FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. David Lobell, a senior fellow at FSI and a recipient of a MacArthur “genius” grant, has looked at the impacts of increasing wheat and corn crops in Africa, South Asia, Mexico and the United States; and has studied the effects of extreme heat on the world’s staple crops.
Rodney Ewing was elected to the National Academy of Engineering this week.
Ewing, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation, was recognized for his research on “the long-term behavior of complex ceramic materials to assess their suitability for engineered nuclear waste sequestration.” He is a professor of geological sciences at Stanford.
Membership in the academy is one of the highest academic distinctions in the field of engineering. It honors outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to engineering literature” and “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education," according to the NAE.
The academy also honored two other Stanford professors: Andrea Goldsmith, professor of engineering, and Leonidas Guibas, professor of computer science. The three Stanford scholars among 84 new members joining NAE this year. In total, the academy has 2,281 members including 249 foreign members. The newly elected class will be formally inducted during a ceremony at the academy's annual meeting in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 8, 2017.
Click here to read a Stanford News Service story on the selections of Ewing and his colleagues to the National Academy of Engineering.
On February 23, 1992, less than two months after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, I landed on the tarmac in Sarov, a city the government had removed from maps to keep secret its status as a nuclear weapons center. I was then director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and accompanied by two senior scientists from my own lab plus three colleagues from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. The six of us were about to walk through the birthplace of the Soviet nuclear bomb, the technological and intellectual powerhouse behind the sophisticated arsenal that had been pointed at our country for the previous 40 years.
Shockingly, after an hour-long flight from Moscow, we stepped out of the Aeroflot turboprop into the open arms of our Russian hosts: Yuli Borisovich Khariton, the scientific leader of the Soviet nuclear program, and other senior lab staff who had waited in the chilly wind to welcome us. Just as remarkable was the fact that this wasn’t the first time we met our Russian counterparts. Two weeks earlier, directors of the Russian nuclear weapons labs, VNIIEF in Sarov and VNIITF in Snezhinsk, had for the first time in history set foot in our labs in Livermore and Los Alamos. This exchange of visits a quarter century ago marked a new turn in relations between the world’s two nuclear weapons superpowers.
The road to Sarov
Our first meeting on Russian soil would have been deemed improbable just a few months earlier. The encounter on the Sarov tarmac grew out of both persistence by determined individuals and larger historical forces. As the Soviet Union scrambled to adjust domestic and international policy in the face of mounting economic and social challenges in the late 1980s, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev reached across the political divide to US President Ronald Reagan to take steps toward nuclear disarmament. One such step was the Joint Verification Experiment of 1988, in which the Soviet Union and the United States asked their nuclear weapons scientists to conduct parallel nuclear-explosion yield measurements at testing grounds in Nevada and Semipalatinsk, located in what is now Kazakhstan. The experiment helped overcome a stumbling block related to verification procedures needed to ratify the 1974 Threshold Test Ban Treaty (TTBT). The 1988 nuclear tests enabled the two sides to sign a new ratification protocol in Geneva in June 1990, and the TTBT entered into force in December 1990.
As history would have it, an unintended outcome of the TTBT ratification effort proved to be the most momentous. Viktor Mikhailov, head of the Soviet team that took part in the Joint Verification Experiment and later Russian minister of atomic energy, was right when he said that “the main result of the Joint Verification Experiment was not the development of procedures and extent of nuclear test monitoring of the joint development of technical verification means, but the chance for interpersonal communications with the American nuclear physicists.”
Indeed, it was working side by side at each other’s test sites that gave rise to deep-rooted affinity and built trust. Over the years, we had only caught glimpses of our Soviet nuclear scientist counterparts at a few international conferences where they disguised their institutional affiliations, saying they were part of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. It was through months of collaboration at our test sites that the contours of their true home institutions—the nuclear weapons labs VNIIEF and VNIITF—began to emerge. As we would discover eventually, these Soviet labs were remarkably similar to our own. We realized that in addition to nuclear weapons work, they were conducting outstanding fundamental science. We became consumed with curiosity to learn more about it first-hand. The Russians were curious about our work as well.
We were all interested in cooperation, but the Russians even more so because they sensed before we did just how dramatically the Soviet Union was changing. Lev D. Ryabev, who headed the atomic ministry at the time, told me years later that Russian nuclear weapons scientists were so eager to work with their American counterparts because “we arrived in the nuclear century all in one boat—movement by any one will affect everyone. We were doomed to work together.”
