The Politics and Ethics of Nonproliferation
A lasting legacy of the Cold War is the continued existence of weapons of mass destruction--uniquely, nuclear arms. The context in which they exist has been drastically changed in the realm of international politics. Father Hehir will probe the changed context of proliferation, as he addresses the continuing ethical and strategic challenges inherited from the past and now reshaped in this century.
Drell Lecture Recording: NA
Drell Lecture Transcript:
Speaker's Biography: J. Bryan Hehir is the Parker Gilbert Montgomery Professor of the Practice of Religion and Public Life at Harvard University and the Secretary for Social Services and the President of Catholic Charities for the Archdiocese of Boston. Father Hehir's research focuses on ethics and foreign policy, and the role of religion on world politics and in American society. His writings include The Moral Measurement of War: A Tradition of Continuity and Change and Military Intervention and National Sovereignty.
Oak Lounge
Thinking inside the box needed to secure borders, write CISAC professor and colleague
This week President Bush will seek to focus the nation's attention on border security and immigration reform. But the president's proposals won't protect Americans from our gravest cross-border threat: the possibility that a ship, truck or train will one day import a 40-foot cargo container in which terrorists have hidden a dirty bomb or nuclear weapon.
The Bush administration maintains that it has a smart strategy to reduce this risk. A new 24-Hour Rule requires that importers report the contents of their containers to customs inspectors one day before the boxes are loaded on ships bound for the United States. The Department of Homeland Security's National Targeting Center then reviews the data, checking against other intelligence to determine which boxes may pose a threat. Although the containers deemed high risk are inspected at cooperating foreign ports or when they enter the United States, the rest--more than 90 percent--land here without any perusal.
We have two concerns about this strategy. First, it presumes that the United States government has good enough intelligence about Al Qaeda to reliably discern which containers are suspicious and which are not. But our inability to thwart the attacks in Iraq demonstrates that we lack such specific tactical intelligence. And supporting customs inspectors, who must make the first assessment of risk, is not a priority for the intelligence agencies. Inspectors must rely on their experience in spotting anomalies--a company that claims to be exporting pineapples from Iceland, for example.
Second, determined terrorists can easily take advantage of the knowledge that customs inspectors routinely designate certain shipments as low risk. A container frequently makes 10 or more stops between its factory of origin and the vessel carrying it to American shores. Many of the way stations are in poorly policed parts of the world. Because name-brand companies like Wal-Mart and General Motors are widely known to be considered low-risk, terrorists need only to stake out their shipment routes and exploit the weakest points to introduce a weapon of mass destruction. A terrorist cell posing as a legal shipping company for more than two years, or a terrorist truck driver hauling goods from a well-known shipper, can also be confident of being perceived as low risk.
So what needs to be done? A pilot project under way in Hong Kong, the world's largest container port along with Singapore, offers one piece of a potential solution. At an estimated cost of $7 per container, new technology can photograph the box's exterior, screen for radioactive material, and collect a gamma-ray image of a box's contents while the truck on which it is carried moves at 10 miles per hour.
Terrorists can defeat radiation sensors by shielding a dirty bomb with dense materials like lead. But by combining those sensors with gamma ray images, the Hong Kong system allows inspectors to sound the alarm on suspiciously dense objects. Inspectors would need to analyze enough of the scans--perhaps 20 percent to 30 percent--to convince terrorists that there is a good chance that an indistinct image will lead a container's contents to be sent for more reliable X-ray or manual examinations. Images of container contents would then be reviewed remotely by inspectors inside the United States who are trained to spot possible nuclear weapons.
If terrorists were to succeed in shipping a dirty bomb, for example, the database of these images could serve as a kind of black box--an invaluable forensic tool in the effort to identify how and where security was breached. That information could help prevent politicians from reacting spasmodically and freezing the entire container system after an attack.
Such a program could significantly reduce the likelihood that terrorists will smuggle plutonium or a dirty bomb through American ports. But it still would not stop a terrorist from importing highly enriched uranium, which can be used to construct a nuclear weapon. Lengthening the time that a container is screened for radiation would help, and this could be done without increasing waiting times if additional monitors were added to the Hong Kong system near the gate where the trucks must already stop for driver identification checks. Better still would be for the Department of Homeland Security to make the development of new technology that can recognize the unique signature of highly enriched uranium an urgent priority.
