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

Updated: Oct 26, 2011

Ward Wilson

CNS Senior Fellow

Activities

Ward Wilson is a Senior Fellow at CNS. He works from Princeton.

Background

Mr. Wilson's article, "The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima" posed a radical challenge to established thinking. According to the distinguished physicist Freeman Dyson, the article "effectively demolishes the generally-accepted myth that the atomic bombings brought World War II to an end."

In 2008, Wilson won the Doreen and Jim McElvany Nonproliferation Essay Challenge and its $10,000 cash prize, for the "most outstanding essay on nonproliferation." Wilson bested scholars from 11 countries and across the United States with an essay entitled "The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence." The article is a fundamental challenge to the theory of nuclear deterrence and has been called "brilliant" and "important."

Mr. Wilson's recent speaking engagements include: the House of Commons in Great Britain, Princeton University, Stanford University, the United Nations, the Naval War College, University of Pretoria, the University of Chicago, Georgetown University, the Norwegian Defense Studies Institute, the Monterey Institute, Los Alamos, the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, the International Committee of the Red Cross, Aberystwyth University in Wales, Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Stimson Center, Hampshire College, the New School, the University of Hamburg, Oslo University, the Geneva Centre for Security Policy, the New America Foundation, the Bergen Resource Centre for International Development in Norway, the University of Massachusetts, the Institute for Advanced Study, the EastWest Institute, and others.

Education

American University in Washington, DC, with a special emphasis on history and philosophy

Bibliography

Print Articles

• "Strange Love: America and the Bomb," Book review of Gary Wills, Bomb Power: The Modern Presidency and the National Security State, Dissent Online edition, April 28, 2010.
• Book review of Bruce D. Larkin, Designing Denuclearization: An Interpretive Encyclopedia and George Perkovich and James M. Acton (eds.), Abolishing Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, The Nonproliferation Review 16, no. 2 (July 2009): 303-307.
• Correspondence, The Nonproliferation Review 16, no. 2 (July 2009): 131-139.
• "The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence," The Nonproliferation Review 15, no. 3 (November 2008): 421-439.
• Correspondence, "Do Small Arsenals Deter?" International Security 32, no. 3 (Winter 2007/08): 202-214.
• "The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima," International Security 31, No. 4: 162-179
• "Banning the Bomb: A New Approach," Dissent, (Winter 2007): 65-69.

Books and Reports

• Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, forthcoming 2012).
• "Delegitimizing Nuclear Weapons: Examining the Validity of Nuclear Deterrence," (with Ken Berry, Patricia Lewis, Benoit Pelopidas, and Nikolai Sokov), study commissioned by the Swiss Foreign Ministry (Monterey, CA: the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies, May 2010).
• "Stable at Zero: Enforcing the Peace in a World Without Nuclear Weapons," in Barry Blechman and Alex Bolfrass (eds.), Elements of a Nuclear Disarmament Treaty (Washington, DC: The Stimson Center, 2010).

Op-Eds and Letters

• "Verification lay at heart of sound new pact," Nashville Tennessean, July 20, 2010.
• "Bush overstates threat posed by a nuclear Iran," The Chicago Tribune, September 14, 2008.
• "A-bomb didn't win the war," The Chicago Tribune, August 10, 2008.

Wilson also writes regularly at www.rethinkingnuclearweapons.org.