Please join Marvin Kalb to discuss the impact of the Vietnam War on presidential/strategic decisions about national security issues. 

Marvin Kalb is also a contributing news analyst for National Public Radio and Fox News Channel. In addition, he is frequently called upon to comment on major issues of the day by many of the nation's other leading news organizations.

Kalb had a distinguished 30-year broadcast career, working for both CBS News and NBC News, where he served as Chief Diplomatic Correspondent, Moscow Bureau Chief, and moderator of Meet the Press. Among his many honors are two Peabody Awards, the DuPont Prize from Columbia University, the 2006 Fourth Estate Award from the National Press Club and more than a half-dozen Overseas Press Club awards. He has lectured at many universities, here and abroad. Kalb was the founding director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

A graduate of the City College of New York, Kalb has an M.A. from Harvard and was zeroing in on his Ph.D. in Russian history when he left Cambridge in 1956 for a Moscow assignment with the State Department. The following year, he joined CBS News, the last correspondent hired by Edward R. Murrow. Kalb has authored or co-authored 10 nonfiction books and two best-selling novels. His latest book, The Media and the War on Terrorism (co-edited with Stephen Hess), was the recipient of the 2004 Arthur Rowse Award for Press Criticism. He is currently engaged in research for a book on U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War and its impact on American politics and foreign policy.

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.

Steve Coll is president of New America Foundation, and a staff writer at The New Yorker magazine. Previously he spent 20 years as a foreign correspondent and senior editor at The Washington Post, serving as the paper's managing editor from 1998 to 2004. He is the author of six books, including The Deal of the Century: The Break Up of AT&T (1986); The Taking of Getty Oil (1987); Eagle on the Street, based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the SEC's battle with Wall Street (with David A. Vise, 1991); On the Grand Trunk Road: A Journey into South Asia (1994), Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, from the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (2004); and The Bin Ladens: An Arabian Family in the American Century (2008).

Mr. Coll's professional awards include two Pulitzer Prizes. He won the first of these, for explanatory journalism, in 1990, for his series, with David A. Vise, about the SEC. His second was awarded in 2005, for his book, Ghost Wars, which also won the Council on Foreign Relations' Arthur Ross award; the Overseas Press Club award and the Lionel Gelber Prize for the best book published on international affairs during 2004. Other awards include the 1992 Livingston Award for outstanding foreign reporting; the 2000 Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for his coverage of the civil war in Sierra Leone; and a second Overseas Press Club Award for international magazine writing. Mr. Coll graduated Phi Beta Kappa, Cum Laude, from Occidental College in 1980 with a degree in English and history. He lives in Washington, D.C.

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.

Co-sponsored by the Mediterranean Studies Forum

Taking a contemporary policy-focused approach, this presentation will focus on the changes in Turkey's neighborhood and the concomitant transformation of Turkey's foreign policy since the demise of the Soviet Union and the beginning of the competition for the energy resources in the Caspian region. How and under which conditions can Turkey's transatlantic obligations, EU membership objectives, and regional aspirations can be reconciled?

Ahmet Evin is Professor of Political Science and the founding dean of Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at Sabanci University (Istanbul, Turkey). He received his Ph.D. in Middle East Studies and Cultural History from Columbia University. He has taught at New York University, Harvard University, Hacettepe University, University of Pennsylvania, University of Hamburg, Bilkent University and Sabanci University. His research interests include theories of the State and elites; Turkish political development; and democracy and civil society. Prof. Evin currently works on current foreign policy issues related to the European enlargement, its significance for Turkey and the region as well as its effect on Transatlantic relations. Prof. Evin has initiated, with the European Commission's support, a policy dialogue on the future European architecture, EU's eastward expansion, its Mediterranean policy, and the customs union agreement with Turkey. Among his publications are "Turkish foreign policy: limits of engagement" (New Perspectives on Turkey, 2009), "The Future of Greek-Turkish relations" (Journal of Southeast European & Black Sea Studies, 2005), Towards Accession Negotiations: Turkey's Domestic and Foreign Policy Challenges Ahead (2004), Politics in the Third Turkish Republic (1998), State Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s (1988), Origins and Development of the Turkish Novel (1984), and Modern Turkish Architecture(1984).