Finally, we must find ways to ensure that terrorists do not breach containers before shipments arrive at loading ports. Sensors should be installed inside containers in order to track their movements, detect any infiltration and discern the presence of radioactive material. Where boxes are loaded, certified independent inspectors should verify that companies have followed adequate protocols to ensure that legitimate and authorized goods are being shipped.
Taken together, these recommendations will require new investments and an extraordinary degree of international cooperation. But increased container security will not only help the United States prevent terrorism, it will also help all countries reduce theft, stop the smuggling of drugs and humans, crack down on tariff evasion and improve export controls. What's more, such a program would require an investment of just one one-hundredth of the capital that could be lost if we shut down the global container shipping system after an attack.
Container security is a complex problem with enormous stakes. American officials insist that existing programs have matters well in hand. But we cannot afford to take these perky reassurances at face value while the same officials fail to embrace promising initiatives like the Hong Kong pilot project.
The Bush Doctrine in Historical Perspective: The United States and Preventive War, 1941-1994
Marc Trachtenberg, a historian by training, now teaches political science at UCLA. He's the author of a number of works on twentieth century international politics, including most notably A Constructed Peace: The Making of the European Settlement, 1945-1963. He just finished a book due to come out this spring called The Craft of History: A Guide to Method.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Beauty and Terror: Does Mathematics Have a Role to Play in Winning the Shadow War?
How do you stop a terrorist?
You can work hard: Post men and equipment at every street corner, every port, every bay, every slip of beach, every straight stretch of asphalt long enough to land a plane.
You will spend billions, and your lines will be thin. All you've done is build the "impregnable" Atlantic Sea Wall--which the Allies punched through in hours on D-Day.
You've got to work smarter, not harder.
The opening line of the Oscar-winning movie A Beautiful Mind is "Mathematicians won the war." During World War II, the mathematics underlying cryptography played an important role in military planning.
Thereafter came a new kind of war. After the first frosts descended in the Soviet East, perhaps $2 billion were spent in the development of Game Theory.
Now again we face a new kind of war. And we need a new kind of mathematics to fight it.
Since 2001, tremendous amounts of information have been gathered regarding terrorist cells and individuals potentially planning future attacks. There is now a pressing need to develop new mathematical and computational techniques to assist in the analysis of this information, both to quantify future threats and to quantify the effectiveness of counterterrorism operations and strategies. Concepts and techniques from mathematics--specifically, from Lattice Theory and Reflexive Theory--have already been applied to counterterrorism and homeland security problems. The following is a partial list of such problems.
1. Strategies for disrupting terrorist cells
2. Data analysis of terrorist activity
3. Border penetration and security
4. Terrorist cell formation
Jonathan Farley is a CISAC science fellow and a professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computer Science at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica. His work focuses on applying lattice theory and other branches of mathematics to problems in counterterrorism and homeland security.
In 2001-2002 he was one of four Americans to win a Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award to the United Kingdom. In the calendar years 2003 and 2004 he taught as a professor in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2004 he received the Harvard Foundation's Distinguished Scientist of the Year Award, a medal presented on behalf of the president of Harvard University for "outstanding achievements and contributions in the field of mathematics." The City of Cambridge, Mass., declared March 19, 2004, to be "Dr. Jonathan David Farley Day."
He obtained his doctorate in mathematics from Oxford University in 1995, after winning Oxford's highest mathematics awards, the Senior Mathematical Prize and Johnson University Prize, in 1994. He graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University in 1991 with the second highest average in his graduating class.
Farley's work includes the solution of a problem posed by universal algebraist George Gratzer that remained unsolved for 34 years, and the solution (published in 2005) of a problem posed in 1981 by MIT mathematics professor Richard Stanley.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Siegfried S. Hecker
CISAC
Stanford University
Encina Hall, C220
Stanford, CA 94305-6165
Siegfried S. Hecker is a professor emeritus (research) in the Department of Management Science and Engineering and a senior fellow emeritus at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI). He was co-director of CISAC from 2007-2012. From 1986 to 1997, Dr. Hecker served as the fifth Director of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Dr. Hecker is an internationally recognized expert in plutonium science, global threat reduction, and nuclear security.
