As the new deputy director for the Center for International Security and Cooperation, Harold Trinkunas will assume more day-to-day management duties of the center in addition to his research scholarship.

Trinkunas, who starts his new role Oct. 1, will provide additional oversight over CISAC’s core operations, from research and fellowships to administration and finance. He was previously CISAC’s associate director for research; he will continue to be a senior research scholar affiliated with the center.

In his new capacity, Trinkunas will work to ensure that CISAC remains on a sustainable footing as its faculty, scholars and fellows generate knowledge to build a safer world and educate the next generation of security experts. This will contribute to maintaining CISAC’s position as a global thought leader on meeting the most pressing challenges for international security and international cooperation.

CISAC’s associate director position for administration and finance will report to Trinkunas, who joined CISAC in September 2016. Previously, that position (under recruitment now) reported to CISAC’s co-directors.  

The new organizational structure brings CISAC into alignment with other centers at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. It will also allow co-directors Amy Zegart and Rod Ewing  to focus more time on CISAC’s external relationships – with CISAC supporters, policy makers and media. These are key audiences for the Center’s scholarly findings and education programs.

Zegart, CISAC co-director for the social sciences, said, "I couldn't be more delighted that Harold has agreed to become CISAC's deputy director. Creating this deputy director position will enable us to bring together longer-range strategic planning and day-to-day operations -- and Harold is ideally suited to the task, with deep experience in university administration at the Naval Postgraduate School, Brookings, and Stanford as well as an active and exciting scholarly research agenda."

Ewing, CISAC co-director for the sciences, said, “Harold’s expanded role in CISAC will allow for a better coordination of administrative and budgetary decisions on a day-to-day basis.  I certainly look forward to working with Harold as we continue to expand the impact of CISAC scholarship on policy issues.”

Management, research

Trinkunas joined CISAC last year from the Brookings Institution, where he was the Charles W. Robinson Chair and senior fellow as well as director of the Latin America Initiative in the Foreign Policy program.

“This is a great opportunity to work in collaborative ways with exceptional scholars around some very important international security challenges facing today’s world,” Trinkunas said then.

Born and raised in Venezuela, Trinkunas earned his doctorate in political science from Stanford in 1999; he was also a predoctoral fellow and later a visiting professor at CISAC.  His first exposure to CISAC took place when he served as a teaching assistant to Scott Sagan in 1992.

Through the years, CISAC has evolved and adjusted its focus to reflect the global security realities, Trinkunas said. Research at CISAC spans biosecurity and global health, terrorism, cybersecurity, governance, and nuclear risk and cooperation, among others.

Trinkunas said he enjoys the mentoring aspect of working with emerging scholars in the CISAC fellowship program, which he oversees.

Security, governance

Trinkunas’ most recent book, Aspirational Power: Brazil's Long Road to Global Influence, co-authored with David Mares of UC San Digo, was published last year by the Brookings Institution Press.  Aspirational Power was chosen as one of Foreign Affair’s “best books of 2016.”

Trinkunas studies the intersection of security and governance. In his research, he has examined civil-military relations, ungoverned spaces, terrorist financing, emerging power dynamics, and global governance.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Harold Trinkunas, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-8035, antanas@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

A new biosecurity initiative at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) aims to identify and mitigate biological risks, both natural and man-made, and safeguard the future of the life sciences and associated technologies.

The initiative will be led by David A. Relman, a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Cooperation and FSI. Relman, the Thomas C. and Joan M. Merigan Professor in the Departments of Medicine, and Microbiology & Immunology, has served as the science co-director at CISAC for the past four years. He will leave this position on Aug. 31 to lead the new initiative.

Michael McFaul, director and senior fellow at FSI, said, “With exceptional leadership skills, valuable experience and abundant energy, David Relman is ideally positioned to work with scholars from across campus who offer critical expertise in biosecurity. This is an exciting, challenging and important new initiative for FSI that is designed to protect public health from the many new risks now accelerating.”

