Risk can be thought of as the product of consequence times probability. No one can assign a number to the probability, for example, that a terrorist gang will acquire a nuclear weapon, although experts think the probability is considerably greater today than at any previous time. We do know, however, that the consequences of a nuclear explosion in any major population center would be catastrophic. The inescapable conclusion is that the global community is facing a very serious risk. What I want to discuss with you today is what is being done to deal with it and what still needs to be done.

The renewed American debate over ballistic missile defenses (BMD) echoes loudly in NATO, in Europe, and in France. This issue will be decisive for the future of European political organization and its security and defense. The issue will also be important for the future of relations between Europe, the United States, and Russia.

Faced with the potential threat of ballistic missiles equipped with nuclear warheads (or biological and chemical payloads) that could strike French and European territories, deterrence is sufficient and offers the greatest cost-effectiveness. In this analysis, the question of the broadening of the French and British deterrent and the political organization of a possible European anti-missile defense system will be discussed. Then, a new transatlantic strategic partnership, the robustness of which lies in counterbalancing the vulnerabilities of its members, will be described.

A new conventional wisdom is emerging among analysts, journalists, and even some government officials in the West who see former Security Council chairman Alexander Lebed as the last great hope for Russian reform. No one doubts that if free and fair elections were held in the immediate future, Lebed would be the obvious front runner. What is troubling, however, is how Lebed's front-runner status in the polls and opposition stance against the current regime has translated into rather uncritical thinking about what his election might mean for the future of Russian markets and Russian democracy.

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Transcript of the first in a series of lectures on  "The U.S.-Russian Strategic Partnership: Premature or Overdue?"

This discussion focused on what Russia and the United States might do to dismantle the nuclear weapons legacy of the Cold War.  Tens of thousands of nuclear bombs and warheads are still held by the two nations.  Wat can be done to rid the world of these weapons?  Can we move beyond START II, and indeed, will the Russian Duma ratify START II? Russia and the United States have the capacity to lead the world into a post-nuclear war era.  The question for today is, will they?

Participants:

AMBASSADOR JAMES E. GOODBY, Distinguished Payne Professor, IIS

Principal Negotiator and Special Representative of the President

for Nuclear Security and Dismantlement, 1995-1996

MR. ALEXANDER YERESKOVSKY

Minister-Counselor, Russian Embassy in the United States

DR. NIKOLAI SOKOV

Fellow, Monterey Institute of International Studies

DR. JOHN STEINBRUNER

Senior Fellow and holder of the Sydney Stein, Jr. Chair in International Security

at the Brookings Institution, Washington, D.C.

The historical facts of Russian politics over the last year appear to point to tremendous progress in making a democracy. There are milestones well worth noting in 1996, especially when compared to other periods: the upheavals of the early years of the new Russian state, the seventy years of totalitarian rule under the Communists, and the hundreds of years of autocratic government under the tsars.

Reading the collected works of Alexander Dallin bears little distinction from reviewing the entire history of the Soviet Union. Few authors have written so widely and crossed so many disciplinary boundaries. Categories such as "historian" versus "political scientist" or expert on "domestic" versus "foreign" policy offer little analytic power in describing Alexander Dallin and his work. In the wake of the Soviet collapse, however, the perspective from which we approach this body of work has suddenly changed. Writing on the eve of the disintegration of the USSR, Alexander Dallin and Gail Lapidus wrote in their introduction to The Soviet System in Crisis that "The changes in Soviet politics and foreign policy precipitated by Gorbachev's leadership challenged the prevailing academic paradigms and the conventional wisdom regarding the Soviet system."

This essay surveys and seeks to explain the (re-)emergence and enforcement of international minority-rights standards in Europe after the Cold War.  The period since 1989 has seen a marked divergence between strengthening minority-rights standards at the international level and worsening conflict and repression in many states in the region.  Enforcement efforts by the CSCE/OSCE, Council of Europe, and European Union have been modest and are focused on states integrating economically and militarily into Western Europe.

How will civil-military relations affect efforts to consolidate new democracies in developing and postcommunist countries? How should democratic governments go about establishing civilian control of the armed forces? This volume brings together ten distinguished authorities from around the world to examine these questions as they relate to Latin America, Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe, and the former Soviet Union.

No matter the outcome of Boris Yeltsin's coming heart surgery, uncertainty about his ability to serve out his second term has jump-started planning and plotting to succeed him. On Saturday, his security adviser, Aleksandr Lebed, called for the President to step down until he has recovered.

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Reprinted as "Pre-election Maneuvers for a Yeltsin Succession," in International Herald Tribune, October 2, 1996; and "What Crisis?" in Hoover Digest, No. 1 (1997), pp.78-80.

The first Russian privatization program represented the largest and fastest property reform ever undertaken in the modern world. This article, however, is not concerned with the quantity and speed of Russia's privatization program, but rather with the kind of privatization that occurred in the first round. Drawing on theories of path dependency, this article argues that the institutional legacy regarding property rights in the Soviet era influenced the course of privatization in post-Soviet Russia. Using a principal-agent model to illuminate the distribution of property rights in the Soviet era, this article first delineates the bundle of property rights that enterprise directors assumed during the Soviet period. The article then traces how these directors sought to protect their property rights during the Russian government's privatization program. To test this explanation, the article then analyses some empirical data from the first round of privatization, first in a discussion of the quantitative results of Russia's first privatization program, and second in a qualitative comparison of four case studies of privatization.