Graham Allison

(AP Photo/Iranian President's Office)

May 24, 2012

"How Close is Iran to Exploding its First Nuclear Bomb?"

Op-Ed, Scientific American

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

Belfer Center Director Graham Allison writes in Scientific American that while it is unclear whether Iran has decided to develop a nuclear weapon, it has over the past decade been "cautiously, but steadily, putting in place all the elements it needs to construct a nuclear weapon in short order."

Allison argues that the best way to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear bomb might be to "aggressively explore the offer made by Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad last fall to end all enrichment beyond LEU in exchange for the purchase of fuel for its Tehran Research Reactor."

Summer 2012

From the Director

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter

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

"Last month, [Harvard President Drew] Faust ended the 40-year estrangement of Henry Kissinger from Harvard....I was honored to play a small role in this détente, moderating a roundtable discussion with Kissinger at Sanders Theatre on April 11....In March, Kissinger and I were in Seoul as guests of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who asked us to a “long lunch” to discuss plans for the second Nuclear Security Summit.....With all this intense work on past and present foreign policy challenges—including an off-the-record briefing for General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff—the Belfer Center remains actively engaged in the debate about the U.S. role in the world" writes Belfer Center Director Graham Allison in the Summer 2012 Newsletter.

AP Photo

May 9, 2012

"Lugar's bipartisan spirit helped ensure U.S. security"

Op-Ed, GlobalPost

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

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts — Yesterday was a dark day for the United States. When Richard Lugar lost the Republican primary election, not only did Indiana lose its senator of 35 years, but the nation was deprived of one of its greatest champions of bipartisan leadership on issues of war and peace.

AP Photo

May 2, 2012

"Killing Osama bin Laden: What's most amazing?"

Op-Ed, GlobalPost

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

The hunt for Osama bin Laden followed a path with many twists and turns. Around each corner lay new discoveries, each often more unbelievable than the last. What was most amazing about this story?

Spring 2012

From the Director

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter

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

As time passes since Paul Doty’s death, we begin to move beyond our grief to a deeper appreciation of all the ways Paul’s work lives on. Nowhere is this legacy more vividly alive than at Harvard in the Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, of which he was the founding member.

AP Photo

March 26, 2012

"Can Seoul summit tackle biggest threat to US security – nuclear terrorism?"

Op-Ed, Christian Science Monitor

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

Why did President Obama fly halfway around the world to Seoul, South Korea, for the second Nuclear Security Summit? What can the 50 world leaders who meet today and tomorrow plausibly accomplish?  The answer is less than many observers hope – but more than skeptics appreciate.

AP Photo

March 2012

What Happened to the Soviet Superpower’s Nuclear Arsenal? Clues for the Nuclear Security Summit

Discussion Paper

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

Twenty years ago Russia and fourteen other newly-independent states emerged from the ruins of the Soviet empire, many as nations for the first time in history. As is typical in the aftermath of the collapse of an empire, this was followed by a period of chaos, confusion, and corruption. As the saying went at the time, “everything is for sale.” At that same moment, as the Soviet state imploded, 35,000 nuclear weapons remained at thousands of sites across a vast Eurasian landmass that stretched across eleven time zones. 

Today, fourteen of the fifteen successor states to the Soviet Union are nuclear weapons-free. This paper will address the question: how did this happen? Looking ahead, it will consider what clues we can extract from the success in denuclearizing fourteen post-Soviet states that can inform our non-proliferation and nuclear security efforts in the future. These clues may inform leaders of the U.S., Russia, and other responsible nations attending the Seoul Nuclear Security Summit on March 26-27, 2012. The paper will conclude with specific recommendations, some exceedingly ambitious that world leaders could follow to build on the Seoul summit’s achievements against nuclear terrorism in the period before the next summit in 2014. One of these would be to establish a Global Alliance Against Nuclear Terrorism.

AP Photo

March 8, 2012

"Will Iran be Obama’s Cuban Missile Crisis?"

Op-Ed, Washington Post

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

The mounting confrontation between the United States and Iran is like a Cuban Missile Crisis in slow motion. Events are moving, seemingly inexorably, toward a showdown at which point President Obama will have to choose to either attack Iran’s nuclear facilities or acquiesce in an Iranian nuclear bomb. When examined in turn, each of these two options seems worse than the other.

AP Photo/Douglas Birch

December 29, 2011

"Washington Can Work: Celebrating Twenty Years With Zero Nuclear Terrorism"

Op-Ed, The Huffington Post

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

As Washington antics undermine our confidence in government, it is instructive to think back 20 years to challenges a President and Congress faced in December, 1991. President George H. W. Bush was finishing the 3rd year of his first term, exhausted by the international avalanche that began shortly after he took office. First the Berlin Wall came down, the Warsaw Pact disintegrated, Saddam invaded Kuwait, and the President mobilized 500,000 American troops to lead a coalition to victory in Desert Storm. A year before he would stand for reelection, the U.S. economy was in recession and the Soviet Union was on the brink of collapse. President Bush and his key advisors wanted nothing more than to get out of town for a well-deserved vacation break.

AP Photo

December 25, 2011

"Christmas gift to America 20 years ago – a Russia to be thankful for"

Op-Ed, Christian Science Monitor

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

When the Soviet Union collapsed 20 years ago on Christmas, doomsayers had a field day. But seen strictly from the perspective of what matters most to Americans, the good news is that the nightmares that experts realistically expected about Russia have not happened.