Episode 08 : Russia's Nuclear Fever - A Conversation with Rose Gottemoeller Machiavelli in the Ivory Tower

In this episode of Machiavelli in the Ivory Tower, hosts Sarah and Hanna speak with Rose Gottemoeller, who is the Steven C. Hazy lecturer at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC). Prior to joining Stanford, Ms. Gottemoeller served as the Deputy Secretary General of NATO and, before that, as Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security at the US Department of State.

They begin their wide-ranging conversation with a discussion of the challenges and policy recommendations that Ms. Gottemoeller raised in a recent piece for the Financial Times, in which she argued that the “West must act now to break Russia’s nuclear fever.” They then turn their attention to one example of this “nuclear fever,” namely, recent debates within Russia’s strategic community about the utility and necessity of nuclear use. From here, they analyze prospects for nuclear risk reduction, the implications of Russia’s planned deployments of non-strategic nuclear weapons in Belarus, the future of multilateral nuclear diplomacy post-February 2022, and NATO’s upcoming summit in Vilnius. They conclude their conversation with Ms. Gottemoeller’s observations about how policymakers, analysts, and academics interact with the American system and why this mode of interaction strengthens national and international security.

Topics:

1. Russia’s Nuclear Fever

2. The nuclear debate in Russia
3. The future of US-Russia arms control
4. Russia’s nuclear deployments to Belarus
5. Nuclear sharing at the 2023 NPT PrepCom
6. The art of the possible in multilateral nuclear diplomacy
7. Options for nuclear risk reduction
8. The 2023 NATO summit in Vilnius
9. Bridging the gap between policymakers and scholarsDescription forthcoming