Ward Wilson

Ward Hayes Wilson is a Senior Fellow and director of the Rethinking Nuclear Weapons project at the British American Security Information Council (BASIC), a think tank focusing on nuclear disarmament based in London and Washington, D.C. He lives and works in Trenton, New Jersey.

Career

Ward Hayes Wilson is the premier source of pragmatic arguments challenging the utility of nuclear weapons.

Although Wilson was not widely published in the nuclear weapons field until 2007, he has quickly moved into “the forefront” of the debate about the value and utility of nuclear weapons and deterrence. One of five co-authors of a 2010 report sponsored by the Swiss government titled “Devaluing Nuclear Weapons,” Wilson is best known for his argument that the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki did not force Japan's surrender-a prevalent argument which some historians have recently come to challenge. (More here) Awarded the top prize ($10,000) in the Doreen and Jim McElvaney challenge in 2008 for his “impressive and detailed critique of nuclear deterrence,” Wilson received a substantial grant the following year to write, travel, and speak on nuclear weapons issues. Traveling extensively over the last four years, he has presented arguments that challenge accepted ideas about nuclear weapons before government and public audiences on six continents. Wilson has spoken at the State Department, the Pentagon, the U.K. House of Commons, the European Parliament, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Naval War College, and universities including Harvard, Princeton, Stanford, Georgetown, and University of Chicago. Wilson launched his book, Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, at the United Nations Office for Disarmament Affairs in February 2013.

Awards and Honors

RFK Fellow, The Robert Kennedy Memorial Foundation, 1981.

Doreen and Jim McElvaney Prize, 2008. A $10,000 for the best essay on nuclear weapons worldwide in 2008.

Works

In addition to the Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons book, Wilson is an avid writer of op-eds, journal articles, reports, and briefing papers. "Strengthening Nonproliferation", British American Security Information Council, October 2013

"Rethinking the Utility of Nuclear Weapons,” Parameters, 2013.

Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013. Review.

"Myth of Nuclear Necessity," op-ed, The New York Times, January 13, 2013.

“The Myth of Nuclear Deterrence,” Nonproliferation Review, 2008.

“The Winning Weapon? Rethinking Nuclear Weapons in Light of Hiroshima,” International Security, 2007.

Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons

Wilson's 2013 book Five Myths About Nuclear Weapons is a fundamental retelling of the story of nuclear weapons. It was written to challenge our traditional assumptions about the bomb. One pervasive myth that Wilson debunks is that nuclear weapons were paramount in ending World War II. Wilson's book demonstrates that the bombs dropped over Japan were not the proximate cause of Japan’s surrender in World War II; they simply provided a face-saving pretext for the Japanese government, which knew it was losing and had been lying to its people. "By re-studying the U.S. nuclear bombing of Japan that ended World War II in 1945, and the brush with World War III that 1962’s Cuban missile crisis represented, Wilson tries to revamp our understanding of the utility of nuclear weapons." The book was generally well received and reviewed. Richard Rhodes, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Making of the Atomic Bomb called it "Brilliant, original, and important - the best analysis yet of why nuclear weapons don't work."