It was during a 1990 trip to Moscow by Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore lab scientists for technical discussions supporting the Geneva test ban talks that Mikhailov extended an impromptu invitation to visit the USSR’s secret nuclear city Sarov (then called Arzamas-16) for the first time.
The American scientists returned with specific proposals from the VNIIEF director and his senior scientists for collaboration with the US labs, along with an invitation to Lawrence Livermore Director John Nuckolls and me to visit the secret Russian cities.
Convinced by my Los Alamos colleagues that this was a great opportunity to collaborate scientifically in important areas of research, I tried a number of avenues in Washington to get approval for exploring potential cooperation. I got little traction until the second half of 1991, after the Soviet Union had begun to disintegrate. As it did so, President George H.W. Bush became concerned that brain drain from the Soviet nuclear complex could lead to the spread of knowledge about how to build these weapons of mass destruction.
Driven by that concern, US Energy Secretary James D. Watkins approved my request for the laboratory directors’ exchange visits, and two months after Gorbachev’s formal dissolution of the Soviet Union on December 25, 1991, we entered the surreal world of the Soviet Los Alamos.
A tradition worth sustaining
Our visits to Sarov and Snezhinsk shattered our Cold War preconceptions of the Soviet nuclear program. We were particularly impressed by the depth of scientific talent. Although they lacked modern computers and electronics, their computational achievements were remarkable, and their experimental facilities were innovative and functional. We found the scientists’ dedication to their mission deeply patriotic, and their attention to nuclear weapons safety reassuring. During our briefings and tours, Russian scientists described leading-edge research in the fundamental science that underpinned their nuclear weapons program. The visits convinced me that our US nuclear labs should collaborate with their Russian counterparts, not only to help solve immediate problems like proliferation and loose nukes, but also because in doing so we would benefit scientifically.
Our Russian colleagues were prepared with proposals for cooperation in a surprisingly broad range of areas. During a daylong session in Chief Weapon Designer Boris Litvinov’s office in Snezhinsk, watched by portraits of Lenin and Igor Kurchatov, one of the fathers of the Soviet Bomb, we hammered out a protocol for cooperation that we would take back to our governments. We came up with a long list problems we wanted to work on together. It included enhancing the security and safety of nuclear weapons during reduction and dismantlement; preventing the proliferation of nuclear weapons knowledge; promoting the conversion and diversification of nuclear facilities; preventing non-nuclear states and terrorists from obtaining nuclear weapons; developing joint mechanisms for emergency response; enhancing the safety of nuclear arsenals; preventing unauthorized use of remaining weapons; and promoting protection and cleanup of the environment at nuclear weapons facilities.
It turned out that we scientists were far ahead of what the US government was prepared to authorize at the time. We heard that when members of the National Security Council staff, which coordinated interagency government issues with Russia, received a copy of the protocol, they declared it did not exist and threw it in the waste paper basket. However, Nuckolls and I presented the protocol to Watkins and received approval to proceed, though only in fundamental science cooperation.
By May 1992, even though the US Energy and State Departments had only agreed to general principles, the former had provided us with the necessary financial support and the latter with the required permissions for travel to Russia. Just as importantly, we had defined what we wanted to do first in the collaboration we called lab-to-lab. We planned for joint experiments in high-energy-density physics and conferences on computer modeling and simulation.
In spite of the initial US government concerns, we would eventually end up cooperating in almost all the areas outlined in the initial protocol. A spirit of collaboration prevailed for nearly a quarter century, and was essential to successfully mitigating the dangers resulting from the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Unfortunately, that cooperation has all but come to an end during the past few years as relations between Moscow and Washington have soured. But the benefits of future cooperation are potentially enormous, as a new report from the Nuclear Threat Initiative makes clear. The US and Russian governments, as well as the two countries’ scientists, should seize any opportunities that arise to rekindle nuclear cooperation.
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This picture shows the 1992 visit of U.S. nuclear weapon labs directors to the Russian nuclear weapons institutes in Sarov and Snezhinsk. On the left, in a white sweater is the Russian physicist Alexander Pavlovsky. Next to him is "Russia’s Oppenheimer" Yuly Khariton, almost 88 at that time. The second and third persons on the right are Sig Hecker, director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, and John Nuckolls, director of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
The Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), in pursuit of training the next generation of scholars on contemporary Asia, has selected two postdoctoral fellows for the 2017-18 academic year. The fellows will begin their year of academic study and research at Stanford this fall.
Shorenstein APARC has for more than a decade sponsored numerous junior scholars who come to the university to work closely with Stanford faculty, develop their dissertations for publication, participate in workshops and seminars, and present their research to the broader community.
