"From the Director"

Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School

Summer 2006

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

At our annual International Council meeting, Harvard President Larry Summers began by reminding us that with opportunity comes responsibility. In the world's most powerful nation, at the world's most influential university, he challenged the group to ask how the Belfer Center can best focus our expertise, knowledge, and resources to have the greatest impact for good on the most significant international issues of the era. Over the day and a half of meetings that followed, members of the International Council-a group that provides intellectual counsel and guidance to the Belfer Center- wrestled with Larry's question. It is a challenge the Center's leadership addresses every day.

In early April, William Kristol and John Deutch faced off in the Forum for the heavyweight battle of the semester on Iraq: should we stay or go. Deutch argued that the U.S. has done what it can there and that staying longer will only worsen the consequences for U.S. interests. Kristol argued that despite many mistakes the U.S. has made to this point, now is not the time to leave. See "Debate in Iraq" cover story in this newsletter for more on this lively event.

Abbas Maleki (former deputy foreign minister in Iran and senior fellow here) and Matthew Bunn (senior researcher and coauthor of the annual report, Securing the Bomb) are actively engaging policymakers on the path ahead on Iran. Working closely with the new director of our Managing the Atom project, Jeffrey Lewis, a Center-wide effort is  underway to be helpful to the U.S. and other governments around the world as they develop sound policies on nonproliferation.

Nonproliferation is also an important dimension of the debate on America's India policy that was clearly laid out during another Forum event starring Bob Blackwill, former U.S. ambassador to India, and Xenia Dormandy. They will be following up on another recommendation of the International Council: to find an appropriate way for the Belfer Center to help both American and Indian policy communities understand shared national interests and opportunities. They believe, as I do, that India is a natural, often overlooked American ally.

Members of the International Council highlighted the negative consequences of extreme partisanship, now at an all-time high, in the search for policy-relevant solutions. Organizations like the Belfer Center can play a unique role in helping build consensus. Belfer Center Senior Fellow Bob Graham (former chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee) is leading a groundbreaking effort that includes Doug Bereuter (former Republican Congressman and chair of the House Intelligence Committee), Juliette Kayyem, and Ernest May, to organize a special executive program this summer that will orient new members of Congress and staff from both sides of the aisle on critical intelligence issues.

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (one of my mentors when he was a professor and I a graduate student decades ago) recently met with a group of students and Center fellows at the JFK Library to answer questions about current national security challenges from Iraq to Israel and Palestine. Kissinger reminded students of the necessity for sound strategy-but the extraordinary difficulty of formulating and sustaining a coherent strategy in the highly-politicized conditions of government today. This theme has been illuminated across the agenda by recent visitors including Deputy Secretary of State Bob Zoellick, former Governor of Virginia Mark Warner, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command James Cartwright, Yale Professor John Lewis Gaddis, editor of Foreign Policy Moises Naim, Lieutenant General David H. Petraeus, commanding general, U.S. Army Combined Arms Center, and Fort Leavenworth, and Vice Admiral Jake Jacoby, former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency. As Bob Blackwill noted, having been away from government for just a year, it is amazing how much clearer the challenges are, how much more obvious the solutions, and how petty the obstacles appear.

Please join me in wishing good luck to two departing staff members who have contributed so much to the Center's successes. We will all miss Cara Fitzpatrick who, for the past two years, has managed several hundred board and directors' events at the Center and whose contagious smile helps lift all of us every day. We will also miss Moira Whelan, our communications director, who has helped tighten links between our research products and the public. We are very sad to see them go, but happy to celebrate the progress of two more "graduates" of the extended Belfer family.

For more information about this publication please contact the Belfer Center Communications Office at 617-495-9858.

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