Stanford University

Terrorism

How to protect our nuclear deterrent

Authors
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
In their latest op-ed in "The Wall Street Journal," William Perry, George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, and Sam Nunn argue that maintaining confidence in the U.S. nuclear arsenal is necessary as the number of weapons decreases.

The four of us have come together, now joined by many others, to support a global effort to reduce reliance on nuclear weapons, to prevent their spread into potentially dangerous hands, and ultimately to end them as a threat to the world. We do so in recognition of a clear and threatening development.

The accelerating spread of nuclear weapons, nuclear know-how, and nuclear material has brought us to a tipping point. We face a very real possibility that the deadliest weapons ever invented could fall into dangerous hands.

But as we work to reduce nuclear weaponry and to realize the vision of a world without nuclear weapons, we recognize the necessity to maintain the safety, security and reliability of our own weapons. They need to be safe so they do not detonate unintentionally; secure so they cannot be used by an unauthorized party; and reliable so they can continue to provide the deterrent we need so long as other countries have these weapons. This is a solemn responsibility, given the extreme consequences of potential failure on any one of these counts.

For the past 15 years these tasks have been successfully performed by the engineers and scientists at the nation's nuclear-weapons production plants and at the three national laboratories (Lawrence Livermore in California, Los Alamos in New Mexico, and Sandia in New Mexico and California). Teams of gifted people, using increasingly powerful and sophisticated equipment, have produced methods of certifying that the stockpile meets the required high standards. The work of these scientists has enabled the secretary of defense and the secretary of energy to certify the safety, security and the reliability of the U.S. nuclear stockpile every year since the certification program was initiated in 1995.

The three labs in particular should be applauded for the success they have achieved in extending the life of existing weapons. Their work has led to important advances in the scientific understanding of nuclear explosions and obviated the need for underground nuclear explosive tests.

Yet there are potential problems ahead, as identified by the Strategic Posture Commission led by former Defense Secretaries Perry and James R. Schlesinger. This commission, which submitted its report to Congress last year, calls for significant investments in a repaired and modernized nuclear weapons infrastructure and added resources for the three national laboratories.

These investments are urgently needed to undo the adverse consequences of deep reductions over the past five years in the laboratories' budgets for the science, technology and engineering programs that support and underwrite the nation's nuclear deterrent. The United States must continue to attract, develop and retain the outstanding scientists, engineers, designers and technicians we will need to maintain our nuclear arsenal, whatever its size, for as long as the nation's security requires it.

This scientific capability is equally important to the long-term goal of achieving and maintaining a world free of nuclear weapons—with all the attendant expertise on verification, detection, prevention and enforcement that is required.

Our recommendations for maintaining a safe, secure and reliable nuclear arsenal are consistent with the findings of a recently completed technical study commissioned by the National Nuclear Security Administration in the Department of Energy. This study was performed by JASON, an independent defense advisory group of senior scientists who had full access to the pertinent classified information.

The JASON study found that the "[l]ifetimes of today's nuclear warheads could be extended for decades, with no anticipated loss in confidence, by using approaches similar to those employed in Life Extension Programs to date." But the JASON scientists also expressed concern that "[a]ll options for extending the life of the nuclear weapons stockpile rely on the continuing maintenance and renewal of expertise and capabilities in science, technology, engineering, and production unique to the nuclear weapons program." The study team said it was "concerned that this expertise is threatened by lack of program stability, perceived lack of mission importance, and degradation of the work environment."

These concerns can and must be addressed by providing adequate and stable funding for the program. Maintaining high confidence in our nuclear arsenal is critical as the number of these weapons goes down. It is also consistent with and necessary for U.S. leadership in nonproliferation, risk reduction, and arms reduction goals.

By providing for the long-term investments required, we also strengthen trust and confidence in our technical capabilities to take the essential steps needed to reduce nuclear dangers throughout the globe. These steps include preventing proliferation and preventing nuclear weapons or weapons-usable material from getting into dangerous hands.

