Nuclear Cuts Criticized
IPNT director William Tobey warns against pending cuts to the U.S. nuclear security budget, arguing it would "make us all less safe."
Obama’s Nuclear Illusion?
Director of Belfer Center Graham Allison assesses President Obama’s progress toward elimination of nuclear weapons to conclude that “the likelihood of a nuclear avalanche is greater than the prospect of reaching the peak.”
Read more in the latest issue of the Initiative's newsletter >
FEATURED PUBLICATIONS
May 14, 2013
"Cuts to Nuclear Security Will Make Us Less Safe"
Politico
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
At the 2010 Washington Nuclear Security Summit, President Barack Obama hosted the largest gathering of foreign leaders on U.S. soil since the Truman administration. He sought to bolster international efforts to protect nuclear material and to prevent terrorists from obtaining a nuclear weapon. The president cites these initiatives among his highest national security priorities. Why then would his latest budget slash the most important programs to secure and to dispose of highly enriched uranium and plutonium — precisely the work he rallied foreign leaders to support?
April 5, 2013
"Obama's Nuclear Vision - or Illusion?"
Boston Globe
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
"Four years ago today, President Obama gave his first speech abroad. In Prague, he announced a bold vision for a “world without nuclear weapons.” Four years on, it is fair to ask: How is that working out? Assessing all the positives, and all the negatives, are we closer to the president’s aspiration — or further from it?"
AP Images
February 12, 2013
"North Korea's Lesson: Nukes for Sale"
New York Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
THE most dangerous message North Korea sent Tuesday with its third nuclear weapon test is: nukes are for sale. Graham Allison writes in the New York Times that the real significance of North Korea's overnight nuclear test is that this particular test was, in the estimation of American officials, most likely fueled by highly enriched uranium, not the plutonium that served as the core of North Korea’s earlier tests. "Testing a uranium-based bomb would announce to the world — including potential buyers — that North Korea is now operating a new, undiscovered production line for weapons-usable material."
NNSA Production Office
December 14, 2012
"Defining and Implementing Best Practices in Nuclear Security"
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
This paper analyzes the contribution that best practices can make to the field of nuclear security by doing the following:
- Defining what is meant by best practice
- Specifying a methodology for deriving it
- Understanding the resulting characteristics of the method
- Comparing its pros and cons to other methods contributing to security, such as guidelines and regulations
AP Photo
September 7, 2012
"Living in the Era of Megaterror"
International Herald Tribune
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School
Forty years ago this week at the Munich Olympics of 1972, Palestinian terrorists conducted one of the most dramatic terrorist attacks of the 20th century. The kidnapping and massacre of 11 Israeli athletes attracted days of around-the-clock global news coverage of Black September’s anti-Israel message. Three decades later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda killed nearly 3,000 individuals at the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, announcing a new era of megaterror. In an act that killed more people than Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, a band of terrorists headquartered in ungoverned Afghanistan demonstrated that individuals and small groups can kill on a scale previously the exclusive preserve of states.
June 11, 2012
"The Special Senate Committee on Anti-terrorism"
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom and Simon Saradzhyan, Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
On June 11, 2012, the Belfer Center's William Tobey, Matthew Bunn and Simon Saradzhyan testified before Canada's upper house of parliament, the Senate, on the threat of nuclear terrorism and strategies to combat it.
AP Images
October 19, 2012
"Boost Phase"
Foreign Policy
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Last week, alarm bells rang as the first headlines ran about Moscow's "bombshell" decision not to renew the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction (CTR) Agreement underpinning efforts to improve nuclear security. Perhaps it was the context of chilling relations with Putin's Russia, including the crackdown on nongovernmental organizations and the eviction of the U.S. Agency for International Development, that evoked such angst. The claim that U.S.-Russian nuclear security cooperation is dead, however, is greatly exaggerated.
September 21, 2012
What Can Destroy Strategic Stability: Nuclear Terrorism Is a Real Threat
This article explores interpretations of the concepts of strategic stability and nuclear deterrence with a focus on distinguishing those factors that have a real destabilizing impact on cornerstones of strategic stability from those that are only perceived to be doing so.
April 30, 2012
"What Lies Beneath"
Foreign Policy
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
There's one fear that keeps leaders from across the globe awake at night: The prospect that somehow, somewhere, criminals or terrorists are getting their hands on the essential ingredients of a nuclear weapon. At the nuclear summit in South Korea last month, policymakers gathered to prevent that nightmare from becoming a reality by launching an initiative to secure all vulnerable nuclear stockpiles within four years. But despite the fanfare surrounding the summit, one of the greatest recent successes in this initiative has thus far remained buried -- both literally and figuratively.
