Armed Force and Society - African studies · 2016. 12. 27. · Second semester, 2012-2013: SCIL10033 Armed Force and Society: Social and Political Perspectives on Technology and National

Undergraduate Course Handbook Sociology Honours

Second semester, 2012-2013: SCIL10033

Armed Force and Society: Social and Political Perspectives on

Technology and National Security

Course teacher: Graham Spinardi

Tuesday, 2.10 - 4 pm.

Weekly, except week 6

Seminar Room 5, Crystal Macmillan Building

1

The course in brief

The main focus of the course is sociological and political perspectives on the

relationship between human societies and military technologies, which we explore

via:

• discussion of a wide range of historical case studies and contemporary security

issues

• discussion and analyses of the distinctive nature of military technologies and the

way they are shaped by social and political factors

• analyses of the role played by military technology in shaping the nature and

outcome of conflicts, as well as the nature of peacetime society

• investigation of the ways that knowledge about military technology is derived, and

of the effects that high levels of military R&D have had on economic activity, and

scientific agendas

The course involves a significant ‘research component’, so is assessed entirely by

essays: there is no examination. Undergraduate and visiting-student assessment is

via a 1,500 word mid-term essay (25% of the overall mark) and a 4,000 word final

essay (75% of mark).

Don’t be alarmed by the size of this reading list! The essential readings for each

week are modest in number and length (and are available through the University

Library’s Electronic Journals page, directly from indicated web addresses, or

electronically via LEARN). The readings indicated for these discussion sessions form

the core of the course and reading beyond the essential readings is recommended, but

the essential reading must be read prior to the classes. The lengthier lists of further

readings are for those doing essays on the topic, and their length arises because I

wanted to provide an introduction to the literature on each topic, leaving you free to

choose what to focus on, rather than giving you prescriptive essays lists. Most of the

journal articles indicated for further reading are available via the University

Library’s electronic journals page.

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Objectives

The learning outcomes being sought are that at the end of the course you will be

familiar with and able to discuss:

1. the key role that technology plays in many current security issues, including

terrorism, proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, intervention and peace-

keeping, and regional conflict;

2. how the effects of military technology can be difficult to evaluate, and the

important role played by testing;

3. the nature of the weapons procurement process and how this relates to economic

impacts and pressure to sell weapons to other nations;

4. the role of science and technology in the Cold War;

5. how the nuclear arms race developed, and Britain’s part in it.

Student presentations

Although it is not assessed and does not form part of your mark, an essential element

of the learning experience in the course is presentations to the class. Home

undergraduates and visiting students make a 15-20-minute group presentation on a

topic of their choice.

Remember to follow the rules of good presentation: have a clear structure; try to

speak from notes rather than read a text; look at your audience; vary pace and

intonation; have a clear aim and structure to your presentation; if presenting to a large

group like the full class, use the data projector or other visual aids; don’t simply

summarize the reading but try to say something interesting using it; don’t be afraid to

be controversial. In most full-class sessions, more than one student will be

presenting, and it is important that you prepare your presentations as a group so that

they link together well and that you keep to time.

Contacting me

Please tell me as soon as possible if you are having any problems with the course, if

you would find it helpful to have an individual chat about your presentation or essay

topics, or if there are any other aspects of the course you would like to discuss with

me.

Please email me if at [email protected] you want to make an appointment to see

me.

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Reading List

‘Key’ readings are designed to tie in closely with lectures, so please read some of

them before each session of the class. The essential readings are marked (*) and must

be read before the class as they will form the starting point for the post-lecture

discussion. All essential readings will be available either as journal articles via the

University Library’s Electronic journals page or via LEARN.

‘Further’ readings are for those doing an essay on a particular topic. Don’t feel you

need to read all of these for your essay, but equally don’t restrict yourselves to

them: for an honours-level course such as this, you can do your own literature

searches. The further readings below are intended to start you in this process by

acting as a guide to the kind of literature available: they are not a definitive essay

reading list.

Recent journal articles will normally be available electronically via the electronic

journal holdings of Edinburgh University Library (http://www.lib.ed.ac.uk/): you’ll

need to be logged in via EASE to get access to them. Unfortunately, some older

volumes of journals are often not available electronically.

Please tell me if you are experiencing problems getting hold of any of the readings.

Useful overall readings There is no course textbook; indeed there does not seem to be any single book that

provides these kinds of sociological and political perspectives on military technology.

The following are all useful in different ways.

Barry Buzan and Eric Herring, The Arms Dynamic in World Politics (Lynne Rienner

Publishers, 1998) provides the best coverage of the theoretical issues dealt with in the

course.

A good readable history, that we will draw on particularly in weeks 1 and 2, is Max

Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to

Today (Gotham, 2006).

Other useful historical surveys are William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power

(Blackwell, 1983) and Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 BC to

the Present (The Free Press, 1989).

An excellent reader on technology in general, with a section on the military, is Donald

MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (Open

University Press, Second Edition, 1999).

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Week 1: Introduction to the Course. Air Power and Intervention:

The Examples of Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya

After the lecture, you should be able to answer the following questions:

(1) Why do we need to consider more than just machines to understand the role of

technology in warfare?

(2) In what ways can technology be seen as having social and political aspects?

(3) What can be achieved by airpower (distinguishing between ‘winning the war’

and ‘winning the peace’)?

(4) What are the main critiques of the ‘revolution in military affairs’ concept?

Discussion questions: has new technology made ‘intervention’ easier?; and, in your

view, should we (the UK, EU, NATO, ‘the West’) intervene in other countries to:

(a) restore, create democracy;

(b) stop genocide;

(c) prevent the acquisition of weapons of mass destruction

(d) gain access to natural resources?

Key readings

PLEASE READ THOSE MARKED * BEFORE LECTURE * Stephen Biddle, ‘The New Way of War? Debating the Kosovo Model,’ Review Essay, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81 (2002), 138-144. Christoph Bluth, ‘The British Road to War: Blair, Bush and the Decision to Invade Iraq,’ International Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 5 (2004), 871-892. Max Boot, ‘The New American Way of War,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 4 (2003), 41-58. Eliot A. Cohen, ‘A Revolution in Warfare,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 75, No. 2 (March/April 1996), 37-54. Lawrence Freedman, ‘The Changing Forms of Military Conflict,’ Survival, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Winter 1998-99), 39-56. Richard J. Harknett, ‘The Risks of a Networked Military,’ Orbis, Vol. 44, Issue 1 (Winter 2000), 127-143. A. E. Levite and E. Sherwood-Randall, ‘The Case for Discriminate Force’, Survival, Vol. 44, No. 4

(Winter 2002-03), 81-98. H. R. McMaster, ‘Learning from Contemporary Conflicts to Prepare for Future War,’ Orbis, Vol. 52, Issue 4 (Fall 2008), 564-584.

Noah Shachtman, ‘How Technology Almost Lost the War: In Iraq, the Critical Networks Are Social —

Not Electronic’, Wired, 15, 12 (27 November 2007). Available at: http://www.wired.com/politics/security/magazine/15-12/ff_futurewar

For more on the revolution in military affairs/network centric warfare see Peter J. Dombrowski, Eugene Gholz and Andrew L. Ross, ‘Selling Military Transformation: The Defense Industry and Innovation,’ Orbis, Vol 46, Issue 3 (Summer 2002), 523-536; David S. Alberts, John J. Garstka and Frederick P. Stein, Network Centric Warfare: Developing and Leveraging Information Superiority (US Department

of Defense, 1999). Available at: http://www.nps.edu/Academics/Centers/CEP/docs/Alberts_NCW.pdf ; and Ralph E. Giffin and Darryn J. Reid, ‘A Woven Web of Guesses, Canto Two: Network Centric Warfare and the Myth of Inductivism (Proposed to the 8th International Command and Control

Research & Technology Symposium). Available at:

http://www.dodccrp.org/events/8th_ICCRTS/pdf/109.pdf Many articles relating to the ‘revolution in military affairs’ can be found at: http://www.comw.org/rma/

Further reading

Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas About Strategic Bombing, 1914-1945 (Princeton University Press, 2002).

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Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today (Gotham,

2006), 268-294. Chapter 9

Darren Brunk, ‘Dissecting Darfur: Anatomy of a Genocide Debate’, International Relations, Vol. 22,

No. 1 (2008), 25-44.

Daniel L. Byman and Matthew C. Waxman, ‘Kosovo and the Great Air Power Debate’, International Security, Vol. 24, No. 4 (Spring 2000), 5-38.

Eliot A. Cohen, ‘The Mystique of US Air Power,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 73, No. 1 (Jan-Feb 1994), 109-

124.

Donald C. F. Daniel, Peter Dombrowski, and Rodger A. Payne, ‘The Bush Doctrine is Dead; Long

Live the Bush Doctrine?’ Orbis (Spring 2005), 199-212. Dennis M. Drew, ‘US Airpower Theory and the Insurgent Challenge: A Short Journey to Confusion’,

The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 4 (October 1998), 809-832.

Rolf Ekeus, ‘Reassessment: The IISS Strategic Dossier on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction,’

Survival, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer 2004), 73-88.

Andrew P. N. Erdmann, ‘The US Presumption of Quick, Costless Wars,’ Orbis (Summer 1999), 363-

381.

Lawrence Freedman, ‘Writing of Wrongs: Was the War in Iraq Doomed From the Start,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 1 (2006), 129-134.

Lawrence Freedman, ‘War in Iraq: Selling the Threat,’ Survival, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer 2004), 7-50.

David C. Gompert, ‘For a Capability to Protect: Mass Killing, the African Union and NATO,’ Survival,

Vo. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2006), 7-18.