The 2017-18 cohort includes two Shorenstein Postdoctoral Fellows; they carry a broad range of interests from labor migration policy in China to regional institutions in East Asia. Their bios and research plans are listed below:
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H. Seung Cho is completing his doctorate at Columbia University’s Department of Political Science. He researches U.S. and Chinese foreign policy toward East Asia’s regional institutions with a broader interest in U.S.-China relations, the political economy of East Asia and qualitative research methods. His dissertation probes the popular narrative that United States and China are competing over East Asia’s regional architecture, arguing that mutual misperception and security dilemma dynamics also play out in the politics of regional institution building. To explore this phenomenon, Seung has conducted extensive fieldwork in Beijing, Jakarta, Seoul and Washington, D.C. At Shorenstein APARC, Seung will be developing his dissertation into a book manuscript while looking to further examine the relationship between the politics of East Asia’s multilateral security institutions and their perceived lack of effectiveness. Previously, Seung was a predoctoral fellow at Peking University’s School of International Studies from 2014-16. Prior to starting his doctoral studies, he also served in South Korean military intelligence as part of the two-year national service. Seung holds a Bachelor of Science in government and economics and Master of Science in international relations from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE).
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Samantha Vortherms is a doctoral candidate in the University of Wisconsin – Madison Department of Political Science. Her research focuses on comparative political economy, development, social welfare and research methodology. Her dissertation examines subnational variation in access to citizenship rights in China through the household registration system. Her research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Department of Education through the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad and the Social Science Research Council's Dissertation Proposal Development Fellowship, among others. At Shorenstein APARC, Sam will work on converting her dissertation to a book manuscript and advance her post-dissertation project on the role of the firm in labor migration policies. Before going to Wisconsin, Sam received her Master of Arts in international relations at the University of Chicago, Artium Magister in public policy from University of Chicago's Harris School of Public Policy, and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Richmond. From 2014-16, she was a visiting research fellow at the National School of Development's China Center for Health Economics Research at Peking University.
Stanford University has expressed its views on the recent executive order on immigration, and is offering resources for students who could be affected. News accounts indicate that as many as 17,000 students across the country fall into this category. On Jan. 27, President Trump signed an executive order restricting travel to the United States of people from seven largely Muslim countries -- Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen.
Amy Zegart, co-director of the Center for International Security and Cooperation, said CISAC's "mission is generating knowledge to build a safer world. We bring scholars, ideas from everywhere. And always will."
Looking ahead, Stanford is planning campus events and initiatives on this issue. Some information already to note:
• Stanford launched a new website on immigration issues for students and scholars. This includes centralized campus information about international travel guidance and other information. Stanford will continue to add content to this site.
• A letter to the campus community from Stanford president Marc Tessier-Lavigne, provost John Etchemendy, and incoming provost Persis Drell affirming the university's support for international students. "As events unfold, the university intends to continue vigorously advocating before Congress, the Executive Branch, and beyond for policies consistent with its commitment to members of our community who are international, undocumented and those who are impacted by the recent executive order."
• A letter to the White House by Tessier-Lavigne and 47 other higher education leaders describing the impact the travel ban will have on students and scholars from those seven countries. "We write as presidents of leading American colleges and universities to urge you to rectify or rescind the recent executive order closing our country’s borders to immigrants and others from seven majority-Muslim countries and to refugees from throughout the world. If left in place, the order threatens both American higher education and the defining principles of our country."
• The Bechtel International Center remains an ongoing resource for international students and scholars at Stanford who have questions or concerns. Vaden Health Center’s Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS) is collaborating with the Bechtel International Center and with the Markaz Resource Center. They will offer special drop-in hours for the next six Friday afternoons for students and scholars. Both student and scholar advisors will be present to offer guidance. Here is the schuedule:
Location: Bechtel International Center
Time: 2-4 p.m.
When: Feb. 10, in the Assembly Room; Feb. 17, in the Assembly Room; Feb. 24, in the Conference Room; March 3, in the Conference Room; March 10, in the Assembly Room; and March 17, in the Assembly Room.
• A statement by Stanford regarding its principles of immigration. "As an academic institution and as a community, Stanford welcomes and embraces students and scholars from around the world who contribute immeasurably to our mission of education and discovery."
• A Q&A with Stanford law professors Jayashri Srikantiah and Shirin Sinnar discussing the implications of the travel ban.
Syria's civil war has taken a devastating toll on children.
