XIIth OdCNP International Summer School "Responding to New Nuclear Realities: Concepts and Actions"
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- Published: Tuesday, 25 October 2022 13:16
On the 10th-14th of October, Odesa Center for Nonproliferation, in cooperation with Bodrum Institute, held XIIth OdCNP International Summer School "Responding to New Nuclear Realities: Concepts and Actions." This event became possible thanks to the support of the Swedish Radiation Safety Authority (SSM).
The School has gathered 44 participants from 10 different countries in Bodrum, Turkey, to acquire new knowledge in the arms control and nonproliferation field and build a new strong community of young scholars with long-lasting networking and academic ties.
In a quickly changing international agenda, scholars and experts had a chance to build a dialogue and discuss the issues that concern them the most today. The outstanding and proficient lectures from experts in the field provoked the participants' thoughts and ideas for fruitful debates.
The three days of School were filled with the presentations of experts representing the Odessa Center for Nonproliferation (Polina Sinovets, Valeriia Gergiieva, Aderito Vicente), The Polish Institute of International Affairs (Lukasz Kulesa), the Izmir University of Economics (Sitki Egeli), SIPRI (Wilfred Wan, Sibylle Bauer) and other significant schools who deal with the research on arms control, nonproliferation and international security.
The experts presented their views on the challenges and prospects of the ongoing Russia's war in Ukraine, the NATO nuclear strategy and its impact on the war in Ukraine, disruptive technologies in the Russia-Ukraine цar and their role in a new security environment, Iranian nuclear program and the future of JCPOA, Russian nuclear posture, nuclear terrorism, and many another no less critical issues which form the current affairs on arms control and nonproliferation arena.
Furthermore, during the School, besides the academic lectures, the young experts' career development session was held, where the OdCNP Non-Resident Fellow Valeriia Hesse, Research Fellow Valeriia Gergiieva, Research Consultant Tetiana Melnyk and Internship Fellow Yelyzaveta Khodorovska had a chance to share their professional and academic achievements with the participants and exchange the advice on how to build a career in the field today.
On one of the days, Polina Sinovets, Şebnem Udum, Iryna Maksymenko, Valeriia Gergiieva, and Valeriia Hesse also presented the book "Arms Control and Europe" recently published by Springer.
The book explores European security from the standpoint of the main current arms control challenges that are the result of the erosion in strategic stability and abandonment of mutually beneficial security outcomes as embodied by arms control. Drawing on this bleak current landscape, the authors argue that the combination of arms control once played a pivotal component of global strategic stability, and could do so again, under the right political conditions. Achieving such conditions implies that states would have a shared interest in the status quo, and not revisionist approaches to the security environment—an outcome that seems remote. However, if the US and Russia were both to seek positive security outcomes simultaneously (an alignment that has not existed in more than three decades), then enhancing the role of arms control likely will help in providing security benefits for all parties. By the end of the 1990s, neither the US nor Russia appeared to be interested in relying on arms control as a tool for increasing security and stability. Instead, it became the preferred tool for the conflict-averse actors to seek to reduce the need for defense spending or the potential for unintentional war.
The School successfully wrapped up with NPT Review Conference simulation game where each participant represented the position of their own country and added their contribution to drafting the final document. The simulation game helped the young scholars implement the acquired knowledge and understand how decisions in international organizations are being taken.
This year's Summer School has traditionally brought together future professionals who share the same passions about nuclear issues and became a place where the participants could establish and strengthen their academic network and become friends.