Sanne Verschuren Awarded Stanton Foundation Grant for Nuclear Security Research
The Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies’ Assistant Professor Sanne Cornelia J. Verschuren has been awarded a Stage 2 grant from the Stanton Foundation to support her research on strategic weapons development and nuclear deterrence.
The project, co-led with Daniel Post from the U.S. Naval War College, examines why states adopt particular types of strategic capabilities and how ideas shape nuclear security policy. The research includes both a book project, “Imagining the Unimaginable: War, Weapons, and Procurement Politics,” and an elite survey examining perspectives on nuclear deterrence.
Verschuren’s book investigates why states make different choices about strategic technologies, focusing on missile defense development in the United States, United Kingdom, France, and India from 1980 to 2020. The research draws on extensive primary data from 16 archives and 105 interviews with key stakeholders across multiple countries. The project examines missile defense as a particularly challenging case, given these programs’ high costs, technological complexity, and potential impact on relationships with allies and adversaries.
The research explores how states adopt varied force structures within similar domains of warfare. It introduces a novel typology of weapons postures, examining how states develop and operationalize military technologies from hegemonic to strategic, tactical, and control postures. This framework helps understand why states with similar technological and financial means often make different choices about their strategic capabilities.
The elite survey component of the project will investigate how policymakers think about nuclear deterrence, focusing on dimensions such as vulnerability, uncertainty, and exceptionality. This research will be conducted through various sampling techniques, including participants from the White House, Departments of Defense and State, Congress, and military educational institutions.
The project aims to provide concrete policy implications, helping policymakers better understand allies’ and adversaries’ intentions through their technological choices. By examining how states face trade-offs between military desires and budget constraints, the research offers insights beyond traditional measures of military expenditures or capabilities.
The Stanton Foundation, established by former CBS president Frank Stanton, focuses on supporting policy research in international security, with special emphasis on nuclear security. The foundation operates on a venture capital model, investing in projects that demonstrate a sound model, a good team, a big idea and a need for capital.
Professor Verschuren, whose previous dissertation on this topic received APSA’s 2022 Kenneth N. Waltz Outstanding Dissertation Award, brings significant expertise to this research. Her work spans international security, military technology development, strategic thinking, and the intersection between nuclear and conventional capabilities.
The grant will support research activities through 2025, including archival research in France and India, a book workshop with senior scholars, and an extensive survey of defense community experts about nuclear deterrence beliefs.
Sanne Cornelia J. Verschuren, Assistant Professor of International Security at the Pardee School of Global Studies of Boston University, specializes in international relations and security policy. Her research, recognized with APSA’s 2022 Kenneth N. Waltz Outstanding Dissertation Award, explores states’ decisions in developing and abandoning weapon technologies. With extensive postdoctoral experience, her work has been supported by prestigious institutions. Professor Verschuren’s expertise includes international security, military technology development, and the intersection of national security with climate change. Read more about Sanne Verschuren on her faculty profile.