Ten years ago, on January 25, 1995, Russian early-warning radars detected a scientific rocket launched from Norway. Details of what followed have never been officially disclosed, but the detection apparently generated an alarm that made its way to the Russian political leadership. The nuclear forces' command-and-control system worked exactly as it was supposed to, stopping the alert without launching an attack, but the accident vividly demonstrated the dangers inherent in the launchon-warning posture of nuclear forces.

The Soviet Union and the United States are the only nuclear states to have implemented launch-on-warning, a combination of early-warning systems to detect a missile attack and command-and-control systems that can launch a retaliatory strike while the aggressor's missiles are in flight. The United States and Russia have preserved this capability as an option for using their strategic nuclear weapons.

The dangers of this rapid-response nuclear posture are widely recognized, but the United States and Russia have nevertheless failed to address this issue. Reducing the level of readiness, known as de-alerting, has not come to the forefront of the U.S.-Russian agenda. One of the reasons for this is their reluctance to enter into new arms control agreements, which are thought to be necessary for a coordinated action in this area. Careful examination of the arguments for de-alerting, though, suggests that there are a number of steps that the United States and Russia could and should take unilaterally.

Discussion of launch-on-warning dangers usually concentrates on the decline of Russian early-warning and command-and-control systems. As a result, most de-alerting measures proposed on the U.S. side are seen primarily as a way to create incentives for Russia to reciprocate. But this perspective overestimates Russia's reliance on the launch-on-warning posture and underestimates the dangers associated with that of the United States.

History shows that the Soviet strategic forces could never rely on radars and satellites to get a timely and accurate assessment of an incoming attack. As a result, the Soviet military never displayed high enough confidence in its early-warning system to make a launch decision based solely on the information provided by the early-warning system.

The United States, on the other hand, built a highly capable and sophisticated earlywarning system. It provides global coverage and very high probability of detection of a missile launch, which allows the United States to have a very high degree of confidence in the system. Paradoxically, this confidence potentially makes a catastrophic technical malfunction more dangerous than in the Russian case, since operators might be less likely to question the data provided by the system.

Although it is difficult to quantify the two systems' vulnerability to a possible technical malfunction, the less sophisticated Russian system does not necessarily pose a substantially greater risk of a catastrophic accident than its U.S. counterpart. This means that efforts to reduce the readiness level of the U.S. forces would bring benefits regardless of reciprocity.

Concerns about the deterioration of the Russian early-warning system are well founded. With the breakup of the Soviet Union most radars were left outside of the Russian territory, and many are not operational. The system's space-based tier is hardly better off. Russia is currently operating only three early-warning satellites, while a complete constellation would require ten satellites. Russia would need at least five satellites to provide minimum coverage of the U.S. territory.

Although the Russian system's decline is indeed serious, it does not necessarily increase the dangers associated with launch-on-warning. A loss of early-warning capability would pose a dire risk only if it were sudden and unexpected or discovered at the time of an attack. But this is not the case in Russia, where deterioration of the early-warning network has been gradual and well understood.

Since the early-warning system is an essential element of a launch-on-warning posture, it is understandable that a number of proposals that aim at reducing the risks of accidental launch suggest helping Russia to repair or upgrade its system. Instead of reducing the risk, however, upgrades would most likely increase risk by introducing new elements into the already complex system and increasing confidence in its performance.

Instead of trying to help Russia repair its early-warning system, efforts should be directed at helping Russia change the command-and-control procedures to accommodate the loss of early-warning capability. These changes would almost certainly result in a shift away from the launch-on-warning posture, reducing the risk of an accidental launch.

Trust And Do Not Verify

One reason de-alerting measures have not yet been implemented is that most of them are thought to require intrusive verification procedures. Indeed, measures like removal of nuclear warheads from missiles or limiting strategic submarine patrol areas, proposed by many, would be very difficult to implement in a transparent and verifiable manner.

Transparency, however, is not required to achieve the main goal of de-alerting-reduction of the risk associated with the launch-on-warning postures. The benefits of de-alerting do not depend on the ability to verify them. For example, submarines that are out of range of their targets cannot take part in a launch-on-warning strike regardless of whether the other side is able to verify their locations. Of course, without verification the opponent would have to assume that these submarines are in full readiness, but there is nothing wrong with that as long as we do not consider de-alerting a substitute for disarmament.