Richard P. Hallion, ‘Storm over Iraq: Airpower and the Gulf War,’ (Smithsonian Institution Press,

1992). Frank G. Hoffman, ‘Complex Irregular Warfare: The Next Revolution in Military Affairs,’ Orbis, Vol. 50, Issue 3 (Summer 2006), 395-411. Mary Kaldor and Andrew Salmon, ‘Military Force and European Strategy,’ Survival, Vol. 48, No. 1 (Spring 2006), 19-34. Chaim Kaufman, ‘Threat Inflation and the Failure of the Marketplace of Ideas: The Selling of the Iraq War’, International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2004), 5-48. Thomas A. Keaney, ‘Surveying Gulf War Airpower,’ Available at: http://www.dtic.mil/doctrine/jel/jfq_pubs/jfq0602.pdf Elizabeth Kier and Jonathan Mercer, ‘Setting Precedents in Anarchy: Military Intervention and Weapons of Mass Destruction’, International Security, Vol. 20, No. 4 (Spring 1996), 77-106. Sung-han Kim, ‘The End of Humanitarian Intervention?’ Orbis, Vol. 47, Issue 4 (Autumn 2003), 721-736. Charles A. Kupchan and Peter L. Trubowitz, ‘Dead Center: The Demise of Liberal Internationalism’, International Security, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall 2007), 7-44. Melvin R. Laird, ‘Iraq: Learning the Lessons of Vietnam,’ Foreign Affairs, Vo. 84 (Nov/Dec 2005), 22-43. Robert S. Litwak, ‘Non-proliferation and the Dilemmas of Regime Change,’ Survival, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter 2003-04), 7-32.

Thomas G. Mahnken and Barry D. Watts, ‘What the Gulf War Can (and Cannot) Tell Us about the

Future of Warfare’, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Autumn 1997), 151-162.

Phillip S. Meilinger, ‘A History of Effects-Based Air Operations’, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 71 (January 2007), 139-68. Phillip S. Meilinger, ‘Trenchard and “Morale Bombing”: The Evolution of Royal Air Force Doctrine

Before World War II,’ The Journal of Military History, Vol. 60, No. 2 (April 1996), 243-270. Robert A. Pape, ‘The True Worth of Air Power,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83 (2004), 116-130, and the responses by Merrill A. McPeak and Pape in Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83 (2004), 160-163.

Robert L. Paarlberg, ‘Knowledge as Power: Science, Military Dominance, and US Security,’ International Security, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Summer 2004), 122-151.

Daryl G. Press, ‘The Myth of Air Power in the Persian Gulf War and the Future of Warfare, International Security, Vo. 26, No. 2 (Fall 2001), 5-44.

Barnett R. Rubin, ‘Saving Afghanistan,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 1 (2007), 57-78. Donald Rumsfeld, ‘Transforming the Military,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 81 (2002), 20-32. Thomas R. Searle, ‘”It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers”: The Firebombing of Tokyo in

March 1945,’ The Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, No. 1 (January 2002), 103-133. James Steinberg, ‘Preventive Force in US National Security Strategy,’ Survival, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter

2005-06), 55-72. Jon Western, ‘Sources of Humanitarian Intervention: Beliefs, Information, and Advocacy in the US

Decisions on Somalia and Bosnia’, International Security, Vol. 26, No. 4 (Spring 2002), 112-142.

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Week 2: Nuclear Weapons and the Cold War: Deterrence and the

Arms Race


(1) What drove the nuclear arms race, and why did the USA and USSR build

thousands of nuclear weapons?

(2) Does deterrence depend on rational state behaviour?

(3) Are nuclear weapons usable?

(4) What factors contribute to the risk of nuclear war?

(5) What unintended consequences can result from arms control agreements?

Debate question: Should the UK disarm unilaterally?

Debate readings

Nicola Butler and Mark Bromley, ‘Secrecy and Dependence: The UK Trident system in the 21st

Century’, BASIC Report, November 2011.

Michael Clarke, ‘Does my bomb look big in this? Britain’s Nuclear Choices after Trident,’ International Affairs, Vol. 80, No. 1 (January 2004), 49-62. Michael Codner, Gavin Ireland and Lee Willett, ‘The United Kingdom’s Independent Strategic Nuclear Deterrent: Observations of the 2006 White Paper and Issues for the Parliamentary Debate,’ Whitehall Report 1-07 (The Royal United Services Institute, 2007). Available at http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/RUSI_Trident_Whitehall_Report.pdf Lawrence Freedman, ‘Britain: The First Ex-Nuclear Power?,’ International Security, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Spring 1981), 80-104. Kate Hudson, ‘Britain’s Trusty Trident? Neither Independent nor a Deterrent’, Global Dialogue, Vol. 8, No. 1-2 (Winter-Spring 2006). * Julian Lewis, ‘Nuclear Disarmament versus Peace in the Twenty-first Century,’ International Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 4 (2006), 667-673. * Michael MccGwire, ‘Comfort Blanket or Weapon of War: What is Trident for?’, International Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 4 (2006), 639-650. Dan Plesch, ‘The Future of Britain’s WMD’, (The Foreign Policy Centre, 2006). * Michael Quinlan, ‘The Future of United Kingdom Nuclear Weapons: Shaping the Debate,’ International Affairs, Vol. 82, No. 4 (2006), 627-637.

Lecture readings Desmond Ball, ‘US Strategic Forces: How Would They Be Used?,’ International Security, Vol. 7, No. 3 (Winter 1982-83), 31-60. Andy Butfoy, ‘Washington’s Apparent Readiness to Start Nuclear War,’ Survival, Vol. 50, No. 5 (Oct-

Nov 2008, 115-140. * Bernard Brodie, ‘The Development of Nuclear Strategy,’ International Security, Vo. 2, No. 4 (Spring

1978), 65-83. John Deutch, ‘A Nuclear Posture for Today,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 84 (2005), 49-60.

Michael S. Gerson, ‘No First Use: The Next Step of US Nuclear Policy,’ International Security, Vol. 35, No. 2 (Fall 2010), 7-47. Dennis M. Gormley, ‘Securing Nuclear Obsolescence,’ Survival, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn 2006), 127-

148. Colin S. Gray, ‘Nuclear Strategy: The Case for a Theory of Victory,’ International Security, Vol. 4, No.

1 (Summer 1979), 54-87. * Michael E. Howard, ‘On Fighting a Nuclear War,’ International Security, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Spring

1981), 3-17. Michael Krepon, ‘Moving Away from MAD,’ Survival, Vol. 43, No. 2 (Summer 2001), 81-95. Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris and Ivan Oelrich. ‘From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence’,

Federation of American Scientists and The Natural Resources Defense Council, Occasional Paper No. 7, April 2009. Available at: http://www.fas.org/pubs/_docs/occasionalpaper7.pdf

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Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky, ‘Nuclear Insecurity: Correcting Washington’s Dangerous Posture,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 5 (2007), 109-118.

Warner R. Schilling, ‘US Strategic Nuclear Concepts in the 1970s: The Search for Sufficiently

Equivalent Countervailing Parity,’ International Security, Vol. 6, No. 2 (Autumn 1981), 48-79.

Walter Slocombe, ‘The Countervailing Strategy,’ International Security, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Spring 1981),

18-27.

Kenneth N. Waltz, ‘Nuclear Myths and Political Realities,’ American Political Science Review, Vol.

84, No. 3 (September 1990), 731-745.

Further reading

Some books that are excellent reads are two by Richard Rhodes – The Making of the Atomic Bomb

(Simon & Schuster, 1986) and Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb (Simon & Schuster,

1995) – and Fred Kaplan, The Wizards of Armageddon (Simon & Schuster, 1983).

Two very important historical papers are David A. Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear

Weapons and American Strategy, 1945-60,’ International Security, Vol. 7, No. 4 (Spring 1983), 12-71,

and ‘“A Smoking, Radiating Ruin at the end of Two Hours”, Documents on American Plans for

Nuclear War with the Soviet Union, 1954-1955,’ International Security, Vol. 6, No. 3 (Winter 1981),

3-38.

Steve Andreasen, ‘Reagan was Right: Let’s Ban Ballistic Missiles,’ Survival, Vol. 46, No. 1 (Spring 2004), 117-130. Desmond Ball and Robert C. Toth, ‘Revising the SIOP: Taking War-Fighting to Dangerous Extremes’, International Security, Vol. 14, No. 4 (Spring 1990), 65-92. Desmond Ball and Jeffrey Richelson (eds.), Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Cornell University Press, 1986). Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Truman and the A-Bomb: Targeting Noncombatents, Using the Bomb, and His Defending the “Decision”’, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 3 (July 1998), 547-570. Avis Bohlen, ‘The Rise and Fall of Arms Control,’ Survival, Vol. 45, No. 3 (Autumn 2003), 7-34. Alan Borning, ‘Computer System Reliability and Nuclear War’, available at: http://www-ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/Breakthrough/book/pdfs/borning.pdf Bruce G. Blair, The Logic of Accidental Nuclear War (Brookings Institution, 1991). § Barry M. Blechman and Douglas M. Hart, ‘The Political Utility of Nuclear Weapons: The 1973 Middle East Crisis,’ International Security, Vol. 7, No. 1 (Summer 1982), 132-156. Paul Bracken, The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces (Yale University Press, 1983). William Daugherty, Barabara Levi, Frank Von Hippel, ‘The Consequences of “Limited” Nuclear Attacks on the United States’, International Security, Vol. 10, No. 4 (Spring 1986), 3-45. Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter, ‘National Missile Defense and the Future of US Nuclear Weapons Policy,’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), 40-92. Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter, ‘Counterforce Revisited: Assessing the Nuclear Posture Review’s

New Missions,’ International Security, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall 2005), 84-126.

Charles L. Glaser, ‘When are Arms Races Dangerous? Rational versus Suboptimal Arming,’ International Security, Vol. 28, No. 4 (Spring 2004), 44-84. Colin S. Gray, ‘The Arms Race Phenomenon,’ World Politics, Vol. 24, No. 1 (October 1971), 39-79.