If we are to succeed in avoiding these dangers, increased international cooperation is vital. As we work to build this cooperation, our friends and allies, as well as our adversaries, will take note of our own actions in the nuclear arena. Providing for this nation's defense will always take precedence over all other priorities.

Departures from our existing stewardship strategies should be taken when they are essential to maintain a safe, secure and effective deterrent. But as our colleague Bill Perry noted in his preface to America's Strategic Posture report, we must "move in two parallel paths—one path which reduces nuclear dangers by maintaining our deterrence, and the other which reduces nuclear dangers through arms control and international programs to prevent proliferation." Given today's threats of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism, these are not mutually exclusive imperatives. To protect our nation's security, we must succeed in both.

Beyond our concern about our own stockpile, we have a deep security interest in ensuring that all nuclear weapons everywhere are resistant to accidental detonation and to detonation by terrorists or other unauthorized users. We should seek a dialogue with other states that possess nuclear weapons and share our safety and security concepts and technologies consistent with our own national security.

Mr. Shultz was secretary of state from 1982 to 1989. Mr. Perry was secretary of defense from 1994 to 1997. Mr. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977. Mr. Nunn is former chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Hero Image
Perry WSJ Deterrent op ed logo
All News button
1

Strategic Stability at Low Numbers

-

Abstract
In order to eliminate nuclear weapons, the world will first have to pass through a regime of "low numbers" in which the US and Russian arsenals contain hundreds of weapons. The conclusion of the New START agreement, along with President Medvedev and President Obama's intention to work on a successor treaty, have brought this prospect forward. Many Western and Russian analysts worry that such a world might be unstable. However, in spite of these fears, the "low numbers problem" has attracted surprisingly little attention in the past (perhaps because the prospect of deep reductions always seemed so remote). In this talk, I will argue that the most likely type of instability is rearmament. I will examine potential drivers of rearmament and discuss steps to ensure that its likelihood can be minimized.

James M. Acton is an associate in the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment specializing in nonproliferation and disarmament. A physicist by training, Acton’s research focuses on the interface of technical and political issues, with special attention to the civilian nuclear industry, IAEA safeguards, and practical solutions to strengthening the nonproliferation regime.

Before joining the Endowment in October 2008, Acton was a lecturer at the Centre for Science and Security Studies in the Department of War Studies at King’s College London. There he co-authored the Adelphi Paper, Abolishing Nuclear Weapons, with George Perkovich and was a consultant to the Norwegian government on disarmament issues. Prior to that, Acton was the science and technology researcher at the Verification Research, Training and Information Centre (VERTIC), where he was a participant in the UK–Norway dialogue on verifying the dismantlement of warheads.

Acton’s other previous research projects include analyses of IAEA safeguards in Iran, verifying disarmament in North Korea, preventing novel forms of radiological terrorism, and the capability of Middle Eastern states to develop nuclear energy. He has published in Jane’s Intelligence Review, Nonproliferation Review, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Survival, and the New York Times. In the UK, he appeared regularly on TV and radio, including on the BBC programs Newsnight, Horizon, and the Six O’clock News.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

James Acton Associate, Nuclear Policy Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace Speaker
Seminars

Microbial Forensics for Attribution of Biological Attacks: How well will it work?

-

Since the 2001 anthrax attacks, members of the biosecurity community and US government officials have expressed a growing sense of alarm at the threat of a biological attack.  The Commission on the Prevention of Weapons of Mass Destruction Proliferation and Terrorism recently predicted that a terrorist attack involving WMD is likely to take place by 2013 and identified biological terrorism as the most likely contingency.  To counter this threat, increasing emphasis has been placed on the role of microbial forensics in deterring an attack. New infrastructure has been established by the US government to develop capabilities to identify the source of a pathogen used in an attack and identify the perpetrators. However, many open questions remain about the potential efficacy of this approach both from a technological capabilities standpoint and from a deterrence perspective.

