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, 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).
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). Assuming a simple, well-known design, a weapon fashioned from this material would produce a nuclear blast equivalent to 10,000 to 20,000 tons of TNT. Under normal conditions, this would devastate a three-square mile urban area. Oklahoma City would have disappeared. The tip of Manhattan, including all of Wall Street reaching up to Gramercy Park, would have been destroyed. AS A DIRECT CONSEQUENCE OF the collapse of the Soviet Union, a buyer's market for the raw materials needed to build simple nuclear bombs has emerged. This has transformed the nature of the world's nuclear proliferation problem in a manner that is only slowly being appreciated by international leaders.
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...."
September 25, 1992
The Territorial Dispute Between Russia and Japan: How a Special Group of Experts See it
Op-Ed, Izvestiya, issue 214
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
The Territorial Dispute Between Russia and Japan: How a Special Group of Experts See it
July 27, 1992
Collusion for Confrontation
Op-Ed, Financial Times (London)
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
On the global canvas of international politics today, what is the most striking anomaly? Of all the leading powers, two alone remain mired in a cold-war confrontation, without a peace treaty to conclude the second world war that ended 47 years ago, without normal relations. The contrast between Russia's new relationship with its main European adversary in the second world war, and its relationship with Japan, is instructive. Only on the Asian front, and most singularly in Russian-Japanese relations, is the cold war essentially frozen in time.
April 24, 1992
Marshalling an Effective Aid Package
Op-Ed, The Guardian
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Political pressure from all quarters has finally persuaded President Bush to join his G7 allies in supporting a multibillion assistant package to the former Soviet Union. In Moscow, first deputy prime minister Yegor Gaidar grasped the G7 package as something to be "compared in scope only to the second Marshall Plan." The allusion is hopeful if exaggerated. While the rhetoric is reminiscent, neither the circumstances in the east nor the commitment to the west yet justify such a comparison.
Spring 1992
Can The U.S. Promote Democracy?
Journal Article, Political Science Quarterly, issue Spring 1992, volume 107
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Is it possible for the U.S. to promote democracy and pluralism?? The democratic revolutions of 1989, coupled with the retreat of authoritarian regimes in Latin America and part of Asia and Africa, have prompted a resurgence of interest throughout the U.S. government and society at large in promoting democracy.
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.