Dr. Hecker’s current research interests include nuclear nonproliferation and arms control, nuclear weapons policy, nuclear security, the safe and secure expansion of nuclear energy, and plutonium science. At the end of the Cold War, he has fostered cooperation with the Russian nuclear laboratories to secure and safeguard the vast stockpile of ex-Soviet fissile materials. In June 2016, the Los Alamos Historical Society published two volumes edited by Dr. Hecker. The works, titled Doomed to Cooperate, document the history of Russian-U.S. laboratory-to-laboratory cooperation since 1992.
Dr. Hecker’s research projects at CISAC focus on cooperation with young and senior nuclear professionals in Russia and China to reduce the risks of nuclear proliferation and nuclear terrorism worldwide, to avoid a return to a nuclear arms race, and to promote the safe and secure global expansion of nuclear power. He also continues to assess the technical and political challenges of nuclear North Korea and the nuclear aspirations of Iran.
Dr. Hecker joined Los Alamos National Laboratory as graduate research assistant and postdoctoral fellow before returning as technical staff member following a tenure at General Motors Research. He led the laboratory's Materials Science and Technology Division and Center for Materials Science before serving as laboratory director from 1986 through 1997, and senior fellow until July 2005.
Among his professional distinctions, Dr. Hecker is a member of the National Academy of Engineering; foreign member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; fellow of the TMS, or Minerals, Metallurgy and Materials Society; fellow of the American Society for Metals; fellow of the American Physical Society, honorary member of the American Ceramics Society; and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
His achievements have been recognized with the Presidential Enrico Fermi Award, the 2020 Building Bridges Award from the Pacific Century Institute, the 2018 National Engineering Award from the American Association of Engineering Societies, the 2017 American Nuclear Society Eisenhower Medal, the American Physical Society’s Leo Szilard Prize, the American Nuclear Society's Seaborg Medal, the Department of Energy's E.O. Lawrence Award, the Los Alamos National Laboratory Medal, among other awards including the Alumni Association Gold Medal and the Undergraduate Distinguished Alumni Award from Case Western Reserve University, where he earned his bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degrees in metallurgy.
Panel Discussion: Hurricane Katrina and Homeland Security: What are the Connections and Research Implications?
Lynn Eden is associate director for research/senior research scholar at CISAC. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford. Her book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.
Michael May is professor emeritus (research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for Intenrational Studies. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, and a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988.
Charles Perrow is professor emeritus of sociology at Yale University. His current interests are in managing highly interactive, tightly-coupled-systems (including hospitals, nuclear plants, chemical plants, power grids, aviation, the space program, and intelligent transportation systems). These interests grew out of his work on "normal accidents," with its emphasis upon organizational design and systems theory. An organizational theorist, he is the author of a number of award winning books in the field of sociology.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Lynn Eden
Not in residence
Lynn Eden is a Senior Research Scholar Emeritus. She was a Senior Research Scholar at Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation until January 2016, as well as was Associate Director for Research. Eden received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Michigan, held several pre- and post-doctoral fellowships, and taught in the history department at Carnegie Mellon before coming to Stanford.
In the area of international security, Eden has focused on U.S. foreign and military policy, arms control, the social construction of science and technology, and organizational issues regarding nuclear policy and homeland security. She co-edited, with Steven E. Miller, Nuclear Arguments: Understanding the Strategic Nuclear Arms and Arms Control Debates (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989). She was an editor of The Oxford Companion to American Military History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), which takes a social and cultural perspective on war and peace in U.S. history. That volume was chosen as a Main Selection of the History Book Club.
Eden's book Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, and Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004; New Delhi: Manas Publications, 2004) explores how and why the U.S. government--from World War II to the present--has greatly underestimated the damage caused by nuclear weapons by failing to predict damage from firestorms. It shows how well-funded and highly professional organizations, by focusing on what they do well and systematically excluding what they don't, may build a poor representation of the world--a self-reinforcing fallacy that can have serious consequences, from the sinking of the Titanic to not predicting the vulnerability of the World Trade Center to burning jet fuel. Whole World on Fire won the American Sociological Association's 2004 Robert K. Merton Award for best book in science, knowledge, and technology.