Relman said the biosecurity initiative will seek to advance the beneficial applications of the life sciences while reducing the risks of misuse by promoting research, education and policy outreach in biological security. His CISAC leadership gives him the know-how to lead such a wide-ranging effort across diverse disciplines and communities.

Relman said, “The opportunity to serve as co-director at CISAC has been a wonderful experience, one that has afforded me the chance to get to know outstanding faculty and staff, their scholarship, and critical policy-relevant work, all of which I had not fully appreciated sitting across campus. This experience has made clear the unusual qualities of Stanford University, and the great people that work here. I am now greatly looking forward to this new opportunity at FSI.”

Biosecurity collaborations

During Relman’s term as CISAC’s science co-director from 2013-2017, he led an expansion of the transdisciplinary work in science and security to include biology, biological and other areas of engineering, medicine, and earth and environmental sciences.

The foundations for work in biological science, technology and security were established at CISAC, especially in the hiring of Megan Palmer, a senior research scholar at CISAC and FSI. Both Relman and Palmer worked together on engagements and discussions with a growing network of more than 20 faculty involved in biosecurity across Stanford.

Palmer said, “Stanford has an opportunity and imperative to advance security strategies for biological science and technology in a global age. Our faculty bring together expertise in areas including technology, policy, and ethics, and are deeply engaged in shaping future of biotechnology policy and practices.”

New insights, new risks

In his new post, Relman said he intends to build on this foundation by creating an initiative that consolidates and focuses activity in biosecurity, develops research and educational programs, attracts new resources, and looks outward at opportunities for policy impact and changing practices across the globe.

Relman said that “new capabilities and insights are reshaping important aspects of the life sciences and associated technologies, and are accompanied by a host of new risks.” If misused, whether by malice or accident, “they pose the potential for large-scale harm,” he noted.

Relman added that the initiative will bring together interest and expertise across the centers and programs of FSI in partnership with Schools and Departments across the university.

At FSI, CISAC will co-sponsor the biological security initiative, which will leverage Stanford expertise in the life sciences, engineering, law and policy.  Key partners will include Tim Stearns (biology), Drew Endy (bioengineering), Mildred Cho (bioethics), and Hank Greely (law), according to Relman. The biosecurity group will also partner with another new program at FSI in global health and conflict, which is led by Paul Wise, Frank Fukuyama, Steve Stedman, Steve Krasner, and others, he added.

Stanford’s School of Medicine and Department of Medicine will also co-sponsor the initiative, thanks to leadership from Lloyd Minor, Michele Barry and Robert Harrington. Relman looks forward to establishing similar relationships with other schools and departments, he said.

 “These partnerships are critical. I’m excited to work with a growing community both within and beyond Stanford towards the goal of a peaceful and prosperous world in the century of biology,” he said.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

David Relman, Center for International Security and Cooperation: relman@stanford.edu

Megan Palmer, Center for International Security and Cooperation:  mjpalmer@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

Rod Ewing will serve as co-director of the sciences for Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Ewing, a mineralogist and materials scientist, is the Frank Stanton Professor in Nuclear Security at CISAC and senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. He begins his new position on Sept. 1, following David Relman, the previous co-director for the sciences. Amy Zegart is the CISAC co-director for the social sciences.

Ewing, whose research is focused on the properties of nuclear materials, leads the Reset Nuclear Waste Policy program at CISAC. He describes the center as a unique organization that “explicitly acknowledges” the role of science and the social sciences in formulating policy. 

“CISAC is a rare opportunity for political and social scientists, historians and scientists and engineers to work together on solving pressing problems. The fact that we have two co-directors reflects a serious intent to integrate knowledge from the widest range of perspectives in order to find policy solutions to important problems,” he said.

Scholarship, research

Ewing is the author or co-author of more than 750 research publications and the editor or co-editor of 18 monographs, proceedings volumes or special issues of journals. He has published widely in mineralogy, geochemistry, materials science, nuclear materials, physics and chemistry in more than 100 different journals. Ewing was granted a patent for the development of a highly durable material for the immobilization of excess weapons plutonium. He is also a founding editor of the magazine, Elements. In 2015, he won the Roebling Medal, the highest award of the Mineralogical Society of America for scientific eminence.

