Benjamin Wilson (Berlin): Stability and Danger
Ideas and Politics in the Nuclear Age
24.11.2016 16:00 Uhr – 18:00 Uhr
wann: Donnerstag, 24. November 2016, 16-18 Uhr
wo: Historicum, Schellingstr. 12, Raum K026
Vortrag im Rahmen des Oberseminars "Perspektiven der Wissenschaftsgeschichte"
"The concept of “stability” lay at the foundation of Cold War nuclear strategy and the doctrine of mutual assured destruction. Where did the idea come from? Many say it was a consequence of the invention of thermonuclear weapons. But I claim that stability was a construction — an idea borrowed from the mid-twentieth-century “systems sciences.” For the American nuclear strategist Thomas Schelling, stability was a concept — and a specific graphical technique — he had encountered in his training and research as a Keynesian macroeconomist in the 1940s. A decade later, he creatively reapplied the technique to the problem of nuclear deterrence, helping to usher in the age of strategic stability." - Benjamin Wilson