Eden has also written on life in small-town America. Her first book, Crisis in Watertown (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972), was her college senior thesis; it was a finalist for a National Book Award in 1973. Her second book, Witness in Philadelphia, with Florence Mars (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1977), about the murders of civil rights workers Schwerner, Chaney, and Goodman in the summer of 1964, was a Book of the Month Club Alternate Selection.
Michael M. May
Michael May is Professor Emeritus (Research) in the Stanford University School of Engineering and a senior fellow with the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University. He is the former co-director of Stanford University's Center for International Security and Cooperation, having served seven years in that capacity through January 2000.
May is a director emeritus of the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, where he worked from 1952 to 1988, with some brief periods away from the Laboratory. While there, he held a variety of research and development positions, serving as director of the Laboratory from 1965 to 1971.
May was a technical adviser to the Threshold Test Ban Treaty negotiating team; a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks; and at various times has been a member of the Defense Science Board, the General Advisory Committee to the AEC, the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board, the RAND Corporation Board of Trustees, and the Committee on International Security and Arms Control of the National Academy of Sciences. He is a member of the International Institute on Strategic Studies, and a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
May received the Distinguished Public Service and Distinguished Civilian Service Medals from the Department of Defense, and the Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award from the Atomic Energy Commission, as well as other awards.
His current research interests are nuclear weapons policy in the US and in other countries; nuclear terrorism; nuclear and other forms of energy and their impact on the environment, health and safety and security; the use of statistics and mathematical models in the public sphere.
May is continuing work on creating a secure future for civilian nuclear applications. In October 2007, May hosted an international workshop on how the nuclear weapon states can help rebuild the consensus underlying the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Proceedings and a summary report are available online or by email request. May also chaired a technical working group on nuclear forensics. The final report is available online.
In April 2007, May in cooperation with former Secretary of Defense William J. Perry and Professor Ashton Carter of Harvard hosted a workshop on what would have to be done to be ready for a terrorist nuclear detonation. The report is available online at the Preventive Defense Project. A summary, titled, "The Day After: Action Following a Nuclear Blast in a U.S. City," was published fall 2007 in Washington Quarterly and is available online.
Recent work also includes a study of nuclear postures in several countries (2007 - 2009); an article on nuclear disarmament and one on tactical nuclear weapons; and a report with Kate Marvel for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences on possible game changers in the nuclear energy industry.
The Dangers of Accidental Ballistic Missile Launch
During the Cold War the United States and the Soviet Union made launch-on-warning an important part of their nuclear strategies. To achieve the launch-on-warning capability both countries deployed networks of early-warning satellites and radars as well as command and control systems that allowed them to launch a retaliatory strike in response to a ballistic missile attack. These systems, which remain operational to this day, are believed to support the "hair-trigger alert" posture of strategic nuclear forces.
This presentation will consider the current status of the U.S. and Russian early-warning systems and the extent to which characteristics of these systems can contribute to the danger of an accidental ballistic missile launch. It will also analyze various proposals that aim at reducing the danger of accidental launch--de-alerting, reduction of strategic forces, repairing the Russian early-warning system, etc. It will be shown that most of these measures are inadequate and some may in fact increase the danger of an accident.
Pavel Podvig joined CISAC as a research associate in 2004. Before that he was a researcher at the Center for Arms Control, Energy and Environmental Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT). He worked as a visiting researcher with the Security Studies Program at MIT and with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, and he taught physics in MIPT's General Physics Department for more than ten years. Podvig graduated with honors from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1988, with a degree in physics. In 2004 he received a PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.
His research has focused on technical and political issues of missile defense, space security, U.S.-Russian relations, structure and capabilities of the Russian strategic forces, nuclear nonproliferation. He was the head of the Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces research project and the editor of a book of the same title, which is considered a definitive source of information on Russian strategic forces.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Pavel Podvig
Pavel Podvig is an independent analyst based in Geneva, where he runs his research project, "Russian Nuclear Forces." He is also a Senior Research Fellow at the UN Institute for Disarmament Research and a researcher with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University. Pavel Podvig started his work on arms control at the Center for Arms Control Studies at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT), which was the first independent research organization in Russia dedicated to analysis of technical issues of disarmament and nonproliferation. Pavel Podvig led the Center for Arms Control Studies project that produced the book, Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces (MIT Press, 2001). In recognition of his work in Russia, the American Physical Society awarded Podvig the Leo Szilard Lectureship Award of 2008 (with Anatoli Diakov). Podvig worked with the Program on Science and Global Security at Princeton University, the Security Studies Program at MIT, and the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. His current research focuses on the Russian strategic forces and nuclear weapons complex, as well as technical and political aspects of nuclear nonproliferation, disarmament, missile defense, and U.S.-Russian arms control process. Pavel Podvig is a member of the International Panel on Fissile Materials. He has a physics degree from MIPT and PhD in political science from the Moscow Institute of World Economy and International Relations.