Stanford freshman Emma Abdullah puts a young human face on that tragedy with her book, The Blue Box, which details the plights of Syrian children during the country’s six-year civil war. Published in 2014, the work is a collection of short stories and poems, and all proceeds go to charity. Abdullah estimates she’s raised $80,000 for the cause. Abdullah, who was raised in Kuwait, has relatives and friends from her father’s side of the family in Syria who have died or gone missing.
As many as 470,000 people and 10,000 children have been killed in the war, according to published accounts and the United Nations.
“My goal is to raise awareness about what these children are going through,” said Abdullah, who spoke at a recent staff meeting at Stanford's Center for International Security and Cooperation. “It’s important for me to bring this situation to light.”
She’s found receptive minds among her fellow classmates, though many of them were not aware of the scope of horror in Syria. “Other students have been good, and people are willing to listen once you talk to them about it. It’s been very positive at Stanford, and there is a lot to do on campus.”
Her 86-page book includes a child who writes stories about people in Syria. “She feeds the box with her thoughts; she puts in everything she has. She doesn't know it but her box becomes powerful. It takes up every word, every smile and every heartbeat and slowly, quietly, it grows. It grows into something so much bigger and more profound than she is. She’s just a child. She’s just a child who promised she’d save another but who doesn't know how. But one day, she looks at her box and she understands,” writes Abdullah, who will major in political science.
'It's a sad picture'
The Syrian civil war began in March 2011; the politics involved were not understandable to Abdullah. Would things return to normal? They did not, and have not since. She soon began losing friends – she estimates at least 20 people -- as thousands of children were tortured and killed. She wanted to do something and make a difference, and not just be a bystander staying silent. So Abdullah began expressing her thoughts and feelings in story form.
Regarding the book’s front cover, Abdullah recalled that when she told the child who drew it how beautiful it was, the child replied, “Don’t lie, it’s a sad picture.” Despite the bright colors, one sees children in that drawing crying and a military airplane flying overhead dropping bombs. And, one of the girls pictured, Nour, is lost forever, likely dead, noted Abdullah.
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In one story, “Call of the Jasmine,” a little boy named Karim writes an early letter to Santa Claus, worried that he may not be alive come December. “I know where I live is not very pretty and I know there’s not much in it for you, but mama says we’re beautiful where it counts.”
In another account, a child is given an injection of lethal poison. “Everything subsequently goes dark but I close my eyes anyway. The darkness will protect me.”
Some quotes from the book include, “When you write something down, it stays forever. It's like a little part of you that you're giving to the universe.” Abdullah also writes, “We live in a world where some people have already lost the game before having begun.”
As she describes the experience of war on children, “There is no Richter scale to measure pain; it leaves you vulnerable. It's not pain you can get used to, not sorrow that you can tame. It leaves you broken, broken but alive.”
Ultimately, one of her characters said, “Maybe life just wants to be noticed, like a sulking toddler, so it will keep throwing things our way until we finally give it the attention it deserves.”
Disconnected world
Abdullah says literature and art allow us to connect with each other in ways that any other medium would really struggle to match.
“We tend to think of refugees as statistics; death tolls in faraway lands we will never live in. We see children of war and never picture our own for we assume that we will never find ourselves packing up our lives and everything we know only to cross oceans for new homes that do not want us,” she said.
That disconnect is the greatest part of the problem. “We allow ourselves to feel distanced from these events and these people. I wonder how many people stop to think ‘this could be me,’” she said.
Abdullah said that when people read a story or watch a play, they are able to think beyond their own lives and feel what another’s pain is like.
“If stories and theater allow us all to live the harrowing life of a refugee, if only for just an hour, maybe we could all carry a little part of them inside of us and maybe then we’d want to push for change,” she added.
‘Community and unity’
President Trump’s recent travel ban for Muslims from seven different Middle Eastern countries has focused attention on Syrian refugees, Abdullah said. Now, media outlets are interviewing refugees and doing in-depth stories on them. She believes the protests and activism around the country and on campus reflects the desire by many to take a closer look at the victims of the Syrian war.
“We see a greater sense of community and unity, and people who might not have cared about these issues are starting to do so now. People are saying, ‘this is not right’ There is a sense of hope,” she said.
She said that living in constant fear of being hurt by others for what you believe in and in fear of being told you can no longer enter a country like the U.S. is something no one should have to experience.
“Nobody chooses where they are born,” Abdullah said.
“My friends in the Middle East are afraid that all the years they have spent working hard will amount to nothing if their education is interrupted. Those studying in the U.S. wonder whether they will be able to visit their families for the holidays and those in other countries are afraid that maybe the ban will spread to where they are, too.”
