Can the current global moratorium on nuclear weapon testing survive the May 1998 tests by India and Pakistan and the refusal of US Senate leaders to permit consideration of the Comprehensive Test Ban treaty (CTBT) by the Senate? If nuclear testing resumes by India or Pakistan - or by Britain, China, France, Russia, or the United States - will it be condemned by most of the world as if an international norm against testing was already in effect? What will be the likely consequences for nonproliferation if tests resume? This article seeks to show that there are norms operating against nuclear testing even though the CTBT has not been ratified, and that renewal of testing would have widespread consequences.

This report is the result of a workshop held in April 1998, when fifty policy experts, government officials and scholars met in Washington, DC. to discuss an issue of great import: the future of the relationship between Ukraine and NATO, This event, the Workshop on Ukraine-NATO Relations, was sponsored by the Harvard University Project on Ukrainian Security and the Stanford-Harvard Preventive Defense Project. The express goal of the workshop was to bring together representatives of Ukraine, NATO, and the United States so that they could collaborate on developing concrete recommendations for short and long-term next steps to broaden and deepen Ukraine-NATO relations.

The conveners of this workshop believed that the relationship developing [at that time] between Ukraine and NATO had the capacity to evolve into an important force for stability and security in Europe and the world, and to serve as a model for other countries in the region. While the NATO-Ukraine Charter and Ukraine's participation in the Partnership for Peace and the NATO peacekeeping mission in Bosnia provided a strong foundation, the longer-term direction of this very important relationship continued to be largely undefined. Further, they strongly believed that the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership signed by Ukraine and NATO in the summer of 1997 was only the first step towards institutionalizing the growing Ukraine-NATO relationship. Ensuring that the Charter was meaningful depended on concrete implementation of the cooperation anticipated in that document. Thus they decided that a concerted effort needed to be made to develop a gameplan for the future.

Background: In the 1980s, many medical organizations identified the prevention of nuclear war as one of the medical profession's most important goals. An assessment of the current danger is warranted given the radically changed context of the post–Cold War era.

Methods: We reviewed the recent literature on the status of nuclear arsenals and the risk of nuclear war. We then estimated the likely medical effects of a scenario identified by leading experts as posing a serious danger: an accidental launch of nuclear weapons. We assessed possible measures to reduce the risk of such an event.

Results: U.S. and Russian nuclear-weapons systems remain on high alert. This fact, combined with the aging of Russian technical systems, has recently increased the risk of an accidental nuclear attack. As a conservative estimate, an accidental intermediate-sized launch of weapons from a single Russian submarine would result in the deaths of 6,838,000 persons from firestorms in eight U.S. cities. Millions of other people would probably be exposed to potentially lethal radiation from fallout. An agreement to remove all nuclear missiles from high-level alert status and eliminate the capability of a rapid launch would put an end to this threat.

Conclusions: The risk of an accidental nuclear attack has increased in recent years, threatening a public health disaster of unprecedented scale. Physicians and medical organizations should work actively to help build support for the policy changes that would prevent such a disaster.

In the 1990s, global concern over illicit trafficking in nuclear material to terrorists and nation-states has intensified. Two major changes are responsible: the evident new intent of terrorists to wound or kill thousands of civilians and the availability of inadequately protected "loose" nuclear materials in Russia and the newly independent former Soviet republics. These changes have made more likely attempts to acquire weapons-usable nuclear materials for terrorist use or for sale to state sponsors of terrorism. As a result, many efforts are being made to strengthen national and international standards for protection of nuclear material from theft and sabotage. One problem with current efforts is that national stnadards now vary widely. Although the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) mandates that non-nuclear weapon parties accept the safeguards requirements of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for their nuclear activities, the relevant international standards for physical protection are mostly advisory.

Russia's current strategic nuclear force will become obsolete shortly after the turn of the century. Strategic modernization is therefore essential if Russia is to remain a nuclear power on a par with the US. But modernization will be extremely difficult because of the country's economic and political turmoil. Russia can probably maintain slightly more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads under the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START) I Treaty - roughly half of what the United States could, in theory, deploy. Under START II, Russia's strategic force will likely contain between 1,800 and 2,500 warheads, compared to 3,500 for the US. Hence, the easiest - perhaps the only - way for Russia to recover rough parity with the United States would be through a START III Treaty that limits both sides to 2,000-2,500 warheads.

As Russia undergoes transition from a command to a market economy, almost all aspects of the economic landscape are changing. One of the more promising changes is the emergence of entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship depends heavily in turn on the availability of financing and advice for new businesses. For the past several decades in the United States this help has come largely from venture capitalists, so it is logical to consider the role that venture capital can play in Russia. Some understanding of this role can be gleaned from reviewing the development of venture capital in the United States. This paper reviews this development and suggests ways of building and utilizing venture capital firms in Russia, recognizing that there are many differences between the circumstances in Russia and those surrounding the development of venture capital in the United States.