In fact, transparency makes de-alerting not only harder to implement but potentially dangerous. If measures that reduce the readiness level are visible and verifiable, an attempt to bring missiles back into operation could create instability in a crisis situation, when countries could find themselves in a rush to re-alert their forces. The dangers associated with this kind of instability could well outweigh any benefits of de-alerting.

Ideally, de-alerting measures should be designed in a way that would make them undetectable. That way, each side could reap the benefits-missiles not being available for launch-on-warning-while avoiding the instabilities associated with re-alerting.

Unilateral Solutions

The greatest challenge to de-alerting is not devising technical proposals but finding ways to convince the United States and Russia to implement them. This would be very difficult, for the United States and Russia have grown wary recently of negotiated agreements that would impose limits on their strategic forces. However, de-alerting seems ideally suited for unilateral non-binding declarations that might work now.

Russia and the United States could begin with a public commitment to de-alert a portion of their strategic arsenals. Of course, there will be plenty of questions about the value of a commitment that is neither enforceable nor verifiable. But this value would be quite real if both sides follow through and change their practices and procedures to exclude at least part of their forces from the launch-on-warning arrangements. The risk of a catastrophic accident will be reduced and these practices could then be extended to the whole force, further reducing the risk.

Making practical steps toward reducing the danger of accidental launch will not be easy. But de-alerting is one of those few arms control issues that still enjoy fairly strong political and public support. This support certainly creates an opportunity for action.

Coit D. Blacker, director of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University, recently named Professor Michael McFaul as the new director of the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law (CDDRL). McFaul, a reknowned specialist on the former Soviet Union, is currently associate professor of political science at Stanford as well as the Peter and Helen Bing Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution. He is also an alumnus of Stanford University.

In appointing McFaul to lead CDDRL, Blacker expressed his confidence that the center will continue to establish itself as one of the leading research units in the United States devoted to exploring the interactions between the establishment of democracies, promoting development, and the rule of law. The center's previous director was Stephen D. Krasner, who took Ppublic service leave from Stanford in the winter of 2004 to serve as the director for policy planning at the U.S. Department of State.

Before joining the Stanford faculty in 1995, McFaul worked for two years as a senior associate for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in residence at the Moscow Carnegie Center. McFaul is also a research associate at the Center for International Security and Arms Control (CISAC) and a senior adviser to the National Democratic Institute. He serves on the board of directors of the Eurasia Foundation, Firebird Fund, International Forum for Democratic Studies of the National Endowment for Democracy, Institute of Social and Political Studies, Center for Civil Society International, and Institute for Corporate Governance and Law; the steering committee for the Europe and Eurasia division of Human Rights Watch; and the editorial boards of Current History, Journal of Democracy, Demokratizatsiya, and Perspectives on European Politics and Society. He has served as a consultant for numerous companies and government agencies.

McFaul's current research interests include democratization in the post-communist world and Iran, U.S.-Russian relations, and American efforts at promoting democracy abroad. With Abbas Milani and Larry Diamond, he codirects the Hoover project on Iran.

McFaul is the author and editor of several monographs including one with Kathryn Stoner-Weiss, After the Collapse of Communism: Comparative Lessons of Transitions (Cambridge University Press, 2004). With Nikolai Petrov and Andrei Ryabov, Between Dictatorship and Democracy: Russian Post-Communist Political Reform (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004); with James Goldgeier, Power and Purpose: American Policy toward Russia after the Cold War (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); with Timothy Colton, Popular Choice and Managed Democracy: The Russian Elections of 1999 and 2000 (Brookings Institution Press, 2003); Russia's Unfinished Revolution: Political Change from Gorbachev to Putin (Cornell University Press, 2001); Russia's 1996 Presidential Election: The End of Bi-Polar Politics, (Hoover Institution Press, 1997); with Tova Perlmutter, Privatization, Conversion and Enterprise Reform in Russia (Westview Press, 1995); Post-Communist Politics: Democratic Prospects in Russia and Eastern Europe (CSIS, 1993); and, with Sergei Markov, The Troubled Birth of Russian Democracy: Political Parties, Programs and Profiles (Hoover Institution Press, 1993). His articles have appeared in Constitutional Political Economy, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, International Organization, International Security, Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, Post-Soviet Affairs, and World Politics.

