From the Director

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter

Spring 2008

Author: Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative, Harvard Kennedy School

In the last several months, the Belfer Center has been in the thick of two of the most important discussions in international affairs: halting the spread of nuclear weapons and shaping a global agreement to mitigate severe climate disruption.

On the first issue, researchers at the Center have participated in the debate initiated by our colleagues Sam Nunn, William Perry, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz in two influential Wall Street Journal opeds. They have called upon governments to embrace the vision of a world free of nuclear weapons and are proposing an ambitious program of urgent steps to that end. In December, we hosted President Mikhail Gorbachev for a conference on "Overcoming Nuclear Danger," which explained actions the Russian and American governments should take to advance the "Four Horsemen's" agenda. Co-sponsored by the World Political Forum, this event marked the 20th anniversary of the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which zeroed out the two countries' intermediate range missiles.

Gorbachev's visit builds upon years of work at the Center on this and related topics. Last summer, Ashton Carter hosted a workshop for senior leaders in the U.S. government on planning for the day after a nuclear attack. Securing the Bomb 2007, written by Matthew Bunn of our Managing the Atom project and commissioned by the Nuclear Threat Initiative, was released in September along with a detailed report in the Washington Post that tracked international efforts in securing nuclear materials.

On a second big international challenge facing the world - shaping an international climate agreement to succeed the Kyoto Protocol - John Holdren and Rob Stavins traveled to Bali, Indonesia, in December for the big climate change conference. At the event, Holdren presented the groundbreaking work he and the Energy Technology Innovation Policy research group are doing on "win-win" energy policies in China, India, and Brazil. Stavins has recently launched the Harvard Project on International Climate Agreements (co-sponsored by the Center and the Harvard Environmental Economics Program). At the meeting, he and other members of the project team met with government officials to describe "Architectures for Agreement: Issues and Options for Post-2012 International Climate Change Policy." Climate change is another instance in which Center participation in a high-profile international event is just the tip of the iceberg; our work in this area ranges from auto policy in China to making recommendations for the G-8 on biofuels to bringing an economic perspective to environmental issues.

For more on all the work and presentations mentioned in this email, please visit our website: www.belfercenter.org.

For Academic Citation:
Allison, Graham. "From the Director." Belfer Center Newsletter (Spring 2008).