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CNS Student Awarded "Most Outstanding Paper" at the 2007 WIIS Summer Symposium

CNS Graduate Research Assistant and Certificate Student Jessica Varnum received the "Most Outstanding Paper" award at the 2007 Women in International Security Summer Symposium for Graduate Students in International Affairs, which was held from June 7-12, 2007. View an abstract of Jessica's paper below:


Forecasting--and Shaping--Nuclear Proliferation Futures: Alternative Scenarios for Turkey in 2020
By Jessica C. Varnum

Abstract
Despite the high costs of any future Turkish decision to go nuclear--both to U.S. interests and to the nonproliferation regime--few policymakers or scholars have considered the possibility of, impetus for, preventive strategies against, or consequences of Turkish nuclear breakout. Drawing on Stephen Meyer's proliferation dynamics model and insights on proliferation motivations from the theoretical literature, this paper examines the salience, lag time, propensity, and treatability of a Turkish decision to pursue a nuclear weapons program.[1] Considering five long-term domestic and international trends relevant to Turkish nuclear policymaking, and related trigger events with the potential to reinforce or reverse the direction of one or more of these trends, the paper forecasts four possible proliferation scenarios for 2020.[2] The most likely scenario is one of Turkish hedging, but there are at least two scenarios in which Turkey might reasonably conclude that nuclear weapons were necessary. The paper concludes with several policy recommendations to the United States government for influencing those trends and trigger events over which it has some control, arguing that if it acts now the United States can still help shape a desirable nuclear nonproliferation future for Turkey.

[1] Salience, lag time, propensity, and treatability are the main components of Meyer's proliferation dynamics model. Stephen M. Meyer, The Dynamics of Nuclear Proliferation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), 455.
[2] The idea of studying proliferation trends and trigger events was derived from a seminar offered by Dr. William C. Potter of the Monterey Institute of International Studies titled: "Proliferation Trends and Trigger Events."


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