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Zachary Zwald
"Solving an Imaginary Problem: Why ‘Should’ Determines ‘Can’ on U.S. National Missile Defense"
Thursday, January 17, 2008
Noon
Mershon Center for International Security Studies
1501 Neil Ave., Columbus, OH 43201
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Zachary Zwald is a 2007-08 Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Mershon Center for International Security Studies. He is working on turning his doctoral dissertation, titled Solving an Imaginary Problem: Why ‘Should’ Determines ‘Can’ on U.S. National Missile Defense, into a book.
Zwald argues that policymakers’ beliefs regarding prudent state behavior in a nuclear environment determine their understanding of what missile defense technology can do. He is currently pursuing the implications of this research by extending the concept of irreducible uncertainty and belief structures regarding nuclear weapons to issues beyond the U.S. national missile defense system.
Zwald addresses:
• The offense-defense balance, arguing that the lack of experience with a given technology explains why policymakers usually misperceive its military value.
• The nuclear revolution, exploring how the prohibitively high cost of gaining experience with nuclear weapons explains why two causal belief structures emerged to understand the military value of nuclear weapons.
Zwald is also exploring whether belief structures held by domestic political elites in new nuclear states, rather than the mere presence of nuclear weapons in a state, determines whether proliferation will increase regional and international tensions or act as an impetus for cooperation and dialogue.
Zwald has a master's and Ph.D. degrees in political science, both from the University of California, Berkeley.
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