Colin S. Gray, ‘The Urge to Compete: Rationale for Arms Racing,’ World Politics, Vol. 26, No. 2 (January 1974), 207-233. Robert Jervis, ‘The Political Effects of Nuclear Weapons: A Comment,’ International Security, Vol. 13,

No. 2 (Autumn 1988), 80-90.

Robert G. Joseph and John F. Reichart, ‘The Case for Nuclear Deterrence Today,’ Orbis, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Winter 1998), 7-19. Peter Hennessy, Cabinets and the Bomb (Oxford University Press, 2007).

Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of US Primacy,’ International Security, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Spring 2006), 7-44. Keir A. Lieber, ‘Grasping the Technological Peace: The Offense-Defense Balance and International

Security,’ International Security, Vol. 25, No. 1 (Summer 2000), 71-104. John J. Mearsheimer, ‘Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in Europe,’ International Security, Vol. 9, No. 3 (Winter 1984-85), 19-46. Michael Middeke, ‘Anglo-American Nuclear Weapons Cooperation After the Nassau Conference: The

British Poicy of Interdependence,’ Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 2, No. 2 (Spring 2000), 69-96. John Mueller, ‘The Essential Irrelevance of Nuclear Weapons,’ International Security, Vol. 13, No. 2

(Autumn 1988), 55-79.

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Robert A. Pape, ‘Why Japan Surrendered,’ International Security, Vol. 18, No. 2 (Autumn 1993), 154-

201.

George C. Peden, Arms, Economics and British Strategy: From Dreadnoughts to Hydrogen Bombs

(Cambridge University Press, 2007).

Robert Powell, ‘Nuclear Deterrence Theory, Nuclear Proliferation, and National Missile Defense,’

International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Spring 2003), 86-118.

Scott D. Sagan, The Limits of Safety: Organisations, Accidents, and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton

University Press, 1993).

Scott D. Sagan, ‘Nuclear Alerts and Crisis Management,’ International Security, Vol. 9, No. 4 (Spring

1985), 99-139. John Simpson, The Independent Nuclear State: The United States, Britain and the Military Atom

(Macmillan, 1983).

G. Spinardi, “Aldermaston and British Nuclear Weapons Development: Testing the ‘Zuckerman

thesis’”, Social Studies of Science , Vol. 27, No. 4 (1997), 547-582.

G. Spinardi, “Golfballs on the Moor: Building the Fylingdales Ballistic Missile Early Warning

System”, Contemporary British History, Vol. 21, No. 1 (March 2007), 87-110.

John D. Steinbruner, ‘Biological Weapons: A Plague upon All Houses,’ Foreign Policy, No. 109

(Winter 1997-1998), 85-96.

Nina Tannenwald, ‘The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-

Use,’ International Organization, Vol. 53, No. 3 (Summer 1999), 433-468.

Marc Trachtenberg, ‘The Influence of Nuclear Weapons in the Cuban Missile Crisis,’ International Security, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Summer 1985), 137-163.

Stephen Twigge and Len Scott, Planning Armageddon: Britain, the United States, and the Command and Control of Western Nuclear Forces 1945-1964 (Harwood, 2000). William Walker, ‘International Nuclear Order: A Rejoinder,’ International Affairs, Vol. 83, No. 4 (2007), 747-756. Ward Wilson, ‘The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima’, International Security, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Spring 2007), 162-179. Ken Young, ‘No Blank Cheque: Anglo-American (Mis)understandings and the Use of the English Airbases’, The Journal of Military History, Vol. 71 (October 2007), 1133-67. Ken Young, ‘A Most Special Relationship: The Origins of Anglo-American Nuclear Strike Planning,’ Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 9, No. 2 (Spring 2007), 5-31. David S. Yost, ‘France’s Evolving Nuclear Strategy,’ Survival, Vol. 47, No. 3 (Autumn 2005), 117-146.

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Week 3: Armed Force, War, and Societies

After the lectures, you should be able to answer the following questions:

(1) What does the idea of a ‘decisive weapon’ entail?

(2) How do technology and doctrine interact?

(3) To what extent has military technology changed the nature, not just of warfare,

but also of the organisation of society?

(4) Is conflict an essential part of state development?

Discussion questions: What are the lessons of 1914 and World War I? Was

technology decisive? Does history shape the present or vice versa?

Key readings Stephen Biddle, ‘Victory Misunderstood: What the Gulf War Tells Us about the Future of Conflict,

International Security, Vol. 21, No. 2 (Autumn 1996), 139-179. Antulio J. Echevarria, ‘The “Cult of the Offensive” Revisited: Confronting Technological Change Before the Great War,’ The Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 25, No. 1 (March 2002), 199-214. Michael Howard, ‘Men against Fire: Expectations of War in 1914,’ International Security, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer 1984), 41-57. Jack S. Levy, ‘Preferences, Constraints, and Choices in July 1914,’ International Security, Vo. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990-91), 151-186. * Keir A. Lieber, ‘The New History of World War I and What it Means for International Relations Theory,’ International Security, Vol. 32, No. 2 (Fall 2007), 155-191. Sean M. Lynn-Jones, ‘Détente and Deterrence: Anglo-German Relations, 1911-1914,’ International Security, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Autumn 1986), 121-150. George Raudzens, ‘War-Winning Weapons: The Measurement of Technological Determinism in Military History,; The Journal of Military History, Vol. 54, No. 4 (October 1990), 403-434. * Scott D. Sagan, ‘1914 Revisited: Allies, Offense, and Instability,’ International Security, Vol. 11, No. 2 (Autumn 1986), 151-175. Jonathan Shimshoni, ‘Technology, Military Advantage, and World War I: A Case for Military Entrepreneurship,’ International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3 (Winter 1990-1991), 187-215. * Jack Snyder, ‘Civil-Military Relations and the Cult of the Offensive, 1914 and 1984,’ International Security, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer 1984), 108-146.

Marc Trachtenberg, ‘The Meaning of Mobilization in 1914’, International Security, Vol. 15, No. 3

(Winter 1990/91), 120-150. Stephen Van Evera, ‘The Cult of the Offensive and the Origins of the First World War,’ International Security, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Summer 1984), 58-107.

Stephen Van Evera, ‘Why Cooperation Failed in 1914,’ World Politics, Vol. 38, No. 1 (October 1985), 80-117.

Further reading Three useful books on this topic are Max Boot, War Made New: Technology, Warfare, and the Course of History: 1500 to Today (Gotham, 2006), William McNeill, The Pursuit of Power (Blackwell, 1983) and Martin van Creveld, Technology and War: From 2000 BC to the Present (The Free Press, 1989).

See also the essays in Colin Creighton and Martin Shaw, The Sociology of War and Peace (Macmillan, 1987).

The classic account of the outbreak of WWI is Barbara Tuchman, The Guns of August also known as

August 1914 (first published in 1962 by Constable, now available from Ballantine or Presidio Press). The stirrup example comes from the classic, but criticised for its technological determinism, Lynn White Medieval Technology and Social Change, (Oxford University Press, 1962). See Hinton, RH & Sawyer, PH (1963) ‘Technological Determinism: the Stirrup and the Plough’, Past and Present 24: 90-100.

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Matthew Allen, ‘The Deployment of Untried Technology: British Naval Tactics in the Ironclad Era,’

War in History, Vol. 15, No. 3 (2008), 269-293.

Stephen Badsey, ‘The Boer War (1899-1902) and British Cavalry Doctrine: A Re-Evaluation,’ The Journal of Military History, Vol. 71 (January 2007), 75-97.

David J. Childs, A Peripheral Weapon? The Production and Employment of British Tanks in the First World War ( Greenwood Publishing Group, 1999).

John Ellis, The Social History of the Machine Gun (Pimlico, 1993).

Daniel R. Headrick, ‘The Tools of Imperialism: Technology and the Expansion of European Colonial

Empires in the Nineteenth Century,’ Journal of Modern History, Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 1979), 231-263. Jeffrey Herbst, ‘War and the State in Africa,’ International Security, Vol. 14, No 4 (Spring 1990), 117-

139.

Jeffrey Herbst, ‘Responding to State Failure in Africa,’ International Security, Vol. 21, No 3 (Winter

1996/97), 120-144.

I. B. Holley, Technology and Military Doctrine: Essays on a Challenging Relationship (Air University

Press, August 2004). Available at: http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA427735&Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf

Michael Howard, ‘When are Wars Decisive?’ Survival, Vol. 41, No. 1 (Spring 1999), 126-35.

Robert H, Jackson and Carl G. Rosberg, ‘Why Africa’s Weak States Persist: The Empirical and the

Juridical in Statehood,’ World Politics, Vol. 35, No. 1 (October 1982), 1-24.

Elizabeth Kier, ‘Culture and Military Doctrine: France between the Wars,’ International Security, Vo.

19, No. 4 (Spring 1995), 65-93.

Carnes Lord, ‘The Role of the United States in Small Wars,’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. 541 (September 1995), 89-100. T.H.E. Travers, ‘Technology, Tactics, and Morale: Jean de Bloch, the Boer War, and British Military Theory, 1900-1914,’ The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 1979), 264-286. Darshan Vigneswaran, ‘The Territorial Strategy of the Italian City-State,’ International Relations, Vol. 21, No. 4 (2007), 427-444. Rachel N. Weber, ‘Manufacturing Gender in Commercial and Military Cockpit Design,’ Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Spring 1997), 235-253.

11

Week 4: Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction


(1) Would the spread of nuclear weapons to more nations be dangerous, or would it

just mean more deterrence?

(2) Why was there an inherent contradiction in the ‘atoms for peace’ policy?

(3) Can nuclear weapons be uninvented, and if so, how, and to what extent?

(4) What can be done about nuclear proliferation?

(5) Why do some states choose to stay (or in the case of South Africa, go) non-

nuclear?

Debate questions: Is the spread of nuclear weapons necessarily a bad thing?

Key readings

David Albright, ‘South Africa and the affordable bomb,’ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 50, No.