Power of writing
Abdullah said she’s always enjoyed writing; she started publishing when she was 13, and has written for student newspapers and magazines in her home country. “I saw that people were being touched, and thought it could have an effect.”
Emma Abdullah
Her family, especially her father, have been highly supportive of her literary talents. In particular, her dad wanted her to reach English-speaking audiences with The Blue Box. “It was important to get it out there to other parts of the world,” she said.
Abdullah went to high school at the New English School in Kuwait. Her book has been adapted as a play by Alison Shan Price. Titled, “The Blue Box: The Memories of Children of War,” it premiered in Kuwait in 2015 and then internationally at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe in Scotland last year.
For those seeking to help, Abdullah suggests making donations to the Syrian American Medical Society, which has helped with evacuations and humanitarian relief for children and others caught up in the crisis.
“The most important thing is not to forget them and not to allow anyone else to either. It is too easy to become indifferent, she said.
The Syrian war has dragged on for six years now, Abdullah said, and children continue to suffer and die every day.
“On a very small scale, the best thing you can do is talk about them and make sure your friends do, too. Learn more about the war and the refugee crisis so that you can spread the word,” she said.
People can donate to charities and NGOs that work with refugees, volunteer at charities, or even start their own fundraisers.
“Advocacy is crucial,” Abdullah said. “Protest, email or call your representatives and urge your government to increase their assistance to Syrian refugees, and encourage your friends to do the same.”
Russia’s desire to be a great power, nuclear deterrence and naval strategies are the reasons behind its rapid Arctic military build-up, a Stanford expert says.
The issue is complicated. “There are three basic drivers: military-strategic calculations, economic development, and domestic objectives,” said Katarzyna Zysk, a visiting scholar at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.
Zysk has a forthcoming paper on this topic to be published by the Strategic Studies Institute of the U.S. Army War College. Last year, she presented her findings at the conference, "The Russian Military in Contemporary Perspective," held by the American Foreign Policy Council. She also discussed her research at the Hoover Institution's Arctic Security Initiative meeting in November 2016.
Putin’s foreign policy
Despite claims it would not do so, Russia since 2012 in particular has embarked on a large-scale military modernization in the Arctic across basically all defense branches, with a special focus on the air and maritime domain, Zysk said.
“The military ambitions have expanded with the more nationalist and isolationist turn in Russian policies after (Vladimir) Putin’s return as president in May 2012,” said Zysk, an associate professor at the Norwegian Defence University College who specializes in Russia’s security and defense policies.
In 2014, Russia decided to deploy military forces along the entire Russian Arctic coast, from Murmansk to Chukotka, and on permanent basis. A modernization effort is underway, too.
This trend has deepened the asymmetry of power between Russia’s forces and those of other countries in the region, such as the United States, Zysk said.
“The Arctic contributes to maintaining Russia’s great power status, which has been one of the main driving forces behind Putin’s foreign policy in recent years,” she said.
‘Startling’ military build-up
The Arctic appears as one of the most stable Russian border regions, which makes the rapid defense build-up by a Russian government with a slowing economy quite perplexing to many observers, noted Zysk.
Apart from the economy, she explains the military strategies involved:
“Russia has revived the Cold War ‘Bastion’ concept in the Barents Sea: In case of conflict, the Northern Fleet’s task is to form maritime areas closed to penetration for enemy naval forces, where Russia would deploy strategic submarines and maintain control. In the areas further south, Russia would seek to deny control for potential adversaries. It also gives Russia a possibility to attack an enemy’s sea lines of communication,” she said.
On top of this, Russia’s modernization efforts are focused on modernizing its nuclear deterrent, including building fourth-generation strategic submarines of the Borei class: three are completed, and five are under different stages of construction, according to Zysk.
Russia is also building new attack submarines, as well as new frigates and corvettes, though the shipbuilding industry is struggling with delivering these on time, she added.
Also, the Artic provides Russia a strategic gateway to both the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, Zysk said, which is important given that Russia’s naval forces are separated between four theaters of operations – the Pacific, the Arctic-Atlantic, the Baltic and the Black Sea.
As a result of climate change, Russia may be able to more freely move its warships between its main bases along the Northern Sea Route, she added.
“Importantly, the forces in the Arctic are not going to stay only in the Arctic. With the increased mobility, the military units can be transferred rapidly to support Russia military operations in other regions, as we have observed in eastern Ukraine, where Russia has used a brigade deployed in the High North. The trend is likely to continue, also because Russia’s military capabilities remain limited, despite the ongoing modernization,” she said.
