This is really great work! Very clearly structured and written, persuasively argued and (fairly) well supported by the evidence.
I’m currently doing my PhD/DPhil on the history of arms control agreements, and 1972 is one of my four case-studies. So obviously Ithink its really important and interesting, and that more people should know about it – and I have a lot of views on the subject! So I’ve got a few thoughts on methodology, further literature and possible extensions which I’ll share below. But they’re all to adding to what is excellent work.
Methodology
Its a bit unclear to me what your claim is for the link between these Track II discussions and the ultimate outcome of the two 1972 agreements. Its not that they were sufficient (needed SALT negotiations, and even then needed Kissinger/Dobrynin backchannel). Is it that the discussions were necessary for the outcome? Or just that they contributed in a positive way? I would be interested in your view.
The limitations section is good. But I think you could have been even clearer on the limits and strengths of a ‘single N’ approach. The limits are how much this can be generalised to the entire ‘universe of cases’. However, single N also has strengths—its most useful for developing and exploring mechanisms. So I think you could frame your contribution as exploring and deepening an analysis of the mechanisms. For example, something like “Two main mechanisms are proposed in the literature, this case study provides strong evidence for mechanism 1 (conveying new conceptions/ideas) and demonstrates how it works”.
On another point, I’d be concerned that if you chose this case because it was one of the most successful Track II cases you’d be ‘selecting on the dependent variable’ (apologies for the political science jargon – something like “cherrypicked for having a particular outcome”) . Can you justify your motivation and case-selection differently, for example as one of (the?) biggest and most sustained Track 2 dialogues? e.g. you say: “when the first Pugwash conference happened in 1957, there were either no, or almost no, other opportunities for Soviet and American scientists to have conversations about security policy and nuclear issues”
Adler + Schelling are great on the US side of the story. I assume you would be familiar with them, but I don’t see them cited. If you haven’t read them, you’re in for a treat – they’re great, and largely agree with you.
If you want to go down a tangent, you might want to engage with new line of argument that many US nuclear policymakers never accepted the parity of MAD, but continued seeking advantage (Green and Long 2017; Green 2020; Lieber and Press 2006, 2020; Long and Green 2015).
As a sidenote, I’m curious why so much of the research on the two nuclear 1972 agreements focusses on ABM. ABM is the more intellectually interesting and counterintuitive. But its not clear to me it was *more important* then the limits on offensive weapons though.
Next steps/possible extensions
My impression is your main audiences are funders (and to a lesser extent general researchers and activists) within GCR. However if you wanted to adapt it, this very plausibly could be a paper. Its already a paper length, ~8,000 words. If you wanted to go down that route, there’s a few things I’d do:
I’d cut most of the personal best guesses (“it seems likely to me” etc).
I think the notes are really great and interesting! If you incorporated some of them in the text of the piece you could deepen some of your claims in section 4, slim down the other sections.
Have a paragraph or two placing this piece within wider IR theoretical debates on constructivism, epistemic communities, going against systemic theories to open the ‘black box’ of the unitary state, etc.
If you wanted to continue this research, you could contrast this case with a similar conference and see what the difference in outcomes was; or try and draw up a list of the whole universe of cases (all major Track II dialogues).
Thanks for this comment, and for the suggestions of literature and potential next directions! I’m excited to hear that arms control agreements are your main research focus and would like to hear about what you’ve found.
My claim about the link between these track II discussions and the ultimate outcome of the negotiations is that (if they had any effect!) they contributed in a positive way because they were necessary for the Soviet negotiators to propose extensive limitations on anti-ballistic missiles and for the Soviet side to be enthusiastic about reaching some kind of extensive agreement on ABM. I don’t think Pugwash discussions were necessary for the ultimate outcome of the ABM Treaty. That’s because I think there’s some chance that if the Soviets had not proposed extensive limits on ABM, the specifics of bargaining during the negotiations would have made them want to accept an American proposal for such limitations, even if other considerations left them enthusiastic about developing missile defences . My guess is that those scenarios are quite unlikely, so that Pugwash made a very signfiicant positive contribution to achieving an agreement on ABM. That said, I did not spend very much research time looking at the details of the SALT negotiations. I think Pugwash probably had only a very limited influence, if any, on the agreement on offensive systems (also, I think you’re right that the agreement on offensive systems is underemphasised and probably had more important effects on the arms race—as I discuss briefly in 4.6, I think ABM turned out to be a bit of a side issue in slowing the progress of the arms race).
I really like your idea of emphasising that n=1 case studies can reveal mechanisms, and I agree that’s an important strength of this kind of study.This is the most important original contribution of this research—as I mentioned in the report, the argument for the influence of Pugwash has largely already been made by Matthew Evangelista, and I’m mostly trying to figure out what it means for the mechanisms of impact for track II.
When it comes to the ‘selecting on the dependent variable’ concern—I feel like this would be more of a worry if my study was trying to say something about the likely impact of a typical track II dialogue. However, I see this study as instead trying to say something about how high the high upside of track II can be, which matters a lot if the impact of these kinds of programs is fat tailed (as I briefly discuss in 2.2). That said, understanding the impact of more typical cases of track II is also important for figuring out how rare big wins are and whether these programs consistently have modest positive effects or just usually fail to do anything. And Pugwash certainly is one of the most major and sustained track II dialogues between countries not in active armed conflict and focussed on arms control—so it is a natural one to look at if you’re focussing on track II for improving great power relations.
This is really great work! Very clearly structured and written, persuasively argued and (fairly) well supported by the evidence.