Existing technologies can be borrowed from molecular biology to identify elements in a pathogen's DNA, which could help investigators trace it back to a specific source strain. However, these tools are limited, and new methods should be developed to increase confidence in microbial forensics analyses. Moreover, a comprehensive genome database of pathogen strains is necessary for an effective investigation in the event of an attack. Who will cover the costs of sequencing pathogen genome strains to generate such a database? Will there be obstacles to gaining cooperation from academic and government facilities within the United States and internationally?  In the best-case scenario, advances in microbial forensics could enable us to identify the source of a biological attack; would these capabilities effectively deter non-state actors? These questions must be addressed to determine the extent to which microbial forensics programs can meet their stated goals.

Jaime Yassif is a doctoral candidate in the Biophysics Group at UC Berkeley. She is conducting her thesis research in the Liphardt lab, where she studies the dynamics of RNA-binding proteins using a single-molecule technique called plasmon rulers.

Prior to her graduate work, Ms. Yassif worked for several years in science and security policy and arms control.  She began as a research assistant at the Federation of American Scientists, where she contributed to the writing of Senate Foreign Relations Committee testimony on radiological weapons and authored a piece on radiological decontamination in Defense News. She then worked as a program officer at the Nuclear Threat Initiative, where she provided support for the organization's four key program areas-Russia/New Independent States, Biological, Regional and Communications-and managed the organization of an international workshop on Global Best Practices in Nuclear Materials Management. This was followed by a fellowship to study the Chinese nuclear posture at Tsinghua University in Beijing.

Ms. Yassif holds an MA in Science and Security from the War Studies Department at King's College London, where she wrote her thesis on verification of the Biological Weapons Convention.  She received her bachelor's degree in Biology from Swarthmore College. Ms. Yassif is former president of the student-run Science, Technology and Engineering Policy group at UC Berkeley and a member of Women in International Security.

Martha Crenshaw is a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the Freeman Spogli Institute, and professor of political science (by courtesy). Her current research focuses on why the United States is the target of terrorism, the effectiveness of counter terrorism policies, and mapping terrorist organizations. Professor Crenshaw served on the Executive Board of Women in International Security and chaired the American Political Science Association (APSA) Task Force on Political Violence and Terrorism. She was a Guggenheim Fellow in 2005-2006. Her edited book, The Consequences of Counterterrorism in Democracies, is being published by the Russell Sage Foundation.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Jaime Yassif PhD candidate, UC Berkeley Biophysics Graduate Group Speaker
Martha Crenshaw Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and Senior Fellow at CISAC and FSI Commentator
Seminars

Holding War Criminals Accountable: Stanford Student Participation in Human Rights Trials

-

Over the past eight years, Stanford students have contributed to holding war criminals accountable in trials held both inside the United States and abroad.  Learn how research by students can help to change and/or enforce international law, shape historic memory, and contribute to the construction of the rule of law -- bit by bit.  This forum explores student participation in what is called the "Jesuit Massacre." In 2009, the Spanish National Court formally charged former Salvadoran President Alfredo Christiani Burkard and 14 former military officers for their role in the murder of six Spanish Jesuit priests, their Salvadoran housekeeper and her 16 year-old daughter in November 1989. The Court has called these murders crimes against humanity and state terrorism. In November, Political Science Professor Terry Karl, aided by a team of students, presented extensive evidence to the Spanish Court. The students will talk about their work and what it means

Philippines Conference Room

Terry L. Karl

Department of Political Science
Encina Hall
Stanford University
Stanford, CA 94305-6044

(650) 724-4166 (650) 724-2996
0
Professor of Political Science
Gildred Professor of Latin American Studies
William and Gretchen Kimball University Fellow
Senior Research Scholar (by courtesty) of FSI/CDDRL
terrykarl.png MA, PhD