Perceived threats
Russia considers that if it engaged in conflict with other great powers, such as the United States, the Arctic would be a major target, Zysk said. Russia has also rehearsed scenarios when the biggest part of the Russian Navy based in the Arctic, the Northern Fleet, would be activated during conflicts escalating in other regions. That’s a reason for the strengthening of its defenses in the region.
“In the Russian assessment, an aerial attack from the Arctic region may pose military threats to the entire Russian territory. In particular, however, Russia is concerned about the sea-based nuclear deterrent deployed in the Arctic. As a result, Russia has devoted a strong focus to increasing air defense and air control across the Arctic,” she said.
Apart from threats from state actors, environmental accidents, trafficking, terrorist attacks on industrial infrastructure or increased foreign intelligence also make the Arctic, in Russia’s view, a vulnerable territory. Finally, the issue of Russia’s vast energy reserves and other rich natural resources in the Arctic are another factor. The development of the Arctic is seen as one of the solutions to what ails the Russian economy.
Zysk said, “Since the early 2000s, the Russian political and military leadership has systematically argued that there will be an acute shortage of energy resources worldwide, which may lead to a conflict, and that the West, led by the United States, may attempt to seize Russia’s oil and gas.”
While this assessment is controversial, Zysk points to statements by the top Russian political and military leadership, including Valery Gerasimov, the chief of the Russian General Staff, that suggests the Russian leadership believes such scenario may occur by 2030.
“It may also explain some of the military investments in the region, such as reactivating 13 military airfields across the Arctic, paratroopers’ exercises and amphibious landing operations along the Northern Sea Route,” she said.
In addition, the Arctic holds a symbolically important place in Russia’s history and national identity, according to Zysk.
“Displays of military strength, accompanied by rhetoric that portrays Russia as the Arctic superpower, resonate well with the Russian public, especially in communities where feelings of nationalism and isolationism run deep,” she said.
As a result of the military modernization, she added, Russia is today better prepared to participate in complex military operations than a decade ago, especially in joint operations, strategic mobility and rapid deployments.
“Russia’s ability to limit or deny access and control various parts of the Arctic has increased accordingly,” Zysk said.
Katarzyna Zysk, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 723-6840, kzysk@ifs.mil.no
Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu
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A Russian submarine stands at Russia's Nothern Fleet base in the town of Severomorsk in 2007. CISAC fellow Katarzyna Zysk says military-strategic calculations, economic development and domestic objectives are driving Russia's military expansion in the Arctic.
Objective: To identify the magnitude of anaemia and deficiencies of Fe (ID) and vitamin A (VAD) and their associated factors among rural women and children.
Design: Cross-sectional, comprising a household, health and nutrition survey and determination of Hb, biochemical (serum concentrations of ferritin, retinol, C-reactive protein and α1-acid glycoprotein) and anthropometric parameters. Multivariate logistic regression examined associations of various factors with anaemia and micronutrient deficiencies.
Setting: Kalalé district, northern Benin. Subjects: Mother–child pairs (n 767): non-pregnant women of reproductive age (15–49 years) and children 6–59 months old.
Results: In women, the overall prevalence of anaemia, ID, Fe-deficiency anaemia (IDA) and VAD was 47·7, 18·3, 11·3 and 17·7%, respectively. A similar pattern for anaemia (82·4 %), ID (23·6%) and IDA (21·2%) was observed among children, while VAD was greater at 33·6%. Greater risk of anaemia, ID and VAD was found for low maternal education, maternal farming activity, maternal health status, low food diversity, lack of fruits and vegetables consumption, low protein foods consumption, high infection, anthropometric deficits, large family size, poor sanitary conditions and low socio-economic status. Strong differences were also observed by ethnicity, women’s group participation and source of information. Finally, age had a significant effect in children, with those aged 6–23 months having the highest risk for anaemia and those aged 12–23 months at risk for ID and IDA.
Conclusions: Anaemia, ID and VAD were high among rural women and their children in northern Benin, although ID accounted for a small proportion of anaemia. Multicentre studies in various parts of the country are needed to substantiate the present results, so that appropriate and beneficial strategies for micronutrient supplementation and interventions to improve food diversity and quality can be planned.
Today, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists’ “doomsday clock” moved 30 seconds forward to 2 and a half minutes to midnight. The closer the minute hand gets to midnight, the closer the bulletin predicts humankind is to destroying itself. The symbolic clock was created in 1947 when Albert Einstein and Robert Oppenheimer (the father of the U.S. nuclear program) founded the publication.
