On June 3rd, 2011 the VCDNP hosted a presentation by Dr. Benoît Pelopidas, a Postdoctoral Fellow at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies and recent recipient of the "Best Graduate Paper 2010" award from the International Security Studies Section of the International Studies Association as well as the "2010 SNIS Award" for the Best Thesis in International Studies from the Swiss Network for International Studies. Dr. Pelopidas' presentation, entitled "The Oracles of Proliferation," is based on his award winning essay published in The Nonproliferation Review in March 2011. It is focused on the way in which proliferation experts maintain a biased historical reading that limits policy innovation.
The crux of the presentation was that policy choices, as Dr. Pelopidas asserted, are determined by an understanding of history and that approaching nuclear history as a history of nuclear weapons proliferation is a presumption shared by both US experts and policy makers. In his presentation, he argued that this understanding of history, relying on the metaphorical use of the term proliferation (which was imported from biology), strongly distorts the facts. Nuclear experts are plagued by a conservative bias as a result of this use of the proliferation metaphor. Instead of challenging the faulty proliferation narrative, most experts have backed it without question. The presentation demonstrated how the legitimacy that experts lend to this view of history has important political effects: it provides an authoritative assessment of past policies and limits the possibility of political innovation.
The presentation was followed by a lively discussion session among the group of gathered experts as well as a catered reception.
