Meet our Postdocs: Interview with Sanne Verschuren
Sanne Cornelia Verschuren received her PhD in Political Science from Brown University in August 2021. Entitled "Imagining the Unimaginable: War, Weapons, and Procurement Politics," her dissertation received the 2022 Kenneth N. Waltz Outstanding Dissertation Award from the American Political Science Association's International Security Section. CERI welcomes Sanne as a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, working with the Nuclear Knowledges programme. She answers our questions about her research past, present and future.
Can you tell us a bit about your academic background?
I completed my Ph.D. in Political Science at Brown University in August 2021. Last year, I worked as a Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. My research focuses on how states fight war, trying to understand why countries pursue military technologies, how they choose to implement those technologies into their overarching military arsenals, and why they sometimes abandon certain technologies and practices.
I first developed an interest in the study of war as a law student at Ghent University in Belgium. Specializing in international law, I took a range of classes on the laws of armed conflict and human rights law. Having decided that I was interested in the political side of these questions, I subsequently pursued an MS.c. in the Politics of Conflict, Rights, and Justice at the School of Oriental and African Studies (University of London). There, my faculty mentors, Professor Leslie Vinjamuri in particular, encouraged me to apply for Ph.D. programmes in the United States. Supported by a wonderful committee at Brown University—Nina Tannenwald, Mark Blyth, Jordan Branch, Jeff Colgan, and Jon Caverley—I was able to fully immerse myself in the politics of warfare and write my Ph.D. dissertation on the decision-making process behind weapons procurement and operationalization. I am incredibly excited to continue this work at CERI and as part of Professor Pelopidas’ Nuclear Knowledges team.
You have joined CERI for a two-year Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship in order to work, among other things, on a book project based on your PhD. What will you be working on?
During my time at CERI, I will focus on two projects.
First, I will continue the work on my book manuscript. My book project asks why states develop different weapon systems within similar domains of warfare. For example, why does the United States invest in ever-more expansive forms of national missile defence, while France briefly dabbled in such matters and the United Kingdom has been reluctant to do so? Contrary to existing explanations, I argue that domestic actors’ ideas, particularly those about the future, play a critical role in shaping states’ decisions about military technology. In doing so, the book project explores how a wide range of domestic actors– members of the armed services, policymakers in the legislative and executive branch of the government, industry representatives, and experts–envision the future of warfare and how they bargain over it. To understand these dynamics, I conduct in-depth case studies, comparing the development and operationalisation of missile defence (1980-2020) in the United States, the United Kingdom, and France. I also include evidence from two shadow cases on the pursuit of military aircraft (1920-1940) and aircraft carriers (1950-1970) in those same states.
Second, I will start a new project that explores the intersection between nuclear and conventional weapons, centred around the concept of nuclear exceptionalism. To do so, I examine the ways in which three constituencies have reproduced or challenged the notion of nuclear exceptionalism: (1) the use of the concept among scholarly communities; (2) the debate among policymakers around the development of three technologies that straddle the boundary between the nuclear and conventional world, specifically nuclear-powered carriers, tactical nuclear weapons, and missile defence; and (3) the framing of nuclear weapons by different disarmament movements in the United States and Europe since the 1980s. Without advocating for, normalizing, or condoning the use of nuclear weapons, the project strives to provide new insights into the ongoing arms race, which is located at the intersection of nuclear and conventional weapons.
What research methodology did you adopt for your PhD, and therefore the book you are working on? Did you encounter any specific difficulties, and if so, how did you overcome them?
For my book project, I gathered original archival evidence by visiting fourteen archives across the United States, United Kingdom, and France. In doing so, I collected roughly 80,000 pages of relevant documents. I also conducted 100 semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders, including members of the armed services, foreign affairs officials, NATO officials, politicians and their staff members, representatives from the defence industry, and members of the expert community in the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium.
Working in a national security space brings up a number of challenges. First, there is a lot of secrecy. Across all these countries, many archival documents are not yet declassified, even when they are older than thirty years, the average cut-off for classification. And, interviewees are limited in what they are authorized to say. Defining clear boundaries for the project is therefore crucial. For example, one cannot ask about the technical specifications behind weapon systems. Second, archives and interviews contain all sorts of biases. Which documents are kept is not randomly distributed. Interviewees, meanwhile, sometimes forget things or exacerbate their own role in political events. To address these biases, I consider triangulation to be key: not just between interviewees, but also between archives, interviews, and other primary sources, such as memoirs or newspaper clippings.
You also work on the notion of nuclear deterrence, which you posit has undergone major changes since the end of the Cold war. Can you tell us more about this project?
Since the end of the Cold War, deterrence theory has experienced many challenges, steered by the introduction of new technology, the arrival of new players in the international arena, and shifting security preferences on the part of policymakers. Yet, research that examines precisely how military and civilian elites think about the nature and functioning of deterrence is limited. Together with my co-author, Daniel Post, we explore variation in elite beliefs about deterrence through a novel survey experiment. In this survey, we measure elites’ conceptualization of deterrence, as well as the conditions under which elites consider deterrence to work. Finally, we explore why elites’ perspectives on this core security concept might diverge. The survey is expected to be rolled out among U.S. policymakers in the next few months.
Interview by Miriam Périer, CERI.
