Abstract

In this lecture, Paul Schulte, a former senior civil servant in the UK Ministry of Defence, considers the usually unappreciated impacts of Russia's and NATO's nuclear weapons in shaping the current crisis, in enabling and assisting Putin's conventional offensive and limiting Western responses to it, and in modifying European geopolitical space. It also considers how nuclear weapons might continue to be "used" as the fighting continues and the wider impacts of the confrontation on global arms control and disarmament regimes for Weapons of Mass Destruction.

Speaker Profile

Paul Schulte

Paul Schulte is a former senior UK career civil servant now following a range of academic interests. 

After a social science degree at LSE he joined the Civil Service Fast Stream and worked successively on central MODUK budgeting, naval personnel policy, Northern Ireland security, human rights and economic policies, UK Defence Commitments in the Middle East, the British Army equipment programme, Military Medical Reorganisation, Gulf War Syndrome, Armed Services’ homosexuality policy, and nuclear, biological, chemical, and conventional arms control. He was MODUK Director of Proliferation and Arms Control, ex officio British Commissioner on the two UN Commissions for Iraqi Disarmament (UNSCOM and UNMOVIC), Director of Defence Organisation for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Baghdad, founding Head of the U.K.’s Interdepartmental Post-Conflict Reconstruction Unit (subsequently the Stabilisation Unit), and Chief MoD Speechwriter for two Defence Secretaries. He writes and lectures on drones, AI, terrorism, nuclear strategy and disarmament, and military ethics.