Professor Karl has published widely on comparative politics and international relations, with special emphasis on the politics of oil-exporting countries, transitions to democracy, problems of inequality, the global politics of human rights, and the resolution of civil wars. Her works on oil, human rights and democracy include The Paradox of Plenty: Oil Booms and Petro-States (University of California Press, 1998), honored as one of the two best books on Latin America by the Latin American Studies Association, the Bottom of the Barrel: Africa's Oil Boom and the Poor (2004 with Ian Gary), the forthcoming New and Old Oil Wars (with Mary Kaldor and Yahia Said), and the forthcoming Overcoming the Resource Curse (with Joseph Stiglitz, Jeffrey Sachs et al). She has also co-authored Limits of Competition (MIT Press, 1996), winner of the Twelve Stars Environmental Prize from the European Community. Karl has published extensively on comparative democratization, ending civil wars in Central America, and political economy. She has conducted field research throughout Latin America, West Africa and Eastern Europe. Her work has been translated into 15 languages.

Karl has a strong interest in U.S. foreign policy and has prepared expert testimony for the U.S. Congress, the Supreme Court, and the United Nations. She served as an advisor to chief U.N. peace negotiators in El Salvador and Guatemala and monitored elections for the United Nations. She accompanied numerous congressional delegations to Central America, lectured frequently before officials of the Department of State, Defense, and the Agency for International Development, and served as an adviser to the Chairman of the House Sub-Committee on Western Hemisphere Affairs of the United States Congress. Karl appears frequently in national and local media. Her most recent opinion piece was published in 25 countries.

Karl has been an expert witness in major human rights and war crimes trials in the United States that have set important legal precedents, most notably the first jury verdict in U.S. history against military commanders for murder and torture under the doctrine of command responsibility and the first jury verdict in U.S. history finding commanders responsible for "crimes against humanity" under the doctrine of command responsibility. In January 2006, her testimony formed the basis for a landmark victory for human rights on the statute of limitations issue. Her testimonies regarding political asylum have been presented to the U.S. Supreme Court and U.S. Circuit courts. She has written over 250 affidavits for political asylum, and she has prepared testimony for the U.S. Attorney General on the extension of temporary protected status for Salvadorans in the United States and the conditions of unaccompanied minors in U.S. custody. As a result of her human rights work, she received the Doctor of Humane Letters, honoris causa from the University of San Francisco in 2005.

Professor Karl has been recognized for "exceptional teaching throughout her career," resulting in her appointment as the William R. and Gretchen Kimball University Fellowship. She has also won the Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching (1989), the Allan V. Cox Medal for Faculty Excellence Fostering Undergraduate Research (1994), and the Walter J. Gores Award for Excellence in Graduate and Undergraduate Teaching (1997), the University's highest academic prize. Karl served as director of Stanford's Center for Latin American Studies from 1990-2001, was praised by the president of Stanford for elevating the Center for Latin American Studies to "unprecedented levels of intelligent, dynamic, cross-disciplinary activity and public service in literature, arts, social sciences, and professions." In 1997 she was awarded the Rio Branco Prize by the President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, in recognition for her service in fostering academic relations between the United States and Latin America.

CV
Terry L. Karl Gildred Professor of Political Science and Latin American Studies Moderator
Symposiums
Program on Human Rights

CISAC to host nuclear security fellowships

Authors
News Type
News
Date
Paragraphs

Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) has been invited to participate in a new nuclear security fellowship program funded by The Stanton Foundation.

The five-year program will provide $300,000 a year for fellowships aimed at pre- and post-doctoral students and junior faculty studying policy relevant issues related to nuclear security. The first fellows, who will be mentored by CISAC faculty, will start in fall 2010. The deadline for receiving applications is Feb. 1, 2010.

"The CISAC faculty are thrilled to receive these generous funds from the Stanton Foundation to support new Nuclear Security Fellows at the center next year," Co-Director Scott D. Sagan said. "This program will be enormously helpful in CISAC's efforts to train and nurture the next generation of scientists and social scientists addressing the complex global problems of nuclear safety, security and non-proliferation."