4 (1994), available at: http://web.archive.org/web/20050412005857/www.thebulletin.org/article.php?art_ofn=ja94albright Bradley L. Bowman, ‘The “Demand-Side”: Avoiding a Nuclear-Armed Iran,’ Orbis, Vol. 52, Issue 4 (Fall 2008), 627-642. Alisa L. Carrigan, ‘Learning to build the bomb?,’ Physics Today, (December 2007), 54-55. J. W. de Villiers, Roger Jardine and Mitchell Reiss, ‘Why South Africa Gave Up the Bomb,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol 72, No. 5 (1993), 98-109. Llewelyn Hughes, ‘Why Japan Will Not Go Nuclear (Yet): International and Domestic Constraints on the Nuclearization of Japan,’ International Security, Vol. 31, No. 4 (Spring 2007), 67-96. Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, ‘Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons’, The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 101, No. 1 (July 1995), 44-99. * Scott D. Sagan, ‘Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons?: Three Models in Search of a Bomb,’ International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996-1997), 54-86. Scott D. Sagan, ‘The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons,’ International Security, Vol. 18, No. 4 (Spring 1994), 66-107. Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate (Norton, 1995). * Scott Sagan, Kenneth Waltz and Richard K Betts, ‘A Nuclear Iran: Promoting Stability or Courting Disaster?’, Debate, In Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 60, No. 2 (Spring/Summer 2007), 135-150.

Peter Liberman, ‘The Rise and Fall of the South African Bomb,’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 2

(Fall 2001), 45-86. * Kenneth Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: More may be Better, (Adelphi Paper No 171, International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1981), available at:

http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/waltz1.htm

Tanya Ogilvie-White, ‘Is there a Theory of Nuclear Proliferation? An Analysis of the Contemporary Debate,’ The Nonproliferation Review (Fall 1996), 43-60. This is good review of theoretical positions.

Further reading Samina Ahmed, ‘Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Turning Points and Nuclear Choices’, International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), 178-204.

Gawdat Bahgat, ‘Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction: The Case of Libya,’ International Relations, Vol. 22, No. 1 (2008) 105-126. Deborah Yarsike Ball and Theodore P. Gerber, ‘Russian Scientists and Rogue States’, International

Security, Vo. 29, No. 4 (Spring 2005), 50-77. Frans Berkhout, Oleg Bukharin, Harold Feiveson and Marvin Miller, ‘A Cutoff in the Production of

Fissile Material’, International Security, Vol. 19, No. 3 (Winter 1994/95), 167-202. Richard Bitzinger, ‘The Globalization of the Arms Industry: The Next Proliferation Challenge,’

International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2 (Autumn 1994), 170-198.

12

Chaim Bruan and Christopher F. Chyba, ‘Proliferation Rings: New Challenges to the Nuclear

Nonproliferation Regime,’ International Security, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Fall 2004), 5-49.

Ashton B. Carter, ‘How to Counter WMD,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83, (2004), 72-85.

Patrick Clawson and Michael Eisenstadt, ‘Halting Iran’s Nuclear Programme: The Military Option,’

Survival, Vol. 50, No. 5 (Oct-Nov 2008), 13-19.

Sheena Chestnut, ‘Illicit Activity and Proliferation: North Korean Smuggling Networks,’ International Security, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Summer 2007), 80-111.

Paul M. Cole, Sweden Without the Bomb: The Conduct of a Nuclear-Capable Nation Without Nuclear Weapons (RAND, 1994). Available at: http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/2007/MR460.pdf

John Deutch, Arnold Kanter, Ernest Moniz and Daniel Poneman, ‘Making the World Safe for Nuclear Energy,’ Survival, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter 2004-05), 65-80.

Peter D. Feaver, ‘Command and Control in Emerging Nuclear Nations,’ International Security, Vol. 17,

No. 3 (Winter 1992/93), 160-187.

Mark Fitzpatrick, ‘Assessing Iran’s Nuclear Programme,’ Survival, Vol. 48, No. 3 (Autumn 2006), 5-

26.

Mark Fitzpatrick, ‘Can Iran’s Nuclear Capability be Kept Latent?’ Survival, Vol. 49, No. 1 (Spring

2007) 33-58.

Steven Flank, ‘Exploding the Black Box: The Historical Sociology of Nuclear Proliferation,’ Security Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1993), 259-94.

Sumit Ganguly, ‘India’s Pathway to Pokran II: The Prospects and Sources of New Dehli’s Nuclear

Weapons Program,’ International Security, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), 148-177.

Francis J. Gavin, ‘Blasts from the Past: Proliferation Lessons from the 1960s,’ International Security,

Vol. 29, No. 3 (Winter 2004/05), 100-135. Bertrand Goldschmidt, ‘A Historical Survey of Nonproliferation Policies,’ International Security, Vol. 2, No. 1 (Summer 1977), 69-87. David J. Karl, ‘Proliferation Pessimism and Emerging Nuclear Powers,’ International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3 (Winter 1996-97), 87-119. See also subsequent correspondence between Peter D Feaver and Scott D. Sagan, and Karl, International Security, Vol. 22, No. 2 (Autumn 1997), 185-207. Rens Lee, ‘Why Nuclear Smuggling Matters,’ Orbis, Vol. 52, Issue 3 (Summer 2008), 434-444. Ariel E. Levite, ‘Never Say Never Again: Nuclear Reversal Revisited,’ International Security, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter 2002/03), 59-88. Michael MccGwire, ‘The Rise and Fall of the NPT: An Opportunity for Britain,’ International Affairs, Vol. 81, No. 1 (2005), 115-140. John J. Meirsheimer, ‘Why We Will Soon Miss The Cold War,’ The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 266, No. 2 (August 1990), 35-50. Available at: http://mearsheimer.uchicago.edu/pdfs/A0014.pdf Dinshaw Mistry, ‘Beyond the MTCR: Building a Comprehensive Regime to Contain Ballistic Missile Proliferation,’ International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4 (Spring 2003), 119-149. Alexander H. Montgomery, ‘Ringing in Proliferation: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb Network,’ International Security, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Fall 2005), 153-187. Michael O’Hanlon, ‘Resurrecting the Test-Ban Treaty,’ Survival, Vol. 50, No. 1 (Feb-March 2008), 119-132.

Mitchell B. Reiss, ‘A Nuclear-armed North Korea: Accepting the “Unacceptable”?’, Survival, Vol. 48,

No. 4 (Winter 2006-07), 97-109. Brad Roberts, ‘From Nonproliferation to Antiproliferation,’ International Security, Vol. 18, No. 1 (Summer 1993), 139-173. Stephen Potter Rosen, ‘After Proliferation: What to Do If More States Go Nuclear,’ Foreign Affairs,

Vol. 85, No. 5 (2006), 9-14. Scott D. Sagan, ‘How to Keep the Bomb From Iran,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 5 (2006), 45-59. Anthony Seaboyer and Oliver Thranert, ‘What Missile Proliferation means for Europe,’ Survival, Vol.

48, No. 2 (2006), 85-96. Roger K. Smith, ‘Explaining the Non-Proliferation Regime: Anomalies for Contemporary International

Relations Theory,’ International Organization, Vol. 41, No. 2 (Spring 1987), 253-281. Etel Solingen, ‘The Political Economy of Nuclear Restraint,’ International Security, Vol. 19, No. 2

(Autumn 1994), 126-169. Jessica Stern, ‘Dreaded Risks and the Control of Biological Weapons’, International Security, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter 2002/03), 89-123.

Ray Takeyh, ‘Iran Builds the Bomb,’ Survival, Vol. 46, No. 4 (Winter 2004-05), 51-64. Sharon K. Weiner, ‘Preventing Nuclear Entrepreneurship in Russia’s Nuclear Cities,’ International

Security, Vol. 27, No. 2. (Fall 2002), 126-158. Jim Walsh, ‘Learning from Past Success: The NPT and the Future of Non-proliferation, Paper prepared

for the Weapons of Mass Destruction Commission (October 2005). Available at http://www.wmdcommission.org/files/no41.pdf

13

Carl Walske, ‘Nuclear Electric Power and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapon States,’ International Security, Vol. 1, No. 3 (Winter 1977), 94-106.

14

Weeks 5: Knowing the Properties of Weapons Through Testing and

Use: the Case of Ballistic Missile Defence


(1) Why is testing so fundamental to the development of many weapons

technologies?

(2) Why are the results of tests always open to contestation?

(3) What is the ‘fog of war’ and how does it affect claims of efficacy based on use?

(4) Why is the question ‘will missile defence work?’ difficult to answer?

Discussion question: What were the missile defence ‘lessons’ of the 1991 Gulf War,

and what does the Patriot experience tell us about the roles of testing and use in the

development of weapons technology?

Key readings

* H. M. Collins and Trevor Pinch, Chapter 1 ‘A Clean Kill?: The Role of Patriot in the Gulf War’ (pp. 7-29) of The Golem at Large: What You Should Know About Technology (Cambridge University

Press, 2002). [webct] * Dennis M. Gormley, ‘Missile Defence Myopia: Lessons from the Iraq War,’ Survival, Vol. 45, No. 4 (Winter 2003-04), 61-86. George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol, ‘Video Evidence of the Effectiveness of Patriot during the

1991 Gulf War’, Science and Global Security 4, pp. 1-63. Googling should find this. Donald MacKenzie, ‘From Kwajalein to Armageddon? Testing and the Social Construction of Missile Accuracy’, in D. Gooding, T. J. Pinch & S. Schaffer (eds.), The Uses of Experiment, (Cambridge

University Press, 1989) 409-436. [webct]

* Theodore A. Postol, ‘Lessons of the Gulf War Experience with Patriot,’ International Security, Vol. 16, No. 3 (Winter 1991-1992), 119-171. Graham Spinardi, ‘Ballistic Missile Defence and the Politics of Testing: the Case of the US Ground-Based Midcourse Defence,’ Science and Public Policy (December 2008). Robert M Stein and Theodore Postol, ‘Patriot Experience in the Gulf War’, correspondence, International Security, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Summer 1992), 199-240.

