Listings of all CNS staff with areas of expertise, contact information, biographies, and recent publications.

Updated: Nov 28, 2012

Dr. Nikolai N. Sokov

Senior Fellow, Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP)

Activities

Dr. Nikolai N. Sokov is a Senior Fellow at the Vienna Center for Disarmament and Non-Proliferation (VCDNP).

Areas of Research

Missiles

Russian and US Systems

Nuclear

Command, Control, Communications & Intelligence (C³I)

Nuclear Arms Control

Strategic Arms Control

Regional Expertise

Kosovo Crisis, Emerging Reorientation of Russias Foreign Policy, Russias Perception of NATO

Newly Independent States

Security and/or Military Strategy

General

Other

Arms Control Agreements: Devolution

Major Treaties and International Regimes: Chances for Demise

NATO

Verification/Compliance

Background

Beginning in 1981, Nikolai worked at the Institute of US and Canadian Studies and the Institute of World Economy and International Relations in Moscow. From 1987-92 he worked at the Ministry for Foreign Affairs of the Soviet Union and later Russia, and participated in START I and START II negotiations as well as in a number of summit and ministerial meetings.

He has been invited to speak at numerous conferences and provide briefings to many organizations and governmental agencies, including:

• U.S. Department of State
• U.S. Department of Defense
• U.S. Department of Energy
• various committees of U.S. Congress
• U.S. national laboratories
• UK Defense Academy
• International Institute for Strategic Studies
• Fondation pour la Recherche Strategique
• Tomsk Polytechnical University

Education

Nikolai has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan (1996) and (the Soviet equivalent of a Ph.D.) Candidate of Historical Sciences degree from the Institute of World Economy and International Relations (1986). He graduated from Moscow State University in 1981.

Bibliography

Nikolai has published extensively on international security and arms control, including:

• Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons: Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence (2010)
• Reducing and Regulating Tactical (Nonstrategic) Nuclear Weapons in Europe (2009)
• Engaging China and Russia on Nuclear Disarmament (2009)
• Evolution of Nuclear Strategy in U.S. and Russia and its Implications for Arms Control (2003)
• Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Options for Control (2000)
• Russian Strategic Modernization: Past and Future (2000)
• Russian Policy Toward the Baltics: What the West Can Expect and What It Could Do (1999)

He is also co-author and co-editor of the first Russian-language college-level textbook on nuclear nonproliferation (Yadernoe Nerasprostranenie, Vol.I-II, PIR Center, 1st edition 2000, 2nd edition 2002), and several monographs.