In addition to CISAC, Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, the Council on Foreign Relations, the RAND Corporation, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London have been selected as host institutions for the fellowships. During their residency, fellows will be expected to complete a policy relevant article, report or book on topics ranging from nuclear terrorism to nuclear proliferation and nuclear weapons.

The Stanton Foundation
Frank Stanton, the president of CBS News from 1946-71, established The Stanton Foundation. During his 25 years at the network's helm, Stanton turned an also-ran radio network into a broadcasting powerhouse. Stanton died in 2006, aged 98 years.

According to information provided by the foundation, Stanton was a strong defender of free speech and was determined to use television as an "instrument of civic education." For example, in 1960, he supported the first televised presidential debates with Richard Nixon and John Kennedy, which required a special act of Congress before they could proceed. These debates were credited with helping Kennedy win the presidency, and have since become a staple of U.S. presidential campaigns.

Throughout his life, Stanton was interested in international security and U.S. foreign policy. He served on several presidential commissions charged with preparing the United States for the challenges of living in a nuclear world. In 1954, Dwight Eisenhower appointed Stanton to a committee convened to develop the first comprehensive plan for the nation's survival of the following a nuclear attack. Stanton was responsible for developing plans for national and international communication in the aftermath of a nuclear incident. According to a statement from the foundation, "The Stanton Foundation aims, through its support of the Nuclear Security Fellows program, to perpetuate his efforts to meet [such] challenges."

Hero Image
Stanton Fellowship Announce logo
All News button
1

The Politics of Militancy: Evidence from Pakistan

-

Combating militant violence-particularly within South Asia and the Middle East-stands at the top of the international security agenda. Despite the extensive literature on the determinants of political attitudes, little is known about who supports militant organizations and why. To address this gap we conducted a 6000-person, nationally-representative survey of Pakistanis that measures affect towards four important militant organizations. We apply a novel measurement strategy to mitigate social desirability bias and item non-response, which plagued previous surveys due to the sensitive nature of militancy. Our study reveals key patterns of support for militancy. First, Pakistanis exhibit negative affect toward all four militant organizations, with those from areas where groups have been most active disliking them the most. Second, personal religiosity does not predict support, although views about what constitutes jihad do. Third, wealthy Pakistanis and those who support core democratic rights are more supportive of militant organizations than others. Longstanding arguments tying support for violent political organizations to individuals' economic prospects or attitudes towards democracy-and the subsequent policy recommendations-may require substantial revision.

Jacob N. Shapiro is Assistant Professor of Politics and International Affairs at Princeton University. His primary research interests are the organizational aspects of terrorism, insurgency, and security policy. Shapiro’s ongoing projects study the causes of support for militancy in Islamic countries and the relationship between aid and political violence. His research has been published in International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Foreign Policy, Military Operations Research, and a number of edited volumes. Shapiro co-directs the Empirical Studies of Conflict Project. He is a member of the editorial board of World Politics, is a former Harmony Fellow at the Combating Terrorism Center at the United States Military Academy, and served in the U.S. Navy and Naval Reserve. Ph.D. Political Science, M.A. Economics, Stanford University. B.A. Political Science, University of Michigan.

Jon Krosnick received a B.A. degree in psychology from Harvard University and M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in social psychology from the University of Michigan.

Prior to joining the Stanford faculty in 2004, Dr. Krosnick was professor of psychology and political science at Ohio State University, where he was a member of the OSU Political Psychology Program and co-directed the OSU Summer Institute in Political Psychology.

He has taught courses on survey methodology around the world at universities, for corporations, and for government agencies, including at IBM, Pfizer, the National Opinion Research Center, RTI International, the White House Office of Management and Budget, Total Research Corporation, the American Society of Trial Consultants, the National Science Foundation, the U.S. General Accounting Office, the Office for National Statistics, London, UK, the London School of Economics and Political Science, the University of Amsterdam, the University of Johannesburg, the Australian Market and Social Research Society's Professional Development Program, and ZUMA (in Mannheim, Germany). He has provided expert testimony in court and has served as an on-air election-night television commentator.

