Papers by Benoit Pelopidas
British Foreign Policy and the National Interest, 2014
Global Studies Quarterly
To address the COVID-19 pandemic, states around the world adopted a range of unprecedented and fa... more To address the COVID-19 pandemic, states around the world adopted a range of unprecedented and far-reaching policy measures, which had for a long time been presented as impossible. In this article, we argue that such actions suggest not only present but also past political possibilities and that these possibilities have been overlooked or denied by policymakers and scholars alike. We focus on two existential challenges about which pledges for transformative actions have been continuously made throughout the previous decades: climate change and the danger from nuclear weapons. We document the gap between pledges and accomplishments in these two realms and show how claims of impossibility to act do not hold up. Adopting a minimal standard of good faith as seeking to keep one's promises, we argue that the lack of adequate action renders the assumption that policymakers are acting in good faith problematic. We then diagnose a Panglossian double failure of the policy-relevant interna...
Writing IR after COVID-19: Reassessing Political Possibilities, Good Faith, and Policy-Relevant Scholarship on Climate Change Mitigation and Nuclear Disarmament
Global Studies Quarterly, 2023
To address the COVID-19 pandemic, states around the world adopted a range of unprecedented and fa... more To address the COVID-19 pandemic, states around the world adopted a range of unprecedented and far-reaching policy measures, which had for a long time been presented as impossible. In this article, we argue that such actions suggest not only present but also past political possibilities and that these possibilities have been overlooked or denied by policymakers and scholars alike. We focus on two existential challenges about which pledges for transformative actions have been continuously made throughout the previous decades: climate change and the danger from nuclear weapons. We document the gap between pledges and accomplishments in these two realms and show how claims of impossibility to act do not hold up. Adopting a minimal standard of good faith as seeking to keep one's promises, we argue that the lack of adequate action renders the assumption that policymakers are acting in good faith problematic. We then diagnose a Panglossian double failure of the policy-relevant international relations scholarship: a failure to provide policymakers with the necessary tools to address the root causes of these existential problems and enable them to learn from past experiences and a failure to hold policymakers accountable. We propose three modifications to the scholarship to avoid repeating such failures and conclude with a dual call for political courage and scholarly responsibility.
No such thing as a free donation? Research funding and conflicts of interest in nuclear weapons policy analysis
International Relations, 2022
Numerous scholars have in recent years concluded that the field of nuclear weapons policy analysi... more Numerous scholars have in recent years concluded that the field of nuclear weapons policy analysis is plagued by widespread self-censorship, conformism, and enduring disconnects between accepted knowledge and available evidence. It has been hypothesized that this tendency is fostered in part by many analysts’ reliance on funding from donors with interests in the perpetuation of the existing nuclear order. In this article, we probe this hypothesis by investigating the financial links between foreign policy think tanks, on the one hand, and nuclear defence contractors and governments that espouse nuclear deterrence strategies, on the other. Relying on semi-structured interviews and a survey of the funding sources of 45 of the world’s top think tanks, we find, first, that effectively all think tanks in the sample accepted funding from nuclear vested interests and, second, that such ‘stakeholder funding’ has real effects on intellectual freedom. Given the widely-held view that democracy relies on intellectual independence, this finding calls for a serious debate about conflicts of interest in foreign policy analysis generally and nuclear policy analysis specifically.
Oxford Handbook of History and International Relations, 2023
The possibility of thermonuclear war has in many ways shaped the agendas of History and Internati... more The possibility of thermonuclear war has in many ways shaped the agendas of History and International Relations. Rigorous counterfactual analysis effectively demonstrates that the risks of unintended and runaway escalation were higher than generally assumed. Nuclear war planning and proposals for arms control and disarmament are based on imagined future scenarios. Current thinking about the future rarely goes beyond extrapolation. Counterfactual analysis provides a more sophisticated foundation for forward looking narratives in contrast to the usual extrapolation of present trends.
Typeset by Soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk Chatham House has been the home of the Royal Institute of I... more Typeset by Soapbox, www.soapbox.co.uk Chatham House has been the home of the Royal Institute of International Affairs for more than ninety years. Our mission is to be a world-leading source of independent analysis, informed debate and influential ideas on how to build a prosperous and secure world for all.