Further reading Donald R. Baucom, ‘The Rise and Fall of Brilliant Pebbles’, The Journal of Social, Economic and Political Studies, Vol. 29, No. 2 (Summer 2004), 143-190.

William J. Broad, Teller’s War: The Top-Secret Story Behind the Star Wars Deception (Simon & Schuster, 1992). Charles L. Glaser and Steve Fetter, ‘National Missile Defense and the Future of US Nuclear Weapons

Policy,’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1 (Summer 2001), 40-92.

Dennis M. Gormley, ‘Missile Contagion,’ Survival, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Aug-Sept 2008), 137-154. Argues that cruise missile proliferation is a bigger problem than that of ballistic missiles, overlooked in the enthusiasm for BMD.

Lisbeth Gronlund et al, Technical Realities: An Analysis of the 2004 Deployment of a US National

Missile Defense System (Union of Concerned Scientists, May 2004). Available at: http://www.ucsusa.org/assets/documents/nwgs/technicalrealities_fullreport.pdf George N. Lewis and Theodore A. Postol, ‘Future Challenges to Ballistic Missile Defense,’ IEEE

Spectrum, (September 1997), 60-68. Donald MacKenzie, ‘How Do We Know the Properties of Artefacts? Applying the Sociology of

Knowledge to Technology’, in R. Fox (ed.), Technological Change: Methods and Themes in the History of Technology London: Harwood, 247-263.

K. Scott McMahon, Pursuit of the Shield: The US Quest for Limited Ballistic Missile Defense (University Press of America, 1997).

15

Keith B. Payne, The Case for National Missile Defense,’ Orbis, Vol. 44, Issue 2 (Spring 2000), 187-

196.

Richard L. Russell, ‘Swords and Shields: Ballistic Missiles and Defenses in the Middle East and South

Asia,’ Orbis, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer 2002), 483-498.

Graham Spinardi, ‘Technological Controversy and US Ballistic Missile Defence: Star Warriors versus

the Huntsville Mafia,’ Defence Studies, Vol. 9, No. 3, 354-384. [webct]

Graham Spinardi, ‘The Rise and Fall of Safeguard: Anti-Ballistic Missile Technology and the Nixon

Administration,’ History and Technology, Vol. 26, Issue 4 (December 2010), 313-334.

Amongst the many books on missile defence, the early phase is best covered by Ernest J. Yanarella,

The Missile Defense Controversy (University Press of Kentucky, 1977) and Benson D. Adams,

Ballistic Missile Defense (American Elsevier Publishing Company, 1971); Frances Fitzgerald, Way

Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars and the End of the Cold War (Touchstone, 2000) provides a

very entertaining account of Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’; and the shift to National Missile Defense under

Clinton is described in Bradley Graham, Hit to Kill: The New Battle Over Shielding America from Missile Attack (Public Affairs, 2001).

16

Week 6: no class

17

Week 7: The Defence Industry and Arms Trade


(1) What is distinctive about the development of military technology?

(2) Why are weapons so expensive?

(3) Is quality always more important than quantity?

(4) Is the ‘military-industrial complex’ a useful concept?

(5) To what extent can high defence research and development provide useful civil

‘spin-off?

Debate questions: Should we build weapons and sell them? If so, who to? If not, why

not? Or should we buy them from someone else?

Discussion reading John A. Alic, Trillions for Military Technology: How the Pentagon Innovates and Why it Costs So Much (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007). Chapters 4-6.

Anon, ‘The Cost of Weapons: Defence Spending in a Time of Austerity’, The Economist, *(August 26, 2010). Ian Anthony, ‘Current Trends and Developments in the Arms Trade,’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 535 (September 1994), 29-42. * Campaign Against Arms Trade, ‘An Introduction to the arms trade,’ available at: http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/intro-briefing-2006.pdf * Malcolm Chalmers, Neil V. Davies, Keith Hartley and Chris Wilkinson, ‘The Economic Costs and Benefits of UK Defence Exports,’ (Centre for Defence Economics, University of York, November 2001). Available at: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/econ/documents/research/defence_exports_nov01.pdf * Chris Havemann, ‘Hawks or Doves? The Ethics of UK Arms Exports,’ Business Ethics, Vol. 7, No. 4 (October 1998), 240-244. William W. Keller and Janne E. Nolan, ‘The Arms Trade: Business as Usual?’ Foreign Policy, No. 109 (Winter 1997-98), 113-125. Donald MacKenzie, ‘Science and Technology Studies and the Question of the Military,’ Social Studies of Science, Vol. 16, No. 2 (May 1986), 361-371 provides a neat summary of some of the key characteristics of defence technology. Thomas L. McNaugher, New Weapons, Old Politics: America’s Military Procurement Muddle (Brookings Institution, 1989).

Thomas L. McNaugher, ‘Weapons Procurement: The Futility of Reform,’ International Security, Vol.

12, No. 2 (Autumn 1987), 63-104. Lewis Page, Lions, Donkeys and Monkeys: Waste and Blundering in the Military (Arrow Books, 2006).

Christopher S. Parker, ‘New Weapons for Old Problems: Conventional Proliferation and Military

Effectiveness in Developing States,’ International Security, vol. 23, No. 4 (Spring 1999), 119-147. * Steven Schofield, ‘Making Arms, Wasting Skills,’ (Campaign Against Arms Trade, 2008), available at: http://www.caat.org.uk/publications/economics/MakingArms2008.pdf

Further reading Bruce Brunton, ‘An Historical Perspective on the Future of the Military-Industrial Complex,’ Social

Science Journal, Vol. 28, No. 1 (1991), 45-62. Andrew Feinstein, The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade, (Hamish Hamilton, 2011). Jacques S. Gansler, The Defense Industry (MIT Press, 1980). Chapters 1-3. Old, but still good.

Eugene Gholz, ‘Eisenhower versus the Spin-off Story: Did the Rise of the Military-Industrial-Complex Hurt of Help America’s Commercial Aircraft Industry?’, Enterprise and Society, Vol. 12, No. 1(Spring

2011), 46-95. Eugene Gholz and Harvey M. Sapolsky, ‘Restructuring the US Defense Industry,’ International Security, Vo. 24, No. 3 (Winter 1999/2000), 5-51.

18

William D. Hartung, ‘Eisenhower’s Warning: The Military-Industrial Complex Forty Years Later,’

World Policy Journal, Vol. XVIII, No. 1 (Spring 2001).

Keith Hayward, ‘The Globalisation of Defence Industries,’ Survival, Vol. 42, No. 2 (Summer 2000),

115-32.

Mary Kaldor, ‘The Weapons Succession Process,’ World Politics, Vol 38, No. 4 (July 1986), 577-595.

M. Mort and G. Spinardi, “Defence and the Decline of UK Mechanical Engineering – the Case of

Vickers at Barrow”, Business History (January 2004), Vol. 46, No. 1, 1-22.

Stephanie G. Neuman, ‘Defense Industries and Global Dependency,’ Orbis, Vol 50, Issue 3 (Summer

2006), 429-451.

Vernon W. Ruttan, Is War Necessary for Economic Growth? Military Procurement and Technology Development (Oxford University Press, 2006).

G. Spinardi, “Prospects for the Defence Diversification Agency: Technology Transfer and the UK

Defence Research Establishments”, Science and Public Policy, Vol. 27, No. 2 (April 2000), 123-135.

G. Spinardi, “Defence Technology Enterprises: A Case Study in Technology Transfer”, Science and Public Policy (August 1992), 198-206.

G. Spinardi, ‘The Limits to ‘Spin-off’: UK Defence R&D and the Development of Gallium Arsenide

Technology,’ British Journal for the History of Science, (March 2012).

Murray Weidenbaum, ‘The Changing Structure of the US Defense Industry,’ Orbis, Vol. 47, Issue 4

(Autumn 2003), 693-703.

Also Special Issue on ‘The Arms Trade: Problems and Prospects in the Post-Cold War World’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 535 (September 1994).

19

Weeks 8: Weapons Development: The Technical Imperative,

Rational Actor, and Bureaucratic Politics


(1) Why can weapons developments not be seen simply as the rational responses of

states to external threats?

(2) Does technology drive the arms race?

(3) What is the role of inter-service rivalry?

(4) How can nuclear weapons decisions be conceptualised?

Discussion question: What best explains ‘arms dynamics’?

Key readings * Michael H. Armacost, ‘The Thor-Jupiter Controversy’, in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman

(eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (Open University Press, Second Edition, 1999), 395-405.

This is an extract from Armacost’s book, The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The Thor-Jupiter

Controversy (Columbia University Press, 1969). [webct] Matthew Evangelista, Innovation and the Arms Race: How the United States and the Soviet Union

Develop New Military Technologies, (Cornell University Press, 1988), chapter 1. [webct]

* James Fallows, ‘The American Army and the M-16 Rifle’ in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman (eds.), The Social Shaping of Technology (Open University Press, Second Edition, 1999), 382-394.

This is an extract from Fallow’s very readable book, National Defense (Random House, 1981). [webct] Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy: A Historical Sociology of Nuclear Missile Guidance (MIT Press, 1990). D. MacKenzie and G. Spinardi, “The Shaping of Nuclear Weapon System Technology: US Fleet Ballistic Missile Guidance and Navigation”, Social Studies of Science, Vol. 18 (1988) in two parts: “I: From Polaris to Poseidon”, 419-63; “II: ‘Going for Broke’—The Path to Trident II”, 581-624. * Graham Spinardi, ‘Why the US Navy went for Hard-Target Counterforce in Trident II (And Why it Didn’t Get There Sooner), International Security, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Autumn 1990), 147-190. See also Graham Spinardi, From Polaris to Trident The Development of US Fleet Ballistic Missile Technology (Cambridge University Press, 1994). For a brief summary, see the review of this book by Scott D. Sagan in The American Political Science Review, Vol. 89, No. 1 (March 1995), 265-266. David A. Welch, ‘The Organizational Process and Bureaucratic Politics Paradigms: Retrospect and

Prospect,’ International Security, Vol. 17, No. 2 (Autumn 1992), 112-146.

