13 - IIASA Conference '07 on Global Development - 14-15 November 2007

Thomas C. Schelling

Managing Nuclear Proliferation

Listen [MP3 26:10]

Lecture Summary

Thomas Schelling analyzes our recent nuclear history and considers what this means for our nuclear future.

He argues how successful the world has been at maintaining nuclear non-proliferation. If anybody had predicted in the 1960s that we would finish the century with no more than eight, nine, or ten nations possessing nuclear weapons, that prediction would not have been listened to.

He argues that one contributor to non-proliferation was the tragic accident at Chernobyl when one of the nuclear reactors exploded in 1986. The spread of radioactive fall out thousands of miles caused disillusionment with nuclear power and stopped many governments building new nuclear power stations.

More surprisingly, Schelling says is that no nuclear weapon has been exploded in warfare since 1945 despite at least six wars in which one side had nuclear weapons. He contends that there is an unwritten taboo against using nuclear weapons and the world is incredibly fortunate that no country has broken the taboo in the last sixty-two years.

Speaker Biography

Dr. Thomas C. Schelling was awarded the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics (shared with Robert Aumann) for “having enhanced our understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis.”

Schelling earned his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 1951 and was Associoate Professor and Professor of Economics at Yale University from 1953 to 1958. He spent 1958–1959 at the RAND Corporation and was Professor of Economics at Harvard University (Department of Economics, Center for International Affairs, and John F. Kennedy School of Government) from 1959 to 1990. In 1990 Dr. Schelling accepted appointment as Distinguished University Professor at the University of Maryland and taught in its Department of Economics and School of Public Policy until 2005.

Thomas Schelling served as Fiscal Analyst at the US Bureau of the Budget (1945–1946), was in the Marshall Plan Mission to Denmark (1948–1949), and held positions in the European Office of the Marshall Plan, Paris (1949–1950), the White House Office of the Director for Mutual Security (1950–1951), and the Executive Office of the President (foreign aid programs) (1951–1953).

His main theoretical interests include bargaining, conflict and cooperation, racial segregation, and techniques of self-management. His main policy interests are nuclear weapons, the limitation of war, climate change, foreign aid, and nicotine.

From 1993 to 1999, Dr. Schelling spent summers as scholar in residence at IIASA.

His major books are The Strategy of Conflict (1960), Strategy and Arms Control (with Morton H. Halperin) (1961), Arms and Influence (1966), and Micromotives and Macrobehavior (1978). His latest book is Strategies of Commitment and Other Essays (2006).

Schelling has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In addition to the 2005 Nobel Prize in Economics (formally known as the Bank of Sweden Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel), Thomas Schelling is the recipient of the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy and the National Academy of Sciences Award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War.

He lives with his wife, Alice Coleman Schelling, in Bethesda, Maryland. Together they have six sons and daughters-in-law and twelve grandchildren.

Responsible for this page: IIASA Publications Team
Last updated: 07 Oct 2009