International Security, 2019
In their recent article, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press argue that enhanced counterforce capabilitie... more In their recent article, Keir Lieber and Daryl Press argue that enhanced counterforce capabilities are increasingly threatening the survivability of nuclear forces. 1 They do not, however, provide a technically valid basis to support this judgment regarding the United States' strategic submarine (SSBN) force. This omission raises doubts about the emergence of any new counterforce era against the U.S. arsenal. Lieber and Press base their claim partly on sources that reveal how U.S. antisubmarine warfare (ASW) efforts against Soviet SSBNs during the Cold War beneªted from advances in acoustic-gathering and data-processing capabilities (pp. 35-36). They then assume that further advancements within these domains should be expected to aid ASW efforts once again. Not only does this assumption predetermine Lieber and Press's ªndings, but it ignores fundamental limits that physics places on technology and suggests that an updated review of U.S. SSBN vulnerability is long overdue in the public domain. Any such review should consider the key parameter that would drive the planning and execution of an ASW strategy to trail and destroy the entire SSBN force using passive acoustics over a considered period: the maximum range at which a U.S. SSBN may be detected. Neither Lieber and Press nor the most comprehensive source they cite attempts this review, 2 but this is the starting point for any serious engagement with the covert trailing threat. Although precise information about the acoustic signal emitted by a U.S. SSBN that determines this parameter is not available in unclassiªed sources, a reasonable estimate of 90-110 decibels was made for the Ohio-class SSBN in the 1980s, 3 with physical con
Cultures & Conflits, 2021
Comment les citoyens peuvent-ils se figurer la possibilité de la guerre nucléaire pour y faire fa... more Comment les citoyens peuvent-ils se figurer la possibilité de la guerre nucléaire pour y faire face politiquement ? Pour répondre à cette nouvelle question, cette intervention s’inscrit dans la lignée des travaux sur la culture populaire visuelle et avance trois arguments. D’abord, elle réaffirme le rôle essentiel de l’imagination et de la forme fictionnelle. Ensuite, elle identifie quatre gestes esthétiques qui rendent la possibilité de la guerre nucléaire imaginable. Enfin, à partir d’une étude de la culture populaire visuelle portant sur la catastrophe nucléaire de 1951 à 2019, elle requalifie la période post-1990 comme moment de production d’un imaginaire dans lequel la guerre nucléaire est absente et les armes potentiellement salutaires, par contraste avec les quatre décennies précédentes. Elle s’appuie sur des matériaux empiriques inédits : une campagne d’entretiens auprès de ceux qui perpétuent, luttent contre, filment ou éduquent au sujet de la guerre nucléaire, en France, au Royaume-Uni et aux États-Unis ainsi qu’un sondage de grande ampleur de la population des États européens dotés d’armes nucléaires ou hébergeant des armes nucléaires américaines.
20 & 21. Revue d'histoire, 2020
In this article we analyse how and if participation affects the learning experiences of pupils. O... more In this article we analyse how and if participation affects the learning experiences of pupils. Our research questions are: 1. What constituted positive learning experiences for pupils in a multidisciplinary learning module? 2. How do the methods used in this study give pupils an opportunity to express negative emotions and participate in developing learning experiences? The data of this practitioner research consists of 80 photographs, 23 picture books and 23 interviews. The positive experiences of the project were social interaction, autonomy of peer groups and sense of capability and competence which relate to social participation. The picture bookinterview method revealed pupils' negative experiences that related to learning how to work in a group and perform the tasks at hand.
Fatalism in the nuclear proliferation
Swiss Political Science Review, 2009
We All Lost the Cuban Missile Crisis
Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Stein’s We all lost the Cold War remains a decisive contribution twe... more Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Stein’s We all lost the Cold War remains a decisive contribution twenty years after its publication and its limitations a powerful invitation to develop what it suggests. First, it offered new evidence based on oral interviews and the publication of the English version of the telegram of Anatoly Dobrynin, which was sent on October 27, 1962 and had only recently been declassified. Second, it proposed an in depth psychological critique of rational deterrence theory and of what it called the “strategy of deterrence”. Third, it questioned the mainstream assessment of the outcome of the crisis as a U.S. victory, which has persisted to this day. This essay reassesses those contributions in depth and argues that they would have been served even better by an engagement with the notion of luck and by an even broader perspective including not only the Soviet voice but also that of other players in the crisis. In that respect, the limitations of this important book suggest a research program for today which is sketched out in the final part of this essay.
Les emergents et la proliferation nucleaire
Critique Internationale, 2012
A bet portrayed as a certainty
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 10736700 2011 549185, Feb 19, 2011
By examining via a case study the political authority of US proliferation experts since the 1960s... more By examining via a case study the political authority of US proliferation experts since the 1960s, this article contributes to nuclear weapons proliferation studies and to the growing literature on the role of expertise in democracies. First, it argues that policy choices are determined by an understanding of history and that approaching nuclear history as a history of nuclear weapons proliferation is a presumption shared by both US experts and policy makers. Second, it shows that this understanding of history, relying on the metaphorical use of the term proliferation (which was imported from biology), strongly distorts the facts. Third, the article shows that nuclear experts are plagued by a conservative bias as a result of this use of the proliferation metaphor. Instead of challenging the faulty proliferation narrative, most experts have backed it without question. Fourth, the legitimacy that experts lend to this view of history has important political effects: it provides an authoritative assessment of past policies and limits the possibility of political innovation. Policy initiatives tend to be restricted to changes in speed or intensity. The article suggests three changes that might restore room for informed political innovation in nuclear weapons policies.
