CHEMICAL AND BIOLOGICAL WEAPONS
October 10, 2012
"WMD Free Zone in Mideast: An Opportunity for Detente with Iran"
Op-Ed, Power & Policy Blog
By Tytti Erästö, Stanton Nuclear Security Postdoctoral Fellow, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom
"The P5+1 and Iran should take note of the fact that there is a new window opening, and try to make most of it. The new opportunity comes in the form of a historic conference for the establishment of a weapons of mass destruction free zone (WMDFZ) in the Middle East—a conference which will be held in Finland in the coming December. What is special about this opportunity is that it allows Iran and the P5+1 to step outside of the negative dynamics created by their previous interactions, and to approach the nuclear issue from a different perspective."
AP Photo
July 29, 2012
"Managing the Endgame in Syria"
Op-Ed, The Diplomat
By Chuck Freilich, Senior Fellow, International Security Program
"...[I]t increasingly looks like a new regime may be as unsavory as its predecessor and may threaten the four decades of calm that have prevailed on the Golan Heights. The danger of escalation is great, especially if Syria, or its Iranian and Hezbollah allies, in a desperate attempt to save itself in its final extremis, seek to divert attention from their shared problems by using Syria's vast chemical arsenal against Israel, Syria's own citizens, or international players, should they seek to intervene. A long-established rule of dictatorship is that an external crisis is always a good means of deflecting attention from domestic challenges."
June 18, 2012
"The Darker Side of the Bio Industry"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"...[O]ne of the fundamental challenges for scientists today is how to communicate basic and vital safety information about the threats we face....Numerical scales work....The public does not need to grasp all the details of the science behind changes to the scale. It just needs a way to know, and process, what is normal, heightened, and extreme danger. This is particularly true given that biological threats are invisible, causing a type of fear distinct from those we can feel or see."
Summer 2012
International Security: Vol. 36. No. 4.
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
International Security is America’s leading journal of security affairs. It provides sophisticated analyses of contemporary security issues and discusses their conceptual and historical foundations. The journal is edited at Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center and published quarterly by the MIT Press. Questions may be directed to IS@Harvard.edu.
Spring 2012
Paul Doty's Legacy Lives on Through Influential Journal
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
By James F. Smith, Communications Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
As soon as Paul Doty launched what is now Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs in 1974, he began planning a scholarly journal on international security. He shrugged off colleagues’ concerns that there would be little market for such a journal.Thirty-six years after the first issue appeared in the summer of 1976, the Belfer Center’s quarterly International Security consistently ranks No. 1 or No. 2 out of over 70 international affairs journals surveyed by Thomson Reuters each year.
January 19, 2012
"Stopping the Clock"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"...[W]hen the smart scientists decided to add global warming and biological harms to the clock's matrix in 2007, their previous laser focus on nuclear Armageddon lost its impact. Their explanation of why things have gotten one minute worse is a laundry list that includes nuclear proliferation, Iran, Japan's nuclear disaster and its effects on nuclear power investments, carbon emissions, and virulent strains of viruses that can be used for lethal purposes."
AP Photo
January 5, 2012
"Security vs. Scourge"
Op-Ed, Boston Globe
By Juliette Kayyem, Lecturer in Public Policy
"...[T]he board is made up of scientists and has no enforcement power. The government does, and the board’s position should be seen as a plea to the journals to avoid a showdown with national-security officials who are understandably concerned with biological weapons. The absence of a globally enforceable Biological Weapons Convention (the United States withdrew its support in 2001) means that each nation, individually, must monitor itself."
December 15, 2011
"Comrades, we're in a defensive arms race with Russia-- but it isn't a bad thing."
Op-Ed, Foreign Policy "The Best Defense" Blog
By Kevin Ryan, Director, Defense and Intelligence Project, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs
Russian leaders have previously promised to improve the survivability of their offensive nuclear missile force as a means of ensuring that they would retain an effective nuclear deterrent, and that will likely happen. But recent events and announcements indicate that Russia is also investing money in its own increased missile defenses.
October 2011
Our Own Worst Enemy? Institutional Interests and the Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Expertise
Book
When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, many observers feared that terrorists and rogue states would obtain weapons of mass destruction (WMD) or knowledge about how to build them from the vast Soviet nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons complex. The United States launched a major effort to prevent former Soviet WMD experts, suddenly without salaries, from peddling their secrets. In Our Own Worst Enemy, Sharon Weiner chronicles the design, implementation, and evolution of four U.S. programs that were central to this nonproliferation policy and assesses their successes and failures.
Winner of the 2012 Louis Brownlow Book Award
Winter 2011-2012
"Terrorist Threat Demands Creative Intelligence"
Newsletter Article, Belfer Center Newsletter
Rolf Mowatt-Larssen, a former director of intelligence and counterintelligence at the Department of Energy, argues that despite not falling victim to a major terrorist event in the last 10 years, the United States must not be complacent in its counter-terrorism efforts. Mowatt-Larssen said in a Belfer Center seminar in September that he believes the possibility of a major attack is higher in the next 10 years than in the preceding decade.
