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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
March, 1996
Avoiding Nuclear Anarchy: Containing the Threat of Loose Russian Nuclear Weapons and Fissile Material
Book
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Owen R. Coté, Editor, International Security, 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 and Steven E. Miller, Director, International Security Program; Editor-in-Chief, International Security; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
What if the bomb that exploded in Oklahoma City or New York's World Trade Center had used 100 pounds of highly enriched uranium? The destruction would have been far more vast. This danger is not so remote: the recipe for making such a bomb is simple, and soon the ingredients might be easily attained. Thousands of nuclear weapons and hundreds of tons of weapons-grade uranium and plutonium from the weapons complex of the former Soviet Union, poorly guarded and poorly accounted for, could soon leak on to a vast emerging nuclear black market.
January 29, 1996
Nuclear and Present Danger
Op-Ed, The Scotsman
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
ON 18 APRIL 1995, American terrorists demolished Oklahoma City's federal office building, killing 162 people. Two and a half years earlier, international terrorists attacked New York City's 110-storey World Trade Center. Had that explosion succeeded in undermining the structural foundation, 30,000 people would have died.From Oklahoma City and the World Trade Center to the first act of nuclear terrorism is but one small step. Suppose that instead of mini-vans filled with hundreds of pounds of the crude explosives used in Oklahoma City and New York, terrorists had acquired a suitcase carrying a, grapefruit sized 100 pounds of highly-enriched uranium (HEV).
April 30, 1995
Must We Wait for the Nuclear Morning After?
Op-Ed, Washington Post
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
What is the message of the Oklahoma City bombing for American national security? First, the oft-repeated assertion that with the end of the Cold War, the United States faces no direct or immediate threat to our security at home is dead wrong. As the most open society on a shrinking globe, America's democracy is also most vulnerable to terrorists' attacks. Such actions threaten not only our security but also our freedom.
January 1993
Cooperative Denuclearization: From Pledges to Deeds
Book
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Ashton B. Carter, Former Co-Director, Preventive Defense Project, Harvard & Stanford Universities, Steven E. Miller, Director, International Security Program; Editor-in-Chief, International Security; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom and Philip D. Zelikow, Former Associate Professor of Public Policy, Harvard Kennedy School; Former Faculty Affiliate, International Security Program
"CSIA's research on cooperative denuclearization began during the August 1991 putsch against Mikhail Gorbachev. To those of us familiar with nuclear weapons, their construction, and command and control, and with the looming revolution about to sweep the then–Soviet Union, it was plain that a new and unprecedented danger to international security was emerging. An appropriate policy response to this new form of nuclear threat could not be fashioned from traditional Cold War tools of deterrence, arms control, and military preparedness alone. Safety could only be sought through new policies emphasizing cooperative engagement with the new states, new leaders, and military and industrial heirs of the former Soviet Union...."
