Paul Doty

Arms Control for New Nuclear Nations

Book Chapter

By Steven Flank, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1991-1993 and Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

AP Photo

Fall 2009

"The Minimum Deterrent & Beyond"

Journal Article, Daedalus, issue 4, volume 138

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

"...[A] primary goal in the next decades must be to remove this risk of near global self-destruction by drastically reducing nuclear forces to a level where this outcome is not possible, but where a deterrent value is preserved — in other words, to a level of minimum deterrence. This conception was widely discussed in the early years of the nuclear era, but it drowned in the Cold War flood of weaponry. No matter how remote the risk of civilization collapse may seem now — despite its being so vivid only a few decades ago — the elimination of this risk, for this century and centuries to come, must be a primary driver for radical reductions in nuclear weapons."

Winter 1991

"Arms Control: 1960, 1990, 2020"

Journal Article, Daedalus, issue 1, volume 121

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

"Looking back over the three decades since arms control was codified in the nuclear age, it is clear that, both in concept and in practice, it has become a central feature of the military and political landscape. Nevertheless, it remains a conception in the service of policy, not an end in itself," writes Paul Doty in his analysis of the history and future of contemporary arms control.

Winter 1978-1979

"Arms Control Enters the Gray Area"

Journal Article, International Security, issue 3, volume 3

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus and Robert Metzger, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1977-1978

"If a Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty is reached and ratified, ceilings and subceilings will have been placed on the number of launchers from which the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. could attack each other over intercontinental distances," the Belfer Center's Paul Doty and Robert Metzger write in an International Security article, "Yet, progress in reductions could be an illusion if at least a start is not made in bringing weapons of lesser range under control. These are the gray area weapons that can reach targets 400 to 2,000 miles or more distant from the point of launch....These gray area weapons unconstrained by either SALT or MBFR consist of a wide array of medium bombers, fighter- bombers, carrier aircraft, intermediate and medium range ballistic missiles and cruise missiles."

Summer 1975

"Strategic Arms Limitation After SALT I"

Journal Article, Daedalus, issue 3, volume 104

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

In a 1975 paper in the journal Daedalus, Paul Doty, founder of the Belfer Center, writes that "If the Vladivostok Agreement of November, 1974, is transformed into a treaty, we will have reached a turning point in the long, tortuous, frustrating effort to bring strategic nuclear weapons under control. This turning point will not necessarily be a breakthrough, however; no substantial controls on existing or planned strategic weapons systems will have been accomplished. Still, some essential steps have been taken."

1972

"Can Investigations Improve Scientific Advice? The Case of the ABM"

Journal Article, Minerva, issue 2, volume 10

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

"Not since Franklin Roosevelt's draft law cleared the House of Representatives by one vote in the summer of 1941 had a President been put to so stern a challenge by Congress on a major question of national defense," Paul Doty writes. "Richard Nixon had staked his prestige on a no-compromise commitment to the view that a beginning on the Safeguard anti-ballistic-missile (ABM) system was " absolutely essential" to America's security. Precisely half the U.S. Senate said he was wrong. In the showdown last week, Mr. Nixon won . . . . But the hairbreadth margin of his victory--51 to 50 on the critical test vote—put the President and the military on notice that their will in defense matters, unchallenged for a generation, would no longer pass without question."

September 10, 1971

"The Community of Science and the Search for Peace"

Journal Article, Science, issue 4001, volume 173

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

"To speak of the community of science and the search for peace at this moment of history may seem anachronistic, if not actually pretentious. To many people, external suspicions and internal doubts seem to have robbed science of the self-confidence and sense of purpose that have given it the coherence of a community. To all who have for years striven to end the Vietnam War, the suggestion that peace requires only a search may seem empty and superficial," writes Paul Doty, founder of the Belfer Center, a biological scientist and proponent of international peace and security, "To contest these points and give substance to this title requires our stepping back into a larger frame of time and freeing ourselves from some of these moods of the moment"

December 13, 1969

"The Academic Condition in the United States"

Journal Article, Nature, volume 224

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

In analyzing the growing Vietnam protest movement at the time, Belfer Center founder Paul Doty writes that, "One person can at most add only a drop to the oceans of reporting and analysis of student protest.... It is neither valid nor useful to think only of the radicals and the rest. A recent survey of student attitudes (January 1969) makes this clear. This is the spectrum which emerged: revolutionaries, 3 percent; radical dissidents, 10 percent; reformers, 39 percent; moderates, 37 percent; conservatives, 11 percent. Thus only a quarter are at the extremes while three-quarters dominate the broad middle ground; it is these who will surely determine what is to become permanent from this cultural revolution."

Fall 1960

"The Role of Smaller Powers"

Journal Article, Daedalus, issue 4, volume 89

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

"As France greeted the fifteenth year of the nuclear age with the explosion of her first atomic bomb, the nuclear club expanded for the first time in nearly eight years. Without international agreements or a display of national self-control uncommon to these times, admissions will come with much greater frequency. Today the smaller powers, the twenty-odd nations that by their own efforts could gain admittance to the club within another eight years, await their inevitable rendezvous with Mephistopheles," wrote Paul Doty, founder of the Belfer Center, about the prospects of the expansion of the worlds most exclusive club, that of the nuclear powers.

Spring 1987

"A Nuclear Test Ban"

Magazine or Newspaper Article, Foreign Affairs, issue 4, volume 65

By Paul Doty, Director Emeritus, Center for Science and International Affairs; Mallinckrodt Professor of Biochemistry, Emeritus

"Nuclear detonations are constant reminders of mankind's capacity for violence," Paul Doty, founder of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, writes in a Foreign Affairs article arguing for a comprehensive test-ban (ctb) treaty, "it is not surprising that people and governments conclude that if this symptom of supreme violence were exorcised, the risk of nuclear war itself would diminish."