A sampling of what's available...

Biosecurity 2011: Not a year to change minds

By Gerald L. Epstein

Nuclear weapons 2011: Momentum slows, reality returns

By Steven E. Miller

Nuclear pursuits, 2012

By Robert S. Norris, Hans M. Kristensen

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Hugh Gusterson

An education in occupation

2 February 2012

Iraq's once great universities are in ruins -- thanks to the United States.

Death by drone

13 October 2011

Does the assassination of American jihadist Anwar al-Awlaki foreshadow the end of America's most sacred principles?

The costs of war

8 September 2011

A decade after 9/11 the bill comes due on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The human element

1 September 2011

Post-Fukushima, experts have talked a lot about technical improvements and engineering problems at nuclear reactors. But not enough people are talking about the role of basic human fallibility in risking reactor safety.

An appreciation: The Republican senator who opposed nuclear arms

10 August 2011

With the passing of Mark Hatfield and Ted Kennedy in the past two years, have we lost the voices who can articulate for the nation the perils of the idolatry of war?

The lessons of Fukushima

16 March 2011

If the nuclear disaster teaches us anything, it is that a perfect safety system is unattainable. Will the United States learn from Japan's mistakes?

An open letter to the Tea Party

29 October 2010

The Tea Party has the power to change the game in Washington, but, in order to do so, it must first take on big defense contractors and politicians complicit in unnecessary military spending.

Now showing: Countdown to Zero

3 August 2010

A new movie for nuclear abolition attracts criticism from surprising quarters.

The olive branch in the West Bank

9 July 2010

Showcasing a world where local Fatah, Hamas, and Israeli activists come together, a new documentary provides a snapshot of what peace looks like between Palestine and Israel.

Against counterinsurgency in Afghanistan

1 July 2010

How much do we have to lose before the Obama administration realizes that counterinsurgency won’t win?

Do professional ethics matter in war?

4 March 2010

The U.S. military's controversial use of embedded anthropologists in Iraq and Afghanistan is both unethical and ineffective. It's time to shut this program down.

An American suicide bomber?

20 January 2010

While some pundits find it impossible that Washington would ever employ a war-fighting strategy that involves suicide bombers, they too easily forget the country's suicidal dance with nuclear weapons.

Afghanistan: Vietnam all over again

1 December 2009

Seemingly confident that he can avoid the miscalculations LBJ made in Vietnam 45 years ago, President Obama believes escalation will resolve the conflict in Afghanistan--a misbegotten strategy, then and now.

How to get out of Afghanistan

12 October 2009

The answer isn't ordering more troops or drone attacks, it is conducting shrewd negotiations that will divide the many disparate elements that constitute the Taliban.

The shared sins of Soviet and U.S. nuclear testing

29 September 2009

A new documentary helps illustrate the sad truth that neither the totalitarian Soviet Union nor the democratic United States protected those most affected by their testing programs.

Why the war in Afghanistan cannot be won

21 September 2009

The tools President Obama and his military advisers believe they need for victory in Afghanistan--more troops and development aid--are actually what will lead to Washington's downfall there.

Thinking creatively about the North Korean stalemate

12 August 2009

Forget stringent designations. To solve the long impasse with Pyongyang, its nuclear weapon status needn't be perfectly clear.

Hiroshima and the power of pictures

5 August 2009

Whether it's photos of Hiroshima and Nagasaki survivors or chronicling detainee abuse in Iraq, war imagery can evoke, provoke, and incite--exactly why it should never be suppressed.

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Profile

Hugh Gusterson

An anthropologist, Gusterson is a professor of anthropology and sociology at George Mason University. His expertise is in nuclear culture, international security, and the anthropology of science. He has conducted considerable fieldwork in the United States and Russia, where he studied the culture of nuclear weapon scientists and antinuclear activists. Two of his books encapsulate this work--Nuclear Rites: A Weapons Laboratory at the End of the Cold War (University of California Press, 1996) and People of the Bomb: Portraits of America's Nuclear Complex (University of Minnesota Press, 2004). He also coedited Why America's Top Pundits Are Wrong (University of California Press, 2005) and the sequel, The Insecure American (University of California Press, 2009). Previously, he taught in MIT's Program on Science, Technology, and Society.

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