McFaul also comments on current Russian and U.S.-Russian affairs, including articles in the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, Moscow Times, New Republic, New York Times, San Jose Mercury News, Washington Post, Washington Times, and the Weekly Standard, as well as television appearances on ABC, BBC, CBS, CNN, Fox News, NBC, and PBS. During the 1995 parliamentary elections in Russia, he worked as senior consultant and commentator for CBS News. During the 1996 presidential election, 1999 parliamentary election, and 2000 presidential election in Russia, he served as a commentator and adviser for CNN. While in Moscow in 1994-95, he also coproduced and appeared in his own television program on democracy for the Russian Television Network (RTR).

McFaul was born and raised in Montana. He received his BA in international relations and Slavic languages and his MA in Slavic and East European Studies from Stanford University in 1986. He was awarded a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford where he completed his PhD in international relations in 1991.

Siegfried S. Hecker, a senior fellow and emeritus director of Los Alamos National Laboratory, will join CISAC as a visiting professor in 2005-2006. He will teach undergraduates and pursue research and policy advising on nuclear proliferation and the security of nuclear weapons stockpiles.

As the Los Alamos director, Hecker advised the U.S. Congress on nuclear security challenges created by the Soviet Union's dissolution. He worked with Russian counterparts to consolidate nuclear weapons from four former Soviet states and to implement new security measures agreed to under the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction program.

"Russia is the key link to fighting nuclear proliferation," Hecker said. He continues to advise Congress members and staff and to work closely with the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy on several cooperative threat reduction programs.

On his arrival this fall, Hecker will be one of two former national lab directors at CISAC. Emeritus Professor Michael M. May formerly directed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Science magazine announced Hecker's CISAC appointment in its Aug. 5 issue.

In May, North Korean leaders hinted to visiting U.S scholar John W. Lewis that they're willing to resume negotiations with the United States on nuclear arms. But if those talks are revived, North Korea wants to focus on mutual steps toward a denuclearized Korean peninsula. The Bush administration has said repeatedly it doesn't want to depart from six-way nuclear talks. (Mike Shuster's full report on NPR's Morning Edition is linked below.)

Daniel Sneider writes, "There is a small crack in the otherwise closed door between the United States and North Korea. That is part of the message Stanford Professor John W. Lewis, an expert on Northeast Asian security issues, brought back this past week from a visit to China and North Korea." (Sneider's column, "Window is closing for U.S. in N. Korean nuclear talks," is linked below.)

On May 18 a roundtable organized jointly by CDDRL and CREEES and chaired by SIIS Senior Fellow Gail W. Lapidus brought together visiting scholars Temuri Yakobashvili from Georgia, Volodymyr Kulyk from Ukraine, Uladzimir Rouda from Belarus, and Wall Street Journal reporter Steve LeVine to examine the dramatic wave of democratic revolutions and protest movements which have transformed the geopolitics of the post-Soviet region over the past 2 years.

The participants argued that although the "Rose Revolution"in Georgia in October 2003, the Ukrainian "Orange Revolution" of November-December 2004, and the more recent regime change in Kyrgyzstan were all precipitated by popular protest against fraudulent elections, they expressed a deeper dissatisfaction with the widespread corruption and failures of the three governments, combined with the emergence of an increasingly mature and organized political opposition. While international organizations and actors played a supportive role in delegitimizing electoral fraud and nurturing civil society, domestic factors were the decisive ones in bringing about peaceful regime change.

The panelists also concurred that the "easy"revolts were now over. They predicted that future upheavals in the region were inevitable, but were far less likely to go smoothly. In Belarus, although popular hostility to a tyrannical political regime is growing, inspired by the successful example of neighboring Ukraine and the attraction of Europe, the absence of a united and organized opposition remains a major barrier. In Uzbekistan, the repressive regime of President Karimov has demonstrated its willingness to resort to violence to put down opposition, and to forestall international criticism by stigmatizing opponents as Islamist terrorists.