“My work on nuclear waste started out with a focus on technical issues, but over several decades, I realized that technical solutions were not enough.  I now focus on trying to understand why institutions – universities, national laboratories and federal agencies – fail to arrive at the technical solutions. I have been surprised to learn how little science has been applied to the nuclear waste problem – and how social issues have dominated the outcome,” Ewing said.

Expertise, policy

In particular, Ewing seeks to understand why so little information from experts rise through an organization and change accepted ‘truths.’

“I first saw this when I was a soldier in Vietnam and continue to see the same problem in many other areas, that a disconnect exists between the on-the-ground reality and policy,” said Ewing who served in the U.S. Army as an interpreter of Vietnamese attached to the 25th Infantry Division from 1969 to 1970.

“At the very highest levels, policies seem to be based on a hunch or a bias rather than an analysis of the problem. I have always wondered why this is so common – as it often leads a country or organization down a wrong and often dangerous path,” he added.

Born in Abilene, Texas, Ewing attended Texas Christian University (B.S., 1968, summa cum laude) and graduate school at Stanford University (M.S., 1972; Ph.D., 1974). He began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico (1974) rising to the rank of Regents’ Professor of Earth & Planetary Sciences in 1993.

From 1997 to 2013, Ewing was a professor at the University of Michigan, and in 2014, he joined Stanford.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Rod Ewing, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-8641, rewing1@stanford.edu

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

When it comes to cybersecurity, Stanford is the hot spot, especially if you work in national security.

On Aug. 18, officials from the U.S. military, National Security Agency, U.S. Cyber Command, Joint Chiefs of Staff, and from countries known as the “Five Eyes,” attended cybersecurity discussions on campus. Most attendees were chief information officers. John Zangardi, the principal deputy chief information officer for the U.S. Department of Defense, led the group.

The "Five Eyes" refers to an alliance comprising the U.S., Australia, Canada, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom. These countries abide by an agreement for joint cooperation in signals intelligence, military intelligence, and human intelligence.

The event was held at the Hoover Institution, a co-sponsor along with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, a center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations. Participants took part in two roundtables – the first one, “Geopolitical Perspectives,” provided a strategic overview of international security with Stanford’s William J. Perry (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), Michael McFaul (FSI and the Hoover Institution), Toomas Henrik Ilves (Hoover Institution), and Francis Fukuyama (the Hoover Institution and FSI's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law).

The second discussion, the “Cyber Information Warfare Panel,” focused on cyber challenges with Amy Zegart (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), Herb Lin (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), John Villasenor (CISAC and the Hoover Institution), and Jay Healey (CISAC).

As cyber attacks escalate in magnitude – reflected in the 2016 Russian meddling in the U.S. election and the 2014 Sony Pictures hacking – the red alert has gone out to Washington D.C. to confront the issue.

At Stanford, Capitol Hill staffers are doing just that, thanks to the Congressional Cyber Boot Camp that takes place Aug. 14-16. The third installment of its kind since 2014, the workshop offered panel discussions, role-playing exercises, informational sessions, and networking opportunities -- all aimed at getting Congress on top of a fast-accelerating issue that has ramifications throughout the American domain.

This year’s event involved almost three dozen staffers hailing from U.S. Senate and House member offices and committees such as the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Homeland Security, Appropriations, Judiciary, Energy and Commerce. Top cyber and policy experts addressed them about some of the thorniest issues emerging in cyber realms -- and what it means for this country's political leadership and citizenry.

The boot camp was held at the Hoover Institution, a co-sponsor along with Stanford’s Center for International Security and Cooperation, the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations, the Stanford Cyber Initiative, and the Stuart Family Congressional Fellowship Program.

CISAC co-director Amy Zegart said, "The Congressional Cyber Boot Camp is our signature event because we’re connecting the worlds of public policy and cybersecurity in ways that help advance national security." Zegart, also the Davies Family Senior Fellow at Hoover, was a co-convener of the boot camp along with Herbert Lin, a CISAC  and Hoover senior fellow, and widely-known cybersecurity expert.

