On October 12-14, members from the Program on Strategic Stability Evaluation (POSSE) attended an authors’ workshop in Washington, DC wherein their draft chapters on regional stability were critiqued by a number of commentators including Jeffrey Knopf, Rajesh Basrur, Nikolai Sokov, Matt Kroenig, Adam Mount, Rob Brown, and Brigadier General Jim Dawkins. In addition to the workshop, the authors attended site visits to the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the Office of the Undersecretary for Arms Control and International Security to discuss their findings and answer questions from federal officials. The topic most addressed during the proceedings was what strategic stability means from the perspective of each author and the state he/she represents; a point which members from the Department of Defense and the State Department found deeply useful and very constructive.

POSSE also had the pleasure of welcoming Admiral (Ret.) Sandy Winnefeld, the most recent Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Distinguished Fellow at the Sam Nunn School’s Center for International Strategy, Technology and Policy, and Mike Elliot, Deputy Director for Strategic Stability for the Joint Staff, to dinner for a constructive discussion on a number of international issues pertaining to regional stability. 

The purpose of POSSE is to reinvigorate inter-disciplinary, international scholarship on issues of strategic stability in a post-nuclear weapons era.  An important component of this effort entails stimulating not only new policy-relevant scholarship but nurturing dialogue among the next generation of international scholars on nuclear disarmament and risk reduction issues—with a particular focus on the United States, the Russian Federation, and the People’s Republic of China.   

For more information, please visit http://posse.gatech.edu/ or contact Chris McDermott at chris.mcdermott@gatech.edu