Dr. Krosnick has served as a consultant to such organizations as Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, the CBS Office of Social Research, ABC News, the National Institutes of Health, Home Box Office, NASA, the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U.S. Government Accountability Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the National Cancer Institute, and Google.

From 2005 through 2009, he is Principal Investigator of the American National Election Studies.

Download pdf

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

Jacob N. Shapiro Assistant Professor of Politics and Public Affairs, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton Speaker
Jon Krosnick Frederic O. Glover Professor in Humanities & Social Sciences; Professor of Communication & Political Science; Senior Fellow at Woods Institute; Professor, by courtesy, of Psychology Speaker
Seminars

Deciding Not to Go Nuclear: The Swedish and Swiss Cases

-

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into six languages, most recently into Czech in 2008. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Matthias Englert is a postdoctoral fellow at CISAC. Before joining CISAC in 2009, he was a researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Group Science Technology and Security (IANUS) and a PhD student at the department of physics at Darmstadt University of Technology in Germany. 

His major research interests include nonproliferation, disarmament, arms control, nuclear postures and warheads, fissile material and production technologies, the civil use of nuclear power and its role in future energy scenarios and the possibility of nuclear terrorism.  His research during his stay at CISAC focuses primarily on the technology of gas centrifuges for uranium enrichment, the implications of their use for the nonproliferation regime, and on technical and political measures to manage proliferation risks.

Reuben W. Hills Conference Room

David Holloway

CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, E214
Stanford, CA 94305-6165

(650) 723-1737 (650) 723-0089
0
Senior Fellow Emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute of International Studies
Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History
0820stanford-davidholloway-238-edit.jpg PhD

David Holloway is the Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History, a professor of political science, and an FSI senior fellow. He was co-director of CISAC from 1991 to 1997, and director of FSI from 1998 to 2003. His research focuses on the international history of nuclear weapons, on science and technology in the Soviet Union, and on the relationship between international history and international relations theory. His book Stalin and the Bomb: The Soviet Union and Atomic Energy, 1939-1956 (Yale University Press, 1994) was chosen by the New York Times Book Review as one of the 11 best books of 1994, and it won the Vucinich and Shulman prizes of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies. It has been translated into seven languages, most recently into Chinese. The Chinese translation is due to be published later in 2018. Holloway also wrote The Soviet Union and the Arms Race (1983) and co-authored The Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative: Technical, Political and Arms Control Assessment (1984). He has contributed to the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Foreign Affairs, and other scholarly journals.

Since joining the Stanford faculty in 1986 -- first as a professor of political science and later (in 1996) as a professor of history as well -- Holloway has served as chair and co-chair of the International Relations Program (1989-1991), and as associate dean in the School of Humanities and Sciences (1997-1998). Before coming to Stanford, he taught at the University of Lancaster (1967-1970) and the University of Edinburgh (1970-1986). Born in Dublin, Ireland, he received his undergraduate degree in modern languages and literature, and his PhD in social and political sciences, both from Cambridge University.

Faculty member at the Center for International Security and Cooperation
Affiliated faculty at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law
Affiliated faculty at The Europe Center
CV
Hide publication sections
Off
Date Label
David Holloway Raymond A. Spruance Professor of International History and FSI Senior Fellow; CISAC Faculty Member; Forum on Contemporary Europe Research Affiliate; CDDRL Affiliated Faculty Speaker
Matthias Englert Postdoctoral Fellow, CISAC Commentator
Seminars

Reducing the nuclear threat: The argument for public safety

Authors
News Type
Commentary
Date
Paragraphs
In this op-ed, CISAC's Richard Rhodes argues that public health, a discipline that organizes science-based systems of surveillance and prevention, has been primarily responsible for controlling the effects of infectious disease. A similar campaign around public safety could help end the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons. Such a push would help create unity in common security and a fundamental transformation in relationships between nations, Rhodes argues.