AP Photo/ Russian Interior Ministry Press Service
September 10, 2012
"Turncoats and Converts Make a Deadly Terrorist Mix"
Power & Policy Blog
By Simon Saradzhyan, Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Events of one August day in Russia's volatile republic of Dagestan have once again highlighted how turncoats can enhance terrorists' capabilities to carry out deadly attacks in the North Caucasus and other regions of Russia.
AP Photo
May 9, 2012
"Lugar's bipartisan spirit helped ensure U.S. security"
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/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
March 20, 2012
"U.S. and Russia Work Together Against Threat of Nuclear Terrorism"
GlobalPost
By Kevin Ryan, Director, Defense and Intelligence Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and The Elbe Group
The Elbe Group, former leaders of American and Russian intelligence and military organizations, write that the nuclear security summit in Seoul provides an important opportunity to reaffirm U.S. and Russian leadership against the deadly menace of nuclear terrorism — a threat that combines the Cold War peril of nuclear holocaust and the 21st century danger of international terrorism. Kevin Ryan joined other Elbe Group members in writing this oped.
AP Photo
March 26, 2012
"Can Seoul summit tackle biggest threat to US security – nuclear terrorism?"
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/Douglas Birch
December 29, 2011
"Washington Can Work: Celebrating Twenty Years With Zero Nuclear Terrorism"
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
January/ February 2012
"Nuclear Scientists as Assassination Targets"
Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, issue 1, volume 68
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Since 2007, international media have reported the violent deaths of four scientists and engineers connected with Iran’s nuclear program and an attempt on the life of a fifth. The news reports on such killings are murky, incomplete, and, in some instances, likely inaccurate...
October 2011
Russia and U.S. National Interests: Why Should Americans Care?
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School, Robert D. Blackwill, International Council Member, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Dimitri K. Simes and Paul J. Saunders
"Two decades after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Russia’s emergence as an independent state, Moscow is no longer America’s strategic rival. Yet, while Russia is not our enemy, neither has it become a friend. Washington and Moscow have succeeded in overcoming Cold War confrontation, but have not developed sustainable cooperative relations. A better-managed bilateral relationship is critical for the advancement of America’s vital national interests."
AP Photo
March 2012
What Happened to the Soviet Superpower’s Nuclear Arsenal? Clues for the Nuclear Security Summit
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
September 16, 2011
"Preventing the Next Fukushima"
Science, volume 333
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom and Olli Heinonen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"If nuclear power is to grow on the scale required to be a significant part of the solution to global climate disruption or scarcity of fossil fuels, major steps are needed to rebuild confidence that nuclear facilities will be safe from accidents and secure against attacks."
AP Photo
July 26, 2010
"The Armageddon Test: To Prevent Nuclear Terrorism, Follow the Uranium"
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs and Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"While the total amount of material that has been recovered and publicly disclosed is not sufficient to make a nuclear weapon, the matter is deadly serious. According to the International Atomic Energy Agency, none of the recovered nuclear material was reported missing by its owners. Incredibly, none of these cases has been sufficiently investigated to determine the origin, destination, and all those responsible for the theft of the material."
June 6, 2011
The U.S.-Russia Joint Threat Assessment of Nuclear Terrorism
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom, Yuri Morozov, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Simon Saradzhyan, Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Viktor I. Yesin and Pavel S. Zolotarev
Researchers from the United States and Russia have issued a joint assessment of the global threat of nuclear terrorism, warning of a persistent danger that terrorists could obtain or make a nuclear device and use it with catastrophic consequences. The first joint threat assessment by experts from the world’s two major nuclear powers concludes: “If current approaches toward eliminating the threat are not replaced with a sense of urgency and resolve, the question will become not if but when, and on what scale, the first act of nuclear terrorism occurs.”
Cover design by Tim Duffy
January 2011
Islam and the Bomb
By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
We can not exclude the possibility of nuclear terrorism. It is not tomorrow's threat; it is with us here today. The game changing impact of a single mushroom cloud could destabilize the world order and raise fundamental doubts about the ability of governments to continue to provide security for their people.
February 11, 2011
"US and Russian Intelligence Cooperation during the Yeltsin Years"
By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Over the years, cooperation between the US and Russia has waxed and waned. Trust has come and gone. As we look to the future to find new ways of strengthening this enigmatic relationship, we should draw on propitious times in the past, when Russians and Americans managed to bridge the divide – most notably, during world war two. History once again favors a genuine partnership between our two nations. Today, there is more that unites us than divides us. We confront common threats of weapons of mass destruction, terrorism, and the challenges of globalization and an interconnected world. The question is: will we have the courage to do the right thing?"