Policy-relevance and the responsibility of nuclear scholars
Why Nuclear Realism is Unrealistic
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sep 26, 2013
French nuclear idiosyncrasy: how it affects French nuclear policies towards the United Arab Emirates and Iran
Http Dx Doi Org 10 1080 09557571 2011 647763, Mar 1, 2012
This article elaborates the notion of ‘nuclear idiosyncrasy’ as a specific understanding of what ... more This article elaborates the notion of ‘nuclear idiosyncrasy’ as a specific understanding of what nuclear weapons and energy are, what they stand for and what they can do. It then assesses the persistence of nuclear idiosyncrasy over time and its effects on French nuclear policies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Iran. Based on interviews in France, Geneva and
La couleur du cygne sud-africain
Annuaire Francais Des Relations Internationales, 2010
Revue Europeenne Des Sciences Sociales European Journal of Social Sciences, Oct 15, 2011
During the last few years, the concept of empire has suffered from conceptual stretching. The aim... more During the last few years, the concept of empire has suffered from conceptual stretching. The aim of this article is thus threefold. First, it identiies the peripheral concepts with which empire is usually confused. Second, it investigates deining strategies applied to "empire" and suggests three reasons that account for conceptual stretching. Third, it builds a new deinition, carefully distinguished from those of hegemon, great power, cosmopolis and imperialism. Finally, the paper insists on the necessity of this clariication for political science as well as historical sociology.
Nuclear scholarship for whom? Rethinking policy-relevance and the responsibility of nuclear scholars
This is a call for lucidity regarding the responsibility of experts outside the government vis-à-... more This is a call for lucidity regarding the responsibility of experts outside the government vis-à-vis the public in a democracy and the price of failing to be up to that task. We should provide a cautionary voice against the certainties uttered by policymakers, always beware of overconfidence in the ability of scientific findings alone to determine policy, shed light on the ethical and political underpinnings of the proposed choices, and devise alternatives beyond the existing ones. We should do so because we often misjudge our impact and its costs, because we can, and because we have to. We owe it to policymakers who are often more creative than we think they are, to ourselves as scholars rather than ideologues, and above all to the citizens of our nations.
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Papers by Benoit Pelopidas
Pour répondre à ces questions et explorer la relation entre la puissance et la possession de « la bombe », il faut dans un premier temps se pencher sur ce système d’armes qui a considérablement évolué au cours des soixante-dix dernières années afin d’identifier ce qui pourrait justifier sa réduction à l’appellation « la bombe ». Dès lors, nous pourrons établir ce que ce système d’armes peut conférer à qui en affirme la possession. Enfin, nous conclurons que l’existence de systèmes d’armes nucléaires, et plus encore thermonucléaires couplés à des missiles balistiques contre lesquels aucune défense crédible n’est envisageable, bouleverse la définition de la puissance. Ainsi, la possession de telles armes se double d’une affirmation de puissance qui pose un risque irréductible d’accident et d’escalade vers la guerre nucléaire. L’illusion du contrôle masque une réalité beaucoup plus fondamentale : les Etats n’ont pas la bombe ; depuis l’invention de cette combinaison, l’humanité est sous son ombre et joue aux dés. Pour que quelques pays se sentent puissants, des millions d’individus sont vulnérables. Repenser la puissance à l’âge nucléaire exige de faire face à cette vulnérabilité.
militaire véhiculent l’idée selon laquelle l’augmentation, pas nécessairement
linéaire, du nombre d’acteurs dotés de l’arme nucléaire est une tendance lourde, voire
une loi de l’histoire. Cet article entend mettre au jour le rôle de la métaphore biologique
de la prolifération, transposée aux armes nucléaires, dans la construction de cette
vision de l’histoire nucléaire et explorer la sélection qu’elle opère dans la mise en récit
qui en découle. Il conclut par la saisie des conséquences politiques de cette vision et
une mise en garde contre une alternative fallacieuse au fatalisme proliférant que serait
la pédagogie de la catastrophe, avant de proposer plusieurs pistes de recherche sur les
autres sources du « fatalisme » que nous avons identifié ainsi que la possibilité d’un
changement de paradigme.
Beginning with a genealogy of the two movements, the authors present the intricacy of imperial rhetoric and nationalist ideologies in modern states compared with the distinctive definition of Empire as a politico-historical form. The extent to which these ideas have shaped the foreign policy of Russia and the USA is then related to events in Central Asia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. The analysis of each case provides a better understanding of the imperial character of these foreign policies in relation to their nationalist foundations.
The combination of political theory and geopolitics makes this cutting-edge research a must read to all interested in the evolving discourse surrounding Empire.