Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Department of Political Science
Stanford University
Encina Hall West
Stanford, CA 94305-6044
Kenneth A. Schultz is professor of political science and a CISAC core faculty member at Stanford University. His research examines international conflict and conflict resolution, with a particular focus on the domestic political influences on foreign policy choices. He is the author of Democracy and Coercive Diplomacy and World Politics: Interests, Interactions, and Institutions (with David Lake and Jeffry Frieden), as well as numerous articles in peer-reviewed scholarly journals. He was the recipient the 2003 Karl Deutsch Award, given by the International Studies Association, and a 2011 Dean’s Award for Distinguished Teaching, awarded by Stanford’s School of Humanities and Sciences. He received his PhD in political science from Stanford University.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
China's nuclear forces, policies and posture have been very unusual since 1964. This is most likely because, unlike policy-makers in the United States, Chinese leaders tend to treat deterrence as being robust against disparities in technical details, such as the number or type of nuclear weapons. China’s current nuclear modernization, centered on the introduction of mobile missiles, creates some important challenges to crisis stability that may be difficult to resolve as long as Chinese and American policymakers hold divergent views on nuclear weapons. In this seminar, Dr. Lewis will address one option that may help clarify these diverging views. Beijing and Washington could negotiate a communiqué on strategic stability that addresses their differing perspectives and supports a sustained and effective dialogue on strategic nuclear issues between the United States and China.
Speaker bio:
Jeffrey Lewis is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Dr. Lewis is the author of Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (MIT Press, 2007) and publishes ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation. Before coming to CNS, he was the Director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation.
Prior to that, Dr. Lewis was Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Executive Director of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a desk officer in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He is also a Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy (CISSM).
CISAC Conference Room
New technologies are creating unprecedented opportunities for "open source" analysis on issues relating to arms control, disarmament and nonproliferation. The widespread availability of commercial satellite images and modeling software allows individuals to perform analyses that previously only intelligence agencies might. Moreover, the wealth of information available online can offer unprecedented insight into foreign nuclear weapon and ballistic missile programs. All of this information can be analyzed by virtual communities that exist only online, with results disseminated through new media platforms like blogs and social networking sites. These communities are increasingly influencing debates within and between governments. This presentation takes an irreverent look at this strange and new circumstance.
Speaker bio:
Jeffrey Lewis is the Director of the East Asia Nonproliferation Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. Dr. Lewis is the author of Minimum Means of Reprisal: China's Search for Security in the Nuclear Age (MIT Press, 2007) and publishes ArmsControlWonk.com, the leading blog on disarmament, arms control and nonproliferation. Before coming to CNS, he was the Director of the Nuclear Strategy and Nonproliferation Initiative at the New America Foundation.
Prior to that, Dr. Lewis was Executive Director of the Managing the Atom Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Executive Director of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs, a Visiting Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a desk officer in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. He is also a Research Scholar at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy (CISSM).
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Russia watchers in the West cannot be surprised that Vladimir Putin is on his way back to the Russian presidency. Dmitri Medvedev was always his protégé, and there was no doubt that major decisions could not be made without his approval. This includes signing the New START arms control treaty, cooperating with NATO in Afghanistan and supporting U.N. sanctions on Iran — all of which should provide reassurance that Putin’s return won’t undo the most important accomplishments of the U.S.-Russia “reset.”
Yet the relationship with the West will inevitably change. For one thing, Putin can have nothing like the rapport his protégé developed with President Obama, which was built upon the two leaders’ shared backgrounds as lawyers, their easy adoption of new technologies, and their fundamentally modern worldviews.
The Bilateral Presidential Commission which Obama and Medvedev created and charged with advancing U.S.-Russia cooperation on everything from counterterrorism to health care may suffer. The relationship as a whole is not adequately institutionalized, and depends on the personal attention of Russian officials who will likely avoid taking action without clear direction from Putin, or who may be removed altogether during the transition.
Putin’s return to the presidency will also provide fodder for Western critics bent on portraying Obama and the reset as a failure, or dismissing Putin’s Russia as merely a retread of the Soviet Union.
These critics are wrong — today’s Russia bears little resemblance to what Ronald Reagan dubbed an “evil empire” — but Putin has been far more tolerant of Soviet nostalgia than his junior partner, and his next term will surely bring a new litany of quotations about Soviet accomplishments and Russia’s glorious destiny that will turn stomachs in the West.
Although he has spent his entire career within the apparatus of state power, including two decades in the state security services, Putin is at heart a C.E.O., with a businessman’s appreciation for the bottom line. Western companies already doing business in Russia can expect continuity in their dealings with the state, and it will remain in Russia’s interest to open doors to new business with Europe and the United States. The next key milestone for expanding commercial ties will be Russia’s planned accession to the World Trade Organization, which could come as soon as December.
