NUCLEAR PROLIFERATION
siavush
July 24, 2008
Securing the Nuclear Renaissance
Testimony
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative
Belfer Center Director Graham Allison testified before the House Subcommittee on Terrorism, Nonproliferation, and Trade. He discussed the findings of "Reinforcing the Global nuclear Order: The Role of the IAEA," a report developed by the independent Commission of Eminent Persons, of which he was a co-executive director, that examined the global nuclear order from the perspective of the IAEA.
AP Photo
July 19, 2008
"Bush's U-turn Toward Common Sense"
Op-Ed, Los Angeles Times
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative
Graham Allison applauds the decision by the Bush administration to send U.S. Undersecretary of State William Burns to the European Union meeting with Iran on Saturday (July 19). This "flip-flop toward reality," Allison says, "represents a major step in overcoming fierce internal struggles within the U.S. and Iran that had left both stuck at stalemate."
Department of Energy
July 18, 2008
"'Appropriate Effective' Nuclear Security and Accounting — What is It?"
Presentation
By Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
Project on Managing the Atom's Matthew Bunn discusses United Nations Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1540 — a major new tool for combating nuclear terrorism and proliferation that is little used.
AP Photo
July 10, 2008
"Indo-Israeli Relations: Key Security Implications"
Policy Brief
By Ronak D. Desai and Xenia Dormandy, Director of the Belfer Center's Project on India and the Subcontinent
Following more than forty years of diplomatic estrangement, the last decade has witnessed India and Israel embark on a new multidimensional "strategic partnership." What are the implications of growing ties between these two countries for India and the United States?
Summer 2008
"The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t: Soviet Military Buildup in the 1970s—A Research Note"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 33
By Pavel Podvig
The Soviet strategic modernization program of the 1970s was one of the most consequential developments of the Cold War. Deployment of new intercontinental ballistic missiles and the dramatic increase in the number of strategic warheads in the Soviet arsenal created a sense of vulnerability in the United States that was, to a large degree, responsible for the U.S. military buildup of the late 1970s and early 1980s and the escalation of Cold War tensions during that period. U.S. assessments concluded that the Soviet Union was seeking to achieve a capability to fight and win a nuclear war. Estimates of missile accu¬racy and silo hardness provided by the U.S. intelligence community led many in the United States to conclude that the Soviet Union was building a strategic missile force capable of destroying most U.S. missiles in a counterforce strike and of surviving a subsequent nuclear exchange. Soviet archival documents that have recently become available demonstrate that this conclusion was wrong. The U.S. estimates substantially overestimated the accuracy of the Soviet Union's missiles and the degree of silo reinforcement. As the data demonstrate, the Soviet missile force did not have the capability to launch a successful first strike. Moreover, the data strongly suggest that the Soviet Union never attempted to acquire a first-strike capability, concentrating instead on strategies based on retaliation.
Summer 2008
"Divining Nuclear Intentions: A Review Essay"
Journal Article, International Security, issue 1, volume 33
By William C. Potter and Gaukhar Mukhatzhanova
Although projections of nuclear proliferation abound, they rarely are founded on empirical research or guided by theory. Even fewer studies are informed by a comparative perspective. The two books under review—The Psychology of Nuclear Proliferation: Identity, Emotions, and Foreign Policy, by Jacques Hymans, and Nuclear Logics: Alternative Paths in East Asia and the Middle East, by Etel Solingen, are welcome exceptions to this general state of affairs, and represent the cutting edge of nonproliferation research. Both works challenge conventional conceptions of the sources of nuclear weapons decisions and offer new insights into why past predictions of rapid proliferation failed to materialize and why current prognoses about rampant proliferation are similarly flawed. While sharing a number of common features, including a focus on subsystemic determinants of national behavior, the books differ in their methodology, level of analysis, receptivity to multicausal explanations, and assumptions about decisionmaker rationality and the revolutionary nature of the decision. Where one author emphasizes the importance of the individual leader’s national identity conception in determining a state’s nuclear path, the other explains nuclear decisions primarily with regard to the political-economic orientation of the ruling coalition. Notwithstanding a tendency to overinterpret evidence, the books represent the best of contemporary social science research and provide compelling interpretations of nuclear proliferation dynamics of great relevance to scholars and policymakers alike.
AP Photo
2008
"La Cina e le Bombe Asiatiche"
Journal Article, Aspenia, issue 41
By Xiaohui (Anne) Wu, Associate, International Security Program/Project on Managing the Atom
As a progressively responsible and cooperative partner of the global, nuclear non-proliferation regime, China faces challenges on multiple fronts that have brought judgment, reflection, and debate, domestically as well as internationally, on its non-proliferation policy. Since 1980s, China's historical reservations about, and skepticism and independence of, the global non-proliferation regime have consequently been gradually transitioning to active participation in and even integration with, as well as strong support of, the process.
June 2008
100 Grams (and Counting...): Notes from the Nuclear Underworld
Report
This report on the 2006 seizure of weapon-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) in Georgia, by journalist Michael Bronner, provides new insights on both nuclear smugglers and those trying to stop them.
AP Photo
June 13, 2008
Reinforcing the Global Nuclear Order: The Role of the IAEA
Memorandum
By Graham Allison, Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs; Douglas Dillon Professor of Government; Faculty Chair, Dubai Initiative and Matthew Bunn, Associate Professor of Public Policy; Co-Principal Investigator, Project on Managing the Atom
The high-level Commission of Eminent Persons advising the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that meeting the current nuclear challenges and seizing the current opportunities will require a fundamentally reinvigorated global nuclear order, featuring a strengthened IAEA with "additional authority, resources, personnel, and technology." Without a "bold agenda" of steps to strengthen the nuclear order, the Commission warned that there were real risks that terrorists might get a nuclear bomb, that a nuclear accident might occur, or that, as the UN High-Level Panel warned, the world could suffer "a cascade of nuclear proliferation." Preventing such events, the Commission emphasized, is essential for nuclear energy to grow enough to contribute to mitigating climate change, making safety, security, and nonproliferation essential foundations for nuclear energy's future.
June 9, 2008
"Is There a New U.S. Policy for Pakistan?"
Op-Ed
By Xenia Dormandy, Director of the Belfer Center's Project on India and the Subcontinent
"How much will the War on Terror define the new President’s agenda towards Pakistan, as it has President Bush’s? What will this mean for America’s broader policy toward the country, and what are the implications, if any, for India?"
