Graham Allison
Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative
Member of the Board
Contact:
Telephone: (617) 496-6099
Fax: (617) 495-8963
Email: graham_allison@harvard.edu
March 31, 1992
President Bush Says Yes
Magazine or Newspaper Article, Moscow News, issue no. 15
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
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March 29, 1992
The Soviet Arsenal and the Mistaken Calculus of Caution
Journal Article, Washington Post
By Ashton B. Carter, Former Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project, Harvard & Stanford Universities and Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Op-ed by Dr. Ashton B. Carter and Dr. Graham T. Allison in The Washington Post
February 24, 1992
Commonwealth of Contradictions
Op-Ed, Asahi Shimbun
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
The Soviet Union has ceased to exist. Its disappearance leaves us without a convenient way of referring to this one-sixth of the Earth's surface. As a result, it is now commonplace to talk of the Commonwealth of Independent States as if it were a real political entity. But the Commonwealth is largely a misnomer. Those who participate in it have less in common than the term suggests. Whatever they share, it is not wealth.
February 9, 1992
Review of Dino Brugioni's Eyeball to Eyeball
Op-Ed, New York Times Book Review
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Distant as it is, the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 still offeres the best lens available through which to examine the possibilities of nuclear confrontation, problems of crisis management and opportunities for crisis prevention. It remains the only occasion in the postwar era when the United States and the Soviet Union stood "eyeball to eyeball" contemplating actions that could have led directly to nuclear war. Dino A. Brugioni has now made an important contribution to the growing number of books on the crisis. His is the first account of this event as seen through the eyes of the intelligence officer. He has made admirable use of his own personal experience (he was the supervisor of aerial reconnaissance photographs during the crisis), as well as the historian's craft (he is also the author of a book on the Civil War), to retell this story with special intention to the role played by intelligence.
January 3, 1992
Nuclear Objectives
Op-Ed, Financial Times (London)
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Can the west seize the present moment of opportunity to secure and disable nuclear weapons on the territories of those former Soviet republics that wish to be nuclear free? The answer is yes - but only with a strategy that marshalls all western instruments of influence and exercises them with a sense for priorities.
August 27, 1991
On With the Grand Bargain
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Robert D. Blackwill, International Council Member, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
In the aftermath of the failed Soviet coup, the United States should urgently take the lead in implementing a robust strategy to confront perhaps the most daunting geopolitical challenge yet for the Bush administration: the long-term Soviet transformation and that of the republics (or independent nations) to democracy and a market economy.
July 17, 1991
A Rare Opportunity for Our Leaders to Lead
Op-Ed, Financial Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Perhaps the major consequence of the Group of Seven summit has already occurred. Gorbachev's coming has concentrated the minds of hundreds of officials at the top of G7 government on the single most important international question of 1991:what about the Soviet future? No less than in the aftermath of the second world war, the end of the cold war requires Soviet and western leaders to decide what kind of Soviet Union they will seek to reconstruct.
July 3, 1991
Different Drummer, Different Market
Op-Ed, New York Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Is it realistic to envision that over the next decade or two the Soviet Union could become a democracy with a market economy? The odds are against it. Psychologically, the roots of a nondemocratic society that is not market-oriented run deep. According to a famous folk story, a Russian farmer responds to his neighbor's good fortune in acquiring a cow not by buying his own cow but by conspiring to kill his neighbor's cow. Conservatism, deep-seated envy and passivity reinforced by years of socialist paternalism have left Soviet citizens ill-suited for economic and political democracy.
Summer 1991
America's Stakes in the Soviet Union's Future
Journal Article, Foreign Affairs, issue no. 3, volume vol. 30
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
The USA should make a massive commitment, of Marshall Plan proportions, to assist the USSR to build a post-communist free market economy. This would act as a powerful inducement for reformers like Gorbachev to abandon all ambition to retain any commitment to communism. The West should (1) provide copious communications infrastructure (2) enlist Soviet help in global security management issues (3) offer massive economic aid "conditional upon political pluralization and a coherent economic program for moving rapidly to a market economy.
June 3, 1991
Would the West's Billions Pay Off?
Journal Article, Los Angeles Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
The path of transformation that the leaders of the Soviet Union can choose depends critically on the extent of Western engagement and assistance is critically dependent on the path of reform the Soviet Union is prepared to undertake. Therefore, rather than each side waiting for the other to take the first step, the governments of the Soviet Union and the West should jointly develop a common program of what each would do if the other meets specific conditions.