At home, Putin faces a looming budget crisis. As the population ages and oil and gas output plateaus the government will be unable to continue paying pensions, meeting the growing demand for medical care, or investing in dilapidated infrastructure throughout the country’s increasingly depopulated regions.
This means that while Putin will seek to preserve Russia’s current economic model, which is based on resource extraction and export, he will be forced to assimilate many of his protégé’s ideas for modernizing Russia’s research and manufacturing sectors. Medvedev’s signature initiative, the Skolkovo “city of innovation,” will likely receive continuing support from the Kremlin, although it will have little long-term impact without a thorough nationwide crackdown on corruption and red tape.
Putin’s restored power will be strongly felt in Russia’s immediate neighborhood, which he has called Moscow’s “sphere of privileged interests.” Even though Kiev has renewed Russia’s lease on the Black Sea Fleet’s Sevastopol base through 2042 and reversed nearly all of the previous government’s anti-Russian language and culture policies, Ukraine is unlikely to win a reprieve from high Russian gas prices. Putin will also continue to press Ukraine to join the Russia-dominated customs union in which Kazakhstan and Belarus already participate. He may also take advantage of Belarus’s deepening economic isolation and unrest to oust President Aleksandr Lukashenko in favor of a more reliable Kremlin ally.
Putin and Medvedev have been equally uncompromising toward Georgia. Both are openly contemptuous of Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, and it is unlikely that any progress on relations can occur until Georgia’s presidential transition in 2013.
Putin has good reason to continue backing NATO operations in Afghanistan to help stem the flow of drugs, weapons and Islamism into Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Russia itself. Moreover, as China extends its economic hegemony into Central Asia, he may find America to be a welcome ally.
Putin appreciates the advantages of pragmatic partnerships and will seek to preserve the influence of traditional groupings like the U.N. Security Council and the G-8 while at the same time promoting alternatives like the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and the Brics.
The succession from Putin to Medvedev and back again was decided behind closed doors, and the formal transition of power is likely to take place with similar discipline. This should offer the West and the wider world some reassurance. Putin’s return to the presidency is far from the democratic ideal, but it is not the end of “reset.” Many ordinary Russians support him because he represents stability and continuity of the status quo and, for now, that is mostly good for Russia’s relations with the West.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
Not in residence
Martha Crenshaw is a senior fellow emerita at CISAC and FSI. She taught at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, from 1974 to 2007. She has published extensively on the subject of terrorism. In 2011 Routledge published Explaining Terrorism, a collection of her previously published work. A book co-authored with Gary LaFree titled Countering Terrorism was published by the Brookings Institution Press in 2017. She recently authored a report for the U.S. Institute of Peace, “Rethinking Transnational Terrorism: An Integrated Approach”.
She served on the Executive Board of Women in International Security and is a former President and Councilor of the International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP). In 2005-2006 she was a Guggenheim Fellow. She was a lead investigator with the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and the Response to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland from 2005 to 2017. She is currently affiliated with the National Counterterrorism, Innovation, Technology, and Education (NCITE) Center, also a Center of Excellence for the Department of Homeland Security. In 2009 the National Science Foundation/Department of Defense Minerva Initiative awarded her a grant for a research project on "mapping terrorist organizations," which is ongoing. She has served on several committees of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2015 she was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy. She is the recipient of the International Studies Association International Security Studies Section Distinguished Scholar Award for 2016. Also in 2016 Ghent University awarded her an honorary doctorate. She serves on the editorial boards of the journals International Security, Security Studies, Dynamics of Asymmetric Conflict, Orbis, and Terrorism and Political Violence.
Much study has been put into the concept of a multinational or international “nuclear fuel bank,” and in 2010 two such banks became a reality according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative. However, all of the conceptual studies along with the two IAEA-approved banks are not really “fuel” banks; rather they are low-enriched uranium (LEU) reserves. While uranium is a commodity, fuel for a nuclear reactor is a highly-engineered product of which uranium is a component.
It has been argued that because there are more fuel fabricators than enrichers, the enrichment step is the crux of a supply assurance mechanism. This is a gross oversimplification. If one cannot get from LEU to a fabricated fuel assembly, then the fuel supply assurance is not available. There are issues of fuel design, core physics, regulation, intellectual property, and liabilities that could preclude fuel fabrication and delivery in a timely manner. These issues and obstacles will be discussed along with some suggestions about how they might be overcome to provide real fuel assurances.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Alan Hanson was appointed as Executive Vice President, Technologies and Used Fuel Management of AREVA NC Inc. in 2005. In this position he was responsible for all of AREVA’s activities in the backend of the nuclear fuel cycle in the U.S. Prior to that he served as President and CEO of Transnuclear, Inc., also an AREVA company, which he joined in 1985. Transnuclear designs, licenses and supplies dry storage casks; more than half of the casks in the U.S. have been supplied by Transnuclear.
