Pomeps Conversations

This week's guest is Målfrid Braut-Hegghammer, who is the author of a new book, Unclear Physics: Why Iraq and Libya Failed to Build Nuclear Weapons. Braut-Hegghammer is an associate professor of political science at the University of Oslo. "The main ambition [of my book] is really to tell a history of these nuclear weapons programs and set them in the context of these regimes. One of my frustrations has been that many have discounted and suggested that the program wasn't successful— and that more broadly that authoritarian leaders will inevitably fail in their efforts to pursue nuclear weapons. Now, with North Korea, we can we can see that that doesn't seem right." "The Iraqi program was actually on the threshold of success in 1991, when the Gulf War interrupted the program. Whereas the Libyan program dwindled down until 2003, without ever coming close to any kind of success and breakthrough," Braut-Hegghammer says. "These are very different outcomes even though neither country ended up with nuclear weapon