About

Adam N. Stulberg is a faculty advisor for the Energy Club at the Georgia Tech Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. His role involves inspiring and preparing students to understand the complex interactions within the energy sector, integrating technology, policy, and business aspects of energy issues. The club offers opportunities for students to network with influential energy leaders and engage in interdisciplinary discussions, catering to both graduate and undergraduate students from all majors.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Sociology
• Computer Science
• Law
• Epistemology
• Economic history
• Engineering
• Law and economics
• Political economy
• Economics
• Economy
• International trade

Selected publications

• Tacit-knowledge networks and nuclear-energy aspirants: case studies from Southeast Asia and the Middle East

  The Nonproliferation Review · 2025-07-03

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• Technology, Materials, and Knowledge Transfer in Nuclear Proliferation Networks: Findings and Implications

  The Sydney eScholarship Repository (The University of Sydney) · 2025-06-02

  other

  This White Paper explicates policy analytical puzzles associated with illicit nuclear trafficking. Despite widespread appreciation of and research into the diffusion of sensitive nuclear materials, technology, and information, we lack systematic understanding of how different proliferation rings are organized and poised to leverage open logistical, political, and practical knowledge contexts to greater or lesser effect. Accordingly, this report presents a single framework for assessing the strengths and weaknesses of different types of logistical and knowledge networks for spreading sensitive nuclear-related material and practical know-how among state and non-state actors. Specifically, alternative logistical and social network approaches are applied to conceptualize different levels of operation among nuclear proliferation rings. This provides quantitative and qualitative methods to extract and operationalize variables— e.g. characteristics of the personnel within the networks, the structure of nodes and characteristics of the links between them, and nature of the landscape in which they operated -- that correlate with trends in illicit nuclear trafficking and nuclear weapons development. These insights are probed in critical cases of North Korean, Iranian, and Pakistani proliferation networks to account for the mixed pathways, timing, and overall effectiveness of acquiring nuclear-related technology from abroad and absorbing/diffusing experiential knowledge within respective national contexts.

  Publisher

• Networks and nuclear diffusion

  The Nonproliferation Review · 2025-07-03

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The proliferation of missiles: Problems, prospects for control, and research agendas

  OSTI OAI (U.S. Department of Energy Office of Scientific and Technical Information) · 2021-07-07

  paratextOpen accessSenior author

  This report is an overview of the discussions and papers given at a workshop and brainstorming secession on missile proliferation. The relationship between missiles and nuclear and chemical weapons are also discussed. (JEF)

  PublisherOA PDF

• Conclusion

  2021-09-23

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• The Cloud of Sanctions: Contending U.S.-Russian Approaches & Strategic Implications

  International Trends / Mezhdunarodnye protsessy · 2021-01-01

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Economic sanctions have been the defining feature of the relationship between Russia and the U.S. / EU since the 2014 Ukraine crisis, and both Moscow and Washington appear to accept that sanctions will remain in place indefinitely. This persistence of sanctions presents a paradox: Western policy makers have repeatedly increased the breadth and depth of these sanctions, despite little evidence that the sanctions have ‘worked’ to achieve their explicit and tangible objectives. This paper examines the nature and origin of this paradox using a multi-dimensional examination of Russian and US actions and discourse since the first imposition of Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia in March 2014. This analysis exposes fundamental differences over how the two sides perceive the appropriateness and strategic context of these sanctions, which reflect a basic difference in worldviews between Moscow and Washington. These contending worldviews potentially compound burdens of uncertainty and costly signaling in sanctions between the U.S. and Russia, which also introduces cross-domain risks that can defy efforts to fine-tune the imposition of costs. If not redressed, this dynamic can derail efforts at strategic reengagement, if not inadvertently elevate prospects for dangerous escalation.

