Published December 11, 2017 by Tom Porter

Why Nobel Peace Prize Winner ICAN Is Unlikely to Mean Fewer Nukes

Rebecca Gibbons

On Sunday, December 10, 2017, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons—ICAN—was awarded the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize, “for its work to draw attention to the catastrophic humanitarian consequences of any use of nuclear weapons and for its ground-breaking efforts to achieve a treaty-based prohibition of such weapons.”

Writing in The Washington Post’s political science blog, the Monkey Cage, Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Rebecca Gibbons explains why the US and her NATO allies are unlikely to take much notice of ICAN and the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons that it helped establish at the United Nations.

Earlier this year, Rebecca Gibbons was awarded a grant from the US Department of Defense for her research project titled The Effect of the Proposed Nuclear Weapons Ban Treaty on US Allies.