Nuclear security can be a daunting topic: The consequences seem unimaginable, but the threat is real. Some scholars, though, thrive on the close study of the world's most dangerous weapons. That includes Caitlin Talmadge PhD '11, an MIT faculty member who is part of the Institute's standout group of nuclear security specialists.
Talmadge, who joined the MIT faculty in 2023, has become a prominent scholar in security studies, conducting meticulous research about militaries' on-the-ground capabilities and how they are influenced by political circumstances.
Earlier in her career, Talmadge studied the military capabilities of armies run by dictatorships. For much of the last decade, though, she has focused on specific issues of nuclear security: When can conventional wars raise risks of nuclear use? In what circumstances will countries ratchet up nuclear threats?
"A scenario that's interested me a lot is one where the conduct of a conventional war actually raises specific nuclear escalation risks," Talmadge says, noting that military operations may put pressure on an adversary's nuclear capabilities. "There are many other instabilities in the world. But I've gotten pretty interested in what it means that the U.S., unlike in the Cold War when there was more of a bipolar competition, now faces multiple nuclear-armed adversaries."
MIT is a natural intellectual home for Talmadge, who is the Raphael Dorman and Helen Starbuck Associate Professor in MIT's Department of Political Science. She is also part of MIT's Security Studies Program, long the home of several of the Institute's nuclear experts, and a core member of the recently launched MIT Center for Nuclear Security Policy, which supports scholarship as well as engagement with nuclear security officials.
"I think dialogue for practitioners and scholars is important for both sides," says Talmadge, who served on the Defense Policy Board, a panel of outside experts that directly advises senior Pentagon leaders, during the Biden administration. "It's important for me to do scholarship that speaks to real-world problems. And part of what we do at MIT is train future practitioners. We also sometimes brief current practitioners, meet with them, and get a perspective on the very difficult problems they encounter. That interaction is mutually beneficial."
Why coup-proofing hurts armies
From a young age, Talmadge was interested in global events, especially military operations, while growing up in a family that supported her curiosity about the world.
"I was fortunate to have parents that encouraged those interests," Talmadge says. "Education was a really big value in our family. I had great teachers as well."
Talmadge earned her BA degree at Harvard University, where her interests in international relations and military operations expanded.
"I didn't even know the term security studies before I went to college," she says. "But I did, in college, get very interested in studying the problems that had been left by the Soviet nuclear legacy."
Talmadge then worked at a think tank before deciding to attend graduate school. She had not been fully set on academia, as opposed to, say, working in Washington policy circles. But while earning her PhD at the Institute, she recalls, "it turned out that I really liked research, and I really liked teaching. And I loved being at MIT."
Talmadge is quick to credit MIT's security studies faculty for their intellectual guidance, citing the encouragement of a slew of faculty, including Barry Posen (her dissertation advisor), Taylor Fravel, Roger Peterson, Cindy Williams, Owen Cote, and Harvey Sapolsky. Her dissertation examined the combat power of armies run by authoritarians.
That research became her 2015 book, "The Dictator's Army: Battlefield Effectiveness in Authoritarian Regimes," published by Cornell University Press. In it she examines how, for one thing, using a military for domestic "coup-proofing" limits its utility against external forces. In the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s, to cite one example, Iraq's military improved in the later years of the war, after coup-proofing measures were dropped, whereas Iran's army performed worse over time as it became more preoccupied with domestic opposition.
"We tend to think of militaries as being designed for external conventional wars, but autocrats use the military for regime-protection tasks, and the more you optimize your military for doing that, sometimes it's harder to aggregate combat power against an external adversary," Talmadge says.
In the time since that book was published, even more examples have become evident in the world.
"It may be why the Russian invasion of Ukraine did so poorly in 2022," she adds. "When you're a personalist dictator and divide the military so it can't be strong enough to overthrow you, and direct the intelligence apparatus internally instead of at Ukraine, it affects what your military can achieve. It was not the only factor in 2022, but I think the authoritarian character of Russia's civil-military relations has played a role in Russia's rather surprising underperformance in that war."
On to nuclear escalation
After earning her PhD from MIT, Talmadge joined the faculty of George Washington University, where she taught from 2011 to 2018; she then served on the faculty at Georgetown University, before returning to MIT. And for the last decade, she has continued to study conventional military operations while also exploring the relationship between those operations and nuclear risk.
One issue is that conventional military strikes that might degrade an opponent's nuclear capabilities. Talmadge is examining why states adopt military postures that threaten adversaries in this way in a book that's in progress; her co-author is Brendan Rittenhouse Green PhD '11, a political scientist at the University of Cincinnati.
The book focuses on why the U.S. has at times adopted military postures that increase nuclear pressure on opponents. Historically these escalatory postures have been viewed as unintentional, the result of aggressive military planning.
"In this book we make a different argument, which is that often these escalatory risks are hardwired into force posture deliberately and knowingly by civilian [government leaders] who at times have strategic rationales," Talmadge says. "If you're my opponent and I want to deter you from starting a war, it might be helpful to convince you that if you start that war, you're eventually going to be backed into a nuclear corner."
This logic may explain why many countries adopt force postures that seem dangerous, and it may offer clues as to how future wars involving the U.S., Russia, China, North Korea, India, or Pakistan could unfold. It also suggests that reining in nuclear escalation risk requires more attention to civilian decisions, not just military behavior.
While being in the middle of research, book-writing, teaching, and engaging with others in the field, Talmadge is certain she has landed in an ideal academic home, especially with MIT's work in her field being bolstered by the Stanton Foundation gift to establish the Center for Nuclear Security Policy.
"We're so grateful for the support of the Stanton Foundation," Talmadge says. "It's incredibly invigorating to be in a place with so much talent and just constantly learning from the people around you. It's really amazing, and I do not take it for granted."
She adds: "It is a little surreal at times to be here because I'm going into the same rooms where I have memories as myself as a grad student, but now I'm the professor. I have a little bit of nostalgia. But one of my primary reasons for coming to MIT, besides the great faculty colleagues, was the students, including the chance to work with the PhD students in the Security Studies Program, and I have not been disappointed. It doesn't feel like work. It's a joy to try to have a positive influence helping them become scholars."