  PublisherDOI

• Recasting the geopolitics of US–Russian commercial nuclear rivalry by embracing strategic complementarity

  The Nonproliferation Review · 2021-11-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Click to increase image sizeClick to decrease image size AcknowledgmentsThe authors express deep gratitude to Murry Smith and Taylor Poole for assistance with collecting, translating, and analyzing the corpus of US and Russian bilateral nuclear-cooperation agreements and with devising a common coding scheme for them. Appreciation also extends to CENESS for assistance with collecting the Russian agreements. All analyses, interpretations, errors, and oversights are solely the responsibility of the authors.Additional informationFundingResearch for this article was supported by the Sarah Scaife Foundation and the Office of Naval Research of the US Department of Defense under Minerva Program grant N00014-19-1-2474. The views and recommendations expressed are the authors’ alone and do not represent the views of the Office of Naval Research or the Department of Defense.Notes on contributorsAdam N. StulbergAdam N. Stulberg is Sam Nunn Professor and chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His current research focuses on strategic dimensions of nuclear and energy networks, Russia’s conflict behavior in the gray zone, and comparative approaches to strategic stability. He holds a PhD in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles; an MA in international affairs from Columbia University; and a BA in History from the University of Michigan. He served as a political consultant at the RAND Corporation from 1987 to 1997. His publications include Well-Oiled Diplomacy: Strategic Manipulation and Russia’s Energy Statecraft (1999), The Nuclear Renaissance and International Security (2013, co-edited with Matthew Fuhrmann), and The End of Strategic Stability? Nuclear Weapons and the Challenge of Regional Rivalries (2018, co-edited with Lawrence Rubin).Jonathan P. DarseyJonathan P. Darsey is a PhD candidate in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research examines how economic statecraft is affected by the structure, power, and interests of corporations in specific industries such as nuclear power, utilizing a combination of data science and traditional international-relations methods. Prior to the Nunn School, he was a partner in Accenture’s business consulting group, where he worked with Fortune 500 corporations on global innovation and growth strategies. He earned an MS from the School of International Service at American University, an MBA in global strategy from Cornell University, and a BA in economics and Latin American studies from Davidson College.

  PublisherDOI

• Statecraft in U.S.-Russia Relations: Meaning, Dilemmas, and Significance

  International Trends / Mezhdunarodnye protsessy · 2021 · 7 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political Science

  The article introduces the special issue of International Trends dedicated to the current tendencies in the evolution of statecraft. It sets the analytical agenda for other special issue contributions by discussing the meaning of the term “statecraft” and illustrating the concept through several dilemmas that policymakers commonly face when choosing foreign policy toolkits. The authors posit that, at base, a meaningful definition of statecraft subsumes the ends, means, and ways embraced by a government in its attempt to exert influence over another state short of the resort to brute military force, either directly or via pressures on key non-state stakeholders. The article goes on to highlight how a clear-cut formulation of a country’s “national interests” may, on one hand, serve as lodestars for the national bureaucracy and draw “red lines” for the country’s adversaries, but on the other hand, entail a difficult and politically costly choice between mutually exclusive priorities for the country’s foreign policy goals. The authors also discuss the impact of technological innovation on the evolution of great power statecraft. They describe a variant of the security dilemma arising from the choice between immediate weaponization of new technology, on one hand, and refraining from such move with the aim of avoiding an arms race or escalation of existing conflicts, on the other. In its turn, developing a strong identity as a means of statecraft for an international player may increase that player’s power of commitment, but at the same time, foreclose attractive policy options that cannot be implemented because they could compromise the chosen identity. Pioneering the use of big data in the study of statecraft, the authors find that, notwithstanding very different power positions, traditions, and interests, U.S. and Russian discourse surrounding great power competition resemble each other more than commonly acknowledged. Keywords:

  PublisherDOI

• Turning Rivals into Frenemies: Shifting U.S.-Russian Trajectories at the Nexus of Global Nuclear Commerce and Nonproliferation

  PonarsEuarasia - Policy Memos · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • International trade
  Publisher

• Russia’s Response to Sanctions: Reciprocal, Asymmetrical, or Orthogonal?

  PonarsEuarasia - Policy Memos · 2020-01-02

  article1st authorCorresponding
  Publisher

Frequent coauthors

• Matthew Fuhrmann

  6 shared

• Mikhail Troitskiy

  University of Wisconsin–Madison

  4 shared

• Jamie Jordan

  Moscow State Institute of International Relations

  4 shared

• Lawrence Rubin

  4 shared

• Sam Nunn

  3 shared

• Bernard Gourley

  3 shared

• Molly Nadolski

  3 shared

• Tom McDermott

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Faculty Award (2010)