For a list of publications, please visit http://russianforces.org/podvig/.
Is the United States Feeding the Nuclear Fire in South Asia?
Zia Mian, a research assistant with the Program on Science and Global Security (PS&GS) at Princeton University and lecturer of public and international affairs at the Woodrow Wilson School, has been with PS&GS since 1997. His interests include nuclear weapons and nuclear energy programs in South Asia, and finding alternative policies that can contribute to disarmament and sustainable development. With Dr. Pervez Hoodbhoy, Mian co-produced Crossing the Lines, a documentary film about India, Pakistan, and the battle over Kashmir, which was shown at CISAC this past summer. He has edited and co-edited a number of books on South Asia, including Out of the Nuclear Shadow (co-edited with Smitu Kothari; Zed Press, London and Rainbow Press, New Delhi, 2001). Mian has also co-edited a volume with Iftikhar Ahmad and Dohra Ahmad, Between Past and Future: Selected Essays on Pakistan by Eqbal Ahmad (Oxford University Press, Karachi).
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?
Allen S. Weiner examines to what degree the global "war on terror" that has erupted since September 11, 2001 fits the "just war" doctrine of international relations or even whether it can properly be considered a war at all in terms of positive international law. Whether or not these labels apply is not merely a matter of academic debate, Weiner notes, but has broader implications for the international legal responsibilities of the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq and other theaters of the "war on terror
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room, East 207 Encina Hall
Allen S. Weiner
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Neukom Faculty Office Building, Room N238
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
Allen S. Weiner is senior lecturer in law and director of the Stanford Program in International Law at Stanford Law School. He is also the co-director of the Stanford Center on International Conflict and Negotiation. He is an international legal scholar with expertise in such wide-ranging fields as international and national security law, the law of war, international conflict resolution, and international criminal law (including transitional justice). His scholarship focuses on international law and the response to the contemporary security threats of international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, and situations of widespread humanitarian atrocities. He also explores the relationship between international and domestic law in the context of asymmetric armed conflicts between the United States and nonstate groups and the response to terrorism. In the realm of international conflict resolution, his highly multidisciplinary work analyzes the barriers to resolving violent political conflicts, with a particular focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Weiner’s scholarship is deeply informed by experience; for more than a decade he practiced international law in the U.S. Department of State, serving as an attorney-adviser in the Office of the Legal Adviser and as legal counselor at the U.S. Embassy in The Hague. In those capacities, he advised government policy-makers, negotiated international agreements, and represented the United States in litigation before the Iran-United States Claims Tribunal, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, and the International Court of Justice. He teaches courses in public international law, international conflict resolution, and international security matters at Stanford Law School.
Weiner is the author of "Constitutions as Peace Treaties: A Cautionary Tale for the Arab Spring” in the Stanford Law Review Online (2011) and co-author (with Barry E. Carter) of International Law (6th ed. 2011). Other publications include “The Torture Memos and Accountability" in the American Society of International Law Insight (2009), "Law, Just War, and the International Fight Against Terrorism: Is It War?", in Intervention, Terrorism, and Torture: Contemporary Challenges to Just War Theory (Steven P. Lee, ed.) (2007), ”Enhancing Implementation of U.N. Security Council Resolution 1540: Report of the Center on International Security and Cooperation” (with Chaim Braun, Michael May & Roger Speed) (September 2007), and "The Use of Force and Contemporary Security Threats: Old Medicine for New Ills?", Stanford Law Review (2006).
Weiner has worked on several Supreme Court amicus briefs concerning national security and international law issues, including cases brought involving "war on terror" detainees. He has also submitted petitions before the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention on behalf of Vietnamese social and political activists detained by their governing for the exercise of free speech rights.
Weiner earned a BA from Harvard College and a JD from Stanford Law School.