Graham Allison

August 31, 1998

Why Russia's Meltdown Matters

Op-Ed, Washington Post

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

For Americans watching the deepening economic crisis in Russia, the most important question is why it matters to us. Given modest levels of U.S. investment and trade and muffled impacts on American markets, Russia's crisis would be important, but no more so than earlier crises in Korea and Indonesia. But Russia is not Indonesia. The reason why Russia's meltdown matters for Americans is much more specific and potentially catastrophic. As an economic crisis accelerates the disintegration of authority in Russia, history has left a superpower arsenal.

April 23, 1998

Showdown in Moscow

Op-Ed, New York Times

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

Tomorrow's showdown in Moscow between President Boris Yeltsin and the Russian Parliament is shaping up to be not only a crisis in Russian politics, but also a profound threat to Russian democracy.

November 15, 1997

Why Say NO to 1,500 Warheads?

Op-Ed, New York Times

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

The centerpiece of next month's superpower summit is to be the signing of a treaty eliminating intermediate-range nuclear forces. The public and Congressional debate about ratifying the treaty will greatly influence future arms control efforts and our relations with Europe and the Soviet Union. While informed opinions on the merits of the treaty differ, a few basic considerations can help guide the debate. Any assessment that considers only the effects on American forces and ignores the effects on Soviet forces will conclude that the agreement is not in our interest . . . Imagine that the terms were reversed - that America was trading away more than 1,500 warheads for about 350 on the Soviet side, while permitting Moscow's allies to keep and even expand their own nuclear arsenals, which threaten our territory. No President could expect this deal to be acceptable to the Senate, American people and our allies.

October 19, 1997

Nuclear Dangers: Fear Increases of Terrorists Getting Hands on 'Loose' Warheads as Security Slips

Op-Ed, Boston Globe

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

The box-office hit film "The Peacemaker" is a pulse-pounding spellbinder in which terrorists hijack nuclear weapons from Russia, smuggle one into the United States, and target New York City. Unfortunately, that make-believe scenario is a real-life worry.

1997

Defending the United States Against Weapons of Mass Destruction

Memorandum

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom, Ashton B. Carter, Former Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project, Harvard & Stanford Universities, John M. Deutch, International Council Member, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Richard A. Falkenrath, Former Assistant Professor of Public Policy; Former Principal Investigator, Executive Session on Domestic Preparedness; Former Executive Director for Research, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John P. Holdren, Former Director and Faculty Chair, Science, Technology and Public Policy Program, Robert Newman, Former Research Fellow, International Security Program, 1995-1996 and Joseph S. Nye, Harvard University Distinguished Service Professor

Unpublished memorandum to the United States Senate

Winter/Spring 1997

The Number One Threat of Nuclear Proliferation Today: Loose Nukes from Russia

Journal Article, Brown Journal of World Affairs, issue no. 1, volume vol. 4

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

This issue focuses on the threat of nuclearization of the Third World through nuclear proliferation, loose nukes from Russia

1997

Before The Morning After

Journal Article, Duke Journal of Comparative & International Law, issue no. 1, volume vol. 8

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

Symposium: Contempory Issues in Controlling Weapons of Mass Destruction

If the Cold War is over and our nuclear nemesis has "retargeted" its nuclear weapons, why does a nuclear threat still hang over us? The answer is that the demise of the Soviet Union left behind an arsenal of thirty thousand nuclear warheads and seventy thousand nuclear weapons-equivalents 3/4 lumps of highly-enriched uranium and plutonium. These items are now located in a society convulsed by a revolution whose central control systems cannot even collect taxes. Russian society has become increasingly free, increasingly chaotic, and increasingly criminalized.

1997

Towards a New Democratic Commonwealth

Report

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

Thanks to the collapse of European communism, it is possible to envisage a new community embracing most of the states of the Northern Hemisphere. Voters in most of the former Soviet bloc countries have affirmed their commitment to democracy in repeated elections. Because of these elections, especially those in Russia, it is possible to think realistically of creating a Commonwealth of Democracies from Vancouver to Vladivostok to Tokyo.

November 8, 1996

Get Ready for the Clinton Doctrine

Journal Article, New Statesman, issue no.428, volume vol. 9

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

Focusing on Clinton's foreign policy for the 1990s.

April 1, 1996

Russia's Loose Nukes a Serious Threat to US

Op-Ed, The Houston Chronicle

By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School

The greatest single threat to the security of America today, and indeed the world, is the threat from loose nuclear weapons and weapons-usable material from Russia. "Loose nukes' - the loss, theft or sale of weapons-usable nuclear materials or nuclear weapons themselves from the former Soviet arsenal - is not a hypothetical threat; it is a brute fact. Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union, the number of reported, suspected and documented cases of diversion of weapons-usable nuclear material has been increasing steadily.