Harvard Club of Tampa Bay

Reception and Presentation with Professor Tom Nichols

"Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear War in the 21st Century" - Join us for a reception and presentation with Professor Tom Nichols. Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval War College and Sr Assoc of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and Int'l Affairs.

Join us for a reception and presentation by Thomas Nichols, PhD, Professor of National Security Affairs, Naval War College and Senior Associate of the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.

“Nuclear Deterrence and Nuclear War in the 21st Century”

For more than forty years, the United States has maintained a public commitment to nuclear disarmament, and every president from Ronald Reagan to Barack Obama has gradually reduced the size of America's nuclear forces. Yet even now, over two decades after the end of the Cold War, the United States maintains a huge nuclear arsenal on high alert and ready for war. The Americans, like the Russians, the Chinese, and other major nuclear powers, continue to retain a deep faith in the political and military value of nuclear force, and this belief remains enshrined at the center of U.S. defense policy regardless of the radical changes that have taken place in international politics. Tom Nichols argues that is long past time to reexamine the role of nuclear weapons and their prominence in U.S. security strategy. Nichols explains why strategies built for the Cold War have survived into the twenty-first century, and he illustrates how America's nearly unshakable belief in the utility of nuclear arms has hindered U.S. and international attempts to slow the nuclear programs of volatile regimes in North Korea and Iran. He argues that to end the danger of worldwide nuclear holocaust, the United States must take the lead in abandoning unrealistic threats of nuclear force and then create a new and more stable approach to deterrence for the twenty-first century.