William J. Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), said: "Last year the Doomsday clock was set at 3 minutes to midnight, the closest it has been to global 'midnight' since the iciest days of the Cold War. This ominous pronouncement reflected my own fears that we were now in greater danger of nuclear catastrophe than we were during the Cold War, with the growing threat of nuclear terrorism, the continued risk of accidents and miscalculation, and the possibility of regional nuclear war and continued nuclear proliferation around the world."
He added, "Today the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists announced that we have moved closer to global catastrophe, for the first time setting the clock 30 seconds ahead to 2 and a half minutes to midnight, approaching a time not seen since the United States and Soviet Russia first developed the H-bomb. We must heed this dire warning as a call to action. There are concrete steps that we can take to reduce the risk of nuclear annihilation, but we must start today."
Siegfried Hecker, the former director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and senior fellow at CISAC, said, "The bulletin’s keepers of the clock made the correct call to move the clock 30 seconds closer to midnight. The disregard for fact-based analysis of issues such as global climate change during the recent presidential campaign is truly alarming. However, my immediate concerns focus on the world having become a more dangerous nuclear place."
He said, "Developments in North Korea top the list: 2016 was a very bad year as Pyongyang greatly expanded its nuclear complex to increase the size of its arsenal to perhaps as many as 20 to 25 weapons, conducted two more nuclear tests to enhance the sophistication of its weapons, and launched two dozen missile tests. All of this while Washington cut all communications with a regime about which we know so little, while continuing the failed policies of sanctions and leaning on China to solve the problem."
"Confrontation," Hecker said, "has replaced cooperation between Russia and the United States. For the first time since the end of the Cold War the specter of a nuclear arms race was raised in 2016. President Putin put the finishing touches on suspending or terminating most of the cooperative nuclear threat reduction programs with the United States. Nuclear safety and security concerns appear to have taken a back seat to nuclear saber rattling and cyber attacks."
He noted, "Tensions between China and the United States have increased substantially over Beijing’s more muscular role in international affairs, particularly with its actions in the South China Sea. Moreover, tensions over Taiwan prompted by President Trump’s comments about the One-China policy renew the possibility of conflict."
"South Asia has inched closer to potential nuclear confrontation between India and Pakistan. India’s expanding economy and its concerns about Chinese military expansion has prompted it to strengthening its nuclear arsenal by moving toward a full triad – land, air and sea-based nuclear weapons. Pakistan, its much smaller and weaker neighbor, feels increasingly threatened by India’s expanding military. It has moved to what is called a posture of full-spectrum nuclear deterrence, which includes very dangerous tactical battlefield nuclear weapons that lower the nuclear threshold," Hecker said.
"Preventing and responding to potential acts of nuclear terrorism require close international cooperation. Unfortunately, all signs point in the opposite direction at a time when the atrocities perpetrated by terrorists are increasing. Greatest among these pullbacks was President Putin’s decision not to participate in the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit held in Washington, DC. With President Obama’s tenure having ended, this very effective collaborative international effort is now in limbo," he said.
MEDIA CONTACTS
Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu
Members of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists deliver remarks on the 2017 time for the 'Doomsday Clock' Jan. 26, 2017 in Washington, DC. For the first time in the 70-year history of the Doomsday Clock, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists moved the clock forward 30 seconds to two and a half minutes before midnight, citing 'ill-considered' statements by U.S. President Donald Trump on nuclear weapons and climate change, developments in Russia, North Korea, India and Pakistan.
Space is more important than ever for the security of the United States, but it’s almost like the Wild West in terms of behavior, a top general said today.
Air Force Gen. John Hyten, commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, spoke Jan. 24 at Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation. His talk was titled, “U.S. Strategic Command Perspectives on Deterrence and Assurance.”
Hyten said, “Space is fundamental to every single military operation that occurs on the planet today.” He added that “there is no such thing as a war in space,” because it would affect all realms of human existence, due to the satellite systems. Hyten advocates “strategic deterrence” and “norms of behavior” across space as well as land, water and cyberspace.
Otherwise, rivals like China and Russia will only threaten U.S. interests in space and wreak havoc for humanity below, he said. Most of contemporary life depends on systems connected to space.
Hyten also addressed other topics, including recent proposals by some to upgrade the country’s missile defense systems.
“You just don’t snap your fingers and build a state-of-the-art anything overnight,” Hyten said, adding that he has not yet spoken to Trump administration officials about the issue. “We need a powerful military,” but a severe budget crunch makes “reasonable solutions” more likely than expensive and unrealistic ones.
On the upgrade front, Hyten said he favors a long-range strike missile system to replace existing cruise missiles; a better air-to-air missile for the Air Force; and an improved missile defense ground base interceptor.