Zegart said the boot camp has grown so popular that a waiting list now exists. And, she points to policy impacts after just three years. For example, a legal counsel to U.S. Sen. John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, attended a prior boot camp, which resulted in McCain visiting and reaching out to CISAC and the Hoover on cybersecurity issues over the past few years. A lot of those discussions are confidential, but that input had its roots in the boot camp and Stanford experts gather there.

“We created the cyber boot camp precisely because many Congressional staffers had told us this was the type of help they needed,” Zegart said.

In her introductory remarks to the group, Zegart said, “If we can help you, you can help our country.” The boot camp would be focused on, she said, encouraging “new knowledge” and building “new networks of people” in the field of cybersecurity.

Sean Kanuck, an affiliate with CISAC who served as the U.S.’ first national intelligence officer for cyber issues from 2011 to 2016, talked about reframing cybersecurity problems in his keynote address to the Stanford Congressional Cyber Boot Camp.

Exercises, networking

As Zegart said, cybersecurity is an urgent issue for policy makers like those at the boot camp, and last year’s presidential election and major hacking of corporations and security organizations attest to the increasing importance that Washington D.C. now places on it. Preparation is considered critical.

And so, this year’s camp included a simulation exercise with Congressional staffers assuming the roles of executives at a large, fictitious company (“Frizzle”) that is under a major cyberattack.

Each boot camp gets a new round of fresh Congressional faces. Last year, the Los Angeles Times published a story on the boot camp and all of the questions and issues that arose in such a scenario. For example, when should customers or authorities be informed, and what about retaliation? For most, cyber is a brave new world – and expert advice is appreciated – something that Stanford’s boot camp offers.

Evolving security threat

Cyber experts point out that nations are increasingly dependent on information and information technology for societal functions. This makes ensuring the security of information and information technology — against a broad spectrum of hackers, criminals, terrorists, and state actors – a top priority for any country. And it seems like every day, something new is introduced.

“Cybersecurity challenges are evolving at a rapid pace, and the cyber threat the nation faces today will be different from the one it faces tomorrow,” Zegart and Lin wrote in the workshop’s agenda.

Cybersecurity is not merely a technical matter, but a “multi-faceted enterprise” that requires drawing on computer science, economics, law, political science, psychology, and other disciplines, they noted.

The idea behind the boot camp is to help congressional staffers – those writing the nation’s policies on cybersecurity – use “multiple perspectives and disciplines” as they analyze and act on cybersecurity issues.

“The Stanford Cyber Boot Camp endeavors to give congressional staffers a conceptual framework to understand the threat environment of today and how it might evolve so that they are better able to anticipate and manage the problems of tomorrow,” Zegart and Lin said.

That seems to be happening on Capitol Hill, where staffers now know who to call for cyber advice.

Lin said he routinely receives calls from Congressional staffers who are alumni of the boot camp – they are seeking his feedback and guidance on cyber policy or legislation. Of course, those discussions are not for public disclosure, given the sensitivity. Lin was also asked to testify twice before Congress on cyber issues, and he was chosen by the Obama Administration to serve on the President’s Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity. He attests that the boot camp opened up the door for him being invited to that commission.

In December 2016, the White House cyber commission, with the help of experts like Lin, issued strong recommendations to upgrade the nation’s cybersecurity systems.

That’s the kind of policy impact the cyber boot camp seeks.

Topics and speakers

Themes covered at this week’s cyber camp:

• the role of offensive operations in cyberspace for improving the nation’s cybersecurity;

• why cyber defense is more difficult than offense;

• the role of market forces in enhancing or weakening cybersecurity;

• automotive cyber security; problems in applying existing law to accelerating technology;

• the economic, psychological, and organizational factors involved in cybersecurity;

• and the fundamental principles of cybersecurity.

Scheduled speakers included:

• Condoleezza Rice, senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and former U.S. Secretary of State and National Security Advisor.

• Michael McFaul, director and senior fellow at both FSI and the Hoover Institution.

• Marc Andreessen, co-founder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz.

• Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia; and distinguished visiting fellow this past year at CISAC, Hoover, and FSI.

• Andy Grotto, CISAC fellow, Hoover research fellow, and former senior director for cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council.

• Joel Peterson, chairman of JetBlue Airways; professor at Stanford Graduate School of Business; and chairman at the Hoover Institution Board of Overseers.

The group also will take a walking tour of the Hoover Institution’s Library and Archives and a trip to the Tesla factory in Fremont.

Prior coverage of boot camps:

Stanford News story on 2014 event

CISAC story on 2014 event

CISAC video of 2014 event

Stanford News story on 2015 event

Hoover story on 2016 media boot camp

MEDIA CONTACT:

Clifton B. Parker, Center for International Security and Cooperation: (650) 725-6488, cbparker@stanford.edu

CISAC's William J. Perry issued the following statement today (Aug. 9) on the North Korea crisis that urged a return to deterrence on the part of the U.S.: 

Learn more at the William J. Perry Project web site.

This Stanford news release describes research by CISAC's Scott Sagan on American public opinion toward the use of nuclear weapons during wartime. He found that views on nuclear weapons usage has not fundamentally changed since 1945, and many people would support the use of such weapons to kill millions of civilians if the U.S. found itself in a similar wartime situation. Sagan and his co-author used a survey experiment to recreate the situation that the United States faced in 1945 in the Hiroshima nuclear bombing with a hypothetical American war with Iran today.

The results showed little support for the so-called “nuclear taboo” thesis, or that the principle of “noncombatant immunity” – civilian protection from such weapons – has become a deeply held norm in America. The conclusions are stark and disturbing, Sagan said.

“These findings highlight the limited extent to which the U.S. public has accepted the principles of just war doctrine and suggest that public opinion is unlikely to be a serious constraint on any president contemplating the use of nuclear weapons in the crucible of war,” wrote Sagan and his co-author, Benjamin Valentino, a Dartmouth College professor of government.

In this podcast with the Carnegie Council, CISAC's Scott Sagan says that major changes must be made if U.S. nuclear war plans are to conform to the principles of just war doctrine and the law of armed conflict. He proposes a new doctrine: "the nuclear necessity principle." In sum, the U.S. will not use nuclear weapons against any target that could be reliably destroyed by conventional means.

In 2016, Sagan co-authored an op-ed in The Washington Post on this topic: "It is time to turn nuclear common sense into national policy. A declaration that the United States would never use nuclear weapons when conventional weapons could destroy the target could reduce the number of nuclear weapons we need for legitimate deterrence purposes. Placing conventional weapons at the center of debates about the future of deterrence would also help focus the policy discussion on plausible scenarios with realistic plans for the use of U.S. military power. And it would more faithfully honor the just-war principles of distinction, necessity and proportionality, by placing them at the heart of our deterrence and security policies, where our highest ideals belong."

CISAC senior fellow Scott Sagan co-authored the following article with Benjamin A. Valentino, an associate professor of government at Dartmouth College. They write that it's time to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons after the United Nations recently voted to permanently ban nuclear weapons. The essay was published July 16 in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists:

On July 7, almost 72 years after the first atomic bomb was detonated in the New Mexico desert, 122 nations voted at the United Nations headquarters in New York to permanently ban nuclear weapons under international law. None of the nine states that possess nuclear weapons even attended the negotiations. The Netherlands was the sole NATO member to participate, and it cast the sole no vote. The ban treaty will be open for signatures from all UN member states beginning in September and will officially enter into force after 50 states have accepted it.

With not a single nuclear weapons state signing up as a member, even the treaty’s strongest proponents acknowledge that it is a largely an aspirational document designed to promote disarmament by delegitimizing nuclear weapons. “Weapons that are outlawed are increasingly seen as illegitimate, losing their political status and, along with it, the resources for their production, modernization, and retention” the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) has claimed. The treaty does not really “outlaw” or make nuclear weapons “illegal” under international law, however, because any state that is not a member of the treaty is not bound by its terms. Indeed, the United States, France, and the United Kingdom issued a joint statement following the vote: “We do not intend to sign, ratify or ever become party to it. Therefore, there will be no change in the legal obligations on our countries with respect to nuclear weapons. For example, we would not accept any claim that this treaty reflects or in any way contributes to the development of customary international law.”

