Description

In the last few years there has been dramatic growth in the attention paid to new military technologies, such as drones, cyberweapons, and robots, which differ substantially from "legacy" weapons in important respects. The new weapons are, on the whole, cheaper than the platforms and weapons that have dominated military planning since World War II, and they would seem to require a different force structure. Some of these technologies have already been deployed in large numbers while others are still in development, but there is little question that collectively they are changing how armed conflict is imagined, blurring the line between conventional and strategic warfare. The course will examine the implications of these weapons for the application of international humanitarian law and standard models of arms control. Do the new technologies require new ways of thinking or can they be subsumed into the established categories? What are their likely consequences for the nuclear nonproliferation regime and the prospects for nuclear disarmament?