Limited number of lunches available for registered guests until 12:30pm on day of event.

About the event: Modern survey experiments indicate that in the event of a limited nuclear strike, the public in the targeted country, including a great democracy, would demand a decisive response. The implications for crisis stability are dire. Just at the moment when democratic decision makers would struggle to formulate a proportional response, they would also have to contend with an enraged populace shouting for vengeance. Public opinion as recently characterized is anathema to sound crisis management. The same mass sentiment that bolstered democratic resolve in the triumphal years after the Cold War now abandons presidents in the age of nuclear multipolarity to foredoomed strategies that overplay their hand. This, however, is not the whole story. Public opinion in real life also prevents leaders from throwing it all away or allowing crises to slip out of control. The Missiles of October in 1962 threatened international peace under different geopolitical circumstances, but the role of public opinion then has lessons for today. What might be called the Robert McNamara-Brent Scowcroft school still reigns. Rather than preclude crisis management, public opinion on net enables it: amplifying popular demand for peace and motivating extraordinary leader performance to preserve it.

About the speaker: Dr. Damon Coletta served as the endowed Scowcroft Professor of Political Science (2020-2021) at the United States Air Force Academy and director of the department’s Eisenhower Center for Space and Defense Studies (2022-2023).  Damon edits the peer-reviewed e-journal, Space & Defense (2012-2024) and serves as social sciences liaison to USAFA’s nationally recognized Nuclear Weapons & Strategy minor program.  He completed a book on science & technology policy and international security, Courting Science: Securing the Foundation for a Second American Century (Stanford, 2016), and coedited NATO’s Return to Europe (Georgetown, 2017).

 All CISAC events are scheduled using the Pacific Time Zone.