Gail Lapidus of Stanford University assesses the factors leading to Moscow's decision in December 1994 to use military force to crush Chechnya's resistance to the authority of the Russian leadership. Exhaustively researched and documented, Lapidus's study traces the evolution of the secessionist struggle through six stages. At the heart of the conflict, she says, was the Chechens' growing desire for sovereignty and territorial integrity sparked by Mikhail Gorbachev's political liberalization initiatives and further fueled by the establishment of a number of new states after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Lapidus also considers the role of Western governments and international institutions first in preventing the outbreak of hostilities and then in mitigating and, finally, terminating the conflict. She concludes that when the behavior of a major power is at issue, the potential for outside intervention is limited, which in turn raises a host of troubling questions about the prospects for future internal conflict resolution.

The majority of Russia's current strategic nuclear force will become obsolete shortly after the turn of the century. Hence, Russian strategic force modernization is essential if Russia is to remain a nuclear power on a par with the United States. Numerous uncertainties, especially financial uncertainties, prevent accurate estimates of Russia's future strategic force structure. Nevertheless, under the START I Treaty, Russia can probably maintain a force with slightly more than 4,000 strategic nuclear warheads over the next two decades-about half the number of the United States. Under START II, Russia is likely to maintain a strategic force of between 1,800 and 2,500 warheads, compared to 3,500 warheads for the United States. Therefore, Russia's main interest in ratifying the START II Treaty would be to pursue a START III Treaty that limits both sides to between 2,000 and 2,500 strategic nuclear warheads. This is the least expensive way to retain rough parity with the United States. Several reasons have been educed for why Russia should not ratify the START II Treaty, namely, because the Treaty allows a U.S. advantage in reconstitution capability and prompt hard-target-kill capability. However, these advantages are neither so great nor so consequential that Russia should reject the START II Treaty for these reasons alone. If Russia ratifies the START II Treaty, and presumably a follow-on START III Treaty, Russia's future strategic nuclear force will appear a lot different than its Soviet predecessor due to the reduced emphasis on land-based ICBMs. Nevertheless, the Russian force should remain a highly survivable, stable force-assuming Russian leaders allocate sufficient resources to ensure that their ballistic missile submarines, mobile ICBMs, and bombers can survive all plausible counterforce threats.

From the preface:

"Events in recent years have caused heightened concern about the security of weapons-usable nuclear material. The possibility of illicit trafficking in, or seizure of, such material, leading to nuclear terrorism, is a worry for all states and their citizens. And given the relatively small quantities required, material obtained in one part of the world could be made into a weapon in another and threaten lives in a third. It is truly a global problem.

Since the beginning of the nuclear era, the physical protection of fissile material has been a responsibility of the individual states possessing the material. These states have different organizational approaches for providing physical protection; and while cognizant of recommended general standards, they tend to follow their own practices, shaped by custom, costs, and threat perception. Moreover, the existence of military as well as civil programs in some states adds another dimension
to the physical protection issue.

Because physical protection is a sovereign matter and not part of an international regime (except for transit of civil material across borders), there has been less attention in much of the world community to the issues of physical protection than to the other elements of nuclear safeguards and controls. (An important exception to this situation is the effort being made to assist the states of the former Soviet Union in the disposition of their weapons-usable nuclear materials.) The lack of a general dialog about a problem of growing concern motivated us to hold a three-day workshop at Stanford University to develop a better understanding of some of the important underlying questions and issues, and to undertake a comparative examination of states' approaches to physical protection. We were pleased to have knowledgeable participants from a number of the countries and regions where physical protection of fissile materials is, or will become, a day-to-day matter.

The results of the workshop are reported in these Proceedings. It is our hope that this work will stimulate further analysis and discussion, and lead to greater interest in international standards, cooperation, and supporting programs.

James E. Goodby
1996-1997 Payne Distinguished Lecturer
Stanford University

Ronald F. Lehman II
Director of the Center for Global Security Research
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

William C. Potter
Director, Center for Nonproliferation Studies
Monterey Institute of International Studies"

Proceedings of a conference, "Preventing Deadly Conflict: Strategies and Institutions," held in Moscow Aug. 14-16, 1996," that was a joint undertaking of the Carnegie Commission on Preventing Deadly Conflict, the Institute of Universal History of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford University.

Dr. Lapidus, who co-edited the report, wrote the conclusion, "Lessons from the Russian Experience."