Today, at the other end of the long trek down the glacier of the Cold War, the nuclear threat has seemingly calved off and fallen into the sea. In 2007, the Pew Research Center's Global Attitudes Project found that 12 countries rated the growing gap between rich and poor as the greatest danger to the world. HIV/AIDS led the list (or tied) in 16 countries, religious and ethnic hatred in another 12. Pollution was identified as the greatest menace in 19 countries, while substantial majorities in 25 countries thought global warming was a "very serious" problem. Only nine countries considered the spread of nuclear weapons to be the greatest danger to the world.

The response was very different among nuclear and national security experts when Indiana Republican Sen. Richard Lugar surveyed PDF them in 2005. This group of 85 experts judged that the possibility of a WMD attack against a city or other target somewhere in the world is real and increasing over time. The median estimate of the risk of a nuclear attack somewhere in the world by 2010 was 10 percent. The risk of an attack by 2015 doubled to 20 percent median. There was strong, though not universal, agreement that a nuclear attack is more likely to be carried out by a terrorist organization than by a government. The group was split 45 to 55 percent on whether terrorists were more likely to obtain an intact working nuclear weapon or manufacture one after obtaining weapon-grade nuclear material.

"The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction is not just a security problem," Lugar wrote in the report's introduction. "It is the economic dilemma and the moral challenge of the current age. On September 11, 2001, the world witnessed the destructive potential of international terrorism. But the September 11 attacks do not come close to approximating the destruction that would be unleashed by a nuclear weapon. Weapons of mass destruction have made it possible for a small nation, or even a sub-national group, to kill as many innocent people in a day as national armies killed in months of fighting during World War II.

"The bottom line is this," Lugar concluded: "For the foreseeable future, the United States and other nations will face an existential threat from the intersection of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction."

It's paradoxical that a diminished threat of a superpower nuclear exchange should somehow have resulted in a world where the danger of at least a single nuclear explosion in a major city has increased (and that city is as likely, or likelier, to be Moscow as it is to be Washington or New York). We tend to think that a terrorist nuclear attack would lead us to drive for the elimination of nuclear weapons. I think the opposite case is at least equally likely: A terrorist nuclear attack would almost certainly be followed by a retaliatory nuclear strike on whatever country we believed to be sheltering the perpetrators. That response would surely initiate a new round of nuclear armament and rearmament in the name of deterrence, however illogical. Think of how much 9/11 frightened us; think of how desperate our leaders were to prevent any further such attacks; think of the fact that we invaded and occupied a country, Iraq, that had nothing to do with those attacks in the name of sending a message.

Richard Butler, the former chairman of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons and the last chairman of UNSCOM, often makes the point that the problem with nuclear weapons is nuclear weapons. People don't always understand what he means. He means that it is the weapons themselves that are the problem, not the values of the entities that control them. U.S. nuclear weapons are just as potentially dangerous to the world as, say, North Korean nuclear weapons. More, I would say, since we have greater numbers of them and have not hesitated to brandish them--even to use them--when we thought it in our interest to do so.

That the problem with nuclear weapons is nuclear weapons may seem counterintuitive, but two centuries ago governments began to think that way about disease, with untold benefits to humanity as a result. Epidemic disease had been conceived in normative terms, as an act of God for which states bore no responsibility. The change that came when disease began to be conceived as a phenomenon of nature without a metaphysical superstructure, a public health problem, a problem for government and a measure of government's success, was revolutionary. More lives were saved, and spared, with public health measures in the twentieth century in the United States alone than were lost throughout the world in all of the twentieth century's wars.