Spring/Summer 2011
"Preventing the Unthinkable"
Journal of International Security Affairs, issue 20
By Kevin Ryan, Director, Defense and Intelligence Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
During the Cold War, the threat of a nuclear attack came mainly from the U.S.-Russian nuclear arsenals, writes Kevin Ryan. Today, however, the United States and Russia have been forced to adapt to a new nuclear threat—that of dedicated terrorists with money and technological access who seek to obtain and use a nuclear device.
AP Photo
March 3, 2011
"Keep Up the Pace of Locking Down the Bomb"
The Huffington Post
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom and William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"The WikiLeaks cables reveal an episode in which officials in Yemen — home of al Qaeda's most active regional branch — warned that a deadly radioactive source was sitting in building whose only guard had left and whose sole security camera had long been broken. These programs provide the practical means to deal with such threats."
AP Photo/IntelCenter
November 12, 2010
Al Qaeda's Religious Justification of Nuclear Terrorism
By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"...Bin Laden would develop an idea that would breathe life back into Zawahiri's dreams: the United States must become the target of the jihad. If the Americans could be provoked into war, they could be defeated like the Soviets, and expelled from Muslim lands for good. The fall of the U.S. superpower would lead to the overthrow of secular Arab states. This insight led to successive Al Qaeda strikes against the U.S., including the unsuccessful bombing of the World Trade Center (1993), bombings of two U.S. embassies in East Africa (1998), and the bombing of the USS Cole (2000). It was not evident at the time, but the road to 9/11 began on the day Al Qaeda was formed."
AP Images
September 9, 2010
"Nine Years After 9/11: Keeping America Safe"
The Huffington Post
By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"In order to achieve success, the intelligence leadership must ensure that every officer in the community understands that the DNI is here to stay, and that the FBI requires their full support. Internal dissonance and institutional rivalries are the surest ways to leave holes in our nation's defenses."
AP Photo
December 23, 2010
"Russia's North Caucasus, The Terrorism Revival"
International Relations and Security Network
By Simon Saradzhyan, Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Terrorism has recently staged a deadly comeback in Russia after a lull of several years, writes Belfer Center fellow Simon Saradzhyan. "Escalatory logic and rivalry among leaders of the North Caucasus-based terrorist networks combined with landmark events planned in Russia and the dynamics of violence in the greater Middle East may fuel further spikes in organized political violence..."
March 25, 2010
"Global Partnership Requires Fresh Ideas"
"considering its current economic, technological and intellectual potential, Russia could, and should, change its role and place in the ‘Global Partnership' and transition from the category of recipient to donor, all the more because a decision about expanding the membership in that international forum will be made in the near future."
AP Photo
April 10, 2010
"Nuclear Security"
International Herald Tribune
By Mohamed ElBaradei, Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government, Harvard Kennedy School and Ernesto Zedillo
The 47 heads of state who will assemble in Washington next week for the world's first Nuclear Security Summit should focus like a laser beam on the biggest potential threat to civilization.
AP Images
April 14, 2010
"Relentless Focus Needed to Fight Nuclear Terror"
AOL News
By William H. Tobey, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
"Obama demanded the attention of world leaders to this critical issue by bringing them to Washington, but the success of his summit will depend on how they respond after they return home."
Spring 2011
"Q & A: Rolf Mowatt-Larssen"
Belfer Center Newsletter
By Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, Senior Fellow, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
After more than two decades in intelligence with the CIA and U.S. Department of Energy, Rolf MowattLarssen is now a senior fellow at the Belfer Center focusing on nuclear terrorism, domestic security, and al Qaeda’s weapons of mass destruction (WMD) ambitions. His most recent research report is titled “Al Qaeda’s Religious Justification of Nuclear Terrorism,” a follow-up to his timeline of al Qaeda’s quest to acquire WMD. We asked Mowatt-Larssen to share his views on al Qaeda's intent and justification for terrorism and to reflect on American life post 9/11 and the future of global intelligence.
December 13, 2012
"As it Grows, Al Jazeera Risks Losing Touch"
Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"...[A]s the Arab Spring continues past a single season, Al Jazeera's very success is revealing some of its vulnerabilities. Its power has others wanting in on the action. As the movement towards democratic reform becomes more pervasive, the network's ownership by a conservative monarchy has become its Achilles' heel. The emir of Qatar recently placed a member of the royal family as director-general of news on Al Jazeera, a reminder to its staff of who pays the bills. In a region where conspiracy theories are rampant, the network's ownership makes it a target for reformers who feel it's mainly catering to the existing power structure."