In January of 2011, Dr. Hanson started a year-long assignment as a Visiting Scholar at the Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University on loan from AREVA. At CISAC he conducts research on the worldwide nuclear supply chain and international fuel assurance mechanisms.
Dr. Hanson began his career in 1975 with the Nuclear Services Division of Yankee Atomic Electric Company. In 1979, he joined the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) in Vienna, Austria. At the IAEA, he served first as Coordinator of the International Spent Fuel Management Program and later as Policy Analyst with responsibilities in the areas of safeguards and non-proliferation policies.
Alan Hanson received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University in 1969 and earned his Ph.D. in nuclear engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1977. He also is a recipient of a Master of Arts in Liberal Studies (MALS) degree from Georgetown University in 2009. He is a member of the American Nuclear Society and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
CISAC Conference Room
Nuclear energy is politically sensitive. For its proponents, nuclear energy is clean and highly efficient and indeed is the only alternative to fossil fuels in providing a base supply of electricity. For its opponents, nuclear energy is nothing but trouble, a symbol of war and weaponry par excellence, and one that creates environmental problems for mankind today and in the future. What is remarkable in this highly emotional debate is the general division between developed and developing countries. Asian and Gulf states are more active than many in other continents in expanding or developing their nuclear energy capacities. China is leading this expansion with 27 reactors under construction now.
Nuclear development in China highlights a series of objectives many developing countries try to balance – energy and economy, energy and development, energy and environment, energy and security, and the need for both clean energy and adequate and reliable energy supplies. It tells a counterintuitive story about Chinese politics – a single-party authoritarian political system with an extremely fragmented institutional structure in nuclear energy policy making, implementation and regulation and with highly competitive market forces in play. It provides a cautionary tale about the Chinese as well as global nuclear future. This paper discusses the challenges of nuclear energy development, using China as an example. It asks who drives it, what technology is selected and adopted, how human capital is developed, what the rules of the games are, and more importantly, which institutions are responsible for issuing licenses, regulating standards, and overseeing the compliance, and what forms of regulation do they use. At the core of these questions is if and how countries can ensure safe, secure and sustainable nuclear development.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Xu Yi-chong is a research professor of politics and public policy at Griffith University. Before joining Griffith University in January 2007, Xu was professor of political science at St Francis Xavier University in Nova Scotia, Canada. She is author of The Politics of Nuclear Energy in China (2010); Electricity Reform in China, India and Russia: The World Bank Template and the Politics of Power (2004); Powering China: Reforming the electric power industry in China (2002); co-author of Inside the World Bank: Exploding the Myth of the Monolithic Bank (with Patrick Weller 2009) and The Governance of World Trade: International Civil Servants and the GATT/WTO, (with Patrick Weller 2004); and editor of Nuclear Energy Development in Asia (2011) and The Political Economy of Sovereign Wealth Funds (2010). All these projects were supported by the research grants from either Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) or Australian Research Council.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
The production and distribution of counterfeit medications has become a significant global public health issue. Though not as rampant in the United States, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has seen a 10 fold increase in the number of cases investigated, particularly a rise in illegally imported and diverted medications entering our legitimate drug supply. In order to curb these illegal activities, California and the federal government have introduced various pieces of legislation to address this. In addition, international entities, State Boards of Pharmacy and the FDA have begun promoting utilization of radio frequency identification technology and other technology to effectively track the medication supply. In a recent California survey, pharmacists felt strongly that the presence of counterfeit medications poses a problem in their pharmacy practice, but they still face several challenges in identifying counterfeit medications, counseling their patients, and forging their role in implementing legislative requirements.
This presentation will aim to provide an introduction to the international and domestic counterfeit drugs situation, discuss possible factors facilitating patient exposure to counterfeit medications, examine potential sources for counterfeit medications in the United States, identifiy federal legislation issues, discuss various forms of technology being used to combat counterfeit medications, and recognize the role of pharmacists and the challenges they face in dealing with counterfeit medications.
Speaker Biography:
Dr. Elaine Law is currently a Clinical Pharmacist specializing in Adult General Surgery at UCSF Medical Center and an Assistant Clinical Professor in the UCSF School of Pharmacy. She received a B.S. in Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology from UCLA, earned a Doctor in Pharmacy from UCSF School of Pharmacy and completed a General Practice Pharmacy Residency at UCSF Medical Center. She holds a Board Certification in Pharmacotherapy and her research interests include roles pharmacists can play in public health issues including counterfeit medications and pharmacist-based immunization programs. She is an advocate of patient care in underserved areas and reaches out regularly to the Tenderloin communities and elderly populations of San Francisco through pharmacy health outreach programs.
Reuben W. Hills Conference Room