Further reading Graham T. Allison and Morton H. Halperin, ‘Bureaucratic Politics: A Paradigm and Some Policy Implications,’ World Politics, Vol 24, Supplement (Spring 1972), 40-79. Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Crossing the Rubicon: A Missed Opportunity to Stop the H-Bomb?’ International

Security, Vol. 14, No. 2 (Autumn 1989), 132-160.

Alexander M. Biekakowski, ‘General Hawkin’s War: The Future of the Horse in the US Cavalry,’ The Journal of Military History, Vol. 71 (January 2007), 127-138. Matthew Evangelista, ‘Why the Soviets Buy the Weapons They Do,’ World Politics, Vol. 36, No. 4

(July 1984), 567-618. Theo Farrell, Weapons Without a Cause: The Politics of Weapons Acquisition in the United States

(Macmillan, 1997). Harry G. Gelber, ‘Technical Innovation and Arms Control,’ World Politics, Vol. 26, No. 4 (July 1974),

509-541. Charles L. Glaser, ‘The Causes and Consequences of Arms Races,’ Annual Review of Political

Science, Vol. 3 (2000), 251-276, esp. 251-259. Robert C. Gray, ‘Learning from History: Case Studies of the Weapons Acquisition Process,’ World Politics, Vol. 21, No. 3 (April 1979), 457-70.

20

Ted Greenwood, ‘Why Military Technology is Difficult to Restrain’, Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Autumn 1990), 412-429. Greenwood is also the author of an excellent book,

Making the MIRV: A Study of Defense Decision Making (Ballinger Publishing, 1975).

Alex Roland, ‘Was the Nuclear Arms Race Deterministic?’, Technology and Culture, Vol. 51, No. 2

(April 2010), 444-461.

Paul N. Stockton, ‘The New Game on the Hill: The Politics of Arms Control and Strategic Force

Modernization,’ International Security, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Fall 1991), 146-170.

Edward Rhodes, ‘Do Bureaucratic Politics Matter? Some Disconfirming Findings from the Case of the

US Navy,’ World Politics, Vol. 47, No. 1 (October 1994), 1-41.

Sanford Lakoff and W. Erik Bruvold, ‘Controlling the Qualitative Arms Race: The Primacy of Politics’, Science, Technology & Human Values, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Autumn 1990), 382-411.

Harvey Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success in Government (Harvard University Press, 1972).

21

Week 9: Cold War Society – Science, Technology and Academia


(1) Why did basic science become seen as important to military strength in the Cold

War?

(2) What role have scientists had in fuelling/controlling the arms race? Does their

expertise give them special status or responsibility?

(3) What is the role of expert (scientific) advice in defence policy-making?

(4) How did Cold War funding for academia affect the practice and the content of

science?

Discussion questions: What, in your view, is the proper relationship between the

state and its military and political objectives, and academia? Do scientists have a

privileged position to either promote or oppose the development or use of weapons?

Key readings Barth, Kai-Henrik, ‘Catalysts of Change: Scientists as Transnational Arms Control Advocates in the 1980s,’ Osiris, Vol. 21 (2006), 182-206. Barth, Kai-Henrik, ‘The Politics of Seismology: Nuclear Testing, Arms Control, and the Transformation of a Discipline,’ Social Studies of Science, Vol. 33, No. 5 (October 2003), 743-781. * John Cloud, ‘Crossing the Olentangy River: The Figure of the Earth and the Military-Inustrial-Academic-Complex, 1947-1972,’ Stud. Hist. Phil. Mod. Phys. Vol. 31, No. 3, 371-404. * Paul Doty, ‘Can Investigations Improve Scientific Advice? The Case of the ABM’, Minerva, Vol. 10, No. 2 (April 1972), 280-294 Roger L. Geiger, ‘Science, Universities, and National Defense, 1945-1970,’ Osiris, 2

nd Series, Vol. 7

(1992), 26-48. * Rebecca S. Lowen, ‘”Exploiting a Wonderful Opportunity”: The Patronage of Scientific Research at Stanford University, 1937-1965,’ Minerva, Vol. 30, No 3 (September 1992), 391-421. Gregory McLauchlan and Gregory Hooks, ‘Last of the Dinosaurs? Big Weapons, Big Science, and the American State from Hiroshima to the End of the Cold War,’ The Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 36, No. 4 (Autumn 1995), 749-776. * Rebecca Slayton, ‘Speaking as Scientists: Computer Professionals in the Star Wars Debate,’ History

and Technology, Vol 19 (2003), 335-364. [webct] Graham Spinardi, “Science, Technology, and the Cold War: The Military Uses of the Jodrell Bank Radio Telescope”, Cold War History Vol. 6, No 3 (August 2006), 279-300.

John S. Rigden, ‘Eisenhower, scientists, and Sputnik,’ Physics Today, (June 2007), 47-52. Available at:

http://link.aip.org/getpdf/servlet/GetPDFServlet?filetype=pdf&id=PHTOAD000060000006000047000

001

Further reading J. Agar and B. Balmer, 'British Scientists and the Cold War: The Defence Research Policy Committee and Information Networks, 1947-1963, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences, vol. 28, no. 2, (1998), pp. 209-252.

Lawrence Badash, ‘Science and McCarthyism,’ Minerva, Vol. 38, No. 1 (March 2000), 53-80.

B.Balmer, 'Killing "Without the Distressing Preliminaries": Scientists' Defence of the British Biological Warfare Programme', Minerva Vol.40 (2002), pp57-75. B.Balmer, ‘How Does an Accident Become an Experiment? Secret Science and the Exposure of the

Public to Biological Warfare Agents’, Science as Culture Vol.13 (2) pp.197-228 (June 2004). Brian Balmer, Britain and Biological Warfare: Expert Advice and Science Policy 1930-65 (Palgrave,

2001). Michael Aaron Dennis, ‘”Our First Line of Defense”: Two University Laboratories in the Postwar

American State,’ Isis, Vol. 85, No. 3 (September 1994), 427-455. Paul Edwards, The Closed World: Computers and the Politics of Discourse in the Cold War (MIT

Press, 1996).

22

Paul Forman and Jose Manuel Sanchez Ron (eds), National Military Establishments and the Advancement of Science and Technology (Springer, 1996).

Sharon Ghamara-Tabrizi, ‘Simulating the Unthinkable: Gaming Future War in the 1950s and 1960s,’

Social Studies of Science, Vol. 30, No. 2 (April 2000), 163-223.

Benjamin P. Greene, Eisenhower, Science Advice, and the Nuclear Test-ban Debate, 1945-1963

(Stanford University Press, 2007).

Gregg Herken, Cardinal Choices: Presidential Science Advising from the Atomic Bomb to SDI (Oxford

University Press, 1992).

Dominick Jenkins, The Final Frontier: Science, America and Terror (Verso, 2002).

Richard D. Lambert, ‘DoD, Social Science, and International Studies,’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 502 (March 1989), 94-107.

Stuart Leslie, The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford (Columbia University Press, 1993).

Rebecca S. Lowen, Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford (University of

California, 1997).

George E. Lowe, ‘The Camelot Affair’, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, Vol. 22, No. 5 (May 1966), 44-

48.

E. Mendelsohn, M. Smith and P. Weingart (eds), Science, Technology, and the Military (Kluwer,

1988).

Margaret Pugh O’Mara, Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search for the Next Silicon Valley (Princeton University, 2004).

Bruce L. R. Smith, The Advisors: Scientists in the Policy Process (Brookings Institution Press, 1992).

H. Guyford Stever and Guy Stever, In War and Peace: My Life in Science and Technology (Joseph Henry Press, 2002). Zuoyue Wang, In Sputnik’s Shadow: The President’s Science Advisory Committee and Cold War

America (Rutgers University Press, 2008). Zuoyue Wang, ‘The Politics of Big Science in the Cold War: PSAC and the Funding of SLAC,’ Historical Studies of Physical Sciences, Vol. 25, No. 2 (1995), 329-356. Available at: http://www.csupomona.edu/~zywang/slac.pdf Peter J. Westwick, ‘Secret Science: A Classified Community in the National Laboratories,’ Minerva, Vol. 38, No. 4 (December 2000), 363-391. Herbert York, The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller, and the Superbomb (Stanford University Press, 1989). Also see special issues: ‘Science in the Cold War’ in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 31, No. 2 (April 2001); ‘Earth Sciences in the Cold War’ in Social Studies of Science, Vol. 33, no. 5 (October 2003); and ‘Universities and the Military’, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 502 (March 1989).

23

Week 10: Terrorism and Technology


(1) How does the changing nature of science and technology affect terrorism?

(2) Is terrorism now different than in previous times (eg the IRA, Baader-Meinhof

gang, Red Brigade)?

(3) Does access to weapons of mass destruction pose a real terrorist threat?

(4) What role can technology play in preventing terrorism?

Discussion questions: To what extent is terrorism about technology or about people,

and should the response to it be seen as a ‘war’? Consider your conclusions in relation

to the threat of WMD terrorism?

Key readings Graham Allison, ‘How to Stop Nuclear Terror,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83 (2004), 64-74.

