Description:

The Treaty on Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons had many opponents when, in 1995, it came up for extension. But against all predictions, the treaty was extended indefinitely, and without a vote. Michal Onderco offers a social network theory explanation of how the NPT was extended, giving new insight into why international treaties succeed or fail. The United States was the NPT’s main proponent, but even a global superpower cannot get its way through coercion or persuasion alone. Onderco draws on unique in-depth interviews and newly declassified documents to analyze the networked power at play. Onderco not only gives the richest account yet of the conference, looking at key actors like South Africa, Egypt, and the EU, but also challenges us to rethink how we think about the American power in international relations.

Speaker: Dr. Michael ONDERCO

　　　　　　　Professor of International Relations,Erasmus University Rotterdam

Speaker’s Profile:

Michal Onderco is Professor of International Relations at Erasmus University Rotterdam and affiliate at Peace Research Center Prague. He studies international security, with focus on nuclear politics and on domestic politics of foreign policy. He authored Networked Nonproliferation (Stanford UP, 2021) and Iran’s Nuclear Program and the Global South (Palgrave, 2016), as well as papers which appeared in International Studies Quarterly, European Union Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, European Journal of Political Research, Cooperation & Conflict, The Nonproliferation Review (and elsewhere). In 2018-2019, he was a Junior Faculty Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Moderator: Dr. Yoko IWAMA
Director of Strategic Studies Program (SSP); Director of Security and International Studies Program (SISP);
Professor, National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies (GRIPS)