As my Scottish friend Gil Elliot wrote in his seminal book Twentieth Century Book of the Dead, "[These lives] are not saved by accident or goodwill. Human life is daily deliberately protected from nature by accepted practices of hygiene and medical care, by the control of living conditions and the guidance of human relationships. Mortality statistics are constantly examined to see if the causes of death reveal any areas needing special attention. Because of the success of these practices, the area of public death has, in advanced societies, been taken over by man-made death--once an insignificant or 'merged' part of the spectrum, now almost the whole.

"When politicians, in tones of grave wonder, characterize our age as one of vast effort in saving human life, and enormous vigor in destroying it, they seem to feel they are indicating some mysterious paradox of the human spirit. There is no paradox and no mystery. The difference is that one area of public death has been tackled and secured by the forces of reason; the other has not. The pioneers of public health did not change nature, or men, but adjusted the active relationship of men to certain aspects of nature so that the relationship became one of watchful and healthy respect. In doing so they had to contend with and struggle against the suspicious opposition of those who believed that to interfere with nature was sinful, and even that disease and plague were the result of something sinful in the nature of man himself."

Elliot goes on to compare what he calls "public death," meaning biological death, death from disease, to man-made death: "[I do not wish] to claim mystical authority for the comparison I have made between two kinds of public death--that which results from disease and that which we call man-made. The irreducible virtue of the analogy is that the problem of man-made death, like that of disease, can be tackled only by reason. It contains the same elements as the problem of disease--the need to locate the sources of the pest, to devise preventive measures, and to maintain systematic vigilance in their execution. But it is a much wider problem, and for obvious reasons cannot be dealt with by scientific methods to the same extent as can disease."

To advance the cause of public health it was necessary to depoliticize disease, to remove it from the realm of value and install it in the realm of fact. Today we have advanced to the point where international cooperation toward the prevention, control, and even elimination of disease is possible among nations that hardly cooperate with each other in any other way. No one any longer considers disease a political issue, except to the extent that its control measures a nation's quality of life, and only modern primitives consider it a judgment of God.

In 1999, for the first time in human history, infectious diseases no longer ranked first among causes of death worldwide. Public health, a discipline which organizes science-based systems of surveillance and prevention, was primarily responsible for that millennial change in human mortality. One-half of all the increases in life expectancy in recorded history occurred within the twentieth century. Most of the worldwide increase was accomplished in the first half of the century, and it was almost entirely the result of public health measures directed to primary prevention. Better nutrition, sewage treatment, water purification, the pasteurization of milk, and the immunization of children extended human life--not surgeons cutting or doctors dispensing pills.

Public health is medicine's greatest success story and a powerful model for a parallel discipline, which I propose to call public safety.

Where nuclear weapons--the largest-scale instruments of man-made death--are concerned, the elements of that discipline of public safety have already begun to assemble themselves: materials control and accounting, cooperative threat reduction, security guarantees, agreements and treaties, surveillance and inspection, sanctions, forceful disarming if all else fails.

Reducing and finally eliminating the world's increasingly vestigial nuclear arsenals may be delayed by extremists of the right or the left, as progress was stalled during the George W. Bush administration by rigid Manichaean ideologues who imagined that there might be good nuclear powers and evil nuclear powers and sought to disarm only those they considered evil. Nuclear weapons operate beyond good and evil. They destroy without discrimination or mercy: Whether one lives or dies in their operation is entirely a question of distance from ground zero. In Elliot's eloquent words, they create nations of the dead, and collectively have the capacity to create a world of the dead. But as Niels Bohr, the great Danish physicist and philosopher, was the first to realize, the complement of that utter destructiveness must then be unity in common security, just as it was with smallpox, a fundamental transformation in relationships between nations, nondiscrimination in unity not on the dark side but by the light of day.

Violence originates in vulnerability brutalized: It is vulnerability's corruption, but also its revenge. "Perhaps everything terrible," the poet Rainer Maria Rilke once wrote, "is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us." As we extend our commitment to common security, as we work to master man-made death, we will need to recognize that terrible helplessness and relieve it--in others, but also in ourselves.

All News button
1
Subscribe to Terrorism