* Keith Breckenridge, ‘The Biometric State: The Promise and Peril of Digital Government in the New South Africa,’ Journal of South African Studies, Vol. 31, No. 2 (June 2005), 267-282. Jack Caravelli, ‘Nuclear Insecurity: Understanding the Treat from Rogue Nations and Terrorists (Greenwood Publishing, 2008). Ashton Carter, ‘The Architecture of Government in the Face of Terrorism,’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), 5-23. Kevin C. Desouza, Winston T. H. Koh and Aris M. Ouksel, ‘Information Technology, Innovation and the War on Terrorism,’ Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 74 (2007), 125-128. Seymour E. Goodman, Jessica C. Kirk and Megan H. Kirk, ‘Cyberspace as a Medium for Terrorists,’ Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Vol. 74 (2007), 193-210. Gavin Philip H. Gordon, ‘Can the War on Terror Be Won” How to Fight the Right War,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 86, No. 6 (2007), 53-66. Michael Howard, ‘A Long War?’, Survival, Vol. 48, No. 4 (Winter 2006-7), 7-14. David Omand, ‘Countering International Terrorism: The Use of Strategy,’ Survival, Vol. 47, No. 4 (Winter 2005-06), 107-116. * John Mueller, ‘Is There Still a Terrorist Threat? The Myth of the Omnipresent Enemy,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85 (Sept/Oct 2006), 2-8. Also look at the debate at:

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/discussions/roundtables/are-we-safe-yet#

William C. Potter, Charles D. Ferguson and Leonard S. Spector, ‘ The Four Faces of Nuclear Terror: And the Need for a Prioritized Response,’ Foreign Affairs, Vol. 83 (2004), 130-132. * Anna M. Pluta and Peter D. Zimmerman, ‘Nuclear Terrorism: A Disheartening Dissent,’ Survival,

Vol. 48, No. 2 (Summer 2006), 55-69.

* William Rosenau, ‘Aum Shinrikyo’s Biological Weapons Program: Why Did it Fail?’, Studies in

Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 24 (2001), 289-301. [webct]

Paul Seidenstat, ‘Terrorism, Airport Security, and the Private Sector,’ Review of Policy Research, Vol.

21, No. 3 (2004), 275-291. Available at: http://www.socsci.mcmaster.ca/polisci/emplibrary/Terrorism,Airport%20Security,and%20the%20Priva

te%20Sector.pdf Mark G. Stewart and John Mueller, ‘A Risk and Cost-benefit Assessment of United States Aviation

Security Measures’, Journal of Transportation Security, Vol 1 (2008), 143-159. http://polisci.osu.edu/faculty/jmueller/STEWJTS.PDF * Kathleen M. Vogel, ‘Framing Biosecurity: An Alternative to the Biotech Revolution Model?’,

Science and Public Policy, Vol. 35, No. 1 (February 2008), 45-54. Jon B. Wolfsthal and Tom Z. Collina, ‘Nuclear Terrorism and Warhead Control in Russia,’ Survival,

Vol. 44, No. 2 (Summer 2002), 71-83. ‘WMD Terrorism: An Exchange,’ Survival, Vol. 40, No. 4 (Winter 1998-99), 168-83.

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Further reading

Max Abrahms, ‘Why Terrorism Does Not Work’, International Security, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Fall 2006),

42-78.

James M. Acton, M. Brooke Rogers and Peter D. Zimmerman, ‘Beyond the Dirty Bomb: Re-Thinking

Radiological Terror,’ Survival, Vol. 49, No. 3 (Autumn 2007), 151-168.

Victor H. Asal, Gary A. Ackerman and R. Karl Rethemeyer, ‘Connections Can be Toxic: Terrorist

Organizational Factors and the Pursuit of CBRN Weapons’, Vol. 35, Issue 3 (2012), 229-254.

Ronald M. Atlas, ‘Toward Global Harmonization for Control of Dual-use Biothreat Agents,’ Science and Public Policy, Vol. 35, No. 1 (February 2008), 21-27.

Andrew J. Bacevich, ‘Bad Medicine for Biological Terror,’ Orbis, Vol. 44, Issue 2 (Spring 2000), 221-

236.

Christopher F. Chyba and Alex L. Greninger, ‘Biotechnology and Bioterrorism: An Unprecedented

World,’ Survival, Vol. 46, No. 2 (Summer 2004), 143-162.

Renee de Nevers, ‘NATO’s International Security Role in the Terrorist Era’, International Security,

Vol. 31, No. 4 (Spring 2007), 34-66.

Richard A. Falkenrath, ‘Problems of Preparedness: US Readiness for a Domestic Terrorist Attack,’

International Security, Vol. 25, No. 4 (Spring 2001), 147-186.

H. George Frederickson and Todd R. LaPorte, ‘Airport Security, High Reliability, and the Problem of

Rationality,’ Public Administration Review, Vol. 62, Special Issue (September 2002), 34-44.

Adam Garfinkle, ‘Comte’s Caveat: How We Misunderstand Terrorism,’ Orbis, Vol. 52, Issue 3

(Summer 2008), 403-421. Jens Hainmuller and Jan Martin Lemnitzer, ‘ Why Do Europeans Fly Safer? The Politics of Airport Security in Europe and the US,’ Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 15, No. 4 (Winter 2003), 1-36. Shane Ham and Robert D. Atkinson, ‘Using Technology to Detect and Prevent Terrorism,’ (Progressive Policy Institute, January 2002). Available at: http://www.ppionline.org/documents/IT_terrorism.pdf Scott Helfstein, Michael J. Meese, Don Rassler, Reid Sawyer, Troy Schnack, Mathew Sheiffer, Scott Silverstone and Scott Taylor, ‘White Paper Prepared for the Secretary of Defense Task Force on DoD Nuclear Weapons Management: Tradeoffs and Paradoxes: Terrorism Deterrence and Nuclear Weapons’, Studies in Conflict Terrorism, Vol. 32, Issue 9 (2009), 776-801. Philip B. Heymann, ‘Dealing with Terrorism: An Overview,’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), 24-38. Kendall Hoyt and Stephen G. Brooks, ‘A Double-Edged Sword: Globalization and Biosecurity,’ International Security, Vol. 28, No. 3 (Winter 2003/04), 123-148. Jennifer Yang Hui, ‘The Internet in Indonesia: Development and Impact of Radical Websites’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 33, Issue 2 (2010), 171-191. Michael Jacobson, ‘Terrorist Financing and the Internet’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 33, Issue 4 (2010), 353-363. Michael Kenney, ‘”Dumb” Yet Deadly: Local Knowledge and Poor Tradecraft Among Islamist Militants in Britain and Spain’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 33, Issue 10, (2010), 911-932.

William J. Krouse, Terrorist Identification, Screening, and Tracking Under Homeland Security

Presidential Directive 6’, Congressional Research Service Report for Congress, (April 21, 2004). Available at: http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RL32366.pdf Anthony Kurth Cronin, ‘Behind the Curve: Globalization and International Terrorism,’ International

Security, Vol. 27, No. 3 (Winter 2002/03), 30-58. Andrew H. Kydd and Barbara F. Walter, ‘The Strategies of Terrorism,’ International Security, Vol. 31, no. 1 (Summer 2006), 49-80.

Michael Mousseau, ‘Market Civilization and Its Clash with Terror,’ International Security, Vol. 27, No.

3 (Winter 2002/03), 5-29. Robert A. Paper, ‘The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism,’ American Political Science Review, Vol. 97, NO. 3 (August 2003), 343-361.

Barry Posen,’ The Struggle against Terrorism: Grand Strategy, Strategy, and Tactics,’ International Security, Vol. 26, No. 3 (Winter 2001/02), 39-55. Robert W. Poole, Jr., ‘Improving Airport Passenger Screening,’ (Reason Public Policy Institute,

September 2002). Available at: http://72.10.40.168/ps298.pdf Adam Roberts, ‘The “War on Terror” in Historical Perspective,’ Survival, Vol. 47, No. 2 (Summer 2005), 101-130. Peter J. Roman, ‘The Dark Winter of Biological Terrorism,’ Orbis, Vol. 46, No. 3 (Summer 2002),

469-482. Johnny Ryan, ‘The Internet, the Perpetual Beta, and the State: The Long View of the New Medium’,

Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 33, Issue 8 (2010), 673-681.

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Bruce Schneier, Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World (Springer,

2006).

Paul Seidenstat and Francis X. Plane, Protecting Airline Passengers in the Age of Terrorism

(Greenwood Publishing Group, 2009).

Henry Sokolski, ‘Rethinking Bio-Chemical Dangers,’ Orbis, Vol. 44, Issue 2 (Spring 2000), 207-219.

John Stone, ‘Al Qaeda, Deterrence, and Weapons of Mass Destruction’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 32, Issue 9 (2009), 763-775.

J. Samual Walker, ‘Regulating against Nuclear Terrorism: The Domestic Safeguards Issue, 1970-

1979,’ Technology and Culture, Vol. 42, No. 1 (Jan 2001), 107-132.

Manuel R. Torres Soriano, ‘The Vulnerabilities of Online Terrorism’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 35, Issue 4 (2012), 263-277.

Anne Stenersen, ‘The Internet: A Virtual Training Camp’, Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 20,

Issue 2 (April 2008), 215-233.

Robert F. Trager and Desislava P. Zagorcheva, ‘Deterring Terrorism: It Can be Done,’ International Security, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Winter 2005/06), 87-123.

US Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, ‘Technology Against Terrorism: Structuring

Security,’ (January 1992). Available at: http://cipp.gmu.edu/archive/257_OTATechAgainstTerrorism.pdf

James R. Van der Velde, ‘The Impossible Challenge of Deterring “Nuclear Terrorism” by Al Qaeda’,

Studies in Conflict and Terrorism, Vol. 33, Issue. 8 (2010), 682-699.

Brian Glyn Williams, ‘The CIA’s Covert Predator Drone War in Pakistan, 2004-2010: The History of

an Assassination Campaign’, Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, Vol. 33, Issue 10, 871-892.

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Week 11: Emerging Technology and Warfare: Cyber War and the

Robot Revolution


(1) What impact might cyber war technology have on the nature of conflict?

(2) Does it matter that robots are changing not just how war is waged, but also by

whom?