The treaty, however, does stand as a symbol of missed opportunities. The energy, organization, and genuine passion that eventually resulted in the ban treaty were assets that might have been used to address dangerous realities about nuclear weapons that are too often ignored: the human costs of clean-up of waste sites and production facilities and the potential for nuclear winter or other environmental effects. These issues were front and center agenda items for the “humanitarian impact” movement that spawned the treaty and in the movement’s early meetings, but these critical concerns were sidelined as the push for a nuclear ban gathered steam. All that remains of these original objectives is a short section in the treaty (Article 6) requiring parties to the convention to remediate any environmental contamination caused by the use, production, or testing of nuclear weapons and to assist people who may have suffered harm from them. But since the nuclear weapons states have not signed the treaty, they are not under pressure to address these problems.

Since nuclear weapons will be with us for many years to come, it is critical that we work now to minimize the risks they pose to humanity. Proponents of the ban treaty were right to criticize the nuclear weapons states for sometimes failing to live up to their pledge under Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty “to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control.” But that progress has been slow because states still rely on nuclear weapons for deterrence and because it has been difficult for states to imagine a way that global nuclear disarmament could be verified and enforced. The ban treaty does nothing to address these disarmament dilemmas.

International concerns about reducing the risks of accidental or unauthorized use of nuclear weapons or to minimizing the past and future environmental impact of nuclear weapons infrastructure ought to be relatively easy to address. No country, after all, wants to suffer a nuclear accident (particularly since it would most likely occur on its own soil), or to leave their weapons vulnerable to theft or unauthorized use. Nor does any state wish to see its natural environment spoiled or the health of its citizens undermined, either by its own nuclear material or by contamination from a nuclear-armed neighbor.

There are good reasons to believe that these kinds of concerns represent the most pressing threats presented by nuclear weapons today. The United States and the Soviet Union came dangerously close to catastrophic nuclear accidents on multiple occasions during the Cold War. Although the safety of US nuclear weapons has improved in many respects, reports of serious mismanagement and lax security at nuclear sites continue. The United States spends between $5 billion and $6 billion a year on environmental restoration and waste management related to its nuclear weapons program and has paid out over $15 billion in compensation to nuclear weapons workers and “downwinders” exposed to radiation from early atmospheric tests. The total costs of the cleanup in the United States are estimated to eventually reach $347 billion—much more than the costs of producing the weapons in the first place.

All of these problems, unfortunately, are far worse in most other nuclear weapons states, where weapons safety technology, security procedures, and environmental protections lag far behind American standards. Cooperative efforts to address these problems are something that all states, both with and without nuclear weapons, should have been able to agree upon. The decision to use the momentum generated by concern for these humanitarian impacts to push instead for a divisive and ultimately ineffective ban, therefore, was a missed opening to make meaningful progress to reducing these hidden risks posed by nuclear weapons.

Proponents of the ban treaty nevertheless argue that by cementing the prohibition on nuclear weapons in international law they will intensify the stigma against nuclear weapons, discouraging new states from building them and eventually pressuring existing nuclear powers to disarm. “By stigmatizing nuclear weapons—declaring them unacceptable and immoral for all—the international community can start demanding and pressuring the nuclear-armed states and their military alliances to deliver what they’ve actually promised: a world free of nuclear weapons,” Beatrice Fihn, the executive director of ICAN, has written.

We see several serious problems with this approach.