I’m currently doing my PhD/DPhil on the history of arms control agreements, and 1972 is one of my four case-studies. So obviously I think its really important and interesting, and that more people should know about it – and I have a lot of views on the subject! So I’ve got a few thoughts on methodology, further literature and possible extensions which I’ll share below. But they’re all to adding to what is excellent work.
Methodology
Its a bit unclear to me what your claim is for the link between these Track II discussions and the ultimate outcome of the two 1972 agreements. Its not that they were sufficient (needed SALT negotiations, and even then needed Kissinger/Dobrynin backchannel). Is it that the discussions were necessary for the outcome? Or just that they contributed in a positive way? I would be interested in your view.
The limitations section is good. But I think you could have been even clearer on the limits and strengths of a ‘single N’ approach. The limits are how much this can be generalised to the entire ‘universe of cases’. However, single N also has strengths—its most useful for developing and exploring mechanisms. So I think you could frame your contribution as exploring and deepening an analysis of the mechanisms. For example, something like “Two main mechanisms are proposed in the literature, this case study provides strong evidence for mechanism 1 (conveying new conceptions/ideas) and demonstrates how it works”.
On another point, I’d be concerned that if you chose this case because it was one of the most successful Track II cases you’d be ‘selecting on the dependent variable’ (apologies for the political science jargon – something like “cherrypicked for having a particular outcome”) . Can you justify your motivation and case-selection differently, for example as one of (the?) biggest and most sustained Track 2 dialogues? e.g. you say: “when the first Pugwash conference happened in 1957, there were either no, or almost no, other opportunities for Soviet and American scientists to have conversations about security policy and nuclear issues”
Further literature
Adler. The emergence of cooperation: national epistemic communities and the international evolution of the idea of nuclear arms control.
Schelling. What Went Wrong with Arms Control?.
Adler + Schelling are great on the US side of the story. I assume you would be familiar with them, but I don’t see them cited. If you haven’t read them, you’re in for a treat – they’re great, and largely agree with you.
If you want to go down a tangent, you might want to engage with new line of argument that many US nuclear policymakers never accepted the parity of MAD, but continued seeking advantage (Green and Long 2017; Green 2020; Lieber and Press 2006, 2020; Long and Green 2015).
As a sidenote, I’m curious why so much of the research on the two nuclear 1972 agreements focusses on ABM. ABM is the more intellectually interesting and counterintuitive. But its not clear to me it was *more important* then the limits on offensive weapons though.
Next steps/possible extensions
My impression is your main audiences are funders (and to a lesser extent general researchers and activists) within GCR. However if you wanted to adapt it, this very plausibly could be a paper. Its already a paper length, ~8,000 words. If you wanted to go down that route, there’s a few things I’d do:
I’d cut most of the personal best guesses (“it seems likely to me” etc).
I think the notes are really great and interesting! If you incorporated some of them in the text of the piece you could deepen some of your claims in section 4, slim down the other sections.
Have a paragraph or two placing this piece within wider IR theoretical debates on constructivism, epistemic communities, going against systemic theories to open the ‘black box’ of the unitary state, etc.
If you wanted to continue this research, you could contrast this case with a similar conference and see what the difference in outcomes was; or try and draw up a list of the whole universe of cases (all major Track II dialogues).
Thanks for this comment, and for the suggestions of literature and potential next directions! I’m excited to hear that arms control agreements are your main research focus and would like to hear about what you’ve found.
My claim about the link between these track II discussions and the ultimate outcome of the negotiations is that (if they had any effect!) they contributed in a positive way because they were necessary for the Soviet negotiators to propose extensive limitations on anti-ballistic missiles and for the Soviet side to be enthusiastic about reaching some kind of extensive agreement on ABM. I don’t think Pugwash discussions were necessary for the ultimate outcome of the ABM Treaty. That’s because I think there’s some chance that if the Soviets had not proposed extensive limits on ABM, the specifics of bargaining during the negotiations would have made them want to accept an American proposal for such limitations, even if other considerations left them enthusiastic about developing missile defences . My guess is that those scenarios are quite unlikely, so that Pugwash made a very signfiicant positive contribution to achieving an agreement on ABM. That said, I did not spend very much research time looking at the details of the SALT negotiations. I think Pugwash probably had only a very limited influence, if any, on the agreement on offensive systems (also, I think you’re right that the agreement on offensive systems is underemphasised and probably had more important effects on the arms race—as I discuss briefly in 4.6, I think ABM turned out to be a bit of a side issue in slowing the progress of the arms race).
I really like your idea of emphasising that n=1 case studies can reveal mechanisms, and I agree that’s an important strength of this kind of study.This is the most important original contribution of this research—as I mentioned in the report, the argument for the influence of Pugwash has largely already been made by Matthew Evangelista, and I’m mostly trying to figure out what it means for the mechanisms of impact for track II.
When it comes to the ‘selecting on the dependent variable’ concern—I feel like this would be more of a worry if my study was trying to say something about the likely impact of a typical track II dialogue. However, I see this study as instead trying to say something about how high the high upside of track II can be, which matters a lot if the impact of these kinds of programs is fat tailed (as I briefly discuss in 2.2). That said, understanding the impact of more typical cases of track II is also important for figuring out how rare big wins are and whether these programs consistently have modest positive effects or just usually fail to do anything. And Pugwash certainly is one of the most major and sustained track II dialogues between countries not in active armed conflict and focussed on arms control—so it is a natural one to look at if you’re focussing on track II for improving great power relations.
Thanks again for the feedback and suggestions!