly twenty years at Loughborough University before moving to Birmingham in January 2011 as the Head of the School of Government and Society and a member of the Board of the College of Social Sciences. He is an International Relations specialist and began his academic career specialising in Russian foreign policy. He has spent the last ten years teaching and researching foreign policy analysis, security studies and international organisations. The specific focus of his current research is the politics of NATO and European enlargement.
- David Cliff - 'Trust and nuclear warhead dismantlement verification'
- Matthew Moran and Christopher Hobbs - 'Exploring the role of trust in Iranian nuclear diplomacy'
- Patricia Shamai - 'Nuclear terrorism and trust: understanding the significance of the categorization of WMD'
- Ingmar Zielke - 'Doomed to failure: US-Russia BMD cooperation'
Chair: Nicholas J Wheeler
Nicholas J. Wheeler is Professor of International Relations and Director of the Institute for Conflict, Cooperation, and Security at the University of Birmingham. His publications include (with Mlada Bukovansky, Ian Clark, Robyn Eckersley, Christian Reus-Smit, and Richard Price), Special Responsibilities: Global Problems and American Power (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2012); (with Ken Booth) The Security Dilemma: Fear, Cooperation, and Trust in World Politics (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); (edited with Jean-Marc Coicaud) National Interest Versus Solidarity: Particular and Univeral Ethics in International Life (Tokyo: United Nations University Press, 2008); (with Ian Clark) The British Origins of Nuclear Strategy 1945-55 (Oxford: Oxford University Press). He is the author of Saving Strangers: Humanitarian Intervention in International Society (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000) and is currently writing a book provisionally entitled Trusting Rivals: Alternative Paths to Security in the Nuclear Age. This is a key output of a 3-year ESRC/AHRC Fellowship on ‘The Challenges to Trust-Building in Nuclear Worlds (awarded under RCUK’s ‘Global Uncertainties: Security For All in a Changing World’ programme. He is co-editor with Professor Christian Reus-Smit of the prestigious Cambridge Series in International Relations.