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Graham Allison

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

 

 

By Date

 

1992 (continued)

Spring 1992

Aid to Russia: Uses of History

Journal Article, Harvard Journal of World Affairs

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

A look at the United States history of aid to countries, and using those models of aid focusing on Russia.

 

 

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

Pre

 

 

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.

 

1991

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.

 

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Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe

Graham Allison, founding dean of Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, a former top official at the Pentagon, and one of America’s leading scholars of nuclear strategy and national security, presents the evidence and argument that led him to two provocative conclusions: a nuclear terrorist attack on an American city is inevitable on our current course and speed, but preventable if we act now. 

Events Calendar

We host a busy schedule of events throughout the fall, winter and spring. Past guests include: UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, former Vice President Al Gore, and former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev.