Weapons experts Lugar, Schwartz to speak at IU Bloomington
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. -- Two leading experts on nuclear weapons will speak this week at Indiana University Bloomington at an event sponsored by the Center for American and Global Security and the School of Public and Environmental Affairs.
Stephen I. Schwartz, a faculty member at the Monterey Institute for International Studies in Monterey, Calif., will present a lecture titled "A Tale of the Triad: The Unknown History and Uncertain Future of America's Nuclear Arsenal." Former U.S. Sen. Richard Lugar, a distinguished scholar and professor of practice in the IU School of Global and International Studies, will provide commentary. The event will take place at 5:30 p.m. Friday, Oct. 25, in Ballantine Hall 109.
Schwartz will discuss the history and politics of the U.S. strategy of deploying nuclear weapons via bombers, submarines and intercontinental ballistic weapons, or ICBMs. He argues the so-called triad is an artifact of the Cold War, created and held together by competition between branches of the military, faulty intelligence and pork-barrel politics. Understanding its history, he says, should help refocus the debate on the future of U.S. strategic nuclear weapons at a time of fiscal austerity.
Schwartz is editor of The Nonproliferation Review and editor of the journal of the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, a research and training center at the Monterey Institute. He previously served as publisher and executive director of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and guest scholar and project director with the Foreign Policy Studies program at the Brookings Institution.
He is the author of "Nuclear Security Spending: Assessing Costs, Examining Priorities" and the editor and co-author of "Atomic Audit: The Costs and Consequences of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Since 1940"; he contributed the foreword to "The Doomsday Scenario: The Official Doomsday Scenario Written by the United States Government during the Cold War."
Lugar was the longest-serving senator in Indiana history, having represented the state in the U.S. Senate from 1977 to 2013. Known as a leader in reducing the threat of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons, he forged a partnership in 1991 with Georgia Sen. Sam Nunn to destroy weapons of mass destruction in the former Soviet Union. To date, the Nunn-Lugar program has deactivated more than 7,500 nuclear warheads that were once aimed at the United States.
A former two-term mayor of Indianapolis, Lugar served during his Senate tenure as chairman and ranking member of the Committee on Foreign Relations and chairman of the Committee on Agriculture. He joined the faculty of the IU School of Global and International Studies in January 2013.
The Center on American and Global Security is supported by the College of Arts and Sciences and the School of Global and International Studies. Sumit Ganguly, professor of political science in the College of Arts and Sciences and Rabindranath Tagore Chair in Indian Cultures and Civilizations, directs the center.
