Abstract:

Why and how do states decide to develop different weapon systems within a similar domain of warfare? For example, why does the United States invest in ever-more expansive forms of national missile defense, while France briefly dabbled in such matters and the United Kingdom has been reluctant to do so? Contrary to the assumption in the existing literature that states know their future threat environment and are able to develop suitable military technology in response to it, I argue that ideas about the future play a critical role in shaping states’ decisions about military technology. I explore these dynamics through an in-depth case study of the development of missile defense capabilities in the United States from the 1980s until the mid-1990s.

Bio:

Sanne Cornelia J. Verschuren is an Assistant Professor of International Security at the Pardee School of Global Studies of Boston University. Her research interests lie at the intersection of international relations, the domestic determinants of security policy, and the role of ideas, norms, and institutions in national security decision-making. She focuses on how states fight war, examining why they construct novel weapon technologies, how they envision fielding such technologies, and why they choose to abandon certain technologies and practices.

Professor Verschuren is in the process of finalizing her first book manuscript, titled Imagining the Unimaginable: War, Weapons, and Procurement Politics. This book is based on her dissertation, which received APSA’s 2022 Kenneth N. Waltz Outstanding Dissertation Award. In the book, she asks why and how states decide to develop different weapon capabilities within a similar military domain—with the development of missile defenses by the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and India as the central case studies. Other research by Professor Verschuren has appeared in Global Studies Quarterly, War on the Rocks, and Inkstick Media, among others.

Before joining Boston University, Professor Verschuren was a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Sciences Po’s Center for International Studies, a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a predoctoral research fellow with the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Her research has been generously supported by the European Commission, the National Science Foundation, the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, the Belgian American Education Foundation, the Tobin Project, the Saxena Center for Contemporary South Asia, and the Brown Graduate School.