Welcome to the Program On Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE)
The purpose of POSSE is to reinvigorate inter-disciplinary, international scholarship on issues of strategic stability in a post-nuclear weapons era. An important component of this effort entails stimulating not only new policy-relevant scholarship but nurturing dialogue among the next generation of international scholars on nuclear disarmament and risk reduction issues—with a particular focus on the United States, the Russian Federation, and the Peoples Republic of China. The intent initially is to flesh out the requirements for “minimum deterrence” among the existing Nuclear Weapons States (NWS), and then to explore novel criteria for strategic stability that transcend this traditional framework to complement pursuit of an agenda for deep reductions, including possible elimination of nuclear weapons.
Specifically, the focus will be on:
- forging a global network of inter-generational and inter-disciplinary scholars of strategic issues
- deepening interaction among members of this network and between them and national security policy makers in the United State and other NWS
- filling knowledge gaps related to conditions and processes for deterring, reassuring, dissuading, averting, and/or managing conflict among multiple nuclear powers that possess very different force postures/strategies
- identifying means to advance and sustain radically new nuclear arms reductions/nonproliferation/disarmament policies amid changing strategic landscapes
POSSE employs a combination of collaborative research activities, workshops, mediated blogs, public fora (real and virtual), closed policy dialogues, and publications to stimulate innovative and cross-disciplinary thinking about strategic stability and to recruit and mentor the next generation of scholars in the field.