(3) What might be the consequences of a robot arms race? Who would be

empowered most?

(4) Will reduced risk of human death make war/intervention seem less costly, and

therefore more likely?

Debate question: Should robots and drones be used wherever possible instead of

humans in warfare?

Key readings (do some googling for up-to-date news coverage and check websites of

some of these authors to see if they have new publications)

* Anon, ‘Flight of the Drones’, The Economist (8 October 2011). Ronald C. Arkin, ‘The Case for Ethical Autonomy in Unmanned Systems’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 9, No. 4 (2010), 332-341. Ronald C. Arkin, ‘Governing Lethal Behavior: Embedding Ethics in a Hybrid Deliberative/Reactive Robot Architecture’, Technical Report GIT-GVU-07-11. http://www.cc.gatech.edu/ai/robot-lab/online-publications/formalizationv35.pdf Peter M. Asaro, ‘How Just Could a Robot War be?’. http://peterasaro.org/writing/Asaro%20Just%20Robot%20War.pdf Owen Barnes (ed), Airpower: UAVs: The Wider Context (Royal Air Force Directorate of Defense Studies, 2009), available at http://www.airpowerstudies.co.uk/publications.htm * James C. Dawkins, Jr., ‘Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicles: Examining the Political, Moral, and Social Implications’, Air University Thesis, June 2005. http://www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?Location=U2&doc=GetTRDoc.pdf&AD=ADA476987 Nicholas Falliere, Liam O. Murchu and Eric Chien, W32 Stuxnet Dossier, Symantic, (February 2011). Available at: http://www.symantec.com/content/en/us/enterprise/media/security_response/whitepapers/w32_stuxnet_

dossier.pdf

James P. Farwell and Rafal Rohozinski, ‘Stuxnet and the Future of Cyber War,’ Survival, Vo. 53, No. 1 (Feb-March 2011), 23-40. International Review of Information Ethics, Vol. 6 (2006), Special Issue ‘Ethics in Robotics’.

http://www.i-r-i-e.net/inhalt/006/006_full.pdf Linda Johansson, ‘Robots and Moral Agency’ Licentiate Thesis, Stockholm, 2011. Google to find this. Alexander Klimburg, ‘Mobilising Cyber Power’, Survival, Vo. 53, No. 3 (June-July 2011), 119-132.

Patrick Lin, George Bekey and Keith Abney, ‘Robots in War: Issues of Risk and Ethics’, in R. Capurro

and M. Nagenborg (eds) Ethics and Robotics (Akademische Verlagsgesellshaft, 2009), 49-67. Google for this. Patrick Lin, ‘Ethical Blowback from Emerging Technologies’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 9, no. 4

(2010), 313-331.

Patrick Lin, ‘Drone Ethics Briefing: What a Leading Robot Expert Told the CIA’, The Atlantic (December 15, 2011). George R. Lucas, ‘Postmodern War’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 9, no. 4 (2010), 289-298.

Jane Mayer, ‘The Predator War’, The New Yorker (October 26, 2009), 36-45. * Elizabeth Quintana, ‘The Ethics and Legal Implications of Military Unmanned Vehicles’, RUSI Occasional Paper. http://www.rusi.org/downloads/assets/RUSI_ethics.pdf Lamber Royakkers and Rinie van Est, ‘The Cubicle Warrior: The Marionette of Digitalized Warfare’,

Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2010), 289-296. Noel Sharkey, ‘Saying ‘No’ to Lethal Autonomous Targeting’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 9, no. 4

(2010), 369-383.

27

P. W. Singer, ‘The Ethics of Killer Applications: Why is it so Hard to Talk about Morality When it

Comes to the New Military Technology?’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 9, no. 4 (2010), 299-312.

P. W. Singer, ‘A World of Killer Apps’, Nature, Vol. 477 (September 22, 2011), 399-401.

* P. W. Singer, Wired for War: The Robotics Revolution and Conflict in the 21st Century (Penguin,

2009). You can view a lecture by Singer at:

http://www.ted.com/talks/pw_singer_on_robots_of_war.html Robert Sparrow, ‘Building a Better WarBot: Ethical Issues in the Design of Unmanned Systems for

Military Applications’, Science and Engineering Ethics, Vol. 15, No. 2 (2009), 169-187.

Bradley Jay Strawser, ‘Moral Predators: The Duty to Employ Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles’, Journal of Military Ethics, Vol. 9, no. 4 (2010), 342-368.

John P. Sullins, ‘RobotWarfare: Can Robots be more Ethical than Humans on the Battlefield?’, Ethics and Information Technology, Vol. Vol. 12, Issue 3 (2010), 263-275.

Eneken Tikk, ‘Ten Rules for Cyber Security’, Survival, Vo. 53, No. 1 (Feb-March 2011),

* Paul F. M. Zahl, Daniel M. Bell and Brian Stiltner, ‘Drones: Is it Wrong to Kill by Remote Control?’,

Christianity Today (October 28, 2011). You can get this by googling.

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Essays SUBMITTING WORK ELECTRONICALLY

From 2012-13 Sociology is trialing a new way to handle essay submission, marking

and return. Junior and Senior Honours students will submit an electronic copy of their

essay, in normal word processing format, through Pebble Pad. You will find Pebble

Pad on your MyEd screen.

You will not be required to submit paper copies of your essay, and feedback will be

provided direct to you through the Pebble Pad system.

We hope that this will make things easier for students, administrative staff and

teaching staff, reduce printing costs, and help the University to be more

environmentally responsible.

Full information on how to submit your Sociology essays can be found here:

https://www.wiki.ed.ac.uk/display/SPSITWiki/Submitting+Work+Using+PebblePad Home undergraduates and visiting students are assessed via:

(1) A mid-term essay of between 1400 and 1600 words (excluding bibliography),

which makes up 25% of your marks for the course. To be submitted

electronically by Monday, February 25, no later than 12.00 noon.

(2) A long essay (term paper) of between 3,900 and 4,100 words (excluding

bibliography), which makes up 75% of your marks for the course. To be

submitted electronically by Monday, April 29, no later than 12.00 noon. See

the end of this Handbook for how to submit electronically.

Do not include your name anywhere on the essay but include your exam number at

the top right hand corner on the first page of your essays. On the first page of both

essays, give an exact word count for the essay, which your word processing software

can provide (don’t include the bibliography in the count, since it does not form part of

the word limit).

Pitfalls to avoid: Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a serious offense attracting severe penalties: see the Sociology Honours

Handbook or other student handbook relevant to you for what it is and how to avoid

it. The School of Social and Political Studies uses the ‘Turnitin’ system to check

that essays do not contain plagiarised material. Turnitin compares every

assignment against a constantly-updated database, which highlights all plagiarised

work.

29

Pitfalls to avoid: Lateness

Please note that both paper and electronic copies must be submitted before the

deadline. We will take the later of the submissions as the definitive ‘hand in’ date and

time. Should this be after the deadline (noon on the relevant day) then Lateness

Penalties will apply. See the Sociology Honours Handbook or other student

handbook relevant to you for the lateness penalties, and on what to do should you

have a good reason to miss the deadline. The penalty for excessive word length in

coursework is one mark deducted for each additional 20 words over the limit. If

the limit is 1500 words then anything between 1501 and 1520 words will lose one

point, and so on.

How the mid-term and final essay differ

The mid-term and final essays must be on different topics. I haven’t set separate

questions or reading lists for them, but the obvious difference is that, because the mid-

term essay is shorter and you have less time to work on it, it is less ambitious. In both

essays, you’ll obviously want to read all the key readings, but for the mid-term you

can draw on the further reading in a more limited way.

You are perfectly at liberty to give your class presentation on the topic of your mid-

term or final essay.

Essay topics

You are not restricted to the list below, in which I suggest possible topics for each

week. You can base your essay on one question or several so long as the essay

remains coherent. Although you should consult me if you intend to do so, you may

construct your own essay title within any of the areas covered by the course. For

readings, see the appropriate sections of the reading list. Bear in mind that it might be

better to do essays after you have heard the relevant lecture.

(1) What are the technological underpinnings of the Revolution in Military Affairs,

and what are the limitations of this approach?

(2) What are the implications of the increasing use of robotic technologies in

warfare?

(3) Describe how US and UK bombing evolved in WWII - especially the arguments

for and against ‘strategic bombing’ and ‘precision bombing’ - and to what

extent changing technology has made such a distinction moot.

(4) To what extent is technology decisive in determining the outcome of conflicts?

What does such a question imply about how we define technology? Discuss

some examples (eg machine gun, tank, atom bomb, radar).

(5) Was there any logic to the nuclear arms race? How can the acquisition by the

USA of thousands of nuclear warheads be explained in terms of ‘deterrence’?

(6) How useful has arms control being in controlling arms races?

(7) To what extent can Britain’s nuclear weapon capability be seen as independent?

(8) What are the policy options that could be used to prevent the proliferation of

nuclear weapons?

(9) Would the world be safer if more nations had nuclear weapons?

30

(10) Why is it difficult to know if missile defence technology will work? To what

extent are questions of technical feasibility linked to questions of whether

missile defence is judged to be necessary?

(11) Why are weapons so expensive? What are the barriers to ‘dual-use’ technology?

(12) What can/should be done about the arms trade?

(13) What are the arguments for and against the UK continuing to be a major arms

exporter?

(14) Can military technologies be seen simply as the result of rational decisions

made by states in response to external threats?

(15) Is there a ‘technical imperative’ driving the arms race?

(16) What is the relationship between the military and science? Did the Cold War

change the nature of science?

(17) Can technology play a significant role in combating terrorism? (It might be

sensible to focus on a few particular examples: eg biometric identification,

airport screening)

(18) What factors might shape terrorists choices as regard the use of weapons of

mass destruction or other forms of attack? Do scientific advances mean that

bioterrorism is more likely?

(19) Are robot technologies (eg ‘drones’) a desirable advance in military technology?