‘Critically dependent’
From satellites to global-positioning systems (GPS), space has transformed human life – and the military – in the 21st century, Hyten said. In terms of defining "space," the U.S. designates people who travel above an altitude of 50 miles as astronauts.
As the commander of the U.S. Strategic Command, Hyten oversees the control of U.S. strategic forces, providing options for the president and secretary of defense. In particular, this command is charged with space operations (such as military satellites), information operations (such as information warfare), missile defense, global command and control, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance, global strike and strategic deterrence (the U.S. nuclear arsenal), and combating weapons of mass destruction.
Hyten explained that every drone, fighter jet, bomber, ship and soldier is “critically dependent” on space to conduct their own operations. All cell phones use space, and the GPS command systems overall are managed at Strategic Command, he said.
“No soldier has to worry about what’s over the next hill,” he said, describing GPS capabilities, which have fundamentally transformed humanity’s way of life.
Space needs to be available for exploration, he said.
“I watch what goes on in space, and I worry about us destroying that environment for future generations.” He said that too many drifting objects and debris exist – about 22,000 right now. A recent Chinese satellite interception created a couple thousand more debris objects that now circle about the Earth at various altitudes and pose the risk of striking satellites.
“We track every object in space” now, Hyten said, urging “international norms of behavior in space.”
He added, “We have to deter bad behavior on space. We have to deter war in space. It’s bad for everybody. We could trash that forever.”
But now rivals like China and Russia are building weapons to deploy in the lower levels of space. “How do we prevent this? It’s bigger than a space problem,” he said.
Deterring conflict in the cyber, nuclear and space realms is the strategic deterrence goal of the 21st century, Hyten said.
“The best way to prevent war is to be prepared for war,” he said.
Hyten believes the U.S. needs a fundamentally different debate about deterrence. And it all starts with nuclear weapons.
“In my deepest heart, I wish I didn’t have to worry about nuclear weapons,” he said. Hyten described his job as “pretty sobering, it’s not easy.”
But he also noted the mass violence of the world prior to 1945 when the first atomic bomb was used. Roughly 80 million people died from 1939 to 1945 during World War II. Consider that in the 10-plus years of the Vietnam War, 58,000 Americans were killed. That’s equivalent to two days of deaths in WWII, he said.
In a world without nuclear weapons, a rise in conventional warfare would produce great numbers of mass casualties, Hyten said. About war, he said, “Once you see it up close, no human will ever want to experience it.”
Though America has “crazy enemies” right now, in many ways the world is more safe than during WWII, Hyten said. The irony is that nuclear weapons deterrence has kept us from the type of mass killings known in events like WWII. But the U.S. must know how to use its nuclear deterrence effectively.
Looking ahead, Hyten said the U.S. needs to think about space as a potential war environment. An attack in space might not mean a response in space, but on the Earth.
Hyten describes space as the domain that people look up at it and still dream about. “I love to look at the stars,” but said he wants to make sure he’s not looking up at junk orbiting in the atmosphere.
‘Space geek’
Hyten has served in the Air Force for 35 years. He originally wanted to be an astronaut, but his eyesight was too bad. He got a waiver, and graduated Harvard in 1981 with an engineering degree on a ROTC scholarship. He entered the Air Force thinking he would only do four years. But then he had a close-up view of what a young Air Force officer could find in the last frontier of space as satellites and military space science were booming.
“God, I love space,” he said.
In introducing Hyten, Amy Zegart, co-director of CISAC, described him as a person of unwavering dedication and profound insights who understands the gravity of situations. “A self-described space geek,” she said.
Hyten lauded CISAC for its research and educational work on national security, and said he enjoyed being around people willing to test out new ideas and discuss potential solutions for vexing problems.
Earlier in the day on campus, Hyten met with William J. Perry, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at CISAC; George Shultz, a former U.S. Secretary of Defense and senior fellow at the Hoover Institution; and Condoleezza Rice, a senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Hoover Institution.
General Hyten was nominated for reassignment to head the U.S. Strategic Command on Sept. 8, 2016. He commanded Air Force Space Command from 2014 to 2016.
FSI scholars approach their research on the environment from regulatory, economic and societal angles. The Center on Food Security and the Environment weighs the connection between climate change and agriculture; the impact of biofuel expansion on land and food supply; how to increase crop yields without expanding agricultural lands; and the trends in aquaculture. FSE’s research spans the globe – from the potential of smallholder irrigation to reduce hunger and improve development in sub-Saharan Africa to the devastation of drought on Iowa farms. 
Emma Abdullah
