James Warren Davis

Originally developed by applying models from cognitive psychology to the study of foreign policy decision-making, the field of behavioral IR is undergoing important transformations. Building on a broader range of models, methods and data from the fields of neuroscience, biology, and genetics, behavioral IR has moved beyond the staid debate between rational choice and psychology and instead investigates the plethora of mechanisms selected by evolution for solving adaptive problems. This opens new opportunities for collaboration between scholars informed by rational choice and behavioral insights. Examining the interactions between the individual’s genetic inheritance, social environment, and downstream behavior of individuals and groups, the emerging field of behavioral epigenetics offers novel insights into the methodological problem of aggregation that has confounded efforts to apply behavioral findings to IR. In the first instance empirical, behavioral IR raises numerous normative and philosophical questions best answered in dialogue with political and legal theorists.

Germany's ambivalent attitude toward nuclear weapons is the result of an intricate rivalry between competing principles and goals of foreign and security policy-making. A deeply engrained strategic culture of anti-nuclearism and anti-militarism competes with a belief in collective defense and alliance cohesion. Similarly, the long-held belief in multilateralism is time and again challenged by newly emerging claims for leadership within multilateral institutions. The strategically rather insignificant non-strategic nuclear weapons issue provides a nodal point around which these conflicting principles came to the fore.

This article suggests that various dimensions of the larger project of global governance are incoherent and illegitimate. Three dimensions of global governance - the provision of global public goods; processes of transnational regulation; and efforts to spread universal human rights - are examined and found to be deficient in terms of the ability of affected populations to participate in decisions over value trade-offs. Citizens' rights to participation in democratic processes often have been diminished as the locus of political decision making has shifted: on the one hand, to institutions beyond the territorial borders of the nation state; on the other, away from political institutions and towards "global civil society," which seems oddly intolerant of diversity. But if global governance is anti-pluralist and disenfranchising, it risks devolving into an imperial project. Hence, the paper concludes with a plea for a return to international politics as a control on the threat of empire.

The article discusses the nuclear disarmament movement Global Zero, focusing on its odds for success, which are said to be slim at best. It is argued that national interests will inevitably stymie any attempts at worldwide nuclear disarmament, but it is still necessary to critique such initiatives, as they could lead to catastrophic mistakes in nuclear strategy. The Global Zero project is said to include many respected political figures. However, the theory that a reduction in existing weapons will cause states such as North Korea or Iran to abandon their nuclear ambitions is characterized as dangerously naive..

A response is presented to the article "Less Than Zero" by Josef Joffe and James Davis, which appeared in the January/February 2011 issue. In that article Joffe and Davis made an argument against the elimination of nuclear weapons. The authors of the current article say the dangers of terrorism and nuclear proliferation overshadow any benefits of maintaining nuclear arsenals. They dispute the contention of Joffe and Davis that nations become more vulnerable to attack as they reduce their nuclear arsenals, and assert that capacities to uncover covert nuclear-weapons programs are more robust than Joffe and Davis claim.