Project description
A closer look at nuclear restraint and escalation
Τhe world faces an alarming risk of nuclear conflict. UN Secretary-General António Guterres recently compared the current situation to the tense days of the Cuban missile crisis. The war in Ukraine has exacerbated the potential risks. With the support of the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the WESUE project will develop a novel approach to comprehending nuclear restraint and the conditions under which it could falter, leading to perilous escalation. Using geopolitical software, it will craft simplified yet realistic war games that allow for repeated experimentation and the isolation of critical variables. The research seeks to inform strategic nuclear decision-making, offering hope in understanding the delicate balance that has thus far kept us from the brink.
Objective
We have no been this close to nuclear conflict since the Cuban missile crisis. U.N Secretary-General António Guterres, as reported by the BBC, acknowledged this fact recently at the 2022 Review Conference of the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT): “Today, humanity is just one misunderstanding, one miscalculation away from nuclear annihilation.” Examples are many at present where the specter of nuclear escalation is real. In the context of the Ukrainian War, Foreign Minister Lavrov and President Putin have both made clear the help of NATO to Kiev increased made nuclear war a possibility. As reported by Bloomberg he stated “The danger is serious, real. It can’t be underestimated.” This followed the order by President Putin in February 2022 to put the nation’s nuclear forces on high alert. As such, it is now more than ever crucial to understand the causes of the nuclear restraint we have experienced until now so that we can understand what makes escalation more likely, and inform strategic nuclear decisions with this scholarship. This is the aim of Wargames as Experiments: Strategy and Unintended Escalation (WESUE): to understand how nuclear restraint could fail and lead to nuclear escalation. WESUE uses a geopolitical software as an experimental method to conduct causal research in the field of nuclear strategy, a novelty. This is an emerging field, which would place WESUE right at the cutting edge of research, with a strong emphasis on NATO and Asia, hence the choice of basing the operation of this research project in Denmark at the Centre for War Studies (CWS) at the University of Southern Denmark (SDU). WESUE will offer a simplified version of a war game that can be played repeatedly, easily, and can isolate
mechanisms through randomized treatment. According to the Doomsday clock, we are less than two minutes to midnight.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
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Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
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(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2022-PF-01
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5230 Odense M
Denmark
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