First, the ethical and legal foundation for the treaty’s stigmatization of nuclear weapons is fundamentally flawed. The treaty explicitly notes that “any use of nuclear weapons would be contrary to the rules of international law applicable in armed conflict” since the use of such weapons would invariably violate the Geneva Convention’s “rule of distinction, the prohibition against indiscriminate attacks, the rules on proportionality and precautions in attack, the prohibition on the use of weapons of a nature to cause superfluous injury or unnecessary suffering, and the rules for the protection of the natural environment.” In fact, it is conceivable that nuclear weapons could be used in a manner consistent with international law and these principles of just war doctrine. For example it is possible that, in 2001, the use of a low yield nuclear weapon against the remote, deeply buried Al Qaeda caves in Tora Bora might have met the legal criteria of necessity and proportionality. If Al Qaeda had been preparing a WMD there, as some suspected, the legal case might have been even stronger. In our opinion, using nuclear weapons in that situation would have been exceptionally imprudent—ending the 70-year old tradition of the non-use of nuclear weapons would have set a precedent that could encourage others to use nuclear weapons in less discriminating ways— but it probably would not have been illegal. Although the list of scenarios in which the use of nuclear weapons might be legal and ethical is not long, a complete ban on the possession of nuclear weapons is simply not supported by reference to existing international law.

Second, the ban is likely counterproductive when it comes to increasing compliance with existing laws of war. The United States had already been moving in recent years to help bring its nuclear doctrine in line with international law. The official US Nuclear Employment Guidance rules now state explicitly that “the United States will not intentionally target civilian populations or civilian objects” with nuclear weapons and that “all plans must be consistent with the fundamental principles of the Law of Armed Conflict” including the “principles of distinction and proportionality.” A debate (see here and here) has begun in the United States about how best to ensure that the US armed forces properly implement this guidance. The humanitarian impact movement could have focused on pressuring other states to adopt similar restrictions in targeting policies, but if possession itself is outlawed, discussions regarding the ethics and legality of nuclear use doctrine are no longer possible.

Finally, there is simply no evidence to suggest that the ban’s approach to stigmatizing nuclear weapons will be an effective path to disarmament. Research on compliance with norms and laws ranging from tax evasion and other illegal behaviors, to excessive drinking, and on to energy conservation shows that one of the strongest predictors of compliance is an individual’s belief about the probability that others in the appropriate reference group will also comply. In the case of the ban, all nuclear weapons states know that the rate of compliance among other nuclear weapons states is zero. Such a ban, therefore, might ultimately do more to undermine the gradual and step-by-step disarmament norm rather than strengthen it.

This highlights another opportunity missed by the ban movement: the opportunity to educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons. Public education is vital to addressing nuclear dangers because proponents of the ban may have overestimated the degree to which an anti-nuclear norm has taken root. Public opinion polls do show high levels of opposition to nuclear use and strong support for the principle of nuclear disarmament, even among nuclear states. For example, a 2008 poll of 21 countries found that majorities (or a plurality in the case of Pakistan) favored an international agreement in which “all countries with nuclear weapons would be required to eliminate them according to a timetable. All other countries would be required not to develop them. All countries … would be monitored to make sure they are following the agreement.” Seventy-seven percent of Americans, 86 percent of French, and 81 percent of Britons favored the agreement. Polls like this, however, almost never provide subjects with specific information about the scenarios in which nuclear weapons might be used or whether and how a disarmament treaty might be enforced. In the United States, where the most extensive polling on nuclear issues has been conducted, a separate poll found that only 25 percent of Americans agreed that “the total elimination of all nuclear weapons is possible,” and in another poll only six percent agreed that “nuclear weapons are morally wrong, and the United States should proceed to eliminate its arsenal whether or not others follow our lead.”

Our own public opinion research shows that significant majorities of the American public are willing to use nuclear weapons first when they are perceived as providing significant advantages over conventional weapons or when they might save large numbers of American soldiers’ lives by eliminating the need for a bloody ground war. We found similar results in a public opinion survey in India in 2015. Support for nuclear use in both countries remained high even when respondents were reminded that nuclear weapons were estimated to kill tens of thousands of civilians or more. These findings suggest that we cannot count on grassroots, mass public campaigns to pressure the governments of nuclear weapons states to disarm. Instead, we need to better educate the public about the dangers of nuclear weapons and how they might undermine rather than guarantee the safety of nations. Ironically, that was exactly